Nothing but

They hold up a glass
and say, “look at it,
it is you”
They carve lines into your skin
and say, “feel it,
it is pain”
and as you bleed they bid you
to “know it,
it is real”

But as you come
to understanding
you cannot look
or feel
or know

The glass is empty
and the flesh fades away
and even the name feels
strange on your tongue

This life as it crumbles
unravels beneath your feet
and in new sight
among the Greater
the glass and the blood
and the naming of it all
is nothing but

Nothing But…

automaticpoetry

Sweet Emptiness

Delights of the mind
that whisper sweet nothings
and pour from your mouth
like sugared wine

You are a craving
a cavern I fill
with sensations and scripts
and mumbles and sighs

Feed me your indulgences
those sweet nothings
that are sure to make me rot

I will taste from you
the emptiness of love

Ghosts in the night

There’s moonlight on the water
and it’s running from something

From darkness?
no, they have long been friends
From what then?

Each glint along the waves
is an arrow
desperate to pierce the skin
of an ocean ‘s barring

It is truly wild now,
the willowy light.

the sea’s become rough
in an effort to subdue her

Whatever It is
whatever calls to her from
the depths of her home

is getting closer
is growing hungry
is growing restless

The tide goes in
The sun comes up
and fair moonlight

falls away

Divining

 

What is a fate
but a lie we’ve been told,
a silver tongue we’ve
paid homage to
that fills us with
the deceit of destiny

What is What Must Be
but a way to conceal
the Truth that
nothing is in stone
but the bones
and striations
of a past that died
all the same.

There is no fate
no divination to be
bought or borrowed
from the stars.
It is time we took back
the sacred ink
and started writing our
own words onto the page.

automaticpoetry

Ashes to ashes

 

From the sticky lining of ash
on the oven walls
one might assume it was
made of sand,
but she scrubbed away
until her elbows popped
and her fingers cracked
and only stopped when
the clean slate glinted
in the dark
like a gumdrop.

“What a skinny girl,”
the witch called out,
from her seat at the table
her echo flanking
the inside of the furnace.
Her plump belly sat against
the edge of the wood
and looked like
an ice cream sandwich
slowly melting down
naked skin.

“You coy thing
with nimble fingers
and a clever mind.
Come to me now,
you fretful thing,
and let us make a toast!”

The girl took a seat
there at the witch’s table,
which was covered in bones
and lofty sinew and
sooted pewter buttons
scattered about.
The witch picked her teeth
with a shard of bone
that looked like a finger
and might very well have been,
It was hard to tell in the
sugary haze
so she looked away
as the witch roared
with laughter.

“Think of this
not as a cremation
but as a joyous feast!”
and her laughter coiled
around her neck
and began to squeeze.
“You are a stupid thing,
to think I could be fooled,
but you show promise
and for that I am
intrigued.”

The witch,
with her ice cream belly
and sugar plum eyes,
bore into her
and suddenly the room
shrank to the size
of the oven she
had crawled from.

“Drink of my cup.”
It tasted of iron and
was thick like soft butter.

“Share of my plate.”
It brought bile to her lips,
but she managed a bite
all the same.

“No more than a child,
but I shall make you a god.
Then you too will command
the fire in these walls.”

The shadows outside
began their journey into
the witch’s hovel.
Just three days before,
it had been made of sugared glass
and gingerbread cake.

“No more,” she continued,
“will you have need of
pebbles and breadcrumbs
for one day this forest will
bend at your feet.”
The witch looked at her closely,
eyes black like a crow,
and waited until
she looked away.

Her laugh shook the
ground beneath them
and the darkness creeping
inside shuddered
its own sort of chuckle.
Together they laughed and
it was like icing dripping
down fresh chocolate cake
but in her ears it was poisoned
and filled her with dread.

“And now, my apprentice,”
the witch said at last,
“finish cleaning the oven.”

 

 

 

 

My only January

In the eternal dusk at the end of the earth
and atop the seat of my own reluctance,
this place is an open-ended question
I’m grasping the fringes of
desperately trying to weave it into an answer
which I can stomach at this summit.

Instead of yarn I can stitch into place,
I am reaching towards a loom
tilting ever skyward towards an
endlessness I can only fathom.

Wonder turns to panic in the breath
of one heartbeat–no one ever told me
that my shackles were to swaddle me to rest
but now I am choking on my own weightlessness

It’s how I got here, you know.
and why I wander still in this eternal dusk.

automaticpoetry

Slice me eternal

flesh and bone,
the meat and the rod
that cling to it all
never to let go

this is the tension–the
foundation which
grips life and holds fast
as joints wrack each
other back and forth
in an embrace that
keeps us whole

yet it is nothing more
than muscles and reflexes
two book ends
propped up against
a moist vellum slowly
setting fire to itself

would it be better
to cast a mold–to melt
the marrow and the meat
and forge it into something
immortal?

i would much rather
cut into myself
and paint a portrait
of my own blood
than marvel
at the dull ache
of my own forever
there in a statue made
of my own flesh

i’ll not break in the tension
instead i will delight
in the forces that
pull me apart for it is they
who in turn will
piece me together again

 

Clean

It’s time to disappear,

to wash my face away

and wipe its name from my lips

until all that remains of me

is a red smear on a cotton strip.

Let me be faceless,

let me be nameless,

and I promise I will wander until

my feet wear deep into the

nothingness of this earth

For I am ready to be nothing,

To fade away.

Some might call it a self

destruction–a violent end,

but I only wish to drift unnoticed

into the shadows of this world

and become lost among the silence.

Be still, be sure

I cherish the silence I feel in my heart
when I am surrounded by sureties
Every yes and no is carefully weighed
to the constants of definity
and grey is a color found only in sky
not a clever way of getting at maybe
for when hesitation takes its hold and
words cower in the shadow of obscurity
my head it screams, it screams, it screams
as the hands of chaos take hold of me.

automaticpoetry

Of fog and forgotten lands

These cloudy days call to me
as if the fog were spirits descending
–lifting the bridal veil of sky
to release those unseen vagabonds
into an earthly marital bed.
They call to me,
those sweet, misty friends
whose vows carry through the atmosphere
and meet me at an inverse summit.
They long to walk among the dirt, the dust.
They long to seek the ashes
that were once their flesh,
so into the lowest of the hanging clouds
I call back to them.
to welcome the aether
which shapes faces reminiscent of
a long forgotten life that I want to know.
I call to them and pluck
their faded breaths into my hands,
and I carry them back
into the land of the sun.

Together of All

In the
Beginning
there was not
man then woman
but in fact
both were born
of Earth and Sky
as one
Two
halves aligned
no more able
to separate
than stars
strung together
in an ever
expanded
universe

In the
Beginning
man and
woman,
or woman
and man,
together at the
hearth of the
Goddess of Reeds
create and expand
pulling scattered masses
from mountain and sea
Pieces divided
that mirror their
own Twos

Man gathers shadow
Woman, light
Pain, Pleasure
War and Peace
These will be
our
children,
they say,
Who will bear
our
legacy
forth into the
world
Our tithe to the
Earth
and the
Monsters
that make
it Heavenly

automaticpoetry

Narcissus

Narcissus stares at himself
in a pool of water
leans in for a kiss
and drowns
Do you wonder at
your own reflection,
the one that meets your
gaze when you are looking
but in a game of
chicken blinks only
after the guillotine has
severed the head
I am drowning
like Narcissus
in a never ending
sea of myself
but like him
I cannot
resist

Transformations

Do I need you now,
or ever again?

Perhaps this still pool
is a lie,

It is a glass
and we all know how
fragile that can be,

How Cinderella danced
all night without shattering
her sole against
a waltz
is a mystery I could not
solve

In fact
if I were a stupid prince
I think I would not know
a size four
from a bloody toe

or a beautiful maiden
from a talking mouse

Or a pumpkin
from a Lamborghini

Perhaps I do
still need you
after all.

Unsettled

Light as a feather stiff as a board
I tread carefully
past the darkened spirits watching
waiting
for my feet to slip off the path
of the living
and into the depths of
something dark
and poetic

All-Seeing

The All-Seeing Eye
is watching me
and does nothing
says nothing
gives nothing away
But I can feel it
oh yes, I can feel
it there
watching, watching
watching me
I feel it there
between every sin
and salvation
I listen for it in
the quiet
though it may
be silent
I feel it’s fullness
surrounding the emptiness
of my inactions
the futility of movement
Were I to try and hide
I would be hidden
in plain sight,
the only sight
of All

automaticpoetry