That stupid piece of my soul you have

He writes of them, (writes!)

casually speaks (and writes.) of their beauty.

Eloquent, no embellishment.

Where my love lies

behind half cracked eyes

I do not mind.

Where I lie

a breeding seething scuttling kind

of firy plague of flies,

breathes, feeds on me and calls itself mine.

When I first saw you,

he says,

it was as though the idea,

what I had always dreamed of had come to life..

and I was speechless.

(a correction of sorts

as though the air

were an infant that

might regurgitate back to him

his words,

she was the only one I loved

(properly),

only just uttered.

I did not shudder.

Only my eyelids half a flutter,

my head a languorous nod.

And with no warning I stood,

dove deep into ice-melt

and swam across a freshly rippling

swimming hole.

On the other side I tiptoed

rock to rock and hid,

coughed sobs shucked rough

from corn cobs, ate hiccups.

(Who cares, who cares?)

After a time

I step lightly back to him,

smile languidly, lay back under sun

and hide reddened eyes under eyelids.

It doesn't matter and I don't care,

I spit-think to him, stubborn as shitstain.

Ever an idea, I am,

to idealists.

(Have I disappointed you yet?)

my beauty is all that was yours then.

Intact, I am now, somehow,

despite the one who broke me.

(not you.)

I am the petulance of pubescence

in my untossed tantrum.

But here we are again, again somehow,

years of void our chemical trail.

Without you now

I might be fashioned of plastic

quarantined in Clorox,

parched, starched, unsalted

finding existence in cheap tv.

Without you now

I might clamp shut my mouth

And refuse speech or breath.

I might walk down rows of cherry trees at dusk

solar flares of scotch vapor from each pore,

each new shadow thrown askew

by dying light

a patch of darkness in which to sink

a new grave in which to stumble headlong

heedless, headless.

It could be worse than now.

But still I think of them

and can't unknow how they are kept.

they are known by your pen.

Reviews

[. serah .]

-- oh, this is a tapestry of images and sentiments so vivid and intense that i would likely think about it for hours... -- it makes me wonder about an individual's identity and how it connects with another individual's identity... -- in this piece it seems like one of them is a poet and another is a writer and that means things are as complex as they can be and i know what that's like... in my own realm of existence... -- stunning poetry...

[M. Shepherd]

Thank you! It very much feels as complex as that, and as confusing a melee.