wish i could write poetry and not think about it anyway i’m trying to write this cohesive thing at the moment so!!! speaking it into being

desert road 2018

I DREAM OF DOING VIOLENCE  UNTO THOSE WHO HAVE HURT ME

published by L’Éphémère Review

you were talking in your sleep last night. something about breezeblocks, like the song. i would have let you hang them off my hands, if only you asked. but no—you thought yourself victorious and disturbed the peace. violated, i became violent and disturbed the streets. the people rioted and the sky stayed red for days.

you sunk into this far too easily. already hungry. always waiting. now, i offer so much more than my wrists to you. you turn over in your sleep. next, i come for god.

allegory of nothing

remember the way your hand curled around mine. prehistoric claw or talon, i don’t want to know the difference so i deny your nature. i want to keep you quiet and your mouth shut.  your face twists as you turn away. you look like the word anguish.

we inherit everything so nothing is your fault but you take the fall anyway. no defense, no preservation. raising your hands (or claws or talons) has always been an act of violence.  something like the space between a clean slaughterhouse and the killing floor.

i’ve been thinking about you in all the wrong ways again. my lampshade hangs crooked and spills the light out all bad. the birds migrate at an odd time of year. heard your voice in my dreams last week. i don’t want to find meaning in this. i deny my nature.

@exit152's writing has had a massive impact on both me as a poet & a poetry reader, i'm very thankful for mara for sharing it with us & it's inspired me to try & write more truthfully & less carefully

back then, i wasn’t a good person, too skinless & heartless to manage anything else. i didn’t wanna know what my love looked like from the outside. left it shivering in the cold until it was raw. read a story where a man killed someone because of how the sun made him feel & could almost understand it.

so i kept living. thought i could survive anything & i was afraid of nothing but the dark. i made myself elysian. transcendent but not pure. more like a  pillar of smoke rising up to choke the sharp dawn. i’m looking for providence. it always comes back to the light & all the ways i used to love & all the ways i can’t anymore.

THE KICKBACK

bridges are dangerous to me because i’m home to too many bad ideas which i think are good ideas. the girl i loved told me i’d probably die trying to prove that i can’t die which is probably true, but i’ve been dying for years anyway. it’s just a matter of time now, waiting to see what gets me first – the crooked brain or broken body, the lightning crack or the slow slide under the water. i’m a reaction, all recoil, the kickback from a gun as it punches your shoulder, turning away from something horrific. i wasn’t gentle to begin with but living traumatised me and now bridges are dangerous. i don’t believe in the afterlife but the girl i loved does and thinks i’m going somewhere after this. once, i thought i was God but God’s bigger than this and not to be fucked with. even i know that.