a-poet-without-a-name

[a-poet-without-a-name]

“the loyal hound”

a hound without a mother

was born to cold and wet,

a rainy sky to cry to,

though no comfort did it get.

this pup was small and loud

and desperate to be loved,

but when cloudy skies died

there was only the moon above.

a hound without a master

was hungry, small, and sad.

for scraps it begged on doorsteps,

yet ‘twas nothing to be had.

no-one sought a pup

that was neither fierce nor brave.

“to raise it is a waste,”

sighed strangers, very grave.

a hound without a home

had naught to do but wander,

watching people passing by

and learning what made them fonder.

mean dogs were mistrusted,

dumb dogs were loved,

brave ones were praised,

and tail-tuckers shoved.

a hound without a purpose

made one for its own;

ev’ry trait was soon erased,

and then it was not alone.

it was a useful hound

who barked and growled and slaved

for masters passing by

who required a part-time knave.

a hound without a friend

fooled itself with ease,

for ev’ry scrap and bone

were bits of love and peace.

each collar it accepted,

with happy lolling tongue,

and for ev’ry passing master

‘til death ‘twould be done.

a hound without love

sought it in ev’ry friendly hand.

for meager morsels would it fight,

ev’ry trifle, the last stand.

so it did not shock the people

when one day it fell dead,

“a loyal mutt,”

was all they said in the end.

[a-poet-without-a-name]

“you.”

I will love you with no strings attached

and I will love you like you are

the very moon in the sky.

and I will love you like the last star

before the death of the world.

and I will love you like a bird

freshly flown from the nest,

spreading your wings into the sun to fly.

I will love you like no one has before,

to make up for the holes in your heart.

I will love you with my very soul,

and use it to weave a blanket of love,

to keep you warm at night.

I will love you unendingly,

unchangingly,

unfathomably,

so even the stars light years away

whisper in flashing lights about it.

I will love you fervently,

softly,

kindly.

I will love you when you are all of you,

none of you,

or somewhere lost in between.

I will love you enough to remind you

that there is no world I would travel,

without wanting you at my side.

I will love you from the beginning,

to the middle,

and past whatever form our end may take.

I will love you,

love you,

you.

[a-poet-without-a-name]

“healing.”

(alt title: “orpheus was once eurydice”)

she’s always there.

intangible, invisible, inaudible,

but she is there.

I can almost see her next to me sometimes,

waiting in the space just beyond,

where my vision can’t quite reach.

she sits in the spaces I can’t see,

but when she reaches out for love,

I grasp her hand and don’t let go.

she is always silent.

her presence likens to a ghost,

haunting me, observing me,

judging who I have become.

I can feel her eyes,

watching me, undoing me,

asking questions I cannot answer.

she comforts me.

even when her gaze weighs like stones,

she is always there,

my first and final friend.

her small hand reaches out,

and this time it’s for me.

this time I need her first,

to remind me who I am.

I cannot feel her hand in mine,

but it is there all the same,

and I need it dearly.

she falls in step with me,

on the way home

watching the stars

pleading for forgiveness.

she can never give it,

so I hold her small hand and walk,

alone,

yet more whole

than I have ever been.

more complete

than I can ever be.

she is always there.

she is so small, and so different,

but we’re still the same,

her and I.

she is strong, and braces me,

when I am too weak

and the quiet is a thunderstorm.

I love her enough for both of us,

and weep for her

when no one else would.

we save each other,

in all the unobserved moments

of our world, when it is hardest.

I walk with her,

silent,

and finally she is known.

[a-poet-without-a-name]

“blue”

when I bleed, I bleed not red but blue.

when I scraped my palms,

chasing after you, only seven years old,

my hands were like the sky,

as I wiped them on my jeans

and kept running.

you said that normal people were red,

like the brightest and best apples.

so I told everyone I bled scarlet,

and pretended my insides were the same

as everyone else’s.

when I got a paper cut at twelve,

and navy spilled onto my homework,

they all sneered

and said they knew that

something was wrong

from the beginning.

I just wrapped my finger up,

and told myself not to bleed in front of them,

and it was such a silly mistake

to cut my finger in the first place.

then when I was fourteen,

and my skin was more a hide of callouses,

I had friends who had never seen me bleed.

but it was okay even so,

because they were accident prone,

and I’d seen lavender and indigo in their veins.

even if they found out,

they were already strange like me,

if not ever quite the same.

[unfinished]

[a-poet-without-a-name]

To whom do I look when enough is enough?

To whom does the sentence fall?

What paths do I wander when

the roads have all run down,

when signs all point to depths untold?

What whispers do I follow through the thicket;

what grin disappears in the gloom?

What curved eyes and claws gleam through leaves,

and beckon me ever closer?

If it is madness then let it be so,

for to call this path sane is foolish.

If it is rage, then let me be consumed,

and let none say it is cold calm.

If it is my fate to be lost forevermore,

then let me stray quickly and not falter.

If I drink tea and

eat cakes and put on

white

kid

gloves,

then let the world I found be my last.

Let me run my Crocus Races,

cry swimming pools to wash away in,

and stand my own trials against Time.

To whom do I look when enough is enough?

Why, to my judge, to my jury, to the eager executioner:

who lo and behold wear faces just like mine,

though painted red they may be.

For in this house of cards

and dreams

and endless teatime,

I am my prisoner and jailer

all in one

and knowing it

is enough

for me.

[a-poet-without-a-name]

⚠️HUGE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES TW!!!!⚠️

“a siren song”

I don’t know how to tell them.

What will they say?

I don’t know how to tell them.

Will they weep?

Wail,

mourn?

Will they hug me close

or push me far away:

where they don’t have to look,

don’t have to see?

I don’t know how to tell them.

Will they let it be about me?

The glass in the window is a mirror,

and the frost fractals pictures of my heart.

A see-through pane of cold refrains

where love never fully took root.

I don’t know how to tell them.

I know I am the one with the most to say,

Arguments and defenses,

Battlements protecting ruined rubble.

Within the reasons and replies

there is only ashes,

and it would be better to let you inside.

How am I to explain that I am right

When it is plain to see that

I have never been more wrong?

I don’t know how to tell them,

because I am afraid of what they’ll say.

Not that they’ll scream or cry or shout,

as others have said to be so.

I am afraid to tell them,

because knowing a siren aims to end you

does not protect you from its song.

The siren has made me lonely,

and its song has made me sad.

I know it must be silenced soon,

but it is so beautiful and comforting,

and I love the tune it hums.

I don’t know how to tell them,

because I am afraid of losing

my beautiful siren who looks just like me;

My self,

My song,

My place.

[a-poet-without-a-name]

“the poets compare”

the poets compare you to a summer’s day;

the smell of new rain

the flight of the spring breeze

the sweet bubbling of a brook

the poets compare you to a crescent moon;

the shy dimple in a smile

the whisper of the trees

the ripples in the lake

the poets compare you to Gaia’s grace,

and find her lacking

and find her dull

and find her small

the poets are wrong, for you are not fresh air.

you are the death of a star

you are the ashes in the hearth

you are the ache in letting go

the poets do not know you, have not met you.

your sharp teeth on a grin

your eyes of different hues that stare

your cold and clumsy hands

the poets do not know you, and claim to love you.

but I love your crooked nose

but I love your unsteady laughter

but I love your chapped lips

the poets compare, yet I know you better.

I know I love you

I know you love me

I know that is enough for us

[a-poet-without-a-name]

To you I give the world, and all things, my brightest star.

To you I gift the safety of my hands and arms, which will hold you close and wrap you in the fine fur of my selkie cloak when your day is done and you are come to rest.

To you I give ribcage, that encompasses and encloses my heart, so you will have bones that know the timbre of my delight when I think of your existence.

To you I give my loyalty, my love, my pride. I trust you to hold me firm, to pull me taught so the winds can catch us both in a merry dance upon the stormy sea.

To you I give the world, and to you I give my soul;

To you my love, I would give all things, for you are

[unfinished]

[a-poet-without-a-name]

⚠️mild body horror⚠️

one day I will pull this skin from my bones in agony, and search for the imposter hiding within.

that parasite,

who once struck my flesh,

has now become part of me in ways I did not know,

nor know to despise.

for once that skin comes crawling back, it will be to bleeding marrow and empty sockets after lengthy scouring and searching of the body,

in which to find imperfections;

nay, horrors.

evidence of some sins I must have done

to once and forever have received this punishment and crucifixion—

stuck to a cross and nails I was yet forced to bear,

yet somehow through odd trials I had not come to hate.

though the cold irons scald me so, and this flesh imprisons my bones,

I find it is flesh most suited to me,

after all,

and such ends with which others have called themselves to go seems not necessary in lack of my apparent suffering.

I am not discomfited by my parasitic home,

for it is useful and does not seem altogether different from my own bones’ timbre.

do not mistake my seeming comfort for content, however,

old friends and new.

know that though I shall danse macabre,

I do it with bleeding feet and grin affixed with the taxidermist’s pins.

to live with a parasite is to welcome a most bosom friendship with one’s own decay,

and no host lives without suitable agony no matter the benefits they are ought.

a symbiote is still a villain,

but I know I am too,

for I caught and held it here within me,

and I know it writhes most fitfully.

[a-poet-without-a-name]

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror,

and I am not the one looking back

My face replaced by devils,

tearing into my softened flesh

I am broken down,

an oil-less machine

Rusted and forgotten,

replaced by mirror me

They have no extra pounds,

no baggage clinging on

They bend like graceful willow tree,

steps light like a fey spring

Their hair is long and short and curled and straight,

a reflection of their mind

Colors change like rainbow skies,

as mirror-me smiles on

They are thin and strange and different,

yet I cannot help but envy

Their frame, their stance, their everything:

it’s what I wish to be

I see Them in this dirty mirror,

and even as I turn away—

They have taken this body, mind and soul

Overlaid their presence like a ghost upon my name

“I am You, and You are Me,”

the devils say with poison teeth

So long passed in timeless bliss,

my own face rots away

So when I turn to mirror again,

I face a form that wails and drips and melts and dies

It cries to me,

“Oh please, oh please!

It’s me, you know me well!”

But that body of mine,

loyal ‘til the end,

Is unrecognizable in its original form,

and my soul it has rent

“Begone!” I cry,

“Begone!” I sob,

“Begone!” I weep and wail.

Yet still that shambling shackle waits,

patient as they strike upon my mind like burning steel

[a-poet-without-a-name]

“the story of Icarus”

icarus had wax wings of his own

made with love and care,

more than he bothered to know

Icarus was blind, and Icarus was proud

Icarus fell hard

Icarus fell loud

they say nymphs came to pay sad respects

for the boy with broken wings who now slept

they watched his proud flight, with awe in their eyes

so it was truly a tragedy

to see his demise

for there’s one thing they knew

drawing his body to rest

the nymphs found a truth that Icarus had not guessed

icarus’ wings, sewed under night oil

were not like his father’s, whose lacked the same toil

no icarus’ wings, by pride they held fast

were of sinew and bone

wings made to last

his father’s clipped warning,

“don’t fly to the sun”

was fear he’d be burned

not fear wax would run

for his father knew not that his son would sink

he made them to last! never did he think:

to see his son fall, oh how close to the sun he flew!

all could hear that father’s cry

as anguish shot him through

the master crafter, with wings made of wax

flew up to the sun

to fall with a crack

like son now like father

a terrible fate

now the nymphs sing of deep water

to remember that sad date

[a-poet-without-a-name]

"little lion boy:

how fierce thy roar!

(even as you tremble.)

how sharp thy claws!

(even as you shake.)

little lion boy:

do you remember blue skies?

(blue as your youthful eyes?)

do you remember grey clouds?

(grey as a family's shrouds?)

little lion boy:

does the time pass too fast?

(how terrible it is to age.)

do you wish it could last?

(how lonely is this stage.)

little lion boy:

you found littler friends!

(with dreams bright to match your own.)

you found a happier home!

(with love enough to fill the hole.)

little lion boy:

hold thy pride tight!

(even as they slip away.)

hold thy head high!

(even as you lose the thread.)

little lion boy!

(do not let this be the end.)”

[a-poet-without-a-name]

The stars melted into poems

That dripped from your lips like honey

Tempting me to lean in closer

So I could taste that sticky sweet

And know for myself if they were true

[a-poet-without-a-name]

“Birthdays”

I had the same birthday as the woman next to me in line at the pharmacy today

I didn’t say anything, and she never knew

But I just thought it was special

To be born under the same star,

On the same day,

Twelve years apart

[a-poet-without-a-name]

They say you don’t miss the good things ‘til they’re gone

The happy times, the gladness

They say you don’t know happiness ‘til you’ve lost it

But then we are hollow and gouged old things

They say you don’t know loss ‘til you’re begging for one more chance with the past

One last dance before the macabre waltz

They say you don’t know pain ‘til your trust is betrayed by those who have you light

Stabbing you in the back with a gentle smile after wiping dry your tears

So tell me, my friends, why we don’t know what it is to live until we have withered and died in these ways?

Until we gasp for water, care, or just a little glimpse of sunlight

[a-poet-without-a-name]

And my heart, it bleeds,

it bleeds, it bleeds, it bleeds,

until everything is weathered out and torn

and the scars that crisscross my soul

weep over constant additions,

and re openings,

bleeding until there is nothing more to give,

nothing more to fill the goblet high,

high with the sorrow and black tragedy

I spill over my very feet,

red waves splashing and sticking to my soles,

as I wonder what the world looked like as freshly fallen snow,

untouched by this bleeding heart,

unmarred by these sticky scars