Stargrazing

On nights like these
we like to call ourselves stargrazers,
deep sky tourists.

We head up to the headland,
where heaven grafts itself to earth,
stitching the breeze between
our cheekbones, our fingertips.
Below, the sea stretches out
with an endless hush. You tell me
we'll sit in the rift
of the tide's smile to keep in touch
with the muchness of being
and believing. But seeing

beyond that pale of blacklight
is another matter. You have a map,
so you take the back of my hand
and paint a picture in mime
and synaesthesiac rhyme:

Our sky is like cat's eyes
kaleidoscoping along a wide road,
a highway of air and neverending
distance, with stars that sink deep
into tar - or maybe sheets - like sleep.
Think of travelling by car, you say. Of flying
then falling. My stars stutter
and flicker with motion sickness.

Our sky is like quicksilver,
mercury melting and jigsawing
across the universe. Sometimes,
metal seeps into the image
of a bird, a snake, a mask –
remnants of a late-forgotten past
and old light, slipping between
floorboards. You tell me to think
of a fence, of running my fingers
over the bars of metal, and feeling
distance, opening itself like an oracle
in the inbetween. All or nothing.

Our sky's a broken bone, home
of frostbitten toes, flyaway hair
and the way my cheeks chafe
against the wind. The sky splits
where the sunset sits on the horizon,
like an open door:
you say, and something more -
but you must be looking away
because your words are hushed, lost
in the anatomy of the Milky Way.

I understand,
I do.
I - I - stand
and shiver.

Your sky's a treasure trove:
a hoard of metaphors for
light, love, and the empty spaces
between the stars. It's your future,
your oracle opening onto the wide
unknown. It's matched to your map,
this place where the heavens
unhitch themselves from earth
and float from your throat
to where the moon is berthed
against a sea of sky. It's here, you escape
to Space, shuttling
on the back of the sea's
uneasy breath, her salted perfume.
While I sit and split; lose touch.

You tell me it's beautiful,
but I'm not sure I believe you, not yet.
You say to keep an open mind.

But how can I know what beauty is
when my sky, all I can see, is blind?

* * *

Written for the Spoken Word Poetry workshop hosted by The Writers'-Workshop.

This took so long to draft and re-draft, and I'm still not completely happy with it...
The formatting's not quite right here (as always). It's slightly better on my dA submission, but still not perfect there. Sometimes, the internet just hates my poetry. :P


Inspired by the lyrics to Stolen Babies' Mind Your Eyes:

Doors will scare me,
Windows leave me blind. :heart:

Surgery

Something most people don't realise
is that coral splints, painted brown,
screwed into the skull and mounted
like a crown allow for a preternatural
reconstruction. A rebirth; to break free
and shed skin like tears. A kind of shipwreck
surgery that makes a child look like a deer.

* * *

This, it turns out, is what hypothermia does to my brain. >__<; Based on one of Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts, as featured in the Nirvana song I Hate Myself and Want to Die:
"Most people don't realise that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer."

In The Dialect Of Insects

I hide in cupboards
and under the stairs,
underjoyed, black-eyed
and fossilised, over-aware
of the bitemarks forming
along my arms, my fingernails.

And thereby hangs a tale of
treacheries and transparencies.
I can't deny: I am gutterspined,
my own bone-laced anathema,
my own dead, buried face
to the ground. Lulled

and dumbfound by the clicks
and spit of this insect language,
I find safety in the rhymes
and rhythms of the cockroach waltz,
watching the flick and swish
of clockwork in motion.

Time, passing. The metaphors
latching their claws into my chest.
I'm running out of words to stave
off this drought. And all I know is
that this is lights out, the final rite,
and I will sleep hungry tonight.

* * *

Right now, it feels like insect speak is all I have left.

.

Yes, parts of this are heavily influenced by Jack Off Jill's Cockroach Waltz. It's one of my favourite songs and I've wanted to write a poem based on it for ages.

That said, I was seriously tempted to title this 'Ugly Bug Ball', but then sanity prevented me. xD
(If you don't get the reference, then I'm afraid you've had a deprived childhood).

Camisado

In a double dream, I must spell out the storm:

how the half moon spoke in reams
of folk lore, pipe dreams that tore
the sky in two. How the walls
began to blister and you, sister,
took your place beneath my skin.

We met stargrazing, your eyes electric,
lacing your lies, your intricacies,
like a cat's cradle. And I, stumbling, stuttering
on in a maze of scars. My modern morphia,
sister scarecrow, I'd follow you to the depths
of my chest: to the mumblings and fumblings
of my heart in the dark. To deceit and defeat
and the great empty longings beyond.

For this, this is how
the camisado begins: with broken people
under a broken steeple, an arch of
aching arms and wing bones, steeling.
With the way the day is swallowed by the sun.

Undone, we write our own religions:
a crucifix made of spoons, knives,
our twisted lives. You say faith's
a virtue, but it's not for the effaced -
we who leave no trace above the surface.
But cut me open, explore me, rip me up
by the roots, and you'll find proof
of the things you cannot see: the truth.

Nemesister, teach me madness,
teach me freedom. Let me loose
control. Map the cavities, fill in
the gaps and when day breaks black,
I'll take your hand. Together,
we will meet the dawn where the sky
puckers like a bruise and I finally lose
touch.

* * *

Fear is my religion.

.

No, life and language and I are not getting on a the moment. Sorry about that.
I guess you could consider this a re-write of Monologue(s) or even You're. Yes, that's right, I'm back at square one again. :/

The first line is taken from Louise Bogan's Song for the Last Act. ♥

.mars

.

He still choked on goodbyes,
words like 'charred' and 'charnel',
but it always fell to Mars to make
the house of bone and regolith,
to take fingerprints from the dead.
He breathes the scenes of crimes
time after time in his own grim theatre.

Like a surgeon, he sculpts the earth,
wreaks revenge and wreckages.
Teethes soot and stones into the tired wings
of ribcages, wishbones - each one

a promise. That one day,
bulbs will breach the eyes of skulls,
that fruits will fill the skypits of the lost.
One day, these bruises will amuse, and
all that bloodrush will be just blush
beneath his skin.

.

* * *

Ta-da! The final piece in the mythology series!
_{[Yes, I'm fully aware I've missed several key gods out (including Pluto, dammit!), but 6 gods, 6 goddesses is quite a nice, balanced number.] :P}

Mars was the Roman god of war, revenge and courage, but also spring and growth in nature. That sense of rejuvenation is what I found most interesting about him.


You can see the rest of my (now complete, at least for now...) mythology series here or on my dA page.

.vulcan

.

Dug deep beneath the earth, there is no light.
No footholds to electric nights or larvae of
synthetic flights. No future. Just Vulcan,
bone lonely, with only his primitive kind of hunger
and a longing to hear something other than
the cemetery talking, walking over him. Unearthed.

This is his forge, where the flower of amnesia,
allowing one man to rewrite another, grows molten -
blown into glass, gunpowder and pyrotechnic stars.
Past, present, but only the future scars in the dark,
this life in transition. And though over and over
he's said it's over and done with, there's always
more. Always a greed, a need for hunger.

God of fire, Vulcan sulks alone, lying low
below the mountain. Nurturing burns.
He's learned to hide his heart, smoked
and charred, but still he chokes electric,
growing on into stone.

.

* * *

Vulcan – god of fire, blacksmiths and craftsmen. His forge is beneath Mount Etna, where he forges weapons for the gods and heroes.

I've always imagined Vulcan as a wretched kind of figure, twisted with loneliness. Probably because my interpretation is based on the impression I got from the Roman Mysteries series I read when I was little (I was quite literally obsessed with it, at one point :P).

Wrote this several weeks ago now (sorry for the slow and multiple updates!), and I'm still not entirely happy with it. There's something a little iffy about the way it slots together...


You can see the rest of my mythology series here or on my dA page.