Poetry for Creative Writing

Addict

In its bold and violent beauty trimmed
Red, the broken flowers in her hands and
Her lips mimicked the tone as they spilled
Frantic words of love lost,
Its brutality like hunger pangs,
And craving something she knew would make her ill.
Addiction: the ever-consuming impulse
She'd slowly learn to live without.
Life without the chemical rush
Floating ecstatic
Flowing in its endorphin surge.
It seems like less than life.
Now crash
Of depleted serotonin. Now loneliness.
Now vermillion
Turning her insides white.
Quell her jaded green vice.
Drain her melancholy.
Replenish her with starry skies,
Turned to hope of sunrise.
The weight of this evening holds her head low
Where sky is distorted in muddy water
As she sinks
Waist-deep.
Personal problems are best
Addressed in third-person.


Schadenfreude

Poor birdie sputtering out of breath,
Addressing me in the hour of your death.
I promised to teach your chicks to fly
And raise them as my own
But I cooked them for my breakfast
And for a toothpick used your bones.

Sadly, the only ones left
Will be those without opinion
But I'll miss you self-righteous bigots
With your gated heaven.

I like to stomp on anthills
Godzilla-style. I'll be
The destroyer of nations
And god-sent deliverer
From the tyranny of queen
And the monotony of drone.

Splayed out in that great white viewing room
With the Power, the saints, the world, popcorn, soda,
I’ll hold my head high through the humiliation.
“Hi. This is something I threw together... I am so, so sorry.”
Hit the lights, press play, begin the reconciliations.


Tacit

Oh, it's just her
And her repertoire of secrets,
Chasing dreams and running them over again.
Just because truth is unspoken
Doesn't make it die.
Silence is a quieter,
Easier way to lie.
I flinch when you touch my abdomen
And wonder if you see the same emptiness
In my eyes as I see in the mirror.
I am reckless,
Hopeless, aimless.
Think of highs, want to be free,
Be a soul, not ignorant flesh.
I cried
Quiet as I could.
He was dry, which is just as well.
At what temperature does flesh melt?
Retching up my organs,
Strumming his guitar.
I cried into my hands.
Makeup falling like
Dirty rain.
Inhale, wait for it.
Exhale, stop.
Dear boy, hold me close
But hold your cards closer.


The Dilemma of Insignificance

Relapse: an intoxicating prospect.
My last taste of you was in our shared cigarette.
It's far too late to bargain or pray,
Though I wish it could have been any other way.
He swallowed the bullet that shat out his brains
And pissed the red mud out of his veins
Till it ran clear
"Across the world"
Just like I'd always hoped.
From here, her tears have the
Same fragile curve as her a*s;
A Spartan hardness in droplets
And the gaze with which she allows the world
Passage through, but never in.
Secrets are divulged in the folds of laundry,
The stains of a great story unspoken
Shared in volumes of torn and reassembled realities
Solid, delicate: the dishes broken in the tantrum
Of a ghost whose haunt has been invaded.
Oh, Ophelia, why can you not do as you are told?


“DO NOT TOUCH,”

these eyes declare,
claws deployed,
vicious glare.
Cornered inside his
mental cage,
a warning noise
before the rage.
The challenge lies.
Her teeth are bared.
The triggering motion
his advances dare.
A flash of red,
a rush, a blow,
liberation
just below.
The door left open,
his carcass there
blood and fear
wash with despair.
The door, the body,
the broken vein,
freedom in reach,
the choice to remain.


Okay This Time for Real...

Ash tray like a Black Plague graveyard,
lungs like death, she sucked butts like a pro.
No conversation on a polite level will satisfy,
no depth from girls with corruptible doe eyes.

She was tempted to give every new acquaintance
a different answer when asked her name.

She was a Jack-in-the-Box
and after performing the same
tinkling laugh melody,
you will be always startled
and amused
or eternally bored.

He concentrated on her
as only a man deeply
familiar with loneliness
could.

She gazed back
with all the certainty
that comes with being
so inexcusably naive.

Her strength lies
with panties on the floor
in her ability to choose
slow death.


Sizing Up

A second’s glance in passing a polished window
is time enough to identify the familiar traits:

the pug’s nose, asymmetrical since the photos
of playing in sandboxes, bathing in teal plastic tubs,
graduating from frilly white pinafores
to ragamuffin mud-caked playclothes,

the strategically tousled hair,

the pursed lips indicating appraisal,

the flesh of cheeks that no longer flush
which ought to be rouged or else pinched,

the darkened, prematurely sagging flesh
beneath sleepless made-up eyes.

They make contact with themselves
and ashamed, slither down along
the too-round lower face, betrayer of age,
soon to pucker and wrinkle and rot.

I will shatter my spirit and reassemble
the shards into mosaic stained glass.


One Month, Two Weeks, and Six Days

The city block too bright for stars
lit by lamps over heads
masking twinkles of romanticism
clearing the sidewalk
clustering oblivious
fluttering moths
and plasticine vacuous bullshit
in this bright floor world.
Instead we lose ourselves
in darkened ceilings with
chandeliers swinging, glinting off beams
from holes ripped and worn
through construction paper covered windows.
Sanctuary.
Delicate like rolls of thunder.
Break the surface; it pulls you under.
Remind me where it began.
Show me where it leads.


Haiku

Volumes of light grey
swirl upon exhalation,
the drizzly bone chill.

On trial again,
consciousness: prosecution.
The defense must rest.

I deserve to be
treated the way I want to
be treated. Like crap.

I am a liver
of life. I am determined
to get cirrhosis.


I Call Do-Over

Can we please start again
before you left, my friend?
Just one more chance?
Only this time,
I’ll remember your laugh
and appreciate you presence.
Our obliviousness
was so innocent
but this time I will know
of limitations
and loneliness
and who will be leaving who.
In my life,
I’ve seen no cleaner slate
than your fresh white casket.