Poetry being pretentious is my lifeblood

[Bang Bang]

as anyone who has ever met me, or viewed me from a distance through the safety of the zoo windows, knows well, i am a depraved, pretentious eejit who T H R I V E S off of being as pretentious as humanly possible. unfortunately, my status as a trashbag gremlin posturing as more interesting than he actually is was in jeopardy, due to my neglect of a poetry thread. no true self-depreciating hellfire can exist without a poetry thread.

ergo, we arrive here. come, join me and smoke hand-rolled cigarettes, listening to 'eclectic' music with me whilst we peer out of poorly lit rooms, into even more poorly lit streets, being sad purely for 'the aesthetic'.

 

[Bang Bang]

the creek.

They tossed her with the coming of the tide,
treating her bones with the salve of time;
with it, she would come to blush,
look delicate, and sacred cry out
‘Mother! Mother, you have killed me!’ —
Those old treacherous bones down there.

She drowned in her own salvation.
The taste of wine on lips (hers)
and shadows on hips (mine)
compels me to the forest, to the fence
where we met.

They say they drowned her.
‘Already dead,’ she said,
kissed my cheek, bent my head.
‘A love affair of corpses.’
I watched her sink — I bound
her feet.
‘The air,’ she smiled (a secret)
‘is all down there.’

 

[Bang Bang]

tide.


i.

the cup of my ears is full —
brimmed over with lemons.
honey, once on my tongue, all gone
run dry, so now
they call me:
bitter

ii.

shake off the sand, mercurial Aphrodite.
the dog of three heads simpers at your ankles.
Death, pale courtier, bows,
Lord, chthonic king, bows,
They, his people, bow.
nails of roses, your fingers curl;
they’ll learn to fear you now.

 

[Bang Bang]

farmer's daughter.


her breast digs into my ribs
as an acorn burrows into earth,
setting its roots and breaking the bones
one by one by one.
the milk-soaked heart branches,
growing up my bronchus
so that it might see the sun.
as my breath becomes her
she brings lips to kiss
the fruits of her love at both ends,
and as the nature of my skin
turns to seed, I find myself–
abundant.

 

[Bang Bang]

era.


the dark cold of his fingertips
scratched at the dawn like a funeral bell—
vultures circling, going through the motions.
the rite of passage i claimed from the girl
with kisses of roses dissolved
like acid, bubbling down in the ventilation
of my c—t. breathing is overrated,
or so they tell me, the way they tell me
i might as well cut off every limb
for what they’re worth, which is
nothing. every joy dance on the
anachronistic parlor tells me my
time is come, my bones were not birthed
for this wet era. Violence makes me shake.
i cry at every opportunity, certain
it is televised to the evangelists
in the sky. the rattling of bars has me
shaking like a leaf— pathetic, really.
i was not built for destroying buildings
nor for holding up the rubble. i am the
expulsion of placenta and viscera
steaming with the rejection
only to shrivel by the morning,
unknown in this harsh light.
.

 

[Bang Bang]

anecdote.


The wind snaps
her windpipe;
Nature's true cannibalism manifest—

Aftertaste of honey.

She sold
that Jewel he gave her
for a night spent warm
in her C—t.
True,
she took him willingly,
as he bottled the screams
for dinner.

I took of your flesh
like a dumpster dived Jesus:
scraggy of heart
and weak, wandering.
I sipped at that Grail
you made me out of your burnt power,
and grew heady—
grew strange
grew severed away
from you,
from communion.

Where shall I worship now?
They sell them five pence a piece
at spiritual Waitrose,
but the fear of hell is still nipping at their feet.
I kick the hounds
down ten steps
and serve them up
for dinner.

Trust the appetite,
they told me,
labelling all cravings with traffic signs.
Shall I set the roads on fire,
cast aside the map
and step onto burning bridges?

A false image—
no bridges were ever built here.
I am maker.
I am the Great Builder of my Nordic pantheon;
giant shall be my limbs,
but I'll let no god
stab me in the back.

 

[Bang Bang]

her.


She breathes
the way I sink:
with ease.

Cold, I see those
soft lips part, warm
air coming to her
like waves.

Out she washes the juices
of my intrepidation.
In she catches
how my nervous breath does

hitch. Grasping at the straws
in her hair, reaching for her
tender garments. Whisper a prayer
so that I might call it
holy.

She does not buy the fiction,
but wraps me in her cloak
for safe keeping.

 

[Bang Bang]

Sunday.


I went to church with the Devil
and watched him fold the service in half,
slit ‘Heaven’ out of old testaments
to keep it for his own.
Watched him reduce
Gospel to
snatched
away
air.

An enemy of action
is easier to trace than—
Slips, summer heats, silks
and pastels soft against
pink skin.
Joy dizzy on shutting it out,
out of ritual shutting doors,
never knowing names nor seeking;
‘Whatever you do, don’t.’

Humming heat of humdrum happy
buzz, rolled brains like rabbit fuzz,
downy, made for careful handling.
Rubbed rough she falls to ribbons.
There are no calls to bring back
dead animals.
Pets must be buried,
in processions led by my old friend,
the Devil.