The Modes

To really taste defeat is to lose the lesson, I’m told- but what about those times when you’re left holding nothing but a big bundle of hurt, across which my name is inked in big bold letters? How meaningless, how halfhearted are the maxims that you… that is, that I whisper toward my own ears when the anguish comes like a morning rain?

And I was left standing as I sunk in the chair with my head perched upon my palms, finding no relief from her brown eyed pair or heavy heart felt songs. “To touch me is to be me,” she said and I’d just as soon get a long to the final fade, but she grabbed my hand to stay.

The other time, when I was looking in the mirror and I wiped away the smoke… finding identity in every angle of me- but something wasn’t there and I might have walked around as nothing but a big black hole. There were other names for me, sometimes, that borrowed much from the word ‘hole’, but if I’d ever thought I had a chance, you wouldn’t have let her go. You are a dirty room and unfolded laundry and you are unprepared for life and class, but she is not, and you cannot have her. You can always have me.

Don’t mistake it for love, it’s not about love. It’s being loved and wondering who could love us and why. Don’t they know I forget to vacuum? Don’t they know that you get so mixed up in my head sometimes and stumble my way through morally dark rooms? Don’t tell her those things and maybe she’ll come back. Tell her I’m you and she’s gone.

I relaxed my lips when she kissed my forehead and pet my hand before she left. Before she left, she melodied into my ear, “Lace undergarments fall apart faster than pages.”

“I love you,” you said, “and I want to be you.”

An Unimportant Footnote

I am hazy half reflections, ethereal,unclear-
or broken, unbloomed lilacs
wilted from several bad years¹-

I'm a feathered, bloody mess
ground between cogs of a machine,
innards smeared upon the gears,
locked into hierarchy²
and, praying love to be an ocean,
let warmth wash over me³,

a pink champagne bath,
tides rolling back.



1.http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=63195
2.http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=58304
3.http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=57265

Visions of Venom

I have visions of venom.
In your own house the rooster's cry comes like a cut and
I hear it like a call for your blood-
but the visions give me headaches,
put who I am and where you live
underwater.

And your goddamned underwater speech,
distorted, mystified, reverant,
is just the empty sound of drowning.
At low tide, the sands rotten and
clinging, we'll tread the beach to see
what sort of corpse your wisdom makes.

But the blood in my head is also
subject to the wrath of the moon-
the pain reaches crescendo.

Pulling at flesh, I conclude that
I'm a fool by defect and
you're a liar who betrays the need for air.

And your goddamned underwater speech,
distorted, mystified, reverant,
is just the empty sound of drowning.


Lot of elegantly expressed but somehow slightly out of focus rage. Particularly like the sentence above. A sentence like that could come in handy round here.

Some arresting word-play here Jack. And I'm also sniffing rage in the air, but tempered with grace and a touch of acceptance.

H

"The rooster's cry comes like a cut"

I wish I'd written that line.

I particularly enjoyed the rich imagery in Visions of Venom and like H says the element of rage written with an elegant hand.