chrysomelidbeetle

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Transient gravity

All this anger was once love In my arms, footholds for fingers to latch onto; A calcareous plate that transforms my skin and bone Everything about my emergence is nauseating Metamorphosize and moult your shell divine Cuticular chemicals and a volatile lunge Splinter my chest into longitudinal lines; I come apart like dry kindling Let the impulse to sing and the instinct to lie entangle towards Pyrrolizidine alkaloids, acids and alkaline

AND SOMEWHERE, SOMEWHERE THE ATOMS STOP FUSING

Melting skywards when I wake, say your name All this anger was once love

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Mind

You have become the voices in my head For how long have I heard you sing, old friend of mine Too much to press it down without a rhyme Too whole to let it leave without some stress What songs I quote an acid alkaline?

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Eph

I crawl out from my thin ex-xu-vee-ae; My eyes compound and composite-ly made;

With sixteen hearts all beating, rest assured A pair of hardened wings and shell endured I walk to you, my legs and tarsi dire My veins are yours, my body up entire;

Two mandibles, a labrum forms ahead One spee-ra-cle, on each segmented stead A shine that no one else but I can see You cannot rise, and yet you fall for me. 

I crawl to you, my flesh a liquid fire, My trachea—what we consider lungs, Teh-bee-al spurs piled up atop a pyre Our voices lost in wings and stolen tongues. 

[chrysomelidbeetle]

in the rhythm of missing limbs

My consequence If someday you won’t find another chance to live A time between my lungs and all that stands and since The breath you would’ve saved is all we’re breathing in

But it’s still real to me A chance to stir convection without certainty Conviction in a sense that does not seem to be,  The yearning we abandoned for it’s scenery

What’s heaven-sent; Could we decide what’s left and still not, quite ascend A bit of mine is yours but now it’s something lent Like water leaves that surface on a river’s bend

My loneliness If someday you won’t find another carapice A time between my lungs and all that stands and since The breath you would’ve saved is all we’re breathing in

[chrysomelidbeetle]

I swear i am not cruel i am good i promise

there is good in me buried somewhere beneath all those layers of muscle and fat

strips of meat that slough off bone

underneath  rings of tendons  and bits of elastic things

i promise there is good in me i just cannot pinpoint where.

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Nutrient uptake

When i am buried in the earth

And the insects have found their way into my casket

They will eat through my hair, my scalp

And devour the remainder of my rotting brain

cradled gently by the curl of my skull

And perhaps the remnants of these cells of mine

Will spark and flutter between their wings

Sift through cuticle and bite through their liquid flesh

Flood their nervous system with light and sound 

An indescribable feeling exists once again 

Before I drift beyond

Bits of my being

Scattered between the scuttling movements 

Of my darling detritivores.

[chrysomelidbeetle]

What loving God

A monstrous thing, what grating hate inspired, Like mother said, her voice between the pews Reduced once more to all I’ve not admired, Six legs and bones all crushed beneath your shoes.

Fill up my space, the cradle of my skull The skies move back as I shrink to the ground Return to food that’s chewed and warm and dull Through darkness, space, and parts devoid of sound.

The love in me has swollen to a mass My heart fits snug within your tired hands Your voice is thin, your larynx made of glass My soul is crushed and burnt with shifting sands.

What loving God would try so hard to save A bug upon a long forgotten grave?

[chrysomelidbeetle]

die as your daughter

Her lips turn and twist, I’ll die as your d(a)ughter, tongue softer and smoother than blue velvet butter;

I watch as she sneers, a dull single shudder, throat curling and stretching a low filtered mutter;

Keen eyes and a smile, an oil rig and rudder, a dollop of cream as they catch-if-you-stutter;

My lips turn and twist, you’ll cry as my mother, your stomach on fire and my mind in the gutter;

Breathe in but don’t hold it--and try not to cut her, tongue softer and smoother than blue velvet but (her).

[chrysomelidbeetle]

O daughter mine

And I will die beyond what was your son, A trouble still, a coast above the shore You speak to me, your mouth a smoking gun A bloody face, your teeth outshine; abhor.

“What child of mine, would leave her past behind As if she’s had her fill, I’ve asked before You are no man, no matter how you lie” I wanted her, but now he’s wanting more.

Her hands are cold, but then again are mine, ”You’ll speak to me, you’ll see” and nothing more My hair is short but all her fingers twine Around my head as if hair could be torn.

“What mother would”, I ask, my soul divine “Abandon me, her son” (O daughter mine).

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Present-life

Let me be future-proof

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Sue-Anne

Pseudotracheae, Sue dont trade sea away, swap the silken hair from your earlobe, flit your wings between my lashes, and see me through ectopic eyes (I'm a disco ball)

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Counter Cricket

Counter cricket, sensilla sweeping, wiry and flux With femurs enriched and compact, muscles coiled, Tarsus filled with glass shards and broken bottles, Twenty thousand stars embedded in your compound eye, Claws curved in black crescents moons, Counter cricket, colossal hemelytra submerged in liquid glass, Gena slick and sclerotized, Tergite armor of protein and metal from Jupiter; Dorsal blood vessel split into an aorta and multi-chambered rock, Hemolymph leaking a chromatic mercury, Counter cricket with saran wrap wings, Counter cricket with an abdomen made of Swiss cheese, With an occiput caved in, epicuticle peeling like one peels a boiled egg; Counter cricket with your cerci of velvet ribbon, Thirteen abdominal segments like stacks of frozen butter, With a trembling thorax of cream cheese, Counter cricket, your thimble vertex slips between my teeth, Counter cricket, midlegs coiled like a rusted spring, Forelegs like plastic toothpicks, Counter cricket, maxillary palps of strange gods, Counter cricket, trachea soft and like the lost thistles of a brush, Eggs lined on the occiput; marbles on a slide.

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Her

There is a kind of love that does not rest in your heart; that does not fit in your soul; that takes your ribs in its hands and slowly moves them apart, (there is no space in your chest) crumbling bone into sawdust its fingers so strict and unforgiving; that buries its fingers behind your eyeballs and pulls them backwards out your mouth to rest on your tongue

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Windowsill

She sits quietly by the window sill Sits quietly by the shore Sits quietly while the winds are still Sits quietly, nothing more.

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Dictyoptera

In time, I know my mind will clasp its hands together in silent prayer of adoration. You watching, potentially I recall, The days I spent inside my room, softly melting beneath my sheets, anxiety-ridden Maintain your distance, diurnal mistress, flaunt above a sea of sand, The sound of snow beneath our boots sink softly, breath beyond our tongues. Dear David, friend dearest, beloved burgundy camellia, Your petals rot within my paperbacks, Stench curling between my teeth Made of metal and earthly crust.

In time, I know my mind will clasp its hands together to wonder what you really meant all those years ago, You sighing, potentially I recall, Nails molding white crescents between your fingers, Palms unlike the mantids we used to pin up on the walls, Tegmina leathery and hardened in death, chitin and protein and all the like, Cross-linking; flexible and sordid cape, Shaped exactly like your eyelids, you told me one night, whispering in the Sweetness Of a midsommar, Because you were a Dictyopteran in your past life—

I had femurs larger that Mars!

I remember, because it was here the leaves caught light of the sun, And it was now the heat slipped between your lashes Fluttering too softly against the lull of the morning. I was a Dictyopteran, once.

I remember your thighs against mine on an old park bench, too hot and too warm. I remember, we were mantids once, Wandering the soil with our leathery capes, sordid, Membranous wings soft and silvery under our tegmina, Compound eyes glittering

I loved you, Creature Camellia,

But we are Dictyopterans.

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Priest

My fingers are locked in prayer, Knees pressed against carpeted floors, Mouth agape, Lips moving but devoid of sound. Beyond me, the swell of moaning and crying and sobbing (and sobbing and sobbing) To my right, a girl claws at her face, snot dribbling down her chin. To my left, a boy wails with a head full of thorns, pleading to be let down from his stake.

My back remains rigid, fingers still locked in prayer, Knuckles flaming a magnificent white against the church pews, Terror snakes down my spine like white lightning, And I’m reduced to nothing, music overwhelming.

We lift you up

We moan, jeers and taunts and anthems expand our shared pain,

We are nothing

—and I cannot move

In my slumber I transform, limbs melting into thin sticks, Eyes glowing golden, Lips elongating and sclerotizing into a labrum, Cheeks moulting into gena, Fingers—tarsi still locked in prayer— Antennae sprout from my vertex, Mandibles flit between my teeth, And my gaze lifts to the heavens, now suddenly much farther away.

Raptorial limbs strip my very being Beyond my pterothorax Beyond my clawed tarsi

Heavenly father, do You still love me now? My forelegs locked in prayer, I continue praying, Even as an insect I devote my tears to You, Figure lost beneath the masses,

As a praying mantis.

[chrysomelidbeetle]

Blue Velvet Butter

Her lips Turn and twist Tongue soft and smoother than Blue velvet butter Watch as she sneers Soft eyes And softer voice Lither and dither Curling like smoke In winter air

Breathe her in And hold her in your lungs Spread your blood beyond your veins And line them up tight-strung Cough her out Teary-eyed Fall beyond the finish line

Breathe her in And hold her in your lungs like churning blue velvet butter.