Category: 12th

You took me in when I was all alone

In the form of a child you raised me as your own

I didn’t even know who I was, what I was

I had forgotten my memory

But still your smile was simmiring

I looked like a 10 year old boy

Game me clothing, gave me toys

A love between a child and mother

It compares like no other

Tucked me into bed

And I filled you with sword led

It came upon like insane man

I knew I had been foreign to this land, a demon in a man

On a mission I had ran

 

I had been a servant of lucifer, But I had betrayed him

With his mission I had concurred, but my body, he trimmed

I was a 10 year old, my memory had been lost

The wind was cold, but at what cost.

 

Then she met me in the woods

Took me in, her lovely inn, fed me like kin

I love her like so and she loved me back

Thought of me as her child

Took me in, her lovely inn, fed me like kin.

I was the child she never had.

 

Then came that one fateful day

She was young, hair not yet gray

I had regained my memory

I was never meant a family

 

I was put here to kill her, and kill her I shall

I did not want to kill her, But I was a being most foul

Put my sword through her head, her screams echoed loud

I was a soul taking demon, did this I had to

 

Soul demons must reap souls

(Send it again, through her lent, after her kin)

I felt like I had no choice, I did not have a voice

I am nothing but sadness

(Such the fate, of just, a demon)

I am not in charge of my own voice

 

Soul demons must reap souls

(Send it again, through her lent, after her kin)

I felt like I had no choice, I did not have a voice

I am nothing but sadness

(Such the fate, of just, a demon)

I am not in charge of my own voice

 

Soul demons must reap souls

(Send it again, through her lent, after her kin)

I felt like I had no choice, I did not have a voice

Nervously pacing

sitting Standing sitting again

His leg bouncing

you can hear the orange

tic tacs shake, waiting for

the lunch bell to ring

hands drumming on the green grated lunch table

fidgeting rocks the unbalanced chair

 

The bell rings

He stands up so quick

he’s unsteady

He reaches in to his pocket

the orange tic tacs shake in his hand

He flicks it open

three fall out

 

A single tic tac slips from his hand

It falls towards the grated table

crowds surge from the door

 

The tic tac bounces, a single

orange dot on a green cage

He talks to her

The tic tac balances on the edge

She walks away

He drops in to the unbalanced chair

Bumping the table

The

tic

tac

falls

Those that protect us,
constantly berated and bombarded,
with the simple words of those who know too little
to even completely comprehend the complex circumstances
of the situations they are placed in.

Those that protect us,
put themselves in the way of
the harm that would inevitably come our way.
Without them we would be completely powerless
to stop those that prey on the helpless.

Those that protect us,
are constantly in fear
they have reached the point where
they have to fear those that mean them harm
and even those that revered them.

Those that protect us,
Will not let it phase them.
Continuing to protect and serve
even when those that they are here for
slowly turn towards opposing viewpoints.

Those that protect us,
constantly berated and bombarded,
with the simple words of those who know too little
to even completely comprehend the complex circumstances
of the situations they are placed in.

 

1. Cut open your chest with a dull ceremonial blade

curved perfectly to fit ghostly hands in a futile grasp at revenge.

 

Molten metal pours out;

beads of mercury en masse,

silently poisoning the hand they happily roll down.

Magma, shimmering water that scalds the dirt to ash

before it buries its shinning head: a statue.

 

Watch it seep down into the ground

through a labyrinth;

tiny civilization, tiny Daedelus

plotting his escape on jeweled wings

as heroism breaks through the defensive lines

to cast the secrets of an empire in finite gold.

 

An anthill cast in gold.

 

2. Dig it up,

a shimmering metal creature,

a coral sprigs, tendrils of metal

where intestines once were.

Iron- filled veins trap the last whisper of blood

that could not quite escape the heat in time.

 

Pull apart the opening in your chest

and let it crawl inside.

Watch it nestle, settle, let out a great sign.

Watch its spidery fingers url around your ribs.

Watch it smile as they crack.

Easily mended, after all, with metal joints

that hold better than brittle bone ever could.

 

3. Sew shut incision with embroidery floss;

reclaim the woman’s craft. Congratulations-

the piece is mounted,

the installment is ready for opening night.

I buried myself in the backyard of your big yellow house
right under the swing set where, before I moved in,
you used to sit in the shade and sing to the trees,
sweet siren crooning to the wind
and taking solace in the echo.

We called the space between our houses a forest
even though it was barely a patch of trees;
the scattered foliage that separated your sphere from mine.
I emerge from the path into green splendor,
wind my way up to your backdoor,
knock on the glass but let myself in
before anyone has a chance to notice.

I used to be able to see the light of your bedroom window from mine.

In the stillness of the hot Texas nights,
dry air washing the hills in a lifeless dance,
I swear I still see a flicker-
and a flash of green live oak-
and I know your light is on
although I cannot see.

I hear your voice float to me,
lilting and dancing across the highways that lay between us-
only now, with a steady beat,
my heart keeps time.

 

Here is what you were never meant to know.
Here is the salt of Orion’s bloodlust,
here is the rubble of the tower,
here is the endless dance of the wheel:

There is a way to rearrange the stars,
reform constellations,
become masters of our own astrology,
write our fates in cosmic dust.

The gods are brittle.
You, too can move earth and sky,
shape water and spit sea foam
into the shape of the life you most desire.

Become a statue,
content to lounge among the stars forever.

Here is the secret,
pressed close to her breast,
that the psychic will never tell.
Here is the witch’s vice,
here is the magician’s heel.

Rewrite fate in an artificial masterpiece,
an expertly arranged terrarium,
succulents and blossoms encased in glass,
tea leaves to be read with a halfhearted smile.

Foresight renders a crystal ball an ornament;
omniscence makes stars sequins on black cloth.

Scatter our seed to the wind;
maybe we become the breeze
and we end up rooted together in the tall grass.

 

Radio waves nestle against my chest
as the dry hills whir up and down,
a seismic machine weathered with asphalt wrinkles.

The sky is bigger here;
a tapestry of blues and whites.
struggle to drink them in,
fearful that you will look upon the vast heavens
and find them hollow.

Where there is green, it is beige.
Where there is life, it is dry.
Where there is flora, it is a withered yellow rose,
and where there is sky,
it is hollow.

You want a tattoo?
Here’s your tattoo, Danny,
all inked in scar tissue
with a cattle brand needle
in the soft nape of your neck.

 

I poured gallons into you–
sickly-sweet honey, endless sticky flow–
Surely it made you sweeter,
a lighter taste on my tongue.

Yet I stayed floating in vinegar,
formaldehyde burns and the fetal curve of preservation
dyeing my skin in suspended decay.

I was a specimen you never cared to study too closely;
ornament, oddity, fascination,
sweet oddball, strange decor.
Glass jar on wooden shelf,
the perfect perch for perverse surveillance.

Paris looks upon Aphrodite and thinks her beautiful;
Eris looks upon the apple and finds it all too sweet.

There may be no island sanctuary within this amber sea;
you may carry me home on wax paper wings
and think me a fool for searching.

You heart evades me, your smile evades me, your skin evades me,
but, in honey or vinegar or sweet autumn cider,
your bones are mine.

 

Scattered,
spilled across scorched blacktop,
jump rope playground-sweepers keep time:
an early-September metronome.
I watch from my lamppost roost,
eyes low,
hands sticky
with childhood wonder,
head drooping into a book
to conceal the flush of longing.

These are our brief intermissions in monotony:
locked and loaded melodramatics,
playground politics,
telenovela conversations and
impromptu psychiatry.

This we relish; here we live
our futures in miniature.
Here we rehearse
for walk-on roles in network dramas.
Tetherball cords tangle,
hair braided around the edge of the ring
as the fiercest of gladiators egg each other on.

We’ve shaded our
crayon drawings since then,
buried our playground receipts
in Crayola crypts.
We dislodge each shard of mulch
indented into scabbed knees-
curtain closed on dress rehearsal.
Baby tooth lockets crack open at hinges,
good luck incantations sealed
at enamel roots with tiny knuckle kisses.

 

Wind chimes batter
one another
in a futile attempt to escape
Their relentless
keening

A fire alarm goes off
For no discernible reason
Everyone scatters

When I pretend
to be asleep
I am exposed
Every time

Everyday something trivial
Will clatter
to the ground
And make someone
trivial jump

I can’t sing
in front of people
My voice comes
Out
but it wavers

All night
And all day
A bird is bawling

Did you know
Rattlesnakes have discarded
their rattles
They will issue
no more warnings

Yesterday in line
A baby stared and stared
at me
Squalling
the whole time

I fold inward on myself
Back arching
like a
Fierce, frightened cat