Exquisite Corpse

I am staring at your picture:
I am a five hundred mile view
& you are looking out amazed.
Now searching the electric blue
for something to embrace –
a God, a mortal plain & true
though I am not one of the race.

How the long nights stretch
all the hours I waste
filling time with my words
& the dead thought of you.
There’s a black bird crying
out in the cold. If he
calls my name I might try
something new.

Leave unwillingness unbroken --
how dare you taunt me with those eyes!
Exquisite corpse I will bury you
& I will reclaim my freedom
from your funerary smile,
break away from all the boredom
into a permanent exile.

All the fragile things,
feeling always the same,
killing time with my books
& the dead love of you.
There’s a black bird crying
out in the night. If he
caws again I might try
someone new.

Exquisite corpse I will bury you.

All the days of dregs,
feeling thrice my age,

keeping time to a tune
I hoped would end soon.
There's a black bird flying
out on the wind.

Exquisite corpse I will bury you.

Another Long Year

Another long year between us –
I would not tarry, nor delay
its passing, not for all the gods
though they threatened & cajoled me:
another year & you recede
further into oblivion –
dim those pearly eyes that held me,
swathed in grim eternity ;
your face, though a monument still,
the weather shall wear (& the climes
of my mind are fierce with despair).
Already I cannot recall
the smell of you, your touch, your hair...

May it ever be so, first born of Chaos!
May Lethe soothe your wounds always
& all your arrows miss their mark.

Indeed I've Seen It All Before

Thence the edgewise word was driven
down & fast, into the tangle
deep & at an awkward angle –
& my fabulation riven:

bleak old winter raven thrice ‘round
the sad house flew, making in the
frigid air & upon the ground
the ancient signs of perfidy

& so my heart – against my heart! –
the word it came & gave a start
to laying worms that lie no more
but in their crevice seethe & roar.

Indeed I've seen it all before.

14 Months

the one is you
& two is a dream
(if three is something
that remains to be seen).
My former self comes at
five for tea with the
sick, sordid wraiths
of my seven deadly sins.
& I hate, I hate the
nigh-impossible wait:
the tension, so insufferable,
puts our eleven dates to shame.
By twelve I’m fast asleep
so come back on the 13th
because 14 months of Hell
is what I’ve had since you ditched me.

Where Everything Goes

Sometimes the moon is an eye
peering from out the black sky.
Sometimes a crow is a word
caught in the form a bird

& it says:
I know where everything goes.
I’ve flown to the edge of the road.

We
shudder without knowing why,
comfort ourselves with the lie
that
everything’s right as it should
&
there are no wolves in the woods.

but
I know where everything goes.
I’ve walked to the edge of the road.

A Song of Sorts

They will say that my life was a farce --

in my mind I could never be sure.
While their laughter echoes in the halls
your smell lingers on by the door.

I have it from sure authority that language isn't all that you speak.
A sense of absurd insecurity transpires the havoc you wreak

because this kind of love is all I'm about;

it's just my luck, I've been left out.

This kind of love is all that we are:
the worst kind of love won't get very far.

So I'm sporting imaginary scars,

dodging blame that no one would uphold.

You are everything I think you are;
I am anything that you suppose.

I think that all this "maturity" is only a manner of speech.

I strive for complete obscurity; oblivion is yet out of reach.

This kind of love is hassles & shards.

This kind of love is too little, too hard.

This kind of love bubbling in my brain --

this kind of love isn't worth the pain.
This kind of love is all that we're about,
this kind of love is echoes & stains.

This kind of love is all that remains.

This kind of love never comes again.

A Rime of Wyrms

Five dragons beached upon the rocky shore –
five black beasts, each bearing upon its back
the rapine fiend, the cutlass craving gore,
the blade-bearing arms pining for attack.

Blind, painted eyes peer out of sculpted heads
into the foggy night towards the town

where drowsy & hapless, the wretched town
wives wake to thralldom, husbands being dead.

But lo! Here is a lad awake by chance –
before the village doom on errand sent,
returning late gazes the wyrms askance
& trembling takes his faithful axe in hand.

The rusted blade quickly bites the riggings;
oars cast away for miles are seen floating
scattered upon the ever-rolling main;
five prows are spoiled ere raiders come again.

Raptors & captives into the boats rushed,
the rightful King’s men hard upon their trail.
Monsters take to sea – angry waters flush,
flooding now the hulls: a gale steals the sails.

From other villages come fishing crafts:
brothers & fathers seeking their fair kin.
In the crisp morning air the King’s horn dins:
it rains arrows on raiders’ makeshift rafts.

Five dragon corpses wandering the main –
five barnacled heads on the Ocean floor;
fifty savage swords of infamous bane
rot in Antrun’s realm for evermore.