all of a sudden passion suddenly

[vampiredust]

Jailbone

You are a wasp womb
but you are not their chariot
You are a lost discus
but you have not been thrown
You are a compact city
but you have not been inflated
You are a butterfly tongue
but you have not been let go

(Not even once, I might add)

 

[vampiredust]

Watching Geese in Wintertime

Snow covered geese plod
through gas lit sludge,
watched by old men sitting

with braces and sipping tea
from flasks thicker
than their wifes' buttocks.

If this poem helps you mend
those patches on your jacket,
then I will be glad.

 

[vampiredust]

Ocean

She flips her mirror constantly,
showing me her true reflection.

Every day is decided by mood
not probability or science,

I guess this is what love is.

 

[vampiredust]

Military Exercises

Snow falls, covering a troupe
of elephants with moon soup.
Men marching behind capture
the scene on their boots,

a distant road smirks. Trees
imitate soldiers on parade
with every passing minute,
but this illusion is never a joke.

Nobody stops here, nobody ever
stops to drink water or watch
the skies burn in their eyes.
This is not a patch to cover up.

 

[vampiredust]

Family

Underneath mussels
and a fish spine,

a pair of crab claws
slowly forced it

's way out. Naked
and blind, I asked

for the bill. Nobody
waited for me after

-wards.

 

[vampiredust]

Irony is a strange god

The sun was obsessed with becoming cold. I know this fact from a man I met
down an alley near my house. I couldn't see his face and he never told me his name. Let's give him a name because otherwise this story won't sound believable and all stories need to have an element of realism, right? Okay, his name was Al. He said the sun likes to go skinny dipping in Iceland. I think it was Iceland, it could have been the North Sea, that's pretty cold. I'm not sure but that's unimportant. What's important is why the sun likes to skinny dip. It's bored the man said. Tired and bored of giving out warmth. I guess we all feel that way, I said.

Sure sure sure
he replied
before taking out his lobster rifle
and blowing
his fucking brains out

Amen, I whispered, amen amen amen

 

[vampiredust]

Jonas

Jonas started swallowing everything
after he popped out of his Mother's
finely welded stomach. First it was
the hospital ward, then his parents,
before England and Europe. With a
big gulp he swallowed America,
having had Africa and Australasia as
a main course. As his belly grew,
his eyes turned into tiny black beads
and his body stretched and turned.
Splashes followed a dive and he
whined, regurgitating the entire earth.

 

[vampiredust]

The Blackbird

I swallowed a blackbird the other
day, felt its feathers curl as they
dipped down in my throat before
the final descent to my stomach.

Nothing happened until I slept,
feeling a slow peck against rib
bones at 1 am. You could see
its outline in the bathroom mirror,

a dark shadow wanting to pop
out of its fleshy nest. I cut out
with a pair of nail clippers,
leaving behind a pair of feathers

that hung out like compasses,
pointing to the dead and gone.

 

[wildsweetone]

Military Exercises

Snow falls, covering a troupe
of elephants with moon soup.
Men marching behind capture
the scene on their boots,

a distant road smirks. Trees
imitate soldiers on parade
with every passing minute,
but this illusion is never a joke.

Nobody stops here, nobody ever
stops to drink water or watch
the skies burn in their eyes.
This is not a patch to cover up.

I love this one.

Very topical, still.

 

[vampiredust]

Perhaps the objective is greater than the method

The ships on the harbour seem smaller
than they were yesterday. It hasn't
been raining and the city behind them
hasn't shrunk in my sleep.

Perhaps I'm getting taller, bones
imitating pines leaning on the hills
or maybe life has come down an inch
or two to make me look at everything

within the confines of their petri dish.
And if I tried to capture those things
I would be able to study them to see
how real they are, before letting go.

Always let go. That is the aim here.

 

[vampiredust]

Shutters

You see them hiding behind windows,
giant wooden hinges imitating concertinas.

Instinct makes you want to take a peek,
perhaps you'll see something seedy or

maybe, just maybe, you'll see something
real.

 

[vampiredust]

Poem

That giant wooden lung at the bottom
of your garden is an eyesore. Remove
it or you'll face legal action, Sir.

We've received complaints from a
concerned party that it's obstructing
the view. What view?

I'm sure there is one here, Sir. Just
look past the lake and trailer park
and walk two hundred miles down

the road. I'm pretty sure that's it.
You could always ask that wooden
lung if you're not sure. If it speaks.

 

[RhymeFairy]

The trees have turned yellow
like a magic carpet ride, I wanna fly
through, grasp a handful
and blow'm through the air. See the yellow
red rain falling, sinking skin deep
deviating a path into ones soul
wake up
breath, smell the air. Catch the sideshow
of simplistic glory laid out
before your eyes ...

..

 

[vampiredust]

Wolf

Nobody saw it splatter across
the page, its paws leaving a trail
of W's on my last paragraph
describing the events of 1492

And just like Columbus, I imagined
it skulking amongst the blue pines
of an undiscovered country,
waiting for that opportunity

to strike and leave its mark:
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

 

[vampiredust]

Sonnet #1

A dog
*
*
*
*
chases after
balloons
*
*
*
*
*
ends up
with poems instead

 

[vampiredust]

Sorry Ezra

Faces on the metro
don't look like petals

on a wet black bough,
nor ghosts for that matter.

 

[vampiredust]

Your letters

have stopped entering her womb,
she ate the last one yesterday
and after throwing up its contents
decided to eat no more.

I thought I saw a couple of words
I knew in that poem she stuffed
in the rubbish, the rest sliced
in the shredder along with junk mail

and last month's bank statements.
She has cut your head off every
photo of you. We're having a bonfire,
but you're not invited.

And if you're passing by, smell the air.
I dare you, I fucking fucking dare you.

 

[cherries_on_snow]

It took me awhile to realize
he couldn't help it.
It isn't that he hates
the other children. It's that he doesn't
see them as being the same
kind of animal he is
with the same feelings, nerves
that will hurt when he hits
them. He doesn't realize
their crying has anything to do
with the kick he just delivered

again and again. Each day the same
like the mail. It's so much paperwork
but he needs to be observed
for his own good.

 

[tungtied2u]

It took me awhile to realize
he couldn't help it.
It isn't that he hates
the other children. It's that he doesn't
see them as being the same
kind of animal he is
with the same feelings, nerves
that will hurt when he hits
them. He doesn't realize
their crying has anything to do
with the kick he just delivered

again and again. Each day the same
like the mail. It's so much paperwork
but he needs to be observed
for his own good.

public school private
eye can't help but question
why
are they the way they are

day in day out
observing emotions in action
unnerving
like a burning fuse

yet you can't
refuse your questioning mind
in an effort
to find
a way to help them cope

for you harbor the hope
some day some way
you
will uncover the clue
that solves the case

 

[vampiredust]

Whitstable Oyster Beds

Sunday was the day that we'd go to Whitstable
and look for oysters, hoping to find pearls -
those miniature earths - in their muscle tongues.

Father was always the first to get the oysters,
wrestling their suction feet with gloves and knife.
But he never gave up and always returned

with handfuls of the prize. Splitting them open
was my job. It was always the same method -
twist and cut. Some days we'd find

the pearls sitting on top of the tongue. Other
times we'd dig around the shell, scooping out
sand and muck. There was nothing there,

there rarely was. Father's strike rate was never
accurate. And then when we were done, empty
shells would be thrown back, recycled again.

 

[vampiredust]

Rockpools

You used to visit rockpools when you were younger,
watching them carry the sea's children in their
scooped out wombs. There was something about
the way waves brought back the babies that made
you weep. And when you slept, you'd always think
about that hollow place inside of you and dream
of diving in a rockpool, where you could sleep,
nurtured only by Moon and tide.

 

[vampiredust]

Equation

I could see almost every element
in her eyes the first time I met her,
magnesium giving me a wink and
nudge when I moved in to close

the deal. Bones and organs moved
into place, creating a single moment
of equilibrium as both sides started
to balance. My spectrometer

fizzed and crackled as her numbers
merged with chemical and element.
I have seen the universe and need
nothing else.

 

[loveumore]

In the OCD household,
even the dog is trained to raise
her foot after walking in the
sliding glass door
with half her body outside
and the other
waiting on the kitchen mat
to have her paws cleaned
rain or shine, head low, she knows
the towel is coming.

The washer never stops running.

 

[vampiredust]

Chemical

For S


I watch you unhook poems from your laboratory
walls, stuffing them in mussel necked jars
labelled metaphor and not to be opened until...
Sometimes you come in with a gas mask on,
becoming human only when the fly skull

is taken off and you are breathing the air
full of your creations. And if I breath it,
perhaps I will be able to experiment and start
dissolving those invisible bonds holding words
together. You are always the scientist,

my friend. Perhaps when you are old and grey
those words kept in your equations will be
released and new chemicals will be created,
swirling around in the sky and in your veins.

 

[loveumore]

I heard another thump.
Not again.

I'm not leaving my room.
Too bad there isn't a lock on the door
so she can't enter
crawling on her knees to me
again
screaming help, tears
streaming down her darkened
fat pockets of self induced stress.

I wish I could say sorry when I walked
away in anger the other day
as she had the fake stroke in the kitchen,
said she couldn't see the red digits on the oven
after the timer went off for the food.

She held her head with one hand
as if pained, wobbled her body to the chair,
felt her way there with the other hand
like a blinde woman who forgot
her walking stick.

One of these days
she's gonna close her eyes
right before mine,
and it's going to be over for good,
forever. The Munchauser will
be dead. I don't know if I will cry then.

Thinking that makes me cry so maybe I will
out of relief. I'm tired.