I've heard about you, little devil. When the old women at the village exhaust the daily gossip, they turn to spooking each other with tales of you. Men arrive at our trading town days later than they should, telling of tiny creatures that take them away, excuses to calm their scolding wives. Or at least, that is what I thought. Now I have met you.
You look just like a child with your rough white clothes and small stature. But when I behold your face, I find something ethereal lingering in your red eyes. I once saw that unearthly hue in a sunset and it beckons me. I tell myself you aren't real, but
Within me something stirs.
I
You cried sweet yellowed glue
when my fingers danced across these bindings
and so I said:
I will not scribble in your margins
or blacken out the tender purple skin
below your eyes where the veins
and profanities show through.
But I will throw you up
let the fire catch your pages
till the ink bubbles and runs
floods each white expanse as it burns.
I did not tell you how badly
I wanted to be rid of your rough edges
big colorless eyes, thin arms
and run-on sentences.
You tugged at the dog ears and bookmarks splayed
around your neck and wrists like collars
opened dying bookstore lips
to say:
I am not meant for your hands
or th
Walking one night
as the rain died on me
a hundred glowing orbs
burst to light.
It was only dandelions in headlights
and still
when the vision passed
I stood trembling.
Simile and self-medication by poetoffire, literature
Literature
Simile and self-medication
I have problems
and I'll swap mine with you like trading cards.
Long lovely disorders go over the lips like chocolate
but honey, we've been writing about these pits of darkness
long before shrinks slapped name tags on them.
While the rest of the world cringes and looks away
together we will scribble from one breakdown to another.
It is a saga marked by the usual trappings of our kind:
I have dizzy spells, you cry at night, I have pills
you describe flowers, I see through hypocrisy
and we both lose love like loose change.
I have problems.
I used to eat the skin at the tips of my fingers
but my bad habits are now limited
to search
The parasite lives and grows by poetoffire, literature
Literature
The parasite lives and grows
Once upon a time Goliath fell.
They built buildings on his body
and David walked away without looking back
didn't know his victory
until he moved
opened the door
to have his pebble drop at his feet
looked up and his apartment was
the white pulp of a gigantic eye dripping blood.
David is meant for spaces
muddy brooks, gaping skies
flanked by open, gnashing trees
skies that swallow
cigarette smoke, pollen dust, and sweat.
He wants to go where the government doesn't care
where you can flick the paperwork
off like straggling hay.
David does not want to know he is living
off others' misery, will not swim where
there are leeches.
Love poem to my plague doctor by poetoffire, literature
Literature
Love poem to my plague doctor
This morning you, my true love
tapped a heartbeat into my door
with an oak cane.
I didn't answer.
I wasn't afraid of you, I promise.
In fact shaking swept over me
a feverish need to pull you in
rising from my chest to my throat.
When you left I coughed it out.
It lay there on my floor
thick and red, but not so much my blood
as my offering
my chance.
It is noon.
My neck stings and pulses
for you to kiss it.
But of course you won't.
Perhaps this attraction
the beauty I see in the way you're covered by a beast
is the same that creates
werewolves, minotaurs, and politicians.
I wouldn't want a man
so please, don't take your m
She who destroys the light by poetoffire, literature
Literature
She who destroys the light
first seed
Darling, you and I both know
in a better world I could be your Lethe
wrap around you, drown you
erode everything
that ever tried to bring your fate down on you.
Still if I picked up the pieces
I'd hear their soft hum
the one shells moan for the sea
for even then there would be places in you
still not free.
second seed
Surely women must have learned by now
never to trust fruit.
A garden is a prison earned
and there is nothing satanic, nothing sacred
about hunger.
Yet when your body curls in on itself
seduced by not-seeds that need only thirst to root
you find your lips wet
and what might be blood or j
first shard
Sometime looking back on this
you know you'll talk of
how you crowned each soiled scrap of me
as you found it with a kiss.
And I know I'll remind you
I remember
your forgiving lips
meeting my chilled, festering flesh.
We'll be lying, but I still want this.
second shard
Come back to me when I am whole.
third shard
When something falls to pieces it shatters
but before you're content thinking me glass
remember I will never be translucent.
fourth shard
I'm drifting through my kingdom
where the sun succumbs, keels over, bleeds out, dies.
When stillness corrodes the earth
I stand waiting, arms outstretched the exact
All I wanted was my own serving boy
Who looks at you as if you were Queen of the Fairies.
But we know who taped gossamer wings to your back,
So baby, let's not call the flying magic.
You could have chosen any Robin Goodfellow
But your eyelids are heavy with the juice.
Love is blind, true, but also very, very, lucky
And I can see the flower red in your cheeks,
Sticky on your skin, blooming in your judgement.
Let someone else awake alone and frightened
Closed in by your midsummer night.
I want to toss and turn and dream and wonder
How someone so beautiful and regal
Could fall for a man no more than an ass.
She of the throne, old version by poetoffire, literature
Literature
She of the throne, old version
first shard
Sometime we will look back on this
And you will remember how you kissed
Every soiled scrap of me as you found it
And I will remember your warm lips
Meeting my chilled, rotted flesh.
We will both be lying
But I want this anyway.
second shard
Come back to me when I am whole.
third shard
Darling, when something falls to pieces it shatters
But before you think me glass
Remember I will never be translucent.
fourth shard
My soul is drifting in my own kingdom
In the banks where the sun goes to die
When stillness corrodes the earth,
I stand, waiting, arms outstretched
In the exact way that makes you want to let me go.