Squashed a leaf between his fingers, plant blood smeared into his stiffened tips. Hands under the tap, the ivory sink that he had expected to turn sage, seethed in charcoal. Might have tipped over a broken ink bottle. Climbing through the bedsheets, his wet hands stained the berth. He lay in the dampness, eyelids stuck to the back of his sockets. Cold sweat counted each column up his spine, the moisture had reached his eyes.
Like wet cloth on a flame,
A breath too late, a beast to tame
Buried under his fingernails, earth turned to ash
Charcoal tears frozen upon his lash
The blood felt heavy, a lump in his veins
Squashed a pomegranate grain, the kind that stains
Tried lifting a finger, it crumbled under its weight
It wasn’t the damp in the air,
It was the lead in his veins.
Dancing ‘round the parking lot; the earth spins under our feet
You twirl ‘bout your toes as the stars swirl over our tilted seas
Your head swinging back; the branches waltz by the leaves
You’re grinning at the sky and the wind in my lungs turns sweet
Your skin celebrates the sun, flushed, you're in bronze and gold
The fire in my blood creeps up my neck like something old
Eyes, acidic lakes of vermillion tears
Throat, a taut rope threatened by aching sobs
Chest, a bruised mural of plundered pride
Wrists, twisted sticks choked under teeth of lead
Abdomen, a nauseated grave of disease
Knees, trembling pillars of unsteady life
Ankles, a crushed faith under the weight bones
A Haunted creature gaped back at its mortal scar
You see the cursor,
Blinking,
Waiting,
Waiting for your trembling fingers to bleed on paper
To spill the blood leaking of wounds
Wounds from savage vines gripping your heart in bitter whisper
Searing hot,
They rive its flesh.
A Wind,
An aloof arctic wind,
As if it hadn't once encountered confinement,
Its giggling caresses, like honey dripping from your lips
Melting away the demons,
Liberating your lungs from their clutches.
Sweet air gushing into your scorched veins
Sweet laughter warming your starved belly
Tears flood through the barren cracks of your face
Tears of deathless gratitude
Tears of sobbing relief
Tears of ignited hope
It rains bombs, destroying any smidge of civilisation but oh, what do they know, humanity had been annhilated long before the world gave us our first breath. Families are separated, tearing away mother from child, but oh,what do they know, our hearts were already wrenched astray. Guns in our hands, violence burning in our veins, but oh, what do they know, our minds were already succumbed by savagery, slaughtered by this cruel carnival. Screams ringing in the sky like war horns but oh, what do they know of the hushed howls that constantly convulse our limbs.
A tear escaped his eye, but the only eye that saw the tear was his own because it was wiped away like a parched river even before it reached the high of his cheekbones. How dare they escape his perfectly masked visage like blemishes staining its pale cosmetic. Running till his insides churned, till his muscles burned, till collapse was what his sweat yearned. He could hear the blood plundering his veins, muffling his ears, fracturing his heart. The blood that was begging to cascade out, if that was the last thing that took for it to be heard.
Threatening to break free from his fragile body, they ravage his brain, loot his senses, suffocate his breath. It won't be long before these letters, these words, these sentences that have stocked the libraries of his brain ever since his body was acquainted with his spirit, shatter the walls of this gingerly built dam and when they do, the acid on his tongue will finally spill and corrode the fake reality of us mortals, afterall, they were just words dissolved in water, like acid corroding his blood, sweat and tears.
You held my face in the chalice of your hands so passionately that you left scorch marks of your palms on my ashen visage. You were so focused on learning the colours of my eyes that you failed to see the vermilion tears that spilled from the cadaver painted in burnt timber. The sterling smile that you oh so adored, was a silent sob to let it fade and reveal the ruptured facade shoven underneath. The sound of my laughter deafened you to such an extent that you failed to hear the ring of howling plea that escaped my already strained throat. Those locks have been chopped off, isolated from my body forever as they were an augury of factitious glamour and unfelt passion. It pains me to confess that it is not white roses that were my covert cowling but those pale chrysanthemums. Infatuation with my crimsons and goldens brimmed the walls of your cosmic castle so fervently that it left no room for my blues and greys. Look at your mural of us, it preens over our feverish fondness, now look at my mural of us, it stifles over our feigned forgery. You loved so earnestly that it burned down the walls of my trivial cottage leaving it in the wake of ashes. The fiery passion that flowed through your veins, inadvertently set my brittle corpse ablaze. You are a raging fire overwhelmed with life while I am a callous carcass choking under my own ashes. Now all that's left of me is woeful cinders dying in the flames of your dancing inferno, slowly fading from nothing to everything.
Ave Atque Vale
Ave Atque Vale
Ave Atque Vale
you held my head and placed it on your chest life roared through the bone, i slept assured its raining, i do not want to discern whether it ...
