The smile I see reflected back at me can not be mine, I know.
For long ago
I stitched my lips
and drained my skin of glow.
The laughter in the pool’s ripples, is not my mirth, you see-
For I don’t laugh,
at least not anymore,
and my eyes are all but empty.
My reflection does not reflect me, for it’s just a mask I wear.
I smile and laugh,
and play along well,
but it’s a heavy disguise to bear.
The smile I see reflected back at me is my golden gag, the slickest scheme-
for beneath the layers
of smiles and shine
warbles a lonely and chilling scream.
They left me folded in sheets
of sand- wrapped in molding bandages
on the bed of the shore, with the surf
licking my frozen toes.
The gull who weeps for his friends
long dead is much like me- a nomad
with no name and no clan;
a roamer rejected by rose-ravished
words. Here I waste away,
repeatedly bitten by the wind’s sharpened
teeth- left to rot.
I watch you slip
through the cracks
of consciousness,
and it’s killing me
slowly and
steadily,
as the light
in your eyes evaporates.
Now all you offer me is a blank stare;
no notions, no understanding-
you see me, but don’t see me,
and you ask me my name.
You wonder who I am.
You wonder where we are.
Don’t you remember?
As we sit on the bench,
I watch you slip
through the cracks
of your own mind,
and it wrenches me to see
you point in the distance,
directing my attention
to something that’s not there.
I try to see, I say I see-
and you smile, saying what
a nice young person I am,
what a nice, pleasant stranger.
I cling to your words, hoping
that within one of them I will
find a glowing ember
that will ignite
a spark, a memory- anything.
But nothing’s there,
and we sit on the bench,
no more than strangers
in a world shifting with
ghosts.
“Laughing with a Mouth Full of Blood” by Simon Birch
Paper tears
but cotton snares-
and like cotton your words
cling to the dust in the air,
sucking the silt and sand
close to its fleece,
and slurring wet promises
slick with grease.
Cotton clings
but paper stings-
and like paper your lips
shred sour notes that sing,
bleeding your words of
all wealth and truth,
and ripping the life from
the throats of the youth.
Have mercy on my moratorium,
for I’ve been a bumbling, busy bug-
traipsing through the trails of time
and slipping in slops of sludge.
Pardon my postponement, please,
but the yawning year is yearning to end-
and work without end waxes wide
and splits all my senses in shreds.
Well, it’s that time of year again…I know this poem is short and not-so-great, but I’ve been piled high with work lately. By next week, I should be back on a regular schedule…I hope.
Is there a difference between ignorance and bliss?
More often than not I find myself wondering this.
In the past I would’ve stacked them as separate tiers,
but now I’m not so sure that things are as they appear.
Ignorance is a coating of concrete atop soil,
acting as adamant armor that seals the cracks of
a loose disposition.
Bliss is the organic and honest puddle that boils,
and as the sun kisses its tears
it smiles in submission.
Separate tiers?
Or shields of fear?
There is no difference between ignorance and bliss,
for incapacity soothes euphoria’s fierce hiss.
It knows of the poisons that shriek the atmosphere,
and wraps its arms around rapture until the skies clear.
Liar.
Stand before me dressed in your deceit;
look me in the eye and tell me
that the chain of untruths draped around your neck
is nothing but jewelry.
Tell me that each link is but a silver lined
ring, simply a pendant disguised
to look like a noose. Tell me true.
You can’t.
Liar. I only see you at the end of my arrow head;
I only see a target, a neck reddened with guilt
and a forehead slick with shame.
Watch out, or else your sweat will freeze
to crystal beads, encrusting your
cheeks in all your splendor-
your wretched, backward splendor.
Now all the world will know.
They’ll spy you, dripping with faux diamonds,
and they’ll see you for what you are-
a fabricator. Tell me true.
What do I believe in?
Huh, that’s funny. Believe.
Like I had a choice what to believe,
like a silver platter
of gleaming chances was
slapped in front of me at my birth,
and I got to pick
the tastiest of the batch. Believe.
You’ll learn fast that nothing
is ever given to you in life,
none of these copper-colored dreams and rosy hopes you speak of,
that reek of delusions
long rotted away.
In the real world, you have to
supply for yourself.
There’s nothing to believe in.
There’s the dirt you have
and how you sculpt it.
Nothing more.
What do I believe in? That question again…
Yes, once I might have longed
for a greater purpose,
striven to be something of a legend.
Tell me true, don’t we all?
Don’t we all want to be the stuff of
lore, written into the undying saga
of the world, forever
to traipse across history’s pages?
Huh, greater purpose…
There is nothing greater than what there is-
the stones and the sky and the sea,
and the thoughts in your head.
I long discarded my greater purpose,
and kicked my potential to the wind.
My ambitions darkened as the
tempest teemed with dust.
I don’t believe in anything,
because nothing is fixed.
You’re born and you live
and you die, and your corpse
becomes another man’s garden,
the dirt that he will build his house upon.
What is there to dream of
when your greatest purpose
is to mold a stranger’s bones,
and then abandon your
skin for the worms?
There is nothing but the
darker purpose and those
who reject it.
Nothing more.
I’ve been experimenting a lot with character types lately. Obviously, the narrator of this poem is more than your average “the glass is half empty” kind of guy. For some reason, I’ve always been fascinated with characters who are considered the darker, antagonist-types. Not necessarily villains- but not a hero by any means. I don’t know; there’s just some kind of appeal they have on me, like I want to delve into their minds and discover their motives. If it’s not clear, I wrote this poem from the point of view of a particular character I’ve been working on, so it doesn’t display my own views in any sense!
I remember your touch,
like the pattering of rain before a storm-
prominent yet gentle,
and warm as it drips onto my skin,
breathing a sigh of warning
for the gale to come.
I do that often now;
remembering.
All I seem to do is remember,
now that you’re gone.
I reach back in time and see your eyes,
alight with playfulness and mystery and intrigue-
and I wonder why you left,
when your blaze was so young.
I wonder a lot of things,
now that you’re gone.
I wonder why the night ever seemed so sweet,
like a blanketing of ink upon
a bed of stars, painting its mellow ‘good night’
across the sky.
Now it just seems cold
and dark and unwelcoming.
The night’s become a stranger,
now that you’re gone.
I wonder why the fire in the hearth,
which once kindled endless embraces
and sparked a passion untold,
seems so dank and dull.
It’s dying, that fire,
if it’s not already dead.
Its embers have dwindled,
crumbling to choking dust,
now that you’re gone.
I remember your voice,
like a long lost melody humming
against my ear, and I can almost
see your lips mold to its tune,
as you sing the night away.
You sing a song to me,
etched with bliss and pain and power,
and I smile as your voice envelopes me.
And I’m happy,
for once.
I do that a lot now;
remembering.
All I seem to do is remember,
now that you’re gone.
You live forever in the wind,
and your voice
breaks the waves of the surf.
No matter where I go
you’ll be there,
because your words
streak the sky and the earth.
When the night grows cold
and all the stars seem bleak,
your touch will linger on my lips.
For within these somber halls
there is no light to seek
and I am lost
in the shadow of the
eclipse.
Linked within this chain
I tell you it’s true,
that I am so lost
without you.
Don’t you see
this spell you have cast on me,
strung in the beads of my memories.
Why did you have to go
and leave me lost
and so alone?
Now I have
nothing but my shattered dreams,
dangling in my bruised memories.
Every word you speak’s
another bead to add
to your endless
string of dead promises.
But I’m stronger now
with your beads
strung around my neck,
and I will never
take them off
and acquiesce.
This poem is actually the lyrics to the first few verses for a piano solo I wrote, so it might be a little different from my usual writing. In the future, I might add on to it as I refine and tie together the last loose ends of the piano score.
Stellular Scribe 