Chronicles of Bursts of Light And Shadow:
Poems of Bipolar Depression
By Cordelia Clark
Smashwords Edition
Published by Cordelia Clark on Smashwords
Copyright 2011 by Cordelia Clark
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About the Author
Cordelia has been writing poetry since she could write. Previous publications include a children’s literary magazine, her high school yearbook (dedication), and Agnes Scott College’s literary magazine. Chronicles of Bursts of Light and Shadow: Poems of Bipolar Depression, is her first publication. Her inspirations include Audre Lorde, Shakespeare, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Anias Nin, Ntzake Shange,Djuana Barnes, Kay Redfiled Jameson, and Emily Dickenson. Cordelia loves hearing from her readers. If you would like to contact Cordelia, you can email her at inkblotsbycordelia@gmail.com.
Dedication
For Opah, with love from your fairy child.
Acknowledgements
Chronicles of Bursts of Light and Shadow: Poems of Bipolar Depression, is the cumulative work of various periods in my life. I would like to acknowledge those individuals who were there for me during my time of shadow. To my Grandmother, for giving me the gift of verse and always letting me express myself while she loved me unconditionally. For my Opah, who is my rock. For teachers and friends along the way: Scott Huckaby,for believing me and pushing me to be stronger, Chad Hyatt with much love for being my therapist when no one else would, Jean Marie Dauplaise, my favorite professor of English, Heather Shepherd Turner, thank you for saving my life in 8th grade, Glenda Huckaby,for believing me, Janice Stallings, for letting me write during math, my husband Brent for having faith in me and keeping me in coffee, ink, laptops, and the best coffee mug ever, we love you. Jeanine Mason for being there during the midnight hours to read my work, Anla Etheridge for loving me and keeping me out of the hospital during the darkest years of shadow, Audrey Clark, for getting me out of the laundry basket when we were four (“who spilled hot coffee?), David Clark for loving to read my work, Amy Nelson, thank you for those hours you listened, Abigail Brinker, miles will never part our souls; Juliet Stephens, the ultimate organizer and cat whisperer; Barbara Kirkland, for always being “mama”; Maggie Reese, for always being glad to see me; Tim Clark, for being my uncle, Jasmine Robinson for understanding my darkness. Rhiannon O’Connor, for dragging me out of bed all those days I wouldn’t come out of my room. Dr. Tamara Weiss, for listening and never putting me away. Andrea Mays, thank you for keeping the spark safe. Christiana Huff, for never throwing me away. Juanita Omilami, for sticking by me and being my cousin as well as my friend. Amber Joi Ragland-Campbell: you’ll always be the “bestest ever.” Jeanette Barrot: thank you for making me take the ambulance. Heather Westfall: you always make me laugh. Zaina Rutledge: giggles are forever. Charise Taylor: you have everlasting patience. Cetra Williams: you’re so much fun. Lisa Gordon: I love you. Mona Randolf: thank you for your support. Jeremiah Weaver, for keeping me safe from myself in the early days. Linda Lowe and Jim Coonan: you’re always there when I need you most. Chris Horvath: for being my brother. Anna Gretchen Troxler: the best friend a four year old could have. I hope this book finds your way. You are so much fun. I miss you. Nancy Lichtenstien: I’m still writing, just like you wanted me to. Thank you for validating my third and fourth grade existence.
AND HOW THE SNOW
And how the snow did fall
As the ice upon her soul reverberated its never ending chime—
Heart so full of sorrow
May you find a graveyard for your demons
Mark each tombstone with the blood they have provoked
You, yourself, you have provoked the scarlet
And the sanguine in which you bathe will not wash away your sin;
I martyr my soul for my Sisters Misguided
By amber eyes, silk words, and searing touch
Church sanctioned suicide
Holy Queen of Heaven
The only thing you taught us to do was inwardly die
Your self denial becomes our own physical ruin
After the void cannot be filled with caresses.
You deny me the womyn I love
To give me the bastards who spread their seed like tumbleweed along the mountainside
I will name them in DARKNESS
For only two belong in moonlight
Shown in all my glory for what I would bestow.
Darkness owns the rest, as he often reminds me.
Darkness owns the rest of me
Womyn of the Night
I would rather be Womyn of the Moonlight
Where diamonds of desire adorn my existentiality
Here I am not tarnished
Here I am not taken
Here I am given for what I am
Goddess and Ruler of the Night
Ruler and Vanquisher rather than Victim
Enveloped in the moonlight in place of Their scent—
Different creatures, yet all one aroma.
One scent, one scream, one secret
If only trees could talk then so could walls
Talking walls for voiceless children
Talking trees to whisper, “do not go this way, I do not trust his eye.”
Hail Holy Queen, Eternal Virgin
What help is a virgin who cannot conceive our pain?
Perfect and blameless with masculinity close to your heart—
You say, “My burden was my Messiah; my burden was to watch Him die.”
Watch Him die with masculinity close to your heart.
My burden, my Messiah is a man
My burden, what the cover of darkness does not reveal
What science erodes in 24 hours
But decades will never erase
Heart so full of sorrow
May you find a graveyard for your demons
Mark each tombstone with the blood they have provoked
You
Yourself
You have provoked the scarlet
And the sanguine in which you bathe will not wash away your sin
My Misguided Sisters
I martyr my soul for amber eyes, silk words, and searing touch
Church sanctioned suicide.
A living darkness
The darkness climbs like a black breed of rose
Winding and tangling and choking and living
A living darkness like a living death
Higher and higher the rose rising like a
Sea the darkness
Lulling you rocking you to sleep
With it briny deep abyss for sleep
Across the Darkness
Some people collect antique spoons they’ll never eat from or dolls too beautiful to play with. I collect moments that bleed into each other like a set of dollar store watercolor paints when a child adds too much water. I fell in love this way, you see—over a thousand intimacies strung as a set of pearls across eight Decembers. Intimacies are not always misplaced caresses or kisses in the rain. They can be the most detrimental of memories, and so was the time I tried to kill myself the spring that I was 22.
Across the darkness spun the scent of tar and oil as the woman standing at the gas station waiting on a drug deal began to scream because I was lying in the street waiting for a car to hit me. She was like background music set against dialogue. Only if I shut out everything else could I understand what she was saying; only if I shut out the hypersensitivity to the smell of the tar and the little pieces of glass that imbedded themselves into my wrists.
Like the series of moments in my consciousness, there is no clear cut transition between the moment I was pulled from the street and when I swallowed a bottle of 100 Excedrin Migraine tablets. I only smelled him as he fed me milk and I threw up all over his bedroom floor. The aroma of cinnamon and laundry detergent that wafted off his skin had always been my refuge. When I could no longer stand he lifted me as if I weighed nothing and carried me to the bathroom the way you carry a small child; like the color blue washing into red and becoming purple he washed the vomit from my hair. As orange was created I was soon wearing his exercise clothes because mine were soiled beyond wearing. With his body he held me down when the seizures began, frightened out of his wits and repeating something over and over about ambulances; but seizures and I are not strangers, and at some point I was able to tell him that ambulances weren’t necessary.
Stronger than his arms, my soul drowned in the little specs of hazel spun like stars around his russet eyes. This is my soul’s collection: the curves of his face, eyes like constellations, the smell of his shampoo in my hair, the mahogany of his arms against mine of alabaster. I fell in love this way, you see. And the only color in which I can find myself, is hazel spun like stars around his russet eyes.
“And now that the hour is mine and I’ve been writing the better part of the day, in a coma, not being able to breathe for crying.” Sylvia Plath
Mine the hour
A coma of tears
In which I have no memory
A black abyss of confusion
Of voices and faces and eyes aflame
To write the better part of a day
And yet have no writing to show for it
And I cannot breathe for crying
Arms of Night
Held in the arms of night
Made conscious of my immortal nature
In the rapture of the silence of his breath
Its heat as it flows across my face
I breathe with him
Without him I remember
Remember everything you symbolize
What I lost when I fell through the cracks of normality
And sank beneath the waves of anxiety
Do you really listen when I speak
Or do my words fill the void within your soul
Like the cigarettes whose fog clings to your frame
And wafts out of every breath you breathe
Who am I to you, and what have I done to you?
Remember the silence
It builds a cavern
Is that why you never let it live
And I let you
Let you captivate my mind and let it crumble
Who are you fooling
Is it me that you pretend for
Reality is calling me
Reminding that none of this is real
Because you do not love me, you could not love me
Even if you tried
Beyond the borders of the chemistry that binds you to another of your sex
And so I despise him because he is not me
So I tell myself that I would drive you crazy
And you would make me sane
How insane this lie I used to live
Why did you let me?
For now I see it crumble
As the cigarettes whose fog clings to your frame
And wafts out of every breath you breathe
I remember everything you symbolize
You symbolize.
Because She Would Hold Me
Phantoms of his scent hold me
In the moonlight unlit by his eyes that taught me how to cry
Held in heat by a body which does not belong to him
Because I cannot
Love is not love
Which looks on tempests
And then finds an alteration
How I’ve altered
Since he last ran his fingers through my auburn curls
I have since cut
And still I hold his scent in my memory
Like a talisman against further injury
A power uncrossed by five time zones
And a fiery plague upon both our houses
How you lied for me
But could never lie with me
I smell you in everyone
But never touch you
So shielded against
Being the only one
The only man I’ve ever loved
She held your place
But only because she would hold me
BEFREFT
My soul flickers between the ceiling and the floor,
Dangerously flirting with the flashes of light
Unseen to the room’s other eyes
Eyes of the others
Eye of the storm
Storm of my soul now plunging beneath me,
Around me, inside of me
Bereft of you, you of yourself, me of myself, ourselves
Betwixt the shadows and the rustle of paper and skirts from the other room
Room?
There is no more room
My spirit is full of it’s own passion/passing/passive/pensive/pervasive/perversion
Blood without tears
Light without fear
Fear without sadness
Sadness so consuming that the words are ethereal
Just as you are now to me
Between the ceiling and the floor
The shadow is not you
Perhaps it should be
Perhaps you should
Wonder/wander/wither
Wither my soul, between the flickers of ceiling and carpet
Carpet and wood like stone
Between the haze and the fire
I walk between the haze and the fire
Beneath the taunting stars
I feel my blood begin to boil
And crave for it to flow
And mingle in the shattered glass
I long to bathe in, cake myself in blood
That it may override the torment of his face, his voice
Uncoil my soul and watch it rise high above me
Beyond the entanglement of his presence
As it lingers like a hangover from a long empty vodka bottle
Dusty with sorrows surfaced
Never fully drowned
You are here now in his place
Yet I cannot see you
I see death beckoning in its familiar form
Come dance with me among the other bloody skeletons
We’ve missed you in our codependant way
As only codependent can
My darling, my bleeding baby,
Come join me, waltz in this acid with me
Mamma never really left you
Cuz she was never really there
Do you expect the Blessed Virgin to come down and save you?
Bless her and watch her turn her face
Come waltz in this acid with me, my darling bleeding baby
Mamma never really left you cuz she was never really there
St Joan my anorexic darling
Go home before these bastards burn you at the stake
Dies ire dies illa solvet sanctum in favilla
How long can you wallow in the darkness before it learns your name?
Black Roses and Frozen Baby’s Breath
Turbid memory, flowing deep
Running long and wide—
Seeping through the silence of my soul
Among these candles lit by remnants of sleep
In this mist of blood and fire
Hollow, save the darkness
Like the cloak of thoughts that weave themselves into a crown of thorns
To hang around my head
In a sea of black roses and frozen baby’s breath
Golden flames and stifling breaths—
To breathe alone and independent of my hollowness—
Darkness and its cold, wet touch—
That send me plunging into nightmare’s neverending waltz of several masks
Twirling in the clutches of phantoms
In this mist of blood and fire;
Kyrie eleison
The dawn rises on instinct,
The flames glow blue and soft
Blown by the breath that sings a fading lullaby
Whose catalyst remains these broken pills and bloody razor blades
Lull to sleep, calm my memory flowing deep
In a sea of black roses and frozen baby’s breath.
FRACTURED SOUL
My fractured soul like the fragments of the sidewalk
Shift with the moving of the earth
Parallel to the gashes in my wrists
Like its own universe somewhere hazy
A reflection of the sun upon the rain
Half shrouded by the darkness
My own light the emanates between the bursts of light and shadow
Crooked roots of stalks without flowers
Grow through the cracks of stone
So I exist amidst the fracture
Where is my flowered crown you promised?
Left I am only with the thorns
Twist and burn inward more
I have not caught your spirit yet
You evade my bloody grasp
Do not let me catch you
What you feel is love will only turn to hate
For I have seen the shadows from the sun and watched the flowers die in rain
You will drown in your own tears if I do not suffocate you
Like the gnarled rings of a tree
My wrists, the scars to prove it
May they serve as a spiraled map to guide you
Never pass this way again
Remember me only as a fleeting shadow of a dream
That dissipates with morning light
These are not the hands you want to hold forever
Do not hesitate to let them go
No—the blood—I leave no stain
God forbid that you remember
Could I erase myself I would
And mingle in the air as if I belonged there
For here I do not belong
You see, it’s shifting like the moving earth
Crooked roots of stalks without flowers
Where is the promised crown of flowers
Somewhere in the haze, neither here nor there nor now nor later
I have not yet caught your spirit
I am still searching for my own.
Insanity’s Rosary
Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy
Mea Culpa
For the love of heaven
Nothing I can do will stop the everlasting tears
Back and forth, to and fro
Like a baby I cradle her
Insatiable darkness
How you cloud her mind and make her scream
Ave Maria, Gratia Plena,
Where is your grace when my Mamma doesn’t know her own soul?
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth
And in all things Invisible
Invisible like the world inside my Mamma’s mind
Et benedictus fructus
I am the fruit of her womb
Yet I cradle her as though she were my child
Back and forth, to and fro
Insatiable darkness
How you cloud her mind and make her scream
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners
Cradled in insatiable darkness
Where there is no distinction
Between the hallucinations of her mind and of her drugs
Hail Holy Queen Mother of Mercy
Mercy, rain down and wash away the acid in her veins
Mea culpa
For the love of heaven
Nothing I can do will stop the everlasting tears
Ave Maria, Gratia Plena
Where is your grace
Between the hallucinations of her mind and of her drugs
Insatiable darkness
How you cloud her mind and make her scream
Mea culpa
For the love of heaven
Nothing I can do
Will stop the everlasting tears.
Shadow on the Wall
Bless me Father for I have sinned
It has been some time since my last confession
And I’m bleeding on your floor
Let the candles burn in hopes to purge the soul of sorrow
So shattered like these bits of broken glass I weave into my skin
Am I beautiful now as the blood floods down my arms?
Beautiful, bleeding mosaic, how pretty we are
If only of our own creation
Would you hold my hands though they be bleeding?
Would you hold me for the virtue’s sake and virtue’s sake alone?
does it exist independent of malice, the tears now pouring
they burn like acid
mea culpa
for the love of heaven
nothing I can do
will stop the everlasting tears
reflected in the darkness like a shadow on the wall.
This Pitch Near Madness
Breathe the fragile twisted twilight of sanity
The valleys rolling deep
Amid the mist at this pitch near madness
When the rocks cry out your name
Enticing you to plunge yourself below
And test its depth
Breathe
And know that silence has a sound and darkness a color
Mirrored in the sunlight that sends your spirit up in flames that burn and mix with blood
At this pitch near madness
When you think you’ve gone insane
Scream
And fill the mountains with your pain
And the sea with your sorrow
That they may swallow bitterness
And rid you of his voice
That calls to you from dismembered psyche marinating in hemorrhaged hope
Breathe
Inhailing infinity
Amid the mist
At this pitch near madness
When the rocks cry out your name
Enticing you to plunge yourself below
And test its depth
Scream
And fill the mountains with your pain
And the sea with your sorrow
Mirrored in the sunlight that sends your spirit up in flames that burn and mix with blood
Fragile twisted twilight of sanity
The valleys rolling deep
Amid the mist
At this pitch near madness
Crooked Shadow
“I am standing upright but my shadow is crooked.” Anne Sexton
Like Anne Sexton, I stand upright with a crooked shadow
Why do you always seem to alter the position of the sun?
How the sky is weaved of shadows that slip through my fingers
Like your soul so weaved with lies
And yet your fragrance waltzes on the wind
And my fragmented mind like a second hand jigsaw puzzle
Comprised by a drunken man
Fits the jagged pieces where they do not belong
I smell you in my clothes
Although you have never worn them
My soul trapped in a moment like a broken watch frozen on three
I lay my head upon the grassy earth and hear your heart beat
And long to bash my head into the ground to make it stop
But cannot bring myself to lift my head
Drift
Drift
Overwhelmed by tidal waves of suffocating fear
Like knives
The anxiety now piercing down my spine
Along its bones each individually
Oppressive like the cloud of smoke he carried with him
Mingled in his breath lingering laced within my thoughts
Inseparable like dark from night
Glass from blood
Tears from hate
Let the hatred drift and mingle in a sea of melancholy
Rising from my soul like the Resurrection
Blood pours down and settles in the lacerations engraved upon my flesh
I wonder if this inclination infers self crucifixion
Like St Francis and the nail prints in his hands
Would it make you love me more
And cleanse my spirit of these flames
Which hide the sanity buried somewhere
Underneath
the pills and tears
blood and glass
pain
and
drift
Dylan
September 11, 1981 - April 20, 1999
Souls adrift, they float along the morning’s haze
Of death choked breaths amid the blood and pain of mind and body
In the wreckage of shrapnel
Made of broken glass and broken dreams
Beyond repair the absence of the mind
And spirits who once embodied faces like our own
Now covered with blood beyond recognition
Lost identity with lost hope
Burning in the festered hatred
Running through his icy veins
That once held peace
Before his heart was hardened
And his psyche hollowed out and left to ruin.
Souls adrift, he floats along the morning’s haze
Of moments lost in time’s abyss
When someone could have loved him
Could have saved him from the edge
The deeper depth of night
The spider web of nightmares that captivates his breath
Amid the blood of hemorrhaged sanity.
Like the dawn
They rise above the wreckage of shrapnel
Made of broken glass and broken dreams
Beyond repair
Lost identity with lost hope
Burning in the festered hatred
Running through his icy veins—
They once held peace
Before his heart was hardened
And his psyche hollowed out and left to ruin
Amid the blood of hemorrhaged sanity.
Edge of Your Tongue
The water closes in
And the night holds my breath like thought on the edge of your tongue
Dangling precariously like my mind on the edge of decision
Desiring a graceful death, but death is never graceful
You with your inconstant atmosphere and me with my flickering soul
All my fears consumed by you, who left me hanging in the balance
Beneath a sky unlit by your eyes that taught me how to cry;
My breath like thought on the edge of your tongue
Mutilation of my soul, suspended
Graceful death sought as the night snuffs out the day
Myriad of scars impending
Laughter as my soaring soul
Unties like a balloon.
Embers of December
I wondered as your fingers traced my cheek if it was because you smelled as I remembered him
If his remnants traced my body through your lips
And my soul exploded as if your mouth belonged to her and embers of September
His soul in your eyes shining forward
Her voice in your touch like a December wind holding my dismembered heart
Memory encumbers you beneath my bated breath
Breathing holds you suspended in this moment where you become three instead of one
Flame
My soul like the flame that flickers in and out
Dances here and there
Bounding and leaping
Jolting and crashing against barbed wire
Longing, aching to be set free
To soar far above
Beyond these blood and chains which hold it down
Hold me down and run your mouth across my mouth
Along my neck, so hot and sticky
So foul and rancid
I take on your stench of ashes
Yes I suppose I’m your little whore
Now that you’ve left your mark of darkness
And a smell that never leaves
How could I know with the mind of a child
I cried when there was no one there to hear
It was then that my soul learned the dance of blood and wire
Tears and fire
I had no voice except to paint with razor blades
The terror with my blood
Now you read the story on my wrists
Like the rings of a tree
Spiraling downward and inward
Where the heart lies stone cold and sleeping
For fear the evil touch or kiss
Like that of the dead to put the living in their grave
Blood and wire, tears and fire
Downward spirals laced with terror
You grate your mouth across my lips
So hot and sticky
So foul and rancid
You run your fingers through my hair
And the tears pour down like rain
Smash the bottles and roll around in the glass
Glorious cleansing blood
It flows in rivers down my arms, my legs
The Virgin Herself was never more pure
My soul like the flame that flickers in and out
Dances here and there
Bounding and leaping
Jolting and crashing against barbed wire
My soul like the flame
That flickers
out
He’ll Never Read This
You’ve never really noticed how the light catches your eyes because
You’ve never really looked at anything or seen the reason behind it
I’ve seen the way the shadows catch the light
And pull it from you with a glow from your soul that only last for
A few seconds
Seconds that are lost as soon as they come
Like a phrase caught on the wind
That tumbles through my brain
I love you
I’ll never say it again
So get that frightened look off of your face
And stop asking me if I’m sure
Nothing’s ever sure not even death
Trust me I know
I’ve tried long enough to die
It’s like a craving in your soul that eats its way out
Until there’s nothing left but an emptiness
That cannot be filled except with
Flowers made of tears you’ll never cry for me
Once he cried for me
Although he won’t admit it
He doesn’t have to
I’ll always know
I always know
The way I’ll always love him
Even when he swears he’ll never say it till it no longer matters
Because my spirit has passed him by
Like the storm across the sky
The way I’ll always crave to die
The way I love you
A hollowness that tears or kisses cannot fill
Kisses that saturate my soul
Till I smell no longer of myself
But of the glow from your soul
That lasts on my lips like the traces of a happy thought
So lost amidst this labyrinth of blood
How beautiful I’ve carved myself again
You don’t have to look
I’ll never show you
I’ll never sever myself so much to say it again
So listen closely before my spirit
Passes you by
Like the storm across the sky
I.
Marriage in its misconception
Would not have crossed my consciousness
Had I never been asked.
And now it crosses my arms as rusty razor blades
And how the blood flows like kisses once so freely
And every mouth ever crossing mine since
Is like a slap across the face
Faces blurred with alcohol and age
Except the ones I loved
Which haunt me now as souls arise in the fog of unrelinquished grief
You said once that if love was the dagger than you were the wound
I want the knife as well as the laceration
But you are not a possession
A thing to be boxed
A thing to be bound
Even by my bated breath which could not hold you
Were you a wisp of smoke or mountain air
And me with my blood crossed arms
Am simply your corrupted courtesan
A product of your barricade so scientifically made
Outside your wall of scorn I realize
That all we would ever do is play house.
I think I’ll stick to my toys.
If I Held My Breath and Ceased to Breathe
If I held my breath and ceased to breathe
Would you notice that my body lay motionless beneath you
If you could feel the darkness
Would you stay wrapped up in my mind
And see the night the sky fell in
And my soul shattered like a broken mirror
Whose pieces always end up protruding from my wrists
To write the legacy of blood my mother left me
Mamma did you always know
Did you ever know the sunshine without rain
And fog without darkness
And darkness without pain
Mamma have you ever slept on your own
Or breathed without smoke
Have you ever danced without the flames caressing your face
And engulfing your soul?
Mamma did you ever see me?
Mamma did you mean to leave me?
Has the darkness always spoken for you
With many voices as many waters
Wash the blood away in beautiful sanguine rivers
Waltzing down the rusted pipes
If he said he didn’t love you
Was it what you expected, my soul?
Where have all the pieces gone?
Tiny, intricate jigsaw of smoke and fire
Breathe the darkness and hear it call your name
If I held my breath and ceased to breathe
Would you notice the way the sky changed
From black to red
And yellow again to blue
As my spirit soared among the stars
Behind my mind
And wrapped up in the arms that never held me.
Like Little Specs of Hazel
She whispers that she loves me
But I know it isn’t true
He’s never said I love you
But I hear it in his eyes
Reflected in my blue
So I wonder as your fingers
Trace my cheek
If it was because you smell
As I remember him
If his remnants trace my body
Through your lips
And my soul explodes as if your mouth
Belongs to her
And embers of September
His soul in her eyes shining forward
His voice in her touch
Like the cold December wind that I remember
Now the darkness clutches me
Reminds me what I swore
How the darkness clutches me
And murmurs I’m a whore
Like little specs of hazel
Spun around his eyes
Tears hot like fire
And I cannot tell him why
She whispered that she loved me
But I knew it wasn’t true
He never said I love you
But I hear it in his eyes
Reflected in my blue
Like little specs of hazel
Spun around his eyes
Tears hot like fire
And I cannot tell him why
Lost in constellations
Dusty box of letters
Thoughts that flow unbidden
From my heart to my pen
Sorrows surfaced never
Fully drowned
Drown my soul in little specs of hazel
Hazel spun like stars around his russet eyes
Vision lost to raven pupils
Seizures flood me
Your scent grasps me and keeps me down
Drown my soul in little specs of hazel
hazel spun like stars around your russet eyes
Myriad of scars impending
My lacerated soul
Lost in constellations
The only color in which I can find myself
Is hazel spun like stars around your russet eyes
Natasha
Reach past the fire and beyond the stars
Through dark and twisted labyrinth of soul
Find the song that rises with your breath
When mist subsides from broken sunlight
Through jagged blades of dancing grass
Command to your reflection true identity
Beyond that of your extending shadow
Listen to the crashing waves of memory
From the experience of others
Choose for yourself
The untamed path
By which to tread
Summon back your spirit from encounters long thought dead
Reach past the fire and beyond the stars, Natasha.
Once I was beautiful
Once I was beautiful
And in your eyes you held my soul
As the water washed over our bodies
Melded like spirits which flickered
Like the flames of the candles
On the edge of the bathtub
Once I was beautiful
Though my soul would flicker in and out
You learned to catch it
And hold it somewhere safe
You were someone safe
And I lost myself in you
While you gave me nothing
Once I was beautiful
And thought you were the earth, the sky, the moon
Broken promises
I learned to hold together with kisses
And pushed the darkness off in its own corner
Once I was beautiful
Sestina
Baby learned to wander
Through an apprehension’s fog
Mists of secrets clingin like a breath that’s held too long
Will it leave her come the daylight
Hardened fast like molten stone?
See them through the dimness, onyx eyes a broken dull.
Tears don’t make them shimmer they remain a ghostly dull
Hatred learns to wander
Movin quick, his fist, like stone
Baby’s brains get liquefied and drift into a fog
Nana singin joy comes in the daylight
But light of day don’t last so long
Nana said she neva thought that it would last this long
She done called on Jesus cuz Baby’s eyes too dull
All the singin on the earth can’t still the daylight
Here beneath the heavens where baby learned to wander
Through an apprehension’s fog
All the singin in the world and her brain still moves like stone
A deer caught in the headlights, her body froze as stone
Here comes his big black belt, the one that’s two feet long
Marlboro he smells like, he walks within a fog
See them through the dimness, onyx eyes a broken dull
Baby’s spirit seeks to wander
It will make its own way home with joy comin in daylight
Birds, they sing in daylight
And don’t notice hearts stopped like stone
Baby’s spirit free to wander
Come day, come all night long
See them through the dimness, onyx eyes a broken dull
Baby stuck forever in an apprehension’s fog
Baby stuck forever in an apprehension’s fog
Would she have left him in the daylight
Onyx eyes a broken dull
All the singin in the world and her brain still moved like stone
Nana said she neva thought that it would last this long
Marlboro he smelled like and walked within a fog.
Baby’s eyes died dull in an apprehension’s fog
Now her spirit wanders past daylight
Held in fog when Nana said she neva thought that it would last this long
Silken Stockings
Like silken stockings up a supple thigh
A love that taught the angels how to cry
Two fates so closely tied that stars
Without reason simply must comply
Whether souls before this time and space
Others living in another place
This place this time it now begins
And seeks until it finds no time to end
Bound not by rings alone but vows
Made in moonlight while reason slept
For reason in itself is loveless blind
And lovers move along at their own pace.
Though stormy seas the salt it brings its tears
The soul in love turns never a deaf ear
Emotions wax and wane with tide and moon
Love remains and is not simply swoon.
Though the blood you’ve softly held my hand
And every bruise you’ve kissed away the pain
Your wild heart I never wish to tame
For such injustice would withhold the rain
Water sign for fire sign enjoined
The twins for crustation strangely matched
All the moons and houses are aligned
And thus for our love the end will never find.
Whether souls before this time and space
This place this time it now begins
Like silken stockings up a supple thigh
A love that taught the angels how to cry.
Tempest of a moonless night
I know the curves of your face
And every speck of hazel
Spun around your eyes
A fire burning unencumbered
Sparks from your lips igniting mine
I could find you in the dark
Of a moonless night
By phantoms of your scent
And the incandescent glow of your soul
Conflagration of my heart
Your russet eyes be spell me
To be lost in constellations
Where the hazel spun like stars
Consumes my essence like a tempest
Washed on shore my body wracked
Like breath from heights uncharted
I know the curves of your face
Where the hazel spun like stars
Consumes my essence like a tempest
Of a moonless night
To be lost in constellations
Your russet eyes be spell me
I could find you in the dark
"The sickness rolled through me in great waves. After each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over and then I would feel it rising up in me again. –sylvia path
All of us the sickness, the wish for death, comes flooding out in waves of blood. To be a wet leaf in one’s own blood shivering all over with the absence of death in the frustration that you are faith ‘s whore is what the death wish seeks so irreverently to pull off. Irreverent we are in the death of our own making, how irreverent the world for trying to keep us alive.
Unmedicated Brilliance of a Moonless Night
Half past the siege of sanity beneath my broken bones
How now past hours of midnight when I used to call
For you in my sleep will you be my last words drunken
And medicated in this tub so filling to the brim with my darkness
Don’t talk me out this time my darling was I ever truly yours
Your darkling
Sparkling in an unmedicated brilliance of a moonless night
These words from my pen to your sparkling lips
Those specs of hazle spun round your russet eyes
And now my dark December how fares your may
Ever after ever glistening should I leave the pills behind?
There’s a weight in my eyes does it weigh on your heart?
And what do the dying babble I wonder as my spirit wanders
These words from my pen to your sparkling lips
Ever after, ever glistening
Your darkling
“I stared over the washbowl in unthinking ritual.” Sylvia Plath
Unthinking ritual
Unthinking ritual the razor blade
The muse of tangled verse along my arm
A tale of then and now and what if
What if I were a size 0
Would I be visible
Me with my invisible nature
A sestina to the death of my spirit when I was 12
Conjured memory so stale like cigarettes and tar
Haiku for every time I went walking
The abyss of downward spiral whispers
Watch the stairs love