all of a sudden passion suddenly

[Guest]

Feather, tail and flirt
chickadee, I'm watching you
watching me. You can decide
whether I'm harmless or not,
but I can tell you that you can trust
me now, I'm just looking today.

I still have the taste of regret
on the back of my tongue,
because bitter and loss takes awhile
to fade; half the time of the whole.

Though, I hope it doesn't take years.
I'm no longer vegan and I'm awful hungry.

 

[Vampiric_Mirage]

Too late for last goodbyes
even as I dig my claws into time
it slips away
ever elusive

Damn bitch

Couldn't it have waited
just a moment more
to let the words spill like semen
filling the void
that shattered my world...

 

[Vampiric_Mirage]

RF I've been reading your stuff - wow! Lol, as I've been letting the cobwebs cover my creativity you have flourished! As always your writing is inspiring and getting better with each read!

 

[RhymeFairy]

RF I've been reading your stuff - wow! Lol, as I've been letting the cobwebs cover my creativity you have flourished! As always your writing is inspiring and getting better with each read!

I sent you a pm, weeks ago ...

Your missed my friend ... as far as my writing,
it is what it is, lol but Thank You ~~~~

 

[vampiredust]

Package

She dumped her love
fleeing incoming tides
of commuters. Wave
after wave of faces
made it claustrophobic
to think, so packaging
it in a rucksack
and weighing it down
with stones seemed
the best option. Nobody
stopped to tell her
that it might have some
value, not even
the words themselves,
screaming like the leftovers
of her childhood.

 

[vampiredust]

Watching The Old

Elderly couples lean
their heads on stacks
of invisible words,
towers of future
conversations waiting
to collapse like jenga
into the cold air.
Each skull is a walnut
ready to be cracked
open, memories
whipped into a souffle
before being cooked
in the earth's oven.
Their children sniff
blindly in sleep,
the touch of heat
cooling on unbranded
skin.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

This and Champagne's poem that answered it are really beautiful. I keep coming back to read them. Thank you.

What is prayer
besides please is somebody
listening telegraphed whispers
to the sky or a tree. A sparrow
alights by the windowsill
and please little bird are you
listening? Take this message
to God or anything beyond
the clouds, a dead sister
or grandparent somebody
who trusted me with secrets
or held me on her lap, sang
Oh You Beautiful Doll. My eyes
open and shut. Smiles so easy
to give away, smiles for nothing,
nobody even a sparrow
who doesn't really listen. Prayer
so holy so wholly empty save
the voice that speaks it, clouds
that move while nothing ever
changes.

 

[vampiredust]

Aimless

The uprooted oaks,
lifeless like cadavers,
had their roots
aimed at the grey sky.
The prayers they
had fired the previous
night had missed
their target, bringing
back gales and thunder.

 

[The Mutt]

There is love
and there are lovers
and there are loves.

And then there are the great loves you have known.

The ones you can remember like the scent of make-up, or the summer heat of leather seats.

I don't know if high school counts.

Susan plucked me from the cafeteria line and cast me as boyfriend.
Then she hung me up like a letterman's jacket.

Maureen had been ill-served by marriage. A boy half her age was a handy thing to have in the drawer with her panties.

Donna used men the way carpenters use nails. I remember telling someone that a few days before I fell in love with her.

Page wanted someone to hold her tight when she died. It was the least I could do.

They all seem like rehearsals for a play I didn't write.

Miss Oatlash only asked me for a lift to Nashville.

She kissed me before we even made Jackson.

I was lost.

 

[vampiredust]

Elms

Elm branches hang
like executed men
above a row of crows
digging through last
nights rubbish. Wind,
scooping up the last
of their leaves, makes
a prayer. Footprints
watch the ritual closely,
eager for any tips
to make its final journey
any easier.

 

[annaswirls]

skipping school

it is the one thing, tonight,
the plaid pajamas,
the front yard grass songs
like a whistle between thumbs we all know
the patterns
woven threaads sometimes move to the front
sometimes the green comes forward
sometimes they blend block watch
patchwork
plaid
flannel
pajamas
we all wear them hidden
hems damp,
mothers watching from windows
pretending not to notice
we have sneaked from our beds again
spy camera
catching us in this perfect imperfection
angels with pitchforks and puppies
flannel pajamas skipping school

 

[annaswirls]

an imposter in this dead mans land
flat head nails hammered by hand floorboards
spaces
cold boards loosen
I did not build
this cottage


your old friend phoned from detroit
wondered how you came to be
a permanent resident of the past

I dont know I dont know I dont know
I did not nail these boards

 

[vampiredust]

Backwards

My old Christmas cards
are in the drawer
dreaming of the time
they will be reduced
back into earth.

Watching an old orange
segment decomposing
in the bin, their snow
turns into steam,
the reindeer imitates
a bucking bronco.

Nobody makes cookies
or leaves out stockings.
My bones are safe
from these thoughts,
locked inside vaults

of tissue. I sealed
the last escapee decades
ago.

 

[vampiredust]

10.20 pm

It is 10.20 pm. After
dropping my little sister
off at the tube station,
I crawl onto the 507 bus.

We go past crowds
leaving the Apollo
Victoria and Victoria
Palace theatres, neon

fountains lining Victoria
Street and steel and glass
buildings that have
replaced most of what I

used to know. And at the end,
at the end I see foxes
waiting with their hoods up
for the crows to arrive.

 

[tungtied2u]

Shhhhhhh!
Hear the people popping ?
Squeezed between the fingers
of the favored few. Pressure applied,
brains and bodies burst !
Effervescent, intoxicating
like a fine champagne.

Remember 2008 ? A fine year !
Health care and unemployment bennies
pared to the bone. Let them eat
themselves. Deceptively unsatisfying
but a pleasant diversion. Survival
is mainly smoke and mirrors.

 

[vampiredust]

Rubble

The WD40 cans, traffic
cones and empty sealants
made a minefield on the grass
next to the tube track.

In the corner of my eye
I saw a weed's periscope
sticking above the earth,
ready to start its invasion.

 

[vampiredust]

Etchings

Graffiti etched
on the tube carriage
windows echoed
like particle tracks

made in a cloud
chamber, each word
repeating its history
over and over.

Leaving the station,
I noticed several
new and unexpected
lines on my palms.

 

[vampiredust]

Last Day Of Summer

Pregnant clouds
hung on the horizon
during those last

few hours of summer.
Spent evenings
were strung across

the streets like rows
of chinese lanterns.
Autumn's moon, locked

inside a hurricane lamp
rattled the glass.
From a distance, it might

have appeared the sea
had moved closer, drawn
to the ripening moon.

 

[vampiredust]

Bowerbird

The male Bowerbird of Australia
attracts a female by building
an elaborate love bower. After
building a little hut out of twigs,

he decorates it with flowers
and colourful objects such as feathers,
fruit, shells, and pebbles, even glass
and paper if near civilisation.

The entire bower-building procedure
can take months, and the bird
will often change the decorations
until he is happy with them. When finally

satisfied, he performs a love dance
outside the bower, sometimes offering
the female a pretty item from his collection.

 

[vampiredust]

Signals

She discovered radio
signals being picked
up by her father's
mercury fillings when

he died: baseball games,
speeches by Truman,
Eisenhower. Sometimes
they fizzed out, interrupted

by someone listening in:
not his wife, already gone,
but a little girl living
where his heart had been.

 

[vampiredust]

Forgetting

Forgetting isn't like wringing
out water from washed
linen, the knot retaining
everything you've put in
before: the energy, grit
and everything in between.
Forgetting isn't like washing
in moonlight, hoping it will
all suddenly disappear.
Forgetting isn't like slipping
off your skin, the mole
and vaccination scars remain.
Forgetting is being like a peg
on the line, being wrapped
in cold and embracing the tip
of whatever is blowing.

 

[ohhh_livia]

all his poems are drowning

all his words, predictable
they follow him left
right left right what a rigid form!
and in such a languid forum

up down up down
here a troll there a troll
such a snarky measure
if ever
i wonder if he wonders

about such things as stars
and bars, mangled cars
holy whores and snuffed out virgins
dead before their time, barely ripe
and like it or not,

it all comes down to this
a thumb and a fist, a belly
with such a sexy dagger
begging to be tweaked
and twisted.

and yet, i will miss him
them

 

[vampiredust]

Promises From A Fortune Cookie

We slip on our sweat
coats and wander
amongst the paper
dragons and lanterns

red like a swollen sun.
There is no time
for our bodies to cool
and set. We must bear

this way of life, the same
way letters from a
caligraphers hand move
without knowing when ink
will stop or dry.

 

[vampiredust]

Listening To Glaciers At The Elderly Home In Ealing

Nurses wheel in medication
and water, picks to hack
away at the glaciers slowly
melting inside their chests.
You can see the tip of each
one pressing against the old
ribcages, a centurion's plume
making one last stand. The
ones that have gone mad
are lucky in their quilt-walled
cells. Nobody will see them
writhe when the ice plunges
in its last seconds, rupturing
the tools of their madness.
We are lucky, a singing man
tells us, ours are just growing.
Just growing. I press my hands
against the radiator before
closing time, eager to hear
the first drop fall.

 

[vampiredust]

Darkened

Between a pair
of derelict buildings
sunlight is stalking,
nose to the ground.

Eager to find the last
bolthole of dark,
it lurks around the steel
border wound

like a dynamite's fuse.
Mice, keeping watch,
dive into their shelters.
Now is not the time

for light, only for night.
The last of birdsong,
sticky like road-tar,
clings onto the air.

It fizzes with the light,
creating something new;
as if that might have
been its original purpose.