The Way I React to Rain

(Prelude: I am not much of a person. I'm more of a thing, or maybe a place, or just an indistinct noun. I've always had a hard time "fitting in." Well, just what in the fuck does that mean? "Fitting in" to what? Is it like that age-old idiom, "a square peg in a round hole," or something deeper? Who knows? Well, I'm happy to not "fit." I like being the puzzle piece that doesn't belong, the one that somehow snuck in the box at the factory or wherever it is that they make puzzles. If there is such a thing as a puzzle factory, I'd like to go. Maybe I could put stray pieces in every box just to feel like I have some bloody company, somewhere. Whatever, though - time for a "real poem.")

Today is grey, a grey-grey-day,
a day of which you'd prob'ly say,
"Why get up? Why? Why not just stay
inside, under covers all day?"

But you know you can't do that, though,
so you get up although you know
just how awful things always go
when outside there's this pseudo-snow

that simply kills the very will
to not just snap and blindly kill,
to maintain sanity and still
squelch the urge of a bloody thrill.

You'll talk of murder, anyway.
"It's a means to an end," you'll say.
You won't kill any, not today.
Instead, you'll keep the grey at bay.

The rain spits all over the glass
as you're running from class to class.
You slip on the glistening grass.
You curse, but you know it'll pass.

Soon, you know, you'll be far away.
You won't have to work. You can play.
You'll recover from this dead day.
You'll simply sleep off all the grey.

Shoot, But Don't Cut

Dancing before the black lens, I say,
"Follow me, if you want me today."
You oblige me; you grin so wide while
you chase and record my ready smile.

This tryst:
look at my mouth,
my silent film lips,
wide and full and dark: real.
This list:
you check things off,
my plain porcelain skin,
my jutting shoulder-bones.

This world:
staring, sepia,
eyes not green but grey,
my flaws bold in monochrome.
This girl:
the creature Me,
willing prisoner,
chained but singing in your heart.

I could be anyone, any of these things -
a gypsy with her fingers trapped in her rings,
a fortune-teller hiding beneath her veils.
"But nothing compares, love," you say. "It all pales."
I disagree, but I know you think it's true.
We turn off the camera and we ___ for a few.

- - - - -

(That ___ in the last line isn't necessarily supposed to signify anything vulgar. In fact, it isn't at all, really, because if it was I'd have no problem with coming right out and saying it. It's just supposed to kind of signify the missing time between when the camera was on and when it was switched off. I don't know why I felt like I had to explain that, but I did. Anyway, I apologize profusely for the shittiness of last night's poem, but it was written in the midst of late-night starvation, caffeine withdrawal, and other various nasty things. So, yeah, just don't read it. Maybe I'll find the effort to delete it at some point here. Okay, time for me to shut the fuck up already.)

In Toothless Clouds

(Disclaimer: I don't have much of an idea for a poem tonight, but I feel obligated to post something here as I've been uncharacteristically absent here throughout the past few days. So, please - don't blame me for whatever comes out. I'm fucking exhausted and melancholic and I think the caffeine-cranked creativity must've all but dissipated by this late hour.)

The dislocation, the disconformity,
it smiles at us, lopsided in the sky.
It curls its orange lips as we watch it float by.

It reminds me of the slippery summer,
yeah, that soft season now long dead and long gone;
it recalls all the fast-fading open roads
that once stretched and yawned on and on before us.
I remember the fast free-fall down the hills
and trudging up similar slopes, inverted -
ah, the way life was, not cruel or perverted,
but rather something touchable, smooth, and real.

Maybe it was in the words we sang out then,
maybe it was on the uncomfortable banks,
or as we sat cursing the Earth in that bar,
maybe my solitary ride to Windsor,
or was it going down to Pennsylvania
to scream to bored kids at a wedding party.

Who knows? I don't, and it doesn't matter much,
but something about the sad November sky
makes me cry out for May and June and July.

An Endtroduction

Elaeri and Siôn

"Enough of that.
Stand up straight!
What nonsense!"
the woman shouts;
she never doubts
the boy's capacity
for audacity
in the empty world.

No eyes to glare,
no soul to scare
or stare
and care
for what lies here,
alone in fear,
cautiously sliding
and overriding
back to the bleak.

Elaeri, her name
simple, the same
as those who crept
with limbs that leapt
shadow to shade,
hilt to blood blade,
consideration,
annihilation,
nothing changes now.

Siôn, her child,
dark-eyed and wild,
so frightened,
unenlightened -
raised so jaded,
a boyhood faded.
His words barbed,
blackly garbed,
like his mother.

Curly black hair,
they match and share
and another trait -
the age-old hate,
columns and rows,
restriction knows
and it thrives:
reality's lives.
He is hers alone.

"The train is leaving,
we can't be late.
It's time to go,"
Elaeri declares.
Her voice ensnares
and the platform
slicked in the storm
gives way to travel.

Stockholm Syndrome

[because you rose up from the ground
because you threw them all around
because you looked like some pale mad thing
as you tore your way into this ring]

you've become one like the rest of us now
you've opened your new eyes so wide, somehow
you wrenched your lids to rise, not hide
for here you've forced your way inside

[i'd let you drown, if it were up to me
i'd pull you back into the black'ning sea
but you're too strong; you've passed the test
you've gone above, you've crushed all the rest]

so i'll let you have your victory, love
i know how hard you had to claw and shove
to escape your bloodied fate down below
oh, how you flexed your muscles just to know

[what you might find if you fought your way
just to see what we mean by "the light of day"
and though your ways make you my enemy
i will let you continue to...just...be]

Tick-Tick-Tick (Phase 1)

I found myself watching the clock again. As always, my eyes were glued again. The second hand was spinning around slightly slower than it should have been, I could see that. It was counting off every 1.2 seconds rather than every second, I decided. At any rate, it compelled me. It somehow had the effect of making me feel...well, the clock's atypical imprecision made me feel as if errors were both common and acceptable. It was consoling.

Vera noticed my hypnosis and from out of nowhere, from out of an amorphous cloud of muddled sensory perception, I felt her frail fingers tenuously clutch at my arm. I started and shifted my gaze to meet her own; she looked concerned. I scrunched up my face inquisitively and asked, "Is everything alright, Vera?"

She opened her mouth to formulate a reply, then quickly resealed it and sighed. Her bold grey eyes probed me for a moment or two until she looked away and finally spoke. "Do you know where we are, Griff?"

The odd obviousness of her question vexed me at first. I was about to admonish her for asking such an absurd thing; I was about to give her the short, sharp response of an emphatic "of course." But then I realized something, something terrifying, something terribly true: I did not know where we were. In fact, I hadn't the faintest idea.

"Vera, I -" I tried to come up with something to say, but I couldn't. The sudden shock of not knowing where I was, of looking around and seeing nothing familiar, of frantically searching for a landmark or another recognizable clue or even a reason for me to be right where I stood, disoriented me completely. I simply could not formulate my thoughts into anything so refined and readily understood as words.

"You what, Griff?" Vera's concern was now inlaid with a strange furtive sort of fear. She subconsciously edged herself away from where I stood; perhaps I was disfigured somehow. "What's going on with you?"

I had no idea. I thought, Is something even going on at all? My wordless, thoughtless stupor only allowed me to look up at the clock again, at that ever-so-slightly off-kilter keeper of time. The clock glared back at me in all its horrible detached glory; it regarded me with the serial blankness of some regal eyeless predator, some half-drawn monster toeing its way through the forests of relentlessness...but blackness was sealing itself around me now, it was crawling around the edges of my head again...I was falling...

And then...

I was...

Nothing...

Sestina: The Tender Void

"I burnt all of your pictures," I say.
"I let them go gray, let them decay."
You stare at me, stand, and sigh.
Disappointment lurches in your eyes.
There are fires burning out in the dark,
but we're staying in our cell tonight.

"There's value in it all - value in their eyes,
value in the way I captured them in the dark."
You cross your arms and go on to say,
"You shouldn't let anything decay."
A chill runs right through me; tonight
I would start even at the softest sigh.

"And you shouldn't have kept them in the dark."
I tell you this, but there's no point. You say
something to the effect of "Well, tonight,
that doesn't matter. The way I heard them sigh,
it was beautiful. You know how I liked their eyes:
the way I felt them all shuddering with decay."

I shake my head, though I can see the decay
of everything and the shadows that pass tonight.
Those feathery phantoms fly through the dark;
they step on my hands, they change the way I say
"You should never have forced their lives to sigh.
You should never have closed so many eyes."

Again, you stare at me, shudder, and sigh.
"Love, you know they didn't die. Their eyes -"
But I silence you. I want no more tales of decay.
I want you to admit you're wrong, now, tonight.
Eventually, you'll run out of horrors to say.
Your shriveled heart will unravel in the dark.

I am afraid of what's built up in here tonight.
You shove yourself toward the mirror and sigh.
I stand behind you, run my fingers over your eyes,
and whisper something true in the deceptive dark.
"Your work won't ever die out; it'll never decay.
It will always ring true in the things you say."

Of all these things I say, strongest is the debt of decay.
Silent, life will sigh: "Things pass away, things close eyes."
Even in the unmerciful dark, you can find forgiveness tonight.

Oh, Fuchsia

Fuchsia,
you're staring...

Of course, the way you're looking, the way you're staring,
I know your eyes want to escape your face
and roll away, away, away! and
and stare and everything...you know, everything...
everything is drowning in the shadows,
everything is huddled with the halos,
the way you lost him, the way you lost them all.
You should enfold yourself in me, you should,
you should suffocate in my skin, you should let it all drown,
you should scream until your lungs are torn
and bloodied little shreds of what they were,
you know,
you know the way, the way your heart beats
and that way you're staring! Stop...
you know you'll slip right through,
you'll figure out all the ways I've turned away
from the light! But they chased me out,
I swear it, they did;
they chased me out but they gave it to me,
you know what,
don't say you don't,
they let it suffer in my sweaty palms,
between my terrible crushing fingers,
they let it live in the veil,
the choking choked ropes of my cruelty!
My sanguine-soaked soul, oh, you know what I've done,
you know how it shrieks right through!
It's red! The sound of red, the smell of red!! You know how I've tried
to chase these things away, to keep them well away, outside,
you know what I've done, what I've changed!
And you've seen how I stare! I stare at the sea,
I stare at the sky, I stare at the You, I stare at the Me!
But I'm trapped, Fuchsia, I'm trapped...
it's like the smallest cell for the giant,
me, me, ME, ME!!
I am that monster!
You can taste it...smell it...the air, oh God, Fuchsia, it slices all around...
STOP STARING!! I'll take your eyes from you.
I will...I swear it...I will take your eyes and then the rest,
I'll prune the limbs from you, I'll take your bones, I'll sell your blood!
Your organs, you know what I can do, you know how it goes!
So I give you this option:
let me murder or manipulate or maim,
let me take what I require, let me give you what you need,
let me let your machines keep working,
your lungs and your heart and maybe a few of your fingers,
and I promise I'll go away;
no beast such as me ever lingers.

Just let me have it!
Please?!
I swear I'll...WHAT DID I SAY? STOP FUCKING STARING AT ME!!
FUCHSIA?!
I'll eat her alive...
I warned her...
I did...

I did.