February.

We both lay next to jaundiced walls,

Under sepia lighting listening to ambient sound.

The atmosphere is full of regret and guilt,

Stupidity and poisoning shame.

 

The warmth of the covers is impenetrable

To the cool despair of the room we have been confined to.

I glance sideways and your arms are folded tight,

Your teeth lightly grazing and sliding along your faded pink lips.

 

Your body is as silent as your mouth.

But under that pale, coarse exterior,

That brain is far from quiet.

I can visualise every fleeting thought,

Wrapping around synapses and nerve endings like fine hairs.

 

Each thought crosses paths with another,

Catching the last syllable by another syllable,

Hooking onto each other and becoming knotted,

Never escaping your mind, until it is an accumulation

Of words that are devoid of any sense, meaning, or empathy.

 

I let out a long exhale.

You look down, then up again at me,

Erasing whatever thought I had ready

To slip off the edge of my tongue and out of me,

Acting like a diffuser to clear the animosity in the air.

 

The charismatic glint in your eye

Will remain etched into my sore memory.

I am a cold heart.

I am desolate, an abandoned shell.

 

We evade the subject in hand,

Falling deeper into irreversible silence.

A plethora of questions that decide our fate

Hang heavy over us, prying and poking,

Obnoxious and rude.

 

Our capacity to answer them

In a clear-cut and logical manner

Flickers and dies like a flame

Snuffed out by a cool breeze.

 

I wonder how we had gotten into such a mess;

Maybe it was the flare of recklessness we both had,

The varying peaks and troughs in our mood, our thoughts.

Or perhaps it was the cruel hand of blunt idiocy,

Waving us right in the face and for once,

In our bored lives we chose to take notice.

 

Maybe we have always been bored; creating drama from nothing.

You look tired, each freckle, limb

And hair sighing in unison.

Fore-lorn, I slide down further under the duvet,

Wishing it would engulf me silently,

Stealing me away to alternative realms,

A different plane of existence.

 

I must escape the insidious reality

I find myself in the middle of,

I'm still able to feel every tremor of shock ripple over me.

Any response from you is laboured,

Mono-syllabic and lacks pitch or depth.

 

I give in and disappear completely underneath the covers.

The crushing sense of abandonment begins to settle in.

Despair weaves it’s smug hands down towards me,

Ready to accompany me in this hopeless venture.

 

 

 

Reviews

[Seshat Nidaba]

Excellent choice of words, edgy and confessional, I can see your influences in this one. This is of a poetic calibre beyond 85% of the poets on this site, which is saying a lot.

My favorite line (there were many)

1. Your body is as silent as your mouth

[pixieheart97]

cool..lots of big words though and they kind of over power it sometimes but it is a very good poem and I like it very much

[Stammers]

It's a little wordy sometimes, but if it’s one of twelve, as in its strongly narrative, more like prose poetry, that would sort of explain it. I like that you have started to make a story line on the prevalence of emotion not explanation, as if we've walked into a therapy session wondering what's gone on to get the character's there, as despondent as they are. Well written generally, I liked it.

[Antonio Valentino]

first poem?! cheez n rice! i cant wait to read the other 11 months..

I let out a long exhale.

You look down, then up again at me,

Executing whatever thought I had ready

To slip off the edge of my tongue and out of me,

Acting like a diffuser to clear the animosity in the air.


seriously, this was brill and so are you
Antonio :)

well it's pondering and deep, feels as if there is a heaviness, but it's very nicely written