A mess
Don’t you hate the life you killed
I’m proud of you still
I was horrible and almost let him in
You made the big mistake of dancing in my storm
Let me die in your arms
I hate the way you hold me, nervous as a cat
I’m baptized in your name
So rear back, and take aim
You are my sunshine
I need your grace to remind me
There’s nothing in that town I need
Forget the sun in his jealous sky
I was so sure what I needed was more
Come and gaze upon my shadow at your door
You were always on my mind
I’ll work hard ’til the end of my shift
Food for Thought
God.
____________
That is my longest poem.
Not for what it doesn't say but for which also goes without saying. That is, "all that's said" that "goes unsaid." I know this is a snarky way to make my entry to the challenge, but I wanted to make a point of how one small word can fill volumes of words in my mind. Disqualify me, certainly. But you'll never be able to memorize the whole thing or set it to music.
White Wall
I purchased some
thumb tacks today
to hang
my fractions
of time
Attached by
thick red
string
and blood
soaked
cadmium
Inspired by
true crime
and Goya
Raygun
snapshots of
this life
deconstructed
and dismantled
until the victims
all look the same
a collage of
emotional
Man Ray
a psychological
mural of
Monet
2011
I'm 31 and I live in Florida in a one bedroom apartment I share with a coworker. I sleep on the living room couch.
If you follow me I can show you exactly where it all went wrong…
It was a cucumber sandwich on the beach of the Black Sea.
Sand in my teeth
or wait maybe it was the watermelon seeds from last winters last meal.
In any case
I was mixing low grade ecstasy into a glass of whiskey when all of the sudden
I remembered my best friend yelling over a pay phone at me 9 years prior “this isn't a fucking Burroughs novel Julia” and slamming the phone.
I dont know about that, it could've easily been a bestseller, except he was dead and I didnt have a pen to write with.
So there's that,
I thought
Yeah
Let's see
How words survive…
They can spend centuries atop our barbed wires
Render us useless in our mutterings
we make in the hopes to retire in a quote.
And
Eyelids are fenders
That crash
Into strangers
In the hopes of explosion
But all we end up getting
is ourselves caught in crypts and gravestones
And here I am
Where the fire escapes are fire hazards
Where the alley ends and meets my throat
sore from screaming into a scream and 2 blocks past the pizza parlors,
coffee shop teenage tragedies
and hipsters with cracked voices.
I’ve got a morticians lens eye view of the strangers finely tuned to a beat my heart forgets to ache to
Crazy impossible nothings
This is the border
I come to at the end of the page
This is my impulsive army
All the incarnations of me
This Morning’s Train Thoughts
I feel a thick layer of afterthought crowding my mind space and I want it purged. I crave clarity and singularity of vision but everything is blurry or smudged.
How do I move from this place, from this space I can’t see well enough to tell if I’ve outgrown?
How do I flip questions into answers like a coin from heads to tails? It’s the journey that’s worn me and now I just flail.
My cloak of protection is threadbare. I feel the piercing wind of depression and I want to lie down and let it take me.
One good day or two can’t fix the damage winter had caused to my mental cage.
I dropped the key and it’s too murky to see. I drop to my knees and feel for it but being this low, it’s so much easier to just lie down and sleep til the sun comes out.
I drink away my doubt but the drink fuels the depression and I continue to slide. My descent is faster than my struggle to stay on top can overcome.
I know I’m halfway through but my reserves are spent. I know what to do but I don’t know how to make myself do it.
If this seems like a cry for help, that’s because it is.
Returning Through Time...
Times change...
I'm here at the airport
Making my baggage claim...
Gathering up what's left
After airlines, and glad hands,
And kamikaze pilots
Have tore into my treasures
Like packs of wild dogs...
If I have one thing left
It is how I can feel
And see over mountains
To the place where birds soar...
I've been witness to burnings
That were well out of hand...
Where the fields were scorched,
And the pines wouldn't stand...
To the dust I returned
With new hope sprouts would grow...
And I dreamed of your love
Underneath moss and loam...
If I have one thing left
It is how I still feel
And see over mountains
To the place where birds soar...
Take my hand and we'll wander
Until we fall down
While the days lay beside us
Like leaves from a tree...
Yes the times they may change,
But our love is profound,
And it pours out like sap
Filling cracks in the street...
And we mustn't forget,
Though the cold that breaks rocks,
And the wind batters frames
Scattering building blocks...
We mustn't forget how to hold out
And crave
Every mystical moment...
Every incoming wave
In this ocean of feeling,
The vast sprawling now...
We inherit raw light...
Every inch we allow...
1/31/24
Bunny Villaire
Edit #2
Lost Lament Of A Former Catholic Schoolboy
High school was,
A barren womb,
Ungainly dressed,
In mottled wounds.
Where winter’s sickness,
Slept around,
It’s fevered cage,
My burial ground.
High school was,
Choice rotting fruit,
It’s nuanced slice,
Skinned trauma blue.
But I could never,
Breathe it in,
To suckle fast,
On soot and sin.
Oh mother Mary’s
Wishing well,
Lies leagues above,
A crater’s hell.
My angel wings,
Grew scabbed
Then sore,
And halos shrank,
Fell to the floor.
Superior mother,
Buried in black,
Sheol has rung,
It wants you back.
For love is hollow,
If sprung on clod,
It’s withered roots,
Upturned to God.
Now shackled to,
These memories,
In earnest want,
And grievous need.
I might have been,
Rued royalty,
Anointed youth,
Of bitter breed.
But such never was,
Nor willed to be,
An arcade angel,
In stained glass bleed.
I dragged my heart,
In catholic guilt,
And slipped on blood,
That Jesus spilt.
For He did turn,
My frame of bone,
From gargoyle slate,
To precious stone.
Now the stride of years,
Do paint wrongs right,
For the keenest eyes
Are second sight.
Ivermectin
“My guinea pig has lice,”
she says, which means
a veterinarian and an
ivermectin prescription,
Google says, which means
a drive too long for the
ailing minivan, the
check engine light says,
which means the mechanic
again and time off work and
a loan, my account balance says,
but she held him close
when COVID closed the world
and she could not hug
friends, this warm little creature
cooing on her chest, nibbling
hay as she Zoomed with
her teacher who would die,
so many would die,
“I’m sorry,” I say,
“we’ll help him.”
coughing stardust tremors
Nothing ticks within my weary brain,
i’m still alone in january militant gloom.
I shatter like ice:
trillions of crystalline opiate screams.
Gaseous giants emerge from gurgling darkness
saps of sparking light reach out like hands from a swampy grave,
Wrinkled green ham hands breach my unsettling dreams,
horrors pave scolding tar roads…
I push away incoming sunshine,
embrace blanket zombified entities,
Tendrils sail blushing black hole abyss,
one purple suctioning tentacle blinks scarred orange sun bliss,
Phoenix risen fever beams dive like assassin mermaids,
dolphins onyx pulse my screeching unconscious,
noxious green flails swirling milky way.
Burdensome to my neighboring friends
i Isolate.
Eternal sunshine bury me with Death’s mercenary occult,
let me rule afar in nebulous realms:
explode with nuclear force;
consume garlic bread with diablo breathed supernovae
spaghetti soul fusing with unraveling dimensions
i am yours,
without doubt
no question
i
am
infinite.