My Poetry
My name is J. I like to write. My poems may contain disturbing content; thankfully, the internet isn't real.
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My name is J. I like to write. My poems may contain disturbing content; thankfully, the internet isn't real.
Advice never sticks to me
Water off a duck's back;
no, neither the good
nor bad
have any piercing consequence
on thick and oiled feathers
Don't listen to what they say,
you say;
and so I don't.
Millions on millions of tiny, tiny little things
exploded into you one day.
How quickly you seem to
forget how it was to be them!
What would you say
if you could speak to
one of those
tiny, tiny things?
God blessed me with life,
you say. And you?
These tiny things are silent.
(They cannot speak, you know.)
If I were to guess,
I think they would find you
a bit silly.
They did all the work, after all.
Closer and closer to
primeval chaos we draw;
and as we move together you
must recognize a few truths.
First,
my nature is of a sort
which you will never understand
Know this, and know this well
I do not condemn
attempts
to make sense of it
No, I find them inevitable
and meaningless,
as many things are
But I'd hate to disappoint
another curious mind.
Secondly,
there are no patterns
You are of the intelligent sort,
and thus you invent things
like meaning where there is none
and purpose
as a concept
I simply grow the way I do,
and it is nothing at all to me
Keep your inventions
to yourself.
Thirdly and lastly,
we are not equals
I am wholly below you
and I know this,
and I hope that you do too
Do not treat me
with your respect;
I am the lowliest
of lowly animals
in the here and now.
As we grow closer
and closer to primeval chaos,
I think that you'll begin to find
I am far better suited
for this
as I am
than you.
Hitherto I must offer my regrets at the state of the place, I recognize, and duck my many heads in a state of apologia. I did not wish for this, you know. The place I reside is beyond salvation, and it has been as such for as long as dark muck could ooze from the ground. Oh, but I have tried— I must reassure you of this, lest you find me lazy. The hero nods along to my explanation. His eyes are human, they are, and thus I find such difficulty in knowing what he really thinks. I must content myself with his proposed acceptance. No need to apologize, my friend, I wholly understand. And, of course, you must understand, in turn, that my purpose here negates such dreary conversation. I do, and I'm quite sorry for being such a dreary conversationalist. I admire his politeness in pushing me away. I suppose I must commend him now, for how cleanly he draws the sword that will shortly end my tending to this horrid swamp.
In many ways
you and I, we are the same
and it hurts;
I wouldn't wish me
on my worst enemy.
If not me, though,
who?
I worry, now,
that no one else will put in the effort
that you deserve.
You're like me, see,
and I know all too well
that lack of love;
it's ripped my ribs open
and torn out my heart.
At least now there's place for you,
in me,
I think,
and maybe I can stop the worst
before it's too late;
God, don't let it be too late!
I can't let there be
another me.
Hold me in your arms, now,
as instructed…
The silence dies with the rest of my kind
and I am alone. You are
here too, I suppose,
and I suppose if you pet me
gently, now, behind the ear,
I might purr.
The relentless hum of
the machine on which you walk
and on which I lay,
will wake you, eventually.
Eventually, it is simply too late
too late for me to warm
your artificial skin
Too late to save you
from yourself…
I am old, you see,
and there’s not enough time for you to
know me.
You hold me in your arms
and you take me away, now,
from the hum of the machine
and into simple,
final silence…
Silence which I will return to soon,
but for now you are safe,
and I didn’t save you, I know,
but you didn’t save me either,
so it looks like we’re even.
We lay together, now,
no longer instructed,
and they close in on us…
It's too late for me to
see the consequences,
but I hope the metal in your bones
which rights your aching spine,
breaks away quickly,
and you can sleep for a long time.
Whatever color wine-dark is supposed to be,
I think I see it
now
with my hands on her throat
everything seems so clear
if not for the bruises I'd see right through her
and if not for the waves
the sea would be
like crystal I suppose,
but now it thrashes about
and produces misty pink foam
and the blood in the sea makes it
wine-dark.
How pointless the source of your woes;
how pitiful the attempts to
fit in with us, the artists,
those who have truly suffered and express it thusly.
No, it's never verbalized,
and yet I see it in the eyes
of those whose good graces I'd seek to gain,
and with it, I cannot help but think:
what meaning does my presence in this life
carry?
if fairies turned out to be real,
i'd forgive them for the wait.
why weren't you here when i needed you?
i'd bury it and give them my name.
i don't mind the world, honest…
it's just been too long a time
to pass up this chance.
i only wish
i had the heart required
to love so freely.
the trash in the gutter
has a kinder heart than yours.
it's disintegrated in the wet
in the eternal downpour,
and yet it persists.
the trash in the gutter
makes itself a place in the world
where you don't want it,
and no matter what
the fine is for its existence,
it persists on.
even if you wouldn't touch it,
can you not commend it
for that?
i'm in love with a star
literally, not metaphorically
or allegorically; she's
billions of light-years away and
they thought she had a planet, they did
but it turned out to be a background object.
i'm in love with her and she doesn't know it
how could she?
i'm wracked with guilt just
talking about her, because she
can't approve what i say,
and how am i to know if she's
shy about me knowing her?
she's a star, and i'm in love with her,
and she's billions of light-years away.
bloat, rot,
scraps that've shredded off
and stick to the bare skin in
fatty clumps,
and other such things that
grow in ways
as to lend you their discomfort.
i hate birds
with their flawless forms,
and the way i can see
the wind as it whistles
perfectly, effortlessly
around the wings and
smooth, slanted heads
and round eyes.
they simply move too easily
as though the world was made for them.
if i never see you again,
i don't think i'll love you…
i don't think i love you even now
in the simplest of moments, love is
difficult; hard and fast and
fickle, and foreign at times
and oh, how i'd love to love you!
but it's just not meant
to be
don't bring me what i want
or i will run,
far, far away
far beyond where you can see
or even fathom,
beyond desire and
beyond light or dark
until you've long since passed.
let me beg, and plead
and melt onto your shiny shoes
and let the earth dissolve what's left
and rinse off your clothes in the shower when i'm gone,
because if you give me
what i really, really want,
what you want, too,
and what i won't stop asking for…
i don't know what i'll have to do.
Under my heel
I have crushed
a candy heart— “Be Mine”
What's left to say?
The poem writes itself;
I've nothing to add.
It means nothing
on its own
and everything
to you and me.
If I wrote the way I thought
I think I'd write nothing at all; I
catch myself
preaching beauty of the mundane
but can't perceive it on my own.
It's only beautiful if I make it so.
If I wrote the way I thought,
I'd pen myself into downward spirals
but the words on the page would be there;
tangible—
and
real,
and
if someone were to sit and read the pages, well,
I don't know. But I know that
when I die, there'll be no secret paintings discovered—
I cannot tear the wallpaper down and
make big black streaks to hold my insides
because someone has already done it,
and there's no wallpaper in my room, anyways.
I won't be worth millions when
I'm gone...
I'm not worth millions now,
and a million mulling over microcosms of my mind
wouldn't mend what I left broken,
and it'd be too late to write the way I thought.
My flesh against flesh
burns with a wretched white flame;
searing; the metallic smell of
boiling smoke.
My wings are shredded and
I'm sure I'm beautiful to someone,
but not to me.
You'd better
not be writing
about killing yourself.
Oh, lord!
A world full of
beauty I can't comprehend,
and people with such vivid lives,
and here I am,
writing poems about killing myself.
there's something warm and wet behind your ribs
between your
fingers where
it glows and lives still—
and as it beats, as it struggles and putters on
you will keep going
there it will always be; and with it so will you
the hurt to survive, the will to keep going
is a slippery thing: a moist-skinned animal
and it's lids blink over wet eyes as it looks at you
and there's nothing you could ever do to keep it down,
nothing you can do to keep it from crawling in there,
in that gap behind your ribs—
and nothing you can do to stop it
from going on, and on
and on and on and on
Somewhere, in the back of a white van, there’s
probably a carpet. And I
can’t say for certain, but I imagine it’s tan, or yellowed with age,
and it’s got crust like the corners of your eyes in the morning.
My face is on the carpet…
No, let me start over.
The fantasy of the white van and the candy and the unknown man is
just so simple that it’s wrong.
In my dreams, sometimes, and when I was little—
there’d be someone who wanted me
wanted me with ropes on my red wrists and black bruises on my eyes
black, and purple, and brown and green and yellow, and a bit of
pink, for the new ones.
They’d carve me up and…
No, god damn it, let me start over.
I want something big and something new
I want to not want something, I want someone to know
what I really, really want— to leave—
and to force it so I don’t have to want anymore…
so that I’m out of the equation entirely.
I’m not eloquent and I talk loud and
I still think that this is funny.
If I was gone, and there was no one in the world who knew
where I was besides the
platonic ideal of the kidnapper, then there’d
be everyone in the world waiting and listening and worrying;
I’d be the center of it all, and they’d cry when I came home
and they wouldn’t expect me to be anything. I wouldn’t
have to be different
not at all, not ever
not once in my life,
and, no… I need to start over.
A hole isn’t a thing, it’s
the opposite, the lack thereof
but it’s tangible; it’s real.
Instead of me where I should be there’s
a hole, shaped like someone 5 foot 9 and sort of sad—
except that’s not true, and I just wish it was…
‘Cause right now the sort of sad is just sort of mad,
sort of angry, and sort of stuck in my
own head like
the version of me who’s stuck in the van, and the one who’s stuck in the basement
with eyes that are black and purple and blue,
and the one who’s stuck behind the screen,
who wishes to offend your sensibilities but oh, fuck, not too much: safely,
so that you’ll say that there’s meaning behind it, so that you’ll
think it’s sad and beautiful anyway, and a product of the world
it lives in, and so it won’t get in trouble.
I’m starting over again. The
only thing I have to talk about is
something I wish was worse, something I wish had happened and
something I wish was pitiable.
I’m sick of writing about me— the me who’s
behind the screen and all the others, too— I think instead
this time, I’ll be the guy in the white van,
thinking about the chips in the paint and not the screams in the back where the carpet is,
and I think I’ll be the one to
tie the ropes around red wrists— no, I’ll use duct tape— and the one to black the eyes.
I’m scrapping this. Let me start over.
God, listen, I’m not really as angry as I seem
and when I shake and my mind is blank with fervor
I don’t want to hurt you, honest.
I want to be loved in the way you love someone else
I want to be the kind of person you write songs and poems and posts about—
and I want to be worthy of some kind of deeper thought.
I want to be loved.
I want to be a change, but
I don’t want to make a change. I don’t want to think of myself
in the way you think of someone else—
and I had my chance to be a song, I did.
I’m not as sad as I seem, but I’ve lost it. I had my chance and it’s gone.
God, I wish I felt like a poet,
but instead I sit here with my fingers on the keys
and when I think it’s to the beat of someone else’s heart,
and nothing I feel is something to be loved. Because I had my chance
to feel, to write anything that could change your mind
and to be something you write songs and poems and posts about, and
I got rid of it.
I don’t want to be loved, I think. Not if that means I have to feel like a poet.
God, just listen, I’m just not angry enough.
The problem of the mind
is the way it locks itself.
Something goes in
and, red alert,
now nothing will again. Not in nor out.
And the problem with the mind
is that when the medicine is locked out,
and the sick begins to fester and rot,
there's nothing in the world
that could stop it.
Sometimes I wish to
mangle myself, to twist my own limbs and
break my
bones out from the
skin,
to smear my
brains and
blood across the pavement. To share
the
darkest
red you have and the
remnants of whatever
meal you've last
eaten
is to share the only things we can say to be real—
because there is no proving what's in my mind
but there is a proof in the gore,
a realness in flesh that can't be taken away from anyone. I wish to
discomfort, and disgust, and to
sicken at the sight of my limbs wrought from
limbs and
flesh wrought from
bone.
You know that you're the
same
inside
and it frightens you to see the insides
out,
and I wish to be free of the expectation of keeping it all
in.
I want to meet
whoever lives underneath the train,
the men who don't mind the gap
and who's white beards and
scabby fingers
get tangled in the wheels
and make the screams you hear when the brakes come on.
I want to play in traffic
and make friends with the cars who
either stop for me or don't,
and who care more about tasting
rock in their tires than
whoever's hands are on the wheel.
I think someone out there
moves these things,
and turns them around so they can go different ways
and stays inside, above the road and under the floor,
and spins the axels quickly to make them go.
I think it's cruel to feed them what we do,
but maybe they like it…
I don't know yet, but one day I'll ask.
It is tough to admit that I'm just average—
that there's nothing special about me whatsoever.
But if I won't do it, who will?
Pretend with me that there’s something out there.
Pretend that, somewhere outside in the dark,
there’s something that might twist and writhe before us,
and might wrestle with the lock on the window.
Pretend that it has
glass shards in its skin, now, and pretend
that everything we were scared of is real.
Pretend that I’m going to be taken away.
I’m going to be taken away, and
there’ll be bruises on my throat and maggots
in my eyes when they find me—
and pretend that I’m special like a corpse, even if just for a minute.
I like to feel disgusting sometimes.
Thus the nature of the maenad; I revel
in filth
because what use is it?
There’s rot in my veins that
won’t be fixed with soap
either way, the bubbles would
burst through and
I’d be worse as a bleeding mess, wouldn’t I?
I like it when
blood is crusted underneath my nails…
peeling back the layers
of keratin fixes something in me,
I think,
that would be better if I could shred away
sheets of skin and
rip off the sticky bits that slip
through my fingers,
except I’m sort of weak, you know?
I can’t get a firm enough hold and
when things start to hurt I
give up.
I’d like to have lines across my arms
and trace raised strips of white
with a lover, maybe, who’d turn to me and
say, “That’s cool.”
I’m too weak for self-control,
which is all I have left,
so what
right do I have to be this way at all?
I’d like to evoke a
kind of nausea in those around me,
and I’d like to see what people would say if
I was more scar than person.
I’d like to see my bones, maybe,
or spit in a cut and
if the foam was red,
I hope that would prove something.
Throw yourself at my feet.
If I ran across the open road,
and stood in the middle, with my
bare soles ripped open with glass and gravel,
would you follow me?
Can we both die in white clothes and
in romantic moments?
You can try to
take off all my skin when I fall asleep,
but there'll never be a way to get it on without ripping it,
and when I wake up somewhere else
I'm not letting you into the water with me.
I stand on flat-cut stone and
the more you climb the more it crumbles,
and when I step to the sky there's no way you can follow.
If you're not there when I'm back
I'll do something awful and great
and I won't let anyone forget it—
but I won't do the same to you, and you know it.
There are flecks of bone in the road today.
Something is flat against the pavement,
and when I crouch next to it I hope I'll be
next.
some kind of soft hand claws out your belly
and the fingers are gray and green, the nails blackened
it tears at the diaphragm and the muscles within the stomach
tickles the throat,
shoves things where they shouldn’t be,
and the suddenly you’re outside of your mind
and outside of your body
and the blackened insides of you are out on the floor
it burns, it’s bitter, but it’s you— bared out for the world to see
and the tears in your eyes are more shame than hurt
the insides of you want to be out but you won't let them.
something claws at you and begs you to set them free but you won't let them
because the only thing worse than dying
is meeting someone who knows they can help
a cigarette is an animal
a pack crumpled on the ground a den
that has lost its use
and no longer keeps the damp out of their fur
a cigarette, like an animal
lives to be consumed
lives to die for a stronger beast
lives to feed a desire stronger than itself
a cigarette is an animal
and the cruel abuse of a person
leads it to jump and mark the skin
a dog lives to bite but
a cigarette can only burn
can only feed the sick desire
can only kill long after it’s died
can only mark if that’s what you want
because a cigarette has no arms or legs
and the only mouth it will touch is your own
and a cigarette isn’t really an animal at all.
to reach around a salty breast is to
touch something that you cannot see
a spot goes bad, and
soft skin collapses into rot
mush, mold
guts spill
and the form is mangled beyond recognition
and that isn’t love
there’s something rotting inside me
below my ribs, inside the
thing that beats to make me breathe
black dust— there’s an ache, an empty hole
that hurts in its nothingness
and none of that is love
true love is not possible
true love does not exist, but
the music in my chest thuds
and echoes into the gaping space
and all our souls are revealed to be one
until your mouth screams from mine and
the throat that makes the sound
is across the room
and all of us are something beyond ourselves
and that is love
true love does not exist, but
i want to crush your skull through mine
and bask in the sickening sound of
lungs breathing into lungs until we both suffocate
fingers on fingers and bone that isn’t bone
a marriage of form, and neither of us are individuals
and that is love
i don’t want to be alone
but true love isn’t real,
and all i have is vile want
to taste your sweat and know the waste
to swallow you whole
to tear you limb from limb and revel in
our life as it pools onto the floor
tears and vomit and salt
an infection of mine that’s reflected in you
and that is love
true love isn’t possible,
because every bone is solid plastic
and my teeth ache to bite into soft fruit
that tickles the throat with black rot
and the hole in my chest will only grow with no sound to fill it
and the copper scent of blood will never fill the air
and i’ll never taste the things you expel from yourself
and i breathe nothing but air and dust
because true love isn’t fucking real
and even if it were
i can’t even taste the salt.
♡ 2024. Copying is an act of love. Please copy.