I felt like a penny
Picked up, rubbed clean, and then used
To make a wish for something more.
Why did you have to change the way
You loved me?
Because you wanted to be best?
Closer?
More secure?
Why did you have to change the way
You spoke to me?
Because I couldn’t love you back the way
You wanted?
And it made you bitter
Turned you toxic?
Why did you have to change the way
You touched me?
The hand once around my shoulder sliding
Down the crease of my inner thigh
Pulling me close when you should be pushing me away
Because now your lust was in our way
Why did you have to change the way
You loved me?
Because now,
It is impossible for me to love you back.
It is its own kind of miracle
How someone can look at you
Like you have hung the silver moon
In the velvet sky of their most luxurious dreams
One moment
And
The next
They never want to see you
Again
Romance novels made me an insomniac
I waited by the phone in the darkest hours
Held my breath until the silence mocked me
And the emptiness of the room without you
Began to echo
Overripe with love
You fall from the limb
Too ready
Too willing to be had
You break open on the ground
Only food for the flies
You were moonlit sonatas
And the stars in the sky
We were young and hopeless with wishes tied to clouds
Like children’s balloons
We didn’t know they were so
Fragile
That close to the heavens
We didn’t know
That even stardust could rust over time
Anything for love
They say
Let that count for love of self too
If your soul cries out for it
It’s not selfish
It’s sustenance
Don’t settle for friendship
When you need love
Don’t settle for sometimes
When you deserve someone’s always
You have the worth you give yourself
Your worth is not measured by the angle of your hips
And the gap between your thighs
In the weight of your breasts
And the breadth of your smile.
It’s hidden shyly in the corners of your face
For few to find.
A flower safe guarded in the middle
Of a book you have to study
Before you find the prize.
The true currency of your glamour.
Sometimes a person’s got a soul so pretty
It makes them glow prettier than anything else.
Lust is no true substitute for pure care.
I have an entire galaxy in my soul
And you have only landed on the moon
Do not think
Because you can see my stars
That you have earned the right to colonize them
You pushed and pulled
Breaking apart an old house
Thinking you wanted what was in it
All the baggage you thought was treasure
Finally
The boards cracked under your pressure
And I broke open
Just the way you wanted
Exactly what you worked for
All my secrets
And my troubles
My old house aches and pains
At your feet for you to pilfer.
We didn’t speak after that.
There is a black hole at the center of every universe.
It yawns
Stretches
And contracts
But it is constant
Ever hungry.
So,
You feed it.
Sweet bursts of sugar
Deep draughts of the finest wine.
You fill it with vicious violence and
Blood red rage
With sex and sinning
Envy and greed.
It eats
And eats
Everything you give it
But sometimes
The right times
All it takes is a mirror to prop before it
And it doesn’t seem so depthless after all.
What do you feed your demons?
Remember
It is you who makes a lie come alive.
Someone need only sow the seed
In the fertile field of your mind
Where they might watch it take root
In your insecurities
Flourish under the drizzle of your fears
And blossom in the sunny belief you hold
For anyone who lets you love them.
This is how a lie takes hold.
There are not enough love letters about friendship
How it feels to know you have a home
Inside the heart of another being
They are the kerchief for your tears
The arms around your shaking shoulders
The hands that help carry your burdens
There are not enough love letters about friendship
Yet they suffer the same betrayals
And there is nothing as brutal as a knife in the back
From a person you trusted with all your pain
I’ve found
That the worst monsters
Have the prettiest faces
The art of deception.
His laugh was bitter and sharp with hate
I swallowed it down like hemlock
And wondered how long it would take
I have an encyclopedic knowledge
Of all your flaws
I ripped out the pages
Of things to love
Verbs of worship and nouns that rhyme
With your name
I burned the edges of the Holy Bible
Because you once told me
God wasn’t as important as our love
And in the end,
It was the biggest lie you ever told
Love looks best on you
But honestly,
Hate is pretty too.
She tends to her anger like a garden
Waters the earth with her hot salt tears
So that only red flowers can bloom
Poppies to commemorate a violent death
Of something she once held so dear
Digs up the weeds with her bare hands
And bleeding broken nails
So that her skin is stained just as dark
As the bruises she secrets away on her heart
She tends to her garden of ivy and wrath
Like a groundskeeper
For an estate of eternal hate
The Midas of death
I turn everything I touch to ash
All the beautiful thins reduced to soot beneath my fingernails
But
Still I reach for that golden thing
That indelible light of life
Even knowing
The press of one finger
Will blow it all to smoke.
No one ever speaks
About the heartbreak
Of shattering another’s dreams
Of taking the love they have for you
And stamping it
Cannot be delivered.
Return to sender.
Just because I am the one that broke
Your heart
It does not mean
I didn’t rip off a little
piece of my soul
In the process
The break up.
Is there beauty in ashes?
Because I am razed to the ground
Burnt up by my own flames
An arsonist
With a self-fulfilling destiny
Who knew love could be so toxic?
That the flames they spoke of wouldn’t set my heart on fire or heat my groin like warm coals.
That instead it would eat me up to ash like lit paper
Until I crumbled into dust.
Yes, she hurts me
She knows I love her because I bleed for her whenever she needs proof
She knows because I fight for her even against myself
She knows because I fell in love with her at eight and never stopped
But the cruel agony of life
Is that I will never know for sure
How much she loves me back
Because no one ever taught her how
Or gave her the courage to try.
Sometimes love stories don’t work out.
I stood in a pool of blood
At the scene of my heartbreak
And wondered if the blue and red lights
Flashing across the carnage
Could make sense of the sorrow
That brutalized my chest
As wide and gory as a rifle shot wound.
Would they itemize the reasons?
Surmise the motive
And write a report
So succinct
I would read it and
Not feel the horror of those events
Again in my heart?
The police work of therapy.
They say opposites attract
But what if
We really are polar opposites?
If our currents run at perpendicular angles and our frequencies on different channels
What if we want to love each other
But the Law of Physics disproves it?
Our bodies were magnetic
The energy between our skin
Was so strong
We couldn’t bear to be apart
But our hearts were polarized
Too contrary to coexist
So even when our bodies collided
Our souls could never connect
She was whelved so deeply in the tissues and chambers of my heart it took me years to find her
And by then it was too late.
All her life
You planted flowers under her skin
A poppy on her throat
Handfuls of peonies across her hips
A tropical paradise warm and wet
At her core
You planted lust and desire in blooms
And plumes of green leaves
All over her body
You planted a garden in her heart
But didn’t stop to watch it grow
Or smell the flowers as you passed
That blossomed just for you
Seasons of the heart.
To watch them was to know
That two souls could be perfectly matched
Harmoniously in tune
Seamlessly entangled
And somehow
Never know it
You dropped me
But I wanted to snap back
Like a yo-yo
Into your hand
Even if it meant
You would drop me
Again
I fought for my fairytale
And in the end
My prince was the villain
And I was a hero
Corners meet
Dark nesting in their folds
Harbouring the fragile glow of a woman
And I ask you then,
How do you see me?
As a creature of the moon
Refracting a light not lost
But glimmering
A soft broken piece of ancient clay
Submerged in burning fluid
That eats with tearing teeth at flesh and thought
Until
I sit a creature of the moon disowned
In human sin
Do you know me as a little lady?
With milk froth of petticoats
Stained by rusty human oil
Doll hands clutching
To the broken fingers of grace
Stunted growth now curling over like spoiled time
In shame
Know me as the little lady fallen off
A high sharp shoe
Would you want me as a naked woman lies?
Curving broken back to arch
Groaning desperate desire
From a throat painted with crimson lines
Of your love
Tasting like honeyed cream
Without the blemish of tattooed bluebells and overripe plums
Want me as I lay a woman
Exposed lines folds and hand holds
Not as naked as you’d like
Could you love me as I am?
Like a soft child’s lullaby of
Glimmering shimmering gold
Like a masterful David to look at and lust
But only wonder at in gentle curiosity
As not the naked woman lies
As not the little lady knows
As not the creature of the moon
But more a person of her own
Then how do you see me?
As I crouch in a corner of shadow’s nest
Licking and lapping at metallic red to
Stop the human oil slick
And soothe the sore lace torn flesh
Back curved in not lust for you
But pain
How do you see me now, my love?
Street poetry
Written in graffiti and waste
One man’s garbage is another’s taste
The art of being thrown away.
I couldn’t have you so
We stopped speaking.
I couldn’t avoid you so
I moved to another country.
I couldn’t forget you so
I married another woman
Dreamt of you each night
And woke up with her each morning.
I couldn’t have you yet
Even across all that ocean
With all that time between us
And me
I was still doomed to love you.
A wish is a seed
Something to plant and germinate
Something to nurture and grow
They teach you in grade school
Water, sunshine, soil
And poof
A plant
I thought hope was like that
Love was like that
And while I had the seed to sow
You gave me nothing to feed it
I am a fallow field.
I kept waiting for all the dirt and rain
Of my life
To blossom into flowers
But I guess
Sometimes
Dirt is just grime
And rain just falls
So many men try to drown their misery at the bottom
Of a bottle.
Why don’t they try to drown it in the rain?
Or trap it in prose at the bottom of that bottle
And drown it in the sea.
The natural remedy for all maladies.
Definition:
Increase the stakes, especially in times of dispute or conflict.
I don’t want to be the phoenix
I want to be the serpent
The snake is not
The sly evil thing in the grass
Of Eden’s garden
It is the serpent
A healer and fertile harbinger
The two twisted heads on the staff of Hermes
The serpent is the middle of black and white
The dual expression of good and evil
The ser
pent does not die and is reborn anew
The serpent evolves, changes, and grows
Shedding the skin of the past but retaining the memory
So that when it slithers forward it does it wise
She was sharp as a heart attack
A woman in need of sacrifice
And reverence
Who understood her worth
And demanded payment
For her venerable affections
I capitulated to the fury of her need
Cut my heart out of my chest with her dagger
Rusty with old blood
The stain of other lovers
Who had failed to fill her greed
I handed it to her
Still beating
Thumping against the silver platter
Like a war drum
She looked me in the eye as she took it
In one pale hand
Raised it to her lips and licked the aorta
Until it throbbed
“I will consume you whole.”
She promised.
The man is the sacrificial lamb in this one.
I slayed my demons
With my bare hands
Stuffed the heads
And mounted them on my wall