[x]

Sonnet XVIVYou are celestial. I tell you this,
not with the romantic veneration
of a Renaissance stargazer, whose bliss
depends on perfection. The cessation
of his quixotic notions, his fervent
belief in the Harmony of the Spheres,
would end altogether his pure content
with the firmament he's worshipped for years.
No—my ardour is more true, if somewhat
less zealous. My telescope has sought out
your craters, your flirtations with moons—but
I love you dearly still. Even without
his blithe ignorance, I see your beauty.
I love and I know you better than he.

suckleyou pry me open
like a blood orange:
a scrape of sugar on my tongue,
a taste like sunrise.

you take in
the salt and slick and
split
of my thighs,
the pulped tomato
of my heart,

the fabric and
steel bones
of an artificial ribcage

as you unknot
them all.

I draw my first
deep breath
and it smells of citrus
and coitus and
you

she never had eyes as brightshe never had eyes as bright as
cold
or song as clear as
dark
but ever into her starry skies
I withered,
drawn into abysmal depths
by the promise
of a ravaged warmth,
somewhere near the centre.

now,
at the zenith of her autumnal beauty,
I find myself lost;
her brilliant voice
in prosepoetry elegance
shall whisper "I love"
into corroded dark
and tear all of the roadblocks
forcibly
from my mind.

nothing like the sunit occurs to me
that I do not love you
as much as I should.

your voice is not
musical to me,
is not by far
my favourite sound:
I prefer the skeletal
tones of a harpsichord,
the rustling of the pages
of old books,
the wild clanging
of a projector
winding up its film.

nor do your eyes
hold for me
visions of the stars,
in all their fierce, deranged
intesity: I love the sight
of a massive, gaseous
binary system
more than that of your
primitive lenses.

the touch of your hands
sends me in no quixotic raptures
that the lazy fronds of a lily
or the crushed softness of velvet
could not—
skin is skin, and quite frankly,
I've felt better.

I ha

an open letter to depressionsuicide princess,
I think you're half in love with me:
the way that you
follow me about, grab at my ankles
and tighten the veins
around my ribs

would almost endear me to you.
and in a certain masochistic way,
I nearly welcome your knock on my door,
the steady clink of your

instruments of torture—because
who would I be without this
choking disease
to carry around?

but frankly, dear,
you impose rather too much
upon my peace of mind.

it's all well and good
to write the occasional
woe-is-me
poem, to hold you by the hand

on a Saturday afternoon
when I have nothing better to do
than indulge your little caprices—

bu

reductionI'll tell the truth:

I am a thief of the
worst persuasion.

if you want honesty,
I don't think that we will
last.

give it one or two
or three years—
years tense with opposing forces
and unusual magic—

and our reaction will be
complete. we will both
go back to our own kinds.

haven't they always defined love
in terms of chemistry?
(opposites attract,
but like dissolves like.)

and here is the confession:
here is why I am odious:
I know this and
I will not withdraw.

here is the electron bridge—here the
anode, cathode, the ill-fated
reactants.

I set this up like dominos;
I wield it lik

lapsedyou've eaten my clairvoyance
and I've nowhere else to turn;

vermin stray like fingers
down my gullet.

"I do not love you"
are five words fit to kill:
I close my teeth over my tongue.

a willow grows aslant a brookthe jumbling of
hymns and hormones,
almond-bitter as the snow,
breaks bottles encased
between her ribs,
trickling down to radius,
ulna.

"every girl's a precious treasure"
(depending on the shape of her
nose)
and
"every girl's a cherished rose"
(depending on the state of her
hymen)

having worth in [n]either, I,
moored among crowflowers
and nettles,
could only let the virgin surf
beat breathlessly against
my stockinged ankles.

I lie
(half-nude in clever
dishabille) as
rigor mortis invades,
bit by bit,
claw and teat.

Londonthe city glows
bright copper, a scandal in
oil colours,
a luminous quivering waste
of fog and smoke.

I feel on my skin
the harsh glare of street lights,
a thick caking of
make-up, the lingering
sting
of a parting kiss.

these streets are a string
of catastrophes,
a bright orgiastic tumbling,
the future glinting red
in a wine glass.

somnambulancewhen man created
god, I think,
it was in this state of mind:

something ruptured inside of him
and gave rise to bright delusions.

in any case
the murky eyes of god
have imposed themselves
upon my eyelids,

small points of light and pressure
through which my dreams leak.

autopsythink of this as matrimony,
a kind of implicit vow,

or at least a grudging compromise
between guard and prisoner.

understand: I will see more of you
in these few hours
than any lover ever has.

my hands, encased in latex,
will caress far deeper, far
more intimately than any touch
you received while alive.

I will know the folds of your skin,
the colour of your heart,
the weight and feel of every
palpable thing
inside you—

and without your consent, with you
powerless to stop me.

I choose to think of this as love.

ambivalenceit seems that I have lost
my senses,
dripping corduroy blue:

a glass of condescension
and I'll deny everything you've
said.

somewhere between the pastry paint
and the religious
beads of sweat

from your lips to your navel
I've trapped myself
in a cage I lost the keys to.

this is where insanity begins:
too much attention
wasted on the wallpaper

and hours spent meeting anything
but your eyes.

as i'm cradled in the circulation
within alcoholic corks
and blue headlights

your voice tapping at my senses,
your lips replacing mine.

the secret is that I cannot do enough screaming
to drown you out

and I can't be quiet enough
to

my heartmy heart (and the vicious folds
of its teeth,
those pale watery things)
has devoured me
like a pearl.

unconvincingly bare
in my eggshells,
my linen,
I scrape by like a drudge—
I've just the hunch in the shoulders,
just the lowering of the eye.

I press my tongue
to the top of my mouth.
does this seem forward
of me?

I am sorry:
the poor thing is used to
having more to touch.

stereoscopicsdeath
is but a microcosm,
a cheap cinematic
illusion of
depth.

it is not a
dichotomy, not a
solid black outline
like those in
cartoons.

not everyone
steps like a
skipping stone
directly into its arms.

some murmur
about its edge for years;
some never escape
its grasp.

standoffdawn hisses and spits
in my bowed head, the wide
arch of my back:
I am reborn in sweltering silence.

I approach you unnoticed
sinless, yet. my strike,
malevolent as your gaze,
abides by negotiations.

I won't have your treaties
and treatises, your cowardly
circular games--
my eyes are full of blistering fire.

let this be as it is, then.
stipulations are worthless
by way of a stiff-necked caviler.
you wreak your own brand of ruin.

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64listen
can you hear the click-clack
reverberating back
off the walls?

would you
indulge in a blood sport?
pieces on a chessboard
undignified falls

if you
will be my black (k)night
I’ll be crowned in white
your rival Queen

don’t say
that you didn’t mean it
we can still clean it
fit to be seen

black and white and black and white and red, oh
you precious thing, your precious king is dead, oh
are we playing, are we playing suicide?
you know I play to win

you tried
to make me take the bait
and yet we’re in stalemate
still

I know
I said I’d take the blame
but you shouldn’t aim
if you don’t mean to kil

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Carpe Diem

by *toxic-nebulae, Apr 1, 2012, 1:28:59 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Traditional Fixed Forms

If, in its due time, each temporal thing
Should take itself to fly, on spectral wing,
Away from places that memories reach,
Fading into that melancholy breach
That is the absence of living recall—
If nothing rises but that it should fall
Into oblivion when none are left
To remember that once, this tree bereft
Of fruit and leaves, in its living hour,
Boasted many a sweet-smelling flower—
If naught is gained by the passage of time
Save the gloomy turn of this very rhyme—
Is love, then, as meaningless and as bare
As unseen phantoms in the empty air?

Carpe Diemby *toxic-nebulae

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Traditional Fixed Forms

NaPoWriMo day #1. Prompt: carpe diem.

`vespera Feb 18, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

YAY a fixed form that doesn't suck

This was delightful

*toxic-nebulae Feb 18, 2013 Student Writer

and I know how rarely you don't hate rhyming poetry, so thank you.

`vespera Feb 18, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

You should be proud of this one. I'm not sure how it really stacks up compared to most rhyming poetry, but I think it's likely publishable, so you may want to look into that