Hush be still

and let me in;

You I’ll hold

and place within.

Open Yourself

as this is my Day;

This is my Time

prepare for my Play.

Constricting your vision

thus blinding your sight;

Completing my mission

as Darkness mates Light.

I am the One

who commits this Rape,

Whilst drowning your Sun

beneath my cape…

As no arm of Law,

has the reach of claw,

To escape,

my Escape.

Now I mean no harm

as I may seem dark;

But blame me not

for absorbing your spark.

Alas I’m held captive

in an equation;

By an ‘Empty Set’

that solves for Salvation.

Without you beneath me

I am potential in a womb;

For your being gives birth

to my arousal to consume.

I shall take your drought

and relieve all your fears;

As I rain upon you

with oceans of tears.

Should you elect to breathe

underneath my blinds;

It shall be by a bond

that forever binds…

Me onto you

with few tears left to cry;

Leaving you wet

with no warmth to help dry.

Succumb now to this slave

of Nature’s whimsical yearning;

For I’ve many visits to make

whilst this Earth keeps turning.

Hush my beloved

be laid tranquil and light;

For ‘at the end of the Day’

I am, the Night!

Copyright © 1986-2017

Alan Salé

All Rights Reserved

contact: AASalehi@gmail.com

PoetryByAlan.com

I hate you.

Your sickeningly sweet voice.

Your huge fake smile.

Your unnaturally loud laugh.

The way your presence hangs over me,

a shadow looming near.

The way your thoughts claw its way inside,

shattering each and every speck of confidence

The way you always lie,

twisting me into a husk of who I used to be

How you stare right back at me through the mirror

He was a liar

In thought, action, deed

He hated himself

A façade,

Masking agony.

"Could you buy me those shoes?"

No "please."

No "...if I work...could you loan me..."

Just deep, dark green eyes that stare blankly though my own bright blue eyes. The chestnut brown hair that I so lovingly combed when he was a child falls across his forehead, matted under an old baseball cap.

His left hand instinctively moves toward the front pocket of his jeans. Jeans that are so tight that the outline of his ever present iPhone has worn a rectangular shape into them.

I shift and glance at my weary husband before I return my attention to the conversation at hand.

Is he going to answer that right now? In the middle of a conversation? Why?

Imperceptible; the feeling that tore him away from his demand, but I could feel it.

I knew the phone would go off.

Just as it had countless times before.

When we had been arguing. When he told me that his father and I were the worst, that we were ruining his life. That he couldn’t stand us. That we were nothing to him.

But that doesn’t happen anymore; the screaming matches.

He has once again retreated into that screen. The world of likes, shares, and controlled emotions on display.

A glimpse of white, and the slightest hint of a chuckle escape from my son. My attention toward him falters, and I look to his father who too has perked up at the sound of our only son’s first display of happiness since the accident.

He’s on the mend, I think to myself. Good. I’m glad. It’s time for us to both move on.

But just as quickly as it came, the smile disappeared and my son looked up from his phone and tucked it into the same spot in the same pocket without a second thought. He looked to my husband. My husband quickly withdrew his wallet from a similarly worn back pocket and handed it to our son without a word.

My husband clung to his wallet like my son clings to his phone.

A wallet is a different sort of crutch for the suburban man who had grown up in the rural south. A man whose calluses from working on his family’s farm caused him to have trouble completing his school assignments on his mother’s beat up type writer as child. A man who had received a scholarship that funded his collegial education— a man who decided that his wife and child would not want for anything.

As he watches our son walk into the store to spend an obscene amount of money on sneakers that he doesn’t need, and will only wear with matching t-shirts, I look at the bags under his eyes and my gaze falls to the haphazardly tucked in shirt that now has an abundance of room for the belly that is no longer there. The belly which I had previously encouraged him to exercise away for so many years.

Now he was becoming gaunt. The accident was slowly killing him.

I can do nothing but watch him wither.

Our son walks slowly back to where we both wait for him. The cell phone in his right hand, stealing all of his attention. He wordlessly carries his bag and my husband’s wallet in his left hand. When he gets near to his father he wordlessly hands the wallet to my husband without taking his eyes of his screen.

The two turn swiftly and pass through me as though I am not even there. And as far as they know I am not there. As far as they are concerned I am drifting at the bottom of the lake which they have to pass over each day. On the way to work, on the way to school, even on the way to this mall.

Each day they have to pass over the bridge with the mismatched concrete where my car broke through.

The memory of my accident haunts them daily…no wonder they have changed so much.

He plunged the knife into his seventh victim. Repeatedly pounding the blade into the opened flesh. Manic laughter filled the room, and a child ran to the locked door. 

Tears filled her terror filled eyes as she scanned the corpses of her family.

 She should have never got out of her bed. 

The bad man stalked towards her. The gleam in his eye, and the blood soaked weapon showed his intentions. Fear grasped ahold of her very soul as he finally reached her. 

"Stop." She cried out. "Please daddy."

And then the switch clicked.

The gleam faded, and the feelings in his body returned. The man looked around him. His wife, father, mother, the neighbours and finally his son.

Tears streaked his face before he spun to check over his daughter. The only one left alive. She grasped him tight. Her small hands twisting in his blood soaked shirt. Sobs wracked her body as he held onto her for dear life. Afraid to let her go.

"Who did this Abigail?" He sputtered out, in-between his own grief stricken cries. 

His daughters ocean blue eyes connect with his.

"You did daddy."

*Author's note: I usually don't like monologues, but yet here is one. I guess in a sense they are unavoidable. 

Isn't it funny that we call it humanity,

when humans do such awful things?

I think so. 

I find it hilarious that we compare humanity with things such as valuing life and being a good person. Let me ask you this, did the man who murdered my mother spare her? Did my father spare all those he killed? What about every war, every genocide, ever mass killing caused by none other than humans? Does the blood of those who died still scream, "where is your humanity"? 

No. 

I think they very well know what humanity really is seeing those prime specimens in action.

If I have lost my humanity, I feel that is a good thing. I'll be the monster they created, because then at least, I will be only acting like a perfectly natural human. 

Forever he walks next to a monster. Why is the noble man loyal to a noble beast? Villagers whisper behind their backs, wondering how someone so honest; so full of light and light can love a heartless savage who haunts their dreams. Kills and tortures without mercy. Rips out the hearts of innocents and taking pleasure from their fear. Then he dances with their daughters as if he was a gentleman rather than the vicious demon that hides underneath. Yet still, the dark haired lord stays loyal to the devil; never questions him, nor does he falter in his devotion.

The truth. Why does  man of honour care so much for the man of rage?  A tyrant who takes he wants without thought to the victims he leaves in his wake. Surely, there must be a reason...and there is. With a kind warmth in his eyes, the hazel eyed protector looks to the left at his younger brother. The one they hate so much. His name spoken throughout the world, a legend; a story to scare kids. Yet he sees no anger, no hate, nor a beast. Just a little, light haired boy with beautiful blue eyes and an innocent smile. Remembers the fear in that little boys eyes when his father struck him (he should have struck his father down the moment he layer a hand on his little brother). The bastards son. 

All his life he had been called an abomination by the man who should not have cared who's blood he carried, so how would he know that he could be anything else but a monster. For every tine he picked up a paintbrush; every time he drew an image of beauty, he would find only pain (art is for maidens, not men!) His little brother, the living boy he failed.  He remembers the terror in eyes as blue as oceans as he screamed in chains. Moonlight illuminating his body as every bone broke and changed into a form that was both deadly and beautiful. A lone wolf...

His father had hunted his brother for how he was born. A curse he bore for his ignorant mother's mistake. And though he could not take away the pain of his family, one thing he could do was stay by his side as they ran and ran and ran. Until tales of the monster and the nobleman reached every village in every city. As they burn down the small house, they never see a noble vampire save a lonely wolf from the hate and fear of those who do not understand. And they will alone walk the earth together until they breathe no more for the vampire will always fin the good in his beastly brother as his brother finds in him. 

For one remembers a boy stuck down cruelly by his father and too quickly,  the boy became a man. Every dagger stabbed in his back created a void in his heart.  Would no one love him? He knew the answer as he glanced at his noble brother beside him. One always had, even as others left, one always stayed! 

The fire of the neighbouring age

A little far away from a tunnel

Escaping a little into one closed bay

All heated

And sweating profusely

As if chasing from a horrible night.

I lived there

Where the girl lived

Just beside the front porch

Under the mistletoe of many trees

Shrinking as one

Yet many.

I killed not one

But all

Who fell inside the hole in me-

The fish,

The creepers under the hardwood tree.

It could'nt survive the winters

Or the scratch of my scribblings on its arm

So I twisted and turned its head

Upside down

Into one neat braid

And killed it.

I am the frozen

Diminished like the monster that feeds off fear

Under your bed-

Dying with the summers of infinty 

Scavenging down the dewy aisle

In a wedding gown

Completely wrecked.

Matvei was someone far different than his brothers. The youngest of three, pure-blooded heirs, he was to one day rule his father's kingdom if the Romans spread too far into their territory and noble blood was shed. He was to be the last light in the darkness surrounding their walls. A hero. A king. A mercenary.

Their position was stamped into the war-torn, blood bathed hills of Europe. A dead country rose from the ashes there, the Spaniards and Germans flooding the land, courting and fucking, corrupting the Earth in their seed. The Spanish-Germanic Empire lived a long one, surpassing the Romans whose thirst for flesh was contagious. They slaughtered them. And the Turks. And the Jews. When they died, they died with Matvei, the last face burned into gold and silver currency, never to be seen again.

"Come now, brother. Look at her." Antonio, the eldest of the three brothers, firmly gripped the hair of the poor slave girl in his arms. She was stark naked, the only coverage she was given being her blood from places Matvei refused to acknowledge for his own sake. Antonio caught the anxiety boiling in the tears at the bridges of his younger brother's eyes and laughed. "Matvei, you are acting like such a child. This slave girl will not bite." Antonio yanked her closer to his face, inhaling the rustic scent of her filth with a small smile. "Foreigners always have quite the alluring scent. So cruel and captivating."

"Toni..." Matvei croaked out in between clenched teeth, eyes upwards at the mold-spotted, brick ceiling. "I- I think that's enough..."

Antonio blinked and turned his head back to his nervous sibling, eyebrow quirked questionably. "It's just sex, Matvei," he said nonchalantly. "Look at her face when I stick my fingers in." Matvei couldn't bear watching or hearing the breathy, abused gasps of this slave girl he was faced with. "See? She likes it."

"That's enough." The new voice hissed from in between his teeth was a foreign one. Probably one of an unknown sibling, a stronger one, in a land far from there. Antonio stared at his brother for about a minute or two, the sound of his jagged breath taking up the loud silence of the dungeon.

"So this is how it is." A sigh. Antonio flung the slave away from him, the poor young woman hitting the ground hard, choking back sobs. Standing to his full height, an almost six and a half feet that loomed intimidatingly over that of his younger, shorter brother, the elder took hold of Matvei's forearm hard and practically dragged him out from the girl's cell. The younger of the two cried out tiny protests for his brother to loosen his grip, but he went unheard. He forced himself to stop stumbling over his feet and be hauled up the stairs out of the dungeons, up the main staircase to where he, his brothers, and his father resided, then down the hall to his father's throne room.

Much like the slave, Antonio heaved Matvei to the ground, the younger boy shivering in fear as they faced their father. The older man stopped his conversation with the middle child, Seckel, a crafty man who conspired horrid things about the casualties of enemy nations, but enjoyed being at the mercy of his personal slave woman when she bound and gagged him in the privacy of his quarters.

"Antonio. Matvei." Matvei was far used to being acknowledged with contempt by his father. He, on his knees, carried out a deep bow, not daring to bring his eyes to meet those of his king.

"Father," Antonio began, not one to dawdle when it came to news, "I believe that our Matvei sympathizes with the lower class. The slaves and foreigners especially."

"Is that so?" A deep, throaty sigh that was no doubt that of the old man in the throne. "My God, Matvei. I pray for you each day. Pray to every God that I know of that you will eventually be a strong man like your brothers. And yet you continue to disappoint." A long silence crowded the room. Seckel and Antonio stared down their youngest brother without remorse.

"Father, if I may suggest," Seckel began, a dash of a smirk lifting his cheeks, "if our brother wishes to have feelings for the slaves, why not we do the honorable thing and treat him like a slave? Rehabilitation is the word I am looking for." Matvei's eyes, wide with panic and still aimed directly at the ground, clouded with stinging rains.

"I adore that idea, brother." Antonio grinned, a sadistic lust dilating his pupils. "Besides. Look at him. He already does so well on his knees, grovelling for forgiveness. He is a natural." The older two brothers cackled at Antonio's joke, but quickly silenced and straightened up with the raising of their father's hand.

"Matvei. Lift up your head. Eyes on me." Reluctantly, Matvei did as he was told, forehead rising from up the stone ground and brown eyes focusing through teared vision on his King. Father did not look pleased. "You are an embarrassment to me. If I was not a merciful man, I would have had you slaughtered along with your bitch of a mother before your birth." A pause. Redirection to Antonio. "Please, demonstrate to him the difference between men like us and the women we keep chained in the cellar."

Antonio licked his lips. "With pleasure." Matvei sobbed like a girl for the seven weeks he was trapped in his brother’s room. And Antonio, strung out on the drug that was Matvei’s body, couldn't resist seconds and thirds. Seckel was invited to partake in the meal known as Matvei. Noble guests from allied nations rallied together in one, weekend long visit of treaty signings and war plans, sucking the juice of the forbidden fruit. When Antonio opened his door on the last day, he whispered, “now you see why we don't waste pity on slaves. Do you feel sub-human, brother? They do.” A tear escaped from the boy’s bloodshot eye. Antonio laughed, undid Matvei’s shackles, and shoved him out of the room. Matvei laid spent on the ground, drowned in the upper class’s filth, unmoving because his legs refused to work. He laid there for hours, stepped on and ignored. He laid there, in that time, in the antebellum of his adulterous bloodlust. He was only fifteen years old.

On the dawn of the coming war against the Turks, Matvei stood in attention in his father’s quarters. The old man coughed and hacked on his own dry saliva. Matvei could remember the taste like it was yesterday. His father was dying of a new illness that, fortunately, was not contagious but came from old age. When his father died, Antonio would be the next heir to the throne, something that the commoners of the Spanish-Germanic Empire feared. Antonio was an evil that swallowed his conquests like Kronos himself, ghastly teeth severing the skin and bone of his children. An attractive man on the outside who boiled with tyranny in his entrails. For now, however, the king’s days were numbered and Matvei could not wait.

“I have brought you something that may please you, father,” Matvei said with a low voice. He and his father were undeniably alone, the young man ordering away the guards after insisting he wanted absolute privacy. His father attempted to sit up in the bed, but he restarted his weak fit of coughs. Matvei jumped to action, forcing the king back into the pillows under him. "Hush, father. Drink this." Picking up the dish of water on the desk beside his father's bed, he pressed the edge against the old man's lips, tipping it a little so that he may drink. The king took tiny sips that reminded Matvei of a small child suckling on his mother's breast for the first time. "There... just like that..."

The old man shoved the dish away from his mouth and wiped any residual water on his lips and chin with the back of his hand. "I am fine. Thank you, son. Now, what is this about pleasing me?"

Matvei's frown from being pushed away rose back up into a smile. Kneeling down, he picked up a box from the ground and then placed it on the bedside. His father raised an eyebrow at him as he watched his son pop open the lid to the container. Moments stood in a silence between the two before a cobra slithered out from it's former prison, devilish eyes locked on the old man. It slid it's way up the man's stomach and the king almost screamed, but Matvei covered his mouth with his hand.

"Now, now, father. Do not startle the cobra. Or else it will bite." The once innocent smile on his son's face that craved nothing more than to please his father faded into something different entirely. There was anger in his eyes that was drenched in a sadistic cruelty that brought tears to his father’s eyes. “Wait-- no way. Are you crying?” The smirk widened into a grin and he threw his head back laughing in such a way that the cobra seated on his father’s chest looked disturbed. “Priceless,” he sighed out, shaking his head. “But I can smell your fear, father. If you beg of it, I am capable of mercy.”

The old man quivered pleas for forgiveness under Matvei’s strong hand, eyes widening and louder begs spilling forth from his muffled lips as Matvei drew a knife and held the blade sickly sweet way against the side of his face. “What? This is mercy, father. This is what you gave to me those few years ago. You remember, do you not? I know you do. You would not stop commenting about how pretty my face was drenched in your seed.

“I can show you mercy.” The young man smiled down at his father, snake on him regaining confidence and crawling up the man’s stomach to his chest. Matvei removed his hand from his father’s mouth, eyes dark. “Beg for it.”

“M-Matvei,” his father spluttered, terrified eyes shifting quickly back and forth from the sadistic son and the hungry cobra, “please… h-have mercy on me! I am sorry! Forgive m--” Matvei couldn’t stand listening to the pathetic man any longer. Wordlessly, he plunged the knife directly through the king’s eye, blade piercing his brain and blood spewing forth from the intrusion. The snake hissed and backtracked at the gory sight, finding refuge beneath the man’s legs. Matvei stared at the convulsing body die off from his own hands. A true, genuine smile graced his face for the first time in years. He was only nineteen years old.

©SelfTitled, 2017