13 o'clock ( dark-er poetry)

The Slick 60 (for Remec: Better to be wiser than more youthful--lol)

:cool:Summer was a disappointment
Because I did not meet you until the fall
Which is appropriate because of the way
That after I swallow the cherry in my cocktail whole
So as not to ruin its deliciousness with my teeth
All I can think of is the part of the night
That I will likely spend skinning my knees
Or maybe that we both will

And then we can lick each others wounds
To cauterize the injuries of gravity's injustice
WIth the burn of good whiskey and wetness of wine
From each others tongues as we use up the night
Like the bottle we destroyed along with our clothes
But for some reason we're not tired we're revving
Like two teenagers in borrowed steel bodies
Looking at the stoplight that taunts us both
When we think we are immune to reality
And decide to burn some more rubber

Understimating how already wet the roadway
Before we ever hit the heated shower of rain
Both bodies faltering for a slowthrough of motion then
Slifting away from each other with supercreased momentum
Spinning into objects harder than their determinations
Leaving two bodies jarringly wiser and probably jointly wounded
Because they both knew better than to think they could win by
Trying to race each other again for an hour past bedtime

:cool:*Psst, Remec: better put the sunglasses back on b4 they see our blackeyes* :cool: lol
 
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I am always alone in the first hour of new beginnigs
When I was born it was the thirteenth chiming
I am sure that hour will chime when I breath my last
A lonely hour now on purpose for reasons now obsolete
Because we no longer need to have the day free.
It is the hour you called, when it really mattered
When you knew that any gains I had made
Were not made real until I shared them with you.

And still the sporadic call though now I wonder
What you are seeking
Do you want me to lace into you with the betrayal I feel
Do you want me to pour forth the guilt that I was not good enough
Do you want to talk about the weather, or the latest obstacle
That lost the time you needed
Have you connected again to reaffirm you let me down
I have no desire to martyr you or myself
I have no desire at all and you take that
In your narcissistic way to mean you put that ennui
In my soul when it was ripe and firmly rooted
Long before we ever were . Better to take praise
For the times you made me feel and leave it at that
But that wouldn't be the angel I know.
You will never believe you didn't string me along
That you were telling me this was all there is from the start
I didn't hear you until the thirteenth hour.
 
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Pick-up

An image flits across
bare consciousness,

bodies gyrating.
pastel strobes,
soft sheets,
fast and slow and fast

bodies give way,
catching breaths,
holding tightly, anchoring,
fingers, mouths, teeth,
drawing out more
restlessness,

"Bite me..no, Bite me!"
pleas become moans,
salty skin shifts to the
metallic tang of
fresh-drawn
blood.
-----
:cool:
 
Safe Word (The 13th Hour Confession)

I won't give you my safe word

The magic password they always asked for
That once said it meant they wouldn't hurt you
It was against the rules of the game they told you
As they tied you up and took out the steel

That at first I thought I must not be saying right
Until finally it was the one that I used to say to beg them
When I was still too young and tender and somehow stupid
To be good enough to become the alpha goddess I am

As you come to me older yet more innocent and ask
In open honesty if you can come and play the game
The predator that I won't let grow inside me uncoils
And to stop it from seeing you I say yes and submit myself

Now I catch myself just before I find myself saying it
My tongue hitting the wall of my teeth and stopping it as
Throat aches with the effort and swells around the sound
Still trying so hard to find its way out to find you to take it
Repetitively shredding sharply in a whimper when I am alone
That catches itself inside me whenever you begin again
As you work your way into me the pain throws my head back
My mouth tearing open with the resonous moan that is growing

As I begin to pull harder against the bindings
Trying to elicit deeper pain from the straining
That is delicious with fear the ecstacy and agony
Running hot and cold and dry and wet within
My body frantically searching for the wall on which
To shatter itself into some kind of an ending

Yet you are not experienced in my kind of breaking
The weapons of pleasure too gentle in your hands
Not driving their tongues into my soul like spikes
But licking softly your true intentions along my flesh
Your caresses do not carve and sculpt me like a master

Words from your lips do not strike upon my skin
Like the fists of hatred so much more familiar
Yet my heart keeps leaping fleetingly through the moonlight
As swiftly as if the real danger chasing me were that
Instead of the echoes of truth coming at me from your words

Let my longing be the torture that brings me to death
I plead in my amazon pride with my teeth biting on my safe word
Though the blade of your tongue is again drawing darker blood
While my shadow demons threathened by your soul's light drive me
To break myself against the emotional bonds you weave around us

When I then will either die with your "L" word on my lips
In your arms some night after your seduction has destroyed me
Or after I have dominated this darkness then I will
Come with you with this word singing in safety between us

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I would appreciate feedback on this poem; obviously I am working through some things right now--
but please post them in the commentary threads and/or PM me with them:rose:
 
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Days, Months, Yours

When does the day know what it will be
Is it that second we chose arbitrarily
Is that all it has before life sets in stone
This day will leap canyons this one will lie prone.

Or does it have time to change to heal
Can it stay numb for an hour and then choose to feel

Meet me at the edge of the fish's eye
Where the black joins white and the waters touch sky

We'll invent our own asanas
Give voice to new hosannas
Drop our shields and our personas
And let our weapons lie.

The days we were are gone but the now is here
The wrapping only incubate the fear

Your yang will never wilt
Like tang fits into hilt
As sure as we must breathe
We both have swords to sheathe

In the darkness of beginnings lie
That half light that illumines the sky
I know your fears though you have few
That embracing me dissolves the you

I do not ask for your possesion
Nor a mirror cast of my impression
But a balance where we truly see.
The you of you and the me of me.
 
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Summoning

Eyes closed I see you sleeping
In darkness a thousand miles from mine
My heart amplifies my hearing your brow creases
Sweating and comfortless word from fevered lips
The unmistakable syllables of my private name
All the summoning I need to fly to your distress
With words that give me a body of terrible beauty
Electric blue like lightning the chakra of a poet's soul
Formed whole and perfectly naked shimmering like steel
Wings that are made by the fanning of delicate blades
My right hand ending in a tempered sword of finite justice
As I cut through the night to reach you I hear you again

This time your cries are sharper as you call the name
Of the dark witch you loved once who is no wiccan
Who stands before your marital bed the bloody altar
Where she tried to carve out your heart with dull knives
Rusted from the acid in your veins injected by her tongue
She feigns concern but I know she conceals many weapons
Which I will not let her approach you with again as she snarls
But both of us here your torturous cycle ringing the air again
As we turn towards you and hear the third name gasping out

The walls shift like a swirl of wind and the middle one enters
Shadows clinging to her breasts and wrapping her in a sheath
The night-wife the half-wife only half of what she seems to be
Certainly not the merciful lover she claimed to come to you as
Supposedly to doctor your soul where your wife had cut deeply
But instead she nursed her own spirit by stealing from yours
While you were numbed to the knowledge of her real purpose
Filling the cavity in with clay to leave you unable to feel love
Even for yourself or even from me until I heard through it
The soft call of your heart still forming the words of salvation
Unmistakable to me and I was unable to turn away from you
Giving to you instead all of the powers of my words and names
So that you would summon me here in this your thirteenth hour

Angrily I cast my eyes upon the crone and say the words of breaking
That must pass from my lips to yours to make them capable of finding
The target of what was once her woman's heart and make her know
That her craft cannot be called an art when there is no light in darkness
And therefore only nothingness in her which will not hurt you anymore
Then to the succubus I twist the sword stopping her in front of her face
The point of the blade a spark of white-on-abyss flame like my eyes
As she raises her hand to cast upon herself the sign of the victim I
Blaze her with words of truth that reveal her the false angel in their fire
Until my fury builds as the spell of your pain echoes for me in your poems
Shattering the layers over your heart and blinding them with your beauty
As gentle as mine is terrible yet just as powerful in the moment of balance
When they flee hissing in fear of the you that they have not seen before

Then I lean down to speak the word that my heart has been carrying
The salve the ointment the healing the word of unbreaking and rebinding
Calling first your name to make the word know to it is will hold its power
And as I am speaking the syllables I see your eyes flutter and behold me
The Dakini that you have summoned from the deepest blue of your soul
And as "Nightblade" slices through the darkness into both of our hearts
Together we lock eyes and share the power rise the spell of summoning
Bound to the truth that it was not just your heart I was here protecting
 
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The Devil Made Me Do It

Laid out on the rusty trundle bed's thin mattress
Naked and blindfolded he nearly orgasms repeatedly
As he is bound down with a web of bungee cords
Crisscrossing his body and hooked securely to metal

He thinks they are playing a game about his pleasure
Sillyness and fetish interspersed with idle questions
The gentle edge of something scraping him tickling and
Tingling as nerve endings are pressed making shivers
Twitching as nerve endings slowly discover severance

Earlier she snapped the head off of a disposable razor
Filed down the platic guard just slightly to serve better
Standing over him she holds it lightly like a piece of chalk
To draw the ritualistic symbols of justice and atonement
Until the front of his body is covered with her scrollwork
She thinks pity there isn't enough time to flip him over

Throughout her work she kept up the banter expected
Mixing false words of encouragement for his arousal with
Many carefully timed interrogations he laughingly answers
His misogynistic ego arguing against her ability for power
He suspects nothing certian that she is just another toy
Hundreds of itching featherlight cuts more uncomfortable
To him than the increasingly damning information he gives

Unable to postpone his release he orders her to finish
Having gotten what she came for she heartily agrees
So she bends and throws the bucket of bleach over him
Without looking back she closes the door on his screams
 
fifteen months

looking into the past
i didn't see you vanish,
maybe it was a fade, like
a spirit crossing over
or like a flash from a gun barrel
blame is always senseless
anger projects inward and
infects these sick cells
one at a time until
they are all ten times their weight
in blood and regret
this ink will never forget
and alone again i am
nourishing memories and
keeping me ten feet away
from the edge of forever black.
 
Marionette

I feel the hard tension of what connects us
That runs steel wires from your will to mine
Here in this world where no god protects us
I work to divine the power in my own mind

For too long have you controlled me this way
So that now I strain against these metal lines
Determined that for freedom I might die today
But I will take you to hell to pay these fines

With banshee cry the violent struggle I begin at last
Snapping the wires which whip and twist and tangle
My body the tempest of this storm that comes to pass
Fighting fiercely without hesitation as itself it mangles

Fraying cables climb like vines splitting into my skin
As the flesh whirls to rip and rend in visceral frenzy
Out of its bone prison climbs the creature deep within
Flashes a bloody smile as turning to you it avenges me
 
Closing Time

I watch her in the bar
When it's 13:00 in the nighttime
The dim lights have an orange reverb
While the band moves as if underwater
With the bass undulating in my head

As she swivels almost silently among us
Balancing a large beatup tray on one hand
While the other hand quickly wipes down the
Emptying tables and chairs with an old dishtowel

Her hips swiveling smoothly around drunks
Leaning haphazardly backwards in their chairs
Her torso twists swiftly to catch empty glasses
Before elbows send them shattering on the floor
Then lithely she speeds through an open space
To serve last call in the still-crowded corners

As she twirls back and forth between the tables
She is a bellydancer undiscovered in every way
Which causes me to wonder why not herself
When my watchful reverie of her is rewarded
By the hand next to me gesturing its drink
All over the front of me with a cold shock

I snap my eyes away from her
Begin fumbling frantically for napkins
Without numbers written on them or
Remnant biproducts of overindulgence
Of my fellow hopeless journeymen

Then she appears and is hurrying
To undo the injustices of the world for me
The rag in her hand feeling like a paintbrush
As she skillfully skims liquid from fabric
Wiping a cool path over my nipples
Which focus their thanks on her
Making her blush worse than words could
For everything that she hears in this place

I want to stop her and hold her
Still by her hands wrapped in mine
Hold her darting eyes by my gaze alone
Stand and tell her in a voice touching softly
Stroking her with gentleness and soaking
Deep enough of inside her soul that she
Just might believe again tonight

That she is beautiful and perfect
Breathtakingly everything she wants to be
If only she would leave with me right now
And find the path leading away from her past

I desire that moment for her more
Than sex or love or anything for myself
So much that I find my lips forming it
Just as some jerk stumbles against her
Loudly slurring his amazement as to why a
Woman like her is always here in this dark place
When she belongs somewhere better

But I know why and so keep silent
As she slides the hair back over the bruises
And says goodbye to me almost crying
 
Blue

My sadness
Sweeps around me
Wings enclosing

Too soft a defense to keep pain out
But coccoon enough to hold it in
Comfort it with warm feathery softness of
Dust-blue wings in faintly moonlit darkness
Keep the world from seeing the wounds
Slowly being absorbed into my body

Until I can stand again
Unblemished
Unfurled
and

Alone
 
I feel the way it feels
when teeth scrape the wrong way
against other teeth,
or forks against plates,
spoons against bowls,
bone against bone
once the cartilage wears thin.

I sign frantic murderous Morse code
with my fingertips at you, semaphore lost
on you, idle as you are,
angry as you are in the mosh pit
thrashing and flailing as my unseen
guardian angelship reaches for you,
attempting to keep you afloat,
coming up holding my own teeth.
 
Half froze up little possum
shaking itself to death,
Daddy picked it up,
took it inside,
left it on the bench to rest.

Michelle became Marcel once
the possum's balls had dropped.
Chewed up bananas
spit through a straw,
God knows Daddy did his best.

"He came a long, long way to die here son,
and now I meantalet him do just that.

Not more than two years had passed
til dad was just like him,
cold and sunken-eyed,
lost in his life,
left him on the couch to rest.

He said "Son gotta quit your
whinin' and cryin' if you
wanta be a man like me."

"There's a lot of men I want to be like,
but not a goddamn one is like you, dad.

You came a long, long way to die here dad,
and now I meantalet you do just that."


(Needs a polish, might be worth it, all of a sudden passion style upon waking up.)
 
Amongst the still smoldering shell
of that dingy jazz bar where cigarette smoke
would pour from under the front door
before it was replaced with darker smoke
remains the martini a callous woman
sent back with an ill-intentioned sideways glance
and a one finger salute to the heavy thuds
of an acoustic bass and snapping snare drum
to some ugly guy with uglier intentions for that night,
but only for her, a loving gesture in its own right
shrugged off her shoulders and down her back
just as he hoped to see that silk number do
stepping through his front door.

So instead of lighting a fire inside of her
he lit her on fire, silk catches quick
and panic catches quicker especially when the stampede
realizes the front door won't open and oh dear god
we can't breathe or see
, only taste smoke
with thick drunk tongues slurring cries for help
into cellular phones hoping the dispatcher
can hear and understand
we're stuck, there is no camaraderie in this death
just sweat and hot flesh cramming together
cooking evenly as the weakest fall to the ground
well-done all because she decided
he wasn't worth her medium rare.
 
i. Fall Gently; Graceful and Effortless

You were just a chilly day in September.
I tried act indifferent being an opposite coast away
since the only real connection I shared was
a refresher algebra course
because I sure couldn't handle the tangible stuff.
You were nothing more than the square root of
Professor Shapiro walking in with eyes redder than booze usually left them.

He regarded our empty empathy masks as cold as our disconnection
as the scared and hopeless and charred jumped from windows,
The salmon spawning season reversed. I felt monstrous for even making the connection.
All eyes painted flat against the images on the screen except those steel blues.
He watched us.
"Everyone I love is there."

John Shapiro left us to our apathy,
our class never resumed,
stunned silence only briefly interrupted by the passing sound of fists
wailing on thin metal lockers,
and a man wailing for his sister
who jumped fifteen stories, live for our viewing pleasure.
 
it wasn't anything fragile as an image
in pencil, fading from a thousand reads
or elegant as one in ink, vanishing with time.

nothing like that at all.

it was cold-blooded deletion,
plain and simple, i admit it.
it was premeditated and meant
to be permanent.

although, nothing is ever really lost
if it's been saved in bytes,
and it has. search. i am not a ghost writer.
these words say that i still breathe
and i still have poems in my heart.
welcome (back?) to Lit :)

a thought-provoking piece...
 
Channel locked, he guides with fist
knotted hair in hand, he is Man
intent upon his intentions, let me
be your canvas to splatter

wound me from the inside out
with weapons of your massive
consumption, I want you
to take me places, she would
never go, let me bleed and love it

let me be the razor's edge
upon the bloodied snow

Wow!! I am browsing through this fantastic thread and this jumped out at me! I love this Maria.
 
Wow!! I am browsing through this fantastic thread and this jumped out at me! I love this Maria.


Thank you, Rayven !

It was one of my favorite pieces, lol. It received loads of feedback; some great suggestions along with some humbling praise when I had all my poetry posted. I appreciate ALL FB, especially kind, constructive crit.

Thank you Pandora for your amazing efforts and kind help along with your awesome poetic contributions.

~~

OH, and Rayven, I have one posted at Clean Sheets you might enjoy. now posted on my page. hope you like it. if not, feel free to offer suggestions :)


maria
 
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Fall Foreclosure (A Rage Poem)

I want to end, rend and rake you
Into little wet leaves of flesh
While you are still alive
Staked down in the yard
Tethered with thistle vines
So that your suffering is as insidious
As your methods were with me

When other people said to me
Oh it can't be that bad
It's only a short chunk of your life
But you ripped it out by hand
Making sure the lines would never match
In your jagged contempt of my wholeness

Stealing intimate parts that you knew
That I would rather die than list the theft of
Further reducing myself by the spectacle
And making vulnerable even more secrets
That my survival depends on keeping hidden

In your forgetful underestimation
You did not calculate correctly my balance
Smearing the ledger at the accounting
Of where I had to trade rights for rites
Not understanding the exchange rate
You dismissed all that was foreign
What you do not understand has no worth to you

That was the error in your algorithms
Nothing figured or disfigured by you
Ever comes out right as you escape
Your real life is plaigerized
Scrapbooks you leave others holding fiction

One of the things that you erased
Was the proof of our love
My heart could not be whited out though
As you ran me too far into the red
But yours was neatly converted
Its black presence in my holdings column an illusion
Revealed to me by the auditor
That has brought you divinely here
For the settlement that we have reached

Love is not to be trifled with
Its power is real and more limitless than greed
Something you should have sought
Instead of treating it as a wrapper
Over what you came to consume
No you did not think of this outcome
When the equation was what will happen
If you cause me to love you more than life

Do not speak thief I know your answer
Risk management is built in to your methods
Meaning that my death would satisfy your debts
But in planning the scam so that you
Were worth more to me than myself in the end

What did you think the collateral would be?

I met you in the summer and by fall
I had
You took my heart and insured it in writing
Promising to grow our mutual investment
But due to the evident misappropriations
We regret to inform you
That you are less than morally bankrupt
Here at the end of this fiscal year you initiated
In fact this leaves you less than humanly feasible

Working away as your screams subside I recite
'This is just how business goes' back to you
Mixing your ruby leaves and tattered clothes
Into the autumn debris from the trees
Which should compost quite quickly
Rotten as you were to begin with I sigh
Autumn always depressed me as the season of death

Before winter covers us all too early in its frost
Like the space of an empty page
For life will write a new year upon its snows
Canceling the evidence of the harvest
Blanking out what is left of you
Until the spring when the grass grows thickly
Before its covering has even melted....

Suddenly I am happy to greet the herald fog
And throw myself relieved into its icy embrace
So much warmer than yours both before and after
Closing my eyes to dream of your face
As the season pulls a white sheet over it I smile

It will always be greener on the other side
 
I do not like you.
I'm tired of pretending
and your arrogance, is it
a front or just your way
of doing things? I thought
we were friends, until
you refused to remove
the knife you stuck in my back
while I tried to be strong
and stood up for you.

Leave me alone, I'm not home.
I am antisocial, as we all know.
 
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