[x]

effluvium screamingeffluvium screaming
as she wrenches her ribs free from the
shrieking vultures and the
nightingales' brittle bones;
the dowagers drop,
laying themselves upon
bandages
formed by discrete empty particles
and their discrete empty words.
oh, how charming, she fancies herself a poet

leech jarand with a rusty scalpel
(which I always have on hand)
I deflower myself,
calculatingly,
to thwart others' ungainly fingers.
I make careful incisions
on wrists, ribs, pelvis;
but this pesky skin keeps
knitting itself back together
(albeit imperfectly)
when I and my lancet
idle.

we make poor surgeons,
my heart and I.

grimlyall that she has amounted to
is a defiant mockery of happiness-
an adder swallowed with grim alacrity,
a blade self-turned in grotesque
cleanliness.

streetlights decay over ghosttrodden ground

hyperrealityshe would go to any lengths
to be rid of their vile fingers,
the wretched tomes by way of vertebrae
cracking each distinct, arched hollow.

but light wakes not to find the demons
couchant in their respective eaves;
their tidy churning authenticity
leading realism to decay.

a dull kind of misogynyhe tried to drown her in
pernicious obedience,
the rotting, peeling wallpaper
of his skin
grasping hers violently,
but her flesh is corroded by the
noxious barbarity of his breath
and he's left
raping nothing but a skeleton

regardlessshe is surging between bouts of
restless melancholia,
her insolent, ungainly fingers
derangedly plucking at the
sky's fragile moths.
"the gentlemen are drowning,"
she says, her mouth full of porridge
and the lurid sweat of nightmares.
the ghastly stacatto of her heartbeat
drags him out, blinking and
comatose,
with lungs sultry and ambivalent.
she found poetry in his idle bones

on the treachery of realitybut nothing actually as sturdy as she
and so, bitter and maniacal,
she skirts the night with her reins
as if to draw a hero out of
the faceless flagstones.
but even her cellophane-cluttered heart
cannot search out a pattern in
their vague crinklings;
they deny, bare-faced,
that a spectre lurks below.

vampire who said he was youyou've been trying to devour
the tragic ephemera of the midnight sky
since your rapacious lungs first drew breath;
the brutal contraption that you call a heart

scraping by on the dull drudgery of arithmetic
to condense my skeleton into something you can use
but she's become enamoured and then some
with you, you bastard
is there anything but raw-flesh conviction about you?

still, the voraciousness of your voice
undermines the veracity of my very heartbeat
and I'm left in bitter deadlock with nothing to do
because
(god save the Queen!)
I loved you

fault linesbut she is cracked
and so they will never find use for her,
delicate bullet-wounds
and melancholy checker-marks
violent on her skin
self-inflicted, of course
because they can't see
that they're the ones who've
scarred her

lolitaher blood is upon her ankles
and they deny the ribbons that they've torn
these are the same men who ripped the wings from butterflies
the pontificating bastards
you whore

I've swallowed my dreams, if you want to know
chromium alloy scrapes at my innards

thusly, it drowns meI am waiting, indolent
as one ill at the sickening
weight of the grave,
in an hourglassed stream.

I linger dubiously,
torpid as a bodily organ
and more acidic,
as it strangles the sand
imprisoned in the
bludgeoning surf.

thusly, it drowns me:
asphyxiated between the
watery insurgents
and recalcitrant rocks.

the icy strands of
sanity are snapping,
one by one.

alcoholicthis glass
has made a martyr
out of you.

with your evangelical mouth
and
your tongue like a flickering
tape-recorder,

you devour its glow
and blanch.

you'd swallow even the cork
for your faith.

on the treachery of imaginationsurely, I must be ill;
I find myself
disputing the vague irrelevancies
of the folds that mottle a curtain,
the shadows that drench the ground.
the night is teeming
with changeable artefacts;
from every obstructed corner
leers the visage of a
ghost.

on wontshe is lost in the throes of
macro-luminescent ponderings

but she only believes in his fingers,
those gullible tools.

ripe and undivine,
a thin moon is drowning.

not to beshe briefly contemplates the former,
but swallows anyway.

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love poem for a bibliophileI absently thumb
the Adirondacks of your spine
like the spine of an
old book.

if I unfold you,
you will be just as
gilt-edged, lavishly illustrated
and eloquent.

principleyou are beautiful
in the way that sonnets are beautiful;
measured, exact,
expertly divulged little by little

(but somehow some poetry peeks through)

solitudechipped bone china,
two lumps of sugar
and enough blackberry rooibos tea
to drown in
(if one is very determined)—
the silver service arranged
gleaming and precise
as a skeleton.

one day, the silence
of this house
will have drunk me
to the dregs.

tumble drylaundry day came
in a tumult of procrastination,
fingers worn as rags,
skin dry and white
as eggshells

(pale ivory with cracks
and freckles,
the heart a fleshy yolk,
yellow with jaundice
and indecision)

and a chore as mundane
as folding linen
became a metaphor,
fertilised and fit for
breaking open.

a portrait of the poet as an old womanI am sulking in the boudoirs of women
across the country, littered amongst
pearls, perfumes, powders and
rouge.

I lurk in the dim, spotted glass of the
vanity, fair skin and miracles,
overnight plane tickets, the languor
of another stilted afternoon.

I am an antiquity: stale, bated breath,
forgetfulness, roses that have to be
pinched into my cheeks:

beautiful as a book
whose pages have begun to yellow.

vapoursout with the old.

a turgid exhale like
a plume of smoke,
a thin regret.

__________________

a shuddering breath
like the flickering
of a light bulb—
a timid hope.

in with the new.

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Submitted: August 18, 2010
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too bloody close

by *toxic-nebulae, Aug 18, 2010, 4:57:59 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

a bludgeoning pathos
is beating at the stalemate
of her lightless eyes

but the nervous flutterings of (almost)
is where I've trapped my heart,
the meticulous ecstasy of longing
clawing at the depths
of her corpse

too bloody closeby *toxic-nebulae

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

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~the-lost-owl Aug 30, 2010 Student Writer

I love this.

I may be alone, but I think the more sense a poem makes, the worse it is.

I can garner almost nothing out of this.

*runs to click +watch*

*toxic-nebulae Aug 30, 2010 Student Writer

I agree with you there.
I can get some meaning from this, but that might just be because I wrote it. I've written much less coherent things.
And thank you. <3

~the-lost-owl Aug 31, 2010 Student Writer

So have I.

I don't remember its name, but I wrote a poem that probably makes no sense to me anymore. It's all twisted and inverted and stuff. It's Burton meets... my attempt at Seuss? XD

My newest one is kind of copying your style though. Although I know exactly what I'm talking about, which may or may not be good...

*toxic-nebulae Aug 31, 2010 Student Writer

Well, consider me flattered.

~the-lost-owl Sep 2, 2010 Student Writer

No problem. You and *Sapph0 and a few others are my particular favorites.

*toxic-nebulae Sep 2, 2010 Student Writer

~exquisiteoath Aug 27, 2010

I quite like the way the 3 last lines unravel.

*toxic-nebulae Aug 27, 2010 Student Writer

Thank you.

~ilyilaice Aug 23, 2010

^{Mysterious and compelling.}

*toxic-nebulae Aug 24, 2010 Student Writer

Thanks!

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too bloody close

too bloody closeby *toxic-nebulae

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