all of a sudden passion suddenly

[cherries_on_snow]

Potent Distraction

.....

 

[vampiredust]

I've been shot several
times in my life. The first
time was in my mother's
womb when I duelled
the umbilical cord. I lost
and they dragged me out
still clutching my homemade
pistol. The second time
was when I was five years
old and was playing with my
cousins. I was hiding behind
an oak for cover, waiting
for them to break cover. I leapt
out, arms flaling like John Wayne
only to find the sun shooting me
instread. I staggered to mother
and father said my last rites. The
last time, i can remember, was
when I was with you. You cocked
your gun and shot your words at me;
I fell and died.

 

[vampiredust]

mannequin seance

The sun died when you
were born but they forgot
to tell you that. You felt

it collapse into the oceans
as you emerged screaming,
your words mirroring his.

They never showed his
ashes, preferring to give
you wax donkeys and comic

books. But you wanted him
instead. When you grew up
you held a seance in your

dead mothers house. You
conjured up his image but never
managed to capture his words

 

[vampiredust]

your face plunges into the subatomic ocean
as you scream through the atmosphere,
careening into the Atlantic before dissapearing
into a electron skyline. You sunk Atlantis,
but that's not the issue here. Let's talk about
your Mother instead.

 

[vampiredust]

Footie

We pass the playground on a nearby
council estate, where the local boys
are playing footie; shirts wrapped
around their waists, they dodge

an invisible bull as they run around
the makeshift pitch, kicking the leather
skull until it cracks. One of the boys
kicks it like a rugby ball and they watch

it shoot over the wire wall. It sits like
a deflated moon in the road, waiting
for someone to throw it back. But no-one
does. I thought I heard a butterfly beating

its wings there as the city burnt. All they
wanted was their ball back.

 

[wildsweetone]

Just another lunchtime in the city

They sit in the sun
baked apple skin stretching
across the saggy lines
of pink, swallowing lunch
during a break away
from the mad rush
and trill of telephones
demanding attention. They
block out traffic and people
watch, stare unashamed
at children collecting
leaf litter from gutters
blocked in the last downpour
and harried mothers
rushing youngsters through
golden arched doors.
They sit and stare
yet see nothing and hear less
and in 17 minutes
they go back to work.

 

[vampiredust]

Conditions of velocity

One hour: £95

We travel in the artificial
womb until we are ready
to be born; covering our
eyes as we are pushed

out. Speaking in signals,
we open our parachutes
that hang like jellyfish
dresses in the sky, before

gliding towards the earth.
Still giddy, we uncrumple
ourselves and watch the
horizon spin in our eyes;

we still have velocity in our
blood and won't stop flying.

There are no refunds

 

[vampiredust]

Brighton Pier

Horses spin like tethered
fireflies on the carousel,
lighting up the night with
hues of white and orange;

I want that one a child
says, pointing to a large
fluffy bear trapped in a plastic
cage. Dad fiddles with the

grappling hook as the gulls
look on. Candy floss spins
like fishing reels as the sea
brings in its latest haul of pebbles.

The father doesn't get the bear.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Blue Girl, Miles Apart

.....

 

[flyguy69]

Percussion

::

The rhythm section starts
with a tap tap pause, tap tap
pause, as my right foot plants
and swings and plants
with two tiny taps
on the side of my shoe and then
my breathing starts; huff and
draw, huff and draw, my lower lip
and jaw go shudder,
shudder. Soon the swish
of nylon brushes a
cymbal note and a bass drum
thump starts up
my spine. Uh. Uh. Uh.
The blood in my ears
goes back and
forth with a whoosh
and a whee and it’s driving me
insane but there’s the finish
line and my time’s on the clock
and I’m on my knees
just stop
just stop
this cacophony in my brain;
I need some quiet
place to end this race and
let my body slowly
come back down and yes,
the drumming stops and I’m
calming now until
I realize my heart
is going bump bump,
bump bump,
bump bump.

::

 

[flyguy69]

Happy Anniversary

::

Fifty years is easy
to reduce to clichés: through good times
and bad, unwavering love, always there, even
that you found silver in dark
clouds. But if it were that easy why
is the way littered
with the hard bones of your brothers,
your sister’s meandering eye? These shoes
abandoned by so many searching
for an uncobbled path. Hallway frames chronicle
your compromises: the preposterous
boat, the dancing attire—each a surface
for gluing. As I watch you now, unable
to keep your fingers from each other’s backs
I suspect clichés say little
about the priorities conceded
with conspiratorial hush: We never found
anything better to do.

::

 

[DeepAsleep]

they'd have you come on home

he was 24 when they filled his boots with sand
shot dead in a sixty seven dollar holdup
with a boychild on the way.
didn't make much sense

people aren't pretty poems.
even if the pieces have beauty,
sometimes the whole is still ugly

no pretty lines about blood drops
like liquid cherry pits gonna be a bandaid
for wounds you thought should have been yours

we'd have filled empty gin bottles with kerosene,
made lamps to light his way home
as if he hadn't burnt so well on his own.

across town from the body garden,
Johnny Cash sang gospel tunes.
The women lined up in black at the box
tears wet the satin liner.
none of them said it looked like sleep
cause a gunslinger's women don't lie.

reverend talked Christ
people who knew better bit their knuckles
cried a little harder.
His friends took care,
quoted Dogen
spoke of dying with honor

everyone thought about a man bent double
laughing at everything
with everything he had.

Put him six feet down on Christmas Eve
and the wind blew cold all night
while mourners mixed seven and seven with
coffee and cigarettes
and those who slept didn't wake up better.

cos there ain't no justice on Christmas
there ain't no reasons,
and there ain't no sense
and there ain't no arguing with the wind
or bullets, or cold waxy hands

at 24, with sand in your boots, you can't argue
with the ones you left behind
since they'd have you come on home
and you can't.

 

[vampiredust]

People drag the canal boats
along the water like tethered
horses, letting them feed only
when the river has risen. Ropes

drop and hands wave, watching
their engines neigh as they move
along the water. They'll stop grazing
at night when they're tied up on

by the river; watching the stars light
up the bones of their fallen brothers

 

[vampiredust]

Battersea

The wind beats the gasworks
as if they are giant drums;
the sound of tu-tum tu-tum
rattling the trains as they hurtle

past. Passing council estates
shaped out of Lego bricks, I see
children redecorating telephone
poles with their signatures, carving

love-me-nots in the rubber trees.
The journey home is a silent one;
I have heard all the music I need to
and need only the stars to sing me
a lullaby.

 

[4degrees]

in size eighteen
glistening intestinal font
i'll write those silly things
on the ocean floor
undertow rolls in,
learn to swim
it says
again
utilize an underwater blowtorch
to sever the industrial chain
just as liberation is assumed
clutch onto the anchor
spend the remainder
of life under water
growing gills and adapting
slowly
to life without oxygen
pressure surrounds and failed beats
flail about in a waterlogged mind
brain cells die and atlantis
appears in a mirage-like way
then another vision, a spectre
of a fisherman
no, a diver in neoprene
eel-slick, cutting through
like a knife, precise,
days go in and out of days
and eyes open on dry land
fourth of july land
wondering why
we all didn't drown.

 

[Maria2394]

Granny Smith's Secret

bound in the valley
we heard Granny moan
bed springs now ragged
and she sleeps alone

Grandpa went missing
'bout ten years ago,
they went apple pickin'
now she sleeps alone

It's fall and the trees
are laden with fruit
limbs scratching soil
bed springs are mute

bound in the valley
her basket in hand
she's off to pick apples
and visit her man

 

[clutching_calliope]

Pasiphae's Mistake

.....

 

[vampiredust]

Fortnum & Mason

Tourists gawp at giant globes
and gyroscopes filled with candy
coloured porcelain houses; some
leave the shop carrying tins of
biscuits and jars of marmalade
with hemmed dresses. Others
just stare at the display shifting
to and fro like the clouds.

 

[vampiredust]

St James's Market, Piccadilly

We wander past stalls selling
organic clothes, postcards
and wooden clocks, watching
Nefertiti staring at us holding

hands from the confines of a
bookmark; her owner jostles
past carrying more made up
archaeology, his face still

covering in Egyptian sand
and the marks of scarabs. She
was reborn once, that I know
but you, you will melt as I sleep.

 

[Sealace]

I wake and you are hovering above me
imossibly light like a zepher tethered to my bedclothes
and I will myself to rise against you
arch and contract but you lift in my breeze
morning birds turn my dreams into lead
but I spend all day with my baloon just inches away,
searching for a corner or a ceinling
to trap you
make you mine
take your press and fortune in flesh
find release

 

[Sealace]

slow cooked you soften my muscle
pull me apart line by line
thread by thread
you my addiction
paralzyed by the thrill of dissection
limb by limb
until I am a pile of bones and answers





your scent makes me grow teeth
grow points and claws on my fingers
we tear fabric
we press the crumbs together make it whole
you tell me sex tears civilization down
I want to be torn down like that

 

[Sealace]

falling awake

are you falling asleep?
quite the opposite he answers

three spotlights mark our movement
on sheets rented by the hour
I dreamed he came for us lover
he knows my escape routes and all my best hiding spaces
because I look him there too
when he was the one on the other side of the light through curtain
the other side of the shotgun
he carries my map in his pocket

I would stoop to say
we are cut from the same cloth
but it is not fabric that stitches our weakness
no tailor responsible for these needle holes and chalk mark darts
no

you and I were penned by the same ink
it is washable and bleeds its colors across the sheets
we are the lines you lifted from an old poem
to seed the new
our tree bears fruits of contradiction
poets that hate poetry
lovers that cannot hold onto love
dreamers that cannot sleep

you my diversion in a road that already wanders
I know you will use these thin shoulder straps
that hold my last modest fabric
to pull in your next distraction
thinking
ah, now this is where it was supposed to go!

look baby
I have already stolen your lines
I wear them like damp panties on a breeze

 

[vampiredust]

After the 1987 Storm

Dad and I are walking through
the park, looking at the trees
twisted like witches teeth. We
are watched only by the remains

of yesterday's storm, pecking
away at our clothes like the gangs
of crows scraping off the flesh
of dead squirrels. He points out

one of them as we pass a couple
of dead oaks; my bones start to
harden but he doesn't notice that
I am gone, consumed by the loam.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Michelangelo on a Saturday

.....

 

[Sara Crewe]

I never focused on the walls
he placed around me although I was left
alone to watch the days and nights juggle
the sun and moon and to listen
to time mock me for choosing
to be happy in a prison. But one night
he forgot to feed me and I watched
from a distance as he played lion-tamer
with the others, petted them with pride
and preened over them openly in ways
that rained over his promises to me, rinsing

them of their faux-finish so I could see
the bare lies and feel them bite
as they attached to my skin like ticks
that sucked me empty of anything but rage.
He was a stupid man to see me
as just another cat and come back to my cage
after his show without a whip and leave
the door open. Maybe I should have showed
him compassion but sometimes forgiveness is hard
to hear above the roar of the jaguar
as she goes for the jugular. I figured he owed
me dinner so I ate him, licked his blood
from my lips and swallowed his pride.