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Theodor Kittelsen - Langebraata (1897)

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The view of Nevada out my window on Day 3 of my California Zephyr ride from Chicago to California (July 2024). 🚞 For Yeehawgust Day 29: Rode Hard.

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Afterparty

Skid marks on my driveway,

empty beer bottles littering my floors.

I don't remember feeling unhappy

when does the present become memory?

I woke up early, but slept through the day

The smell of cigarettes staining my walls

drinks in my fridge I don't remember buying.

I replay the conversations until it's old

and they can't make me happy anymore.

Teleport to a rainy Tuesday,

driving me past a cornfield, I doze off

nobody replaces the CD in the player.

All the street lamps lighting the emptiness

If I squint it looks like heaven.

Tattoo this feeling into my gut

throw it back up when I lose it.

Until a sudden reminder takes me back

and I lose it again.

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bulldozer

they don't tell you how quiet it can be

the four walls condensing

where laughter used to be.

Your manifesto hanging over

the corpse of truth, a mangled Socrates

pouring questions over a silk rug.

You answer with absolution;

I found true meaning in your absence.

Why, oh why does it always end this way?

I spill and you lap

sell me out when the thirst is down

leave me before I can lose faith in you.

I'm sure you think you're better on a podium

you're only louder from there.

I knew you best in the dirt

when we were laying down marble for your temple,

I always thought was our temple.

Cowering back with prey instincts

you forgot the teeth in your mouth.

The sheep's clothing pooling

must've convinced yourself at one point,

You look different from up here.

You are loved. You are hated. You are nothinged.

Bold-faced lack of guilt, you're glowing.

you are a once were, like an imprint on dust.

Echo as you creep out, I slept soundly

it's kind of peaceful here.

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Bryce Emley, from "A List of Waters"

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Anna Loginova aka Vindront aka Vin the Artist (Russian) - The Sun roars into View, 2024, Paintings

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Clean Kill, Loose End

You've left me gaping, wanting

spilling love, slipping on my sentences

singing darling, baby, honey

my voice diluted by cold air.

Careful stitching on your exit wound

fine art done from apathetic hands.

You won't write my name down

in case of eyes upon the butchery,

you knew it was wrong

but what was worse?

Our love or yours?

I held it with shaking hands

trembling just at the thought of it.

Every moment precious, every moment earned

my empty hands yearned for your burden

I would have carried it.

You knew that.

Instead you sever all semblance of us

clean me off like I was already gone

tying me up like I was a loose end.

Tell me, what do your dreams look like?

Do I haunt you? Floating around your closet

tethered to your future lovers?

Do you hear my name sometimes?

when you cut into another body

do you see me?

Was I your first kill?

Or the first time you were careless?

Clumsy kissing and wandering hands

ripping under the skin

taking what you can hold onto.

Where does that leave me?

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“You still crave lemonade, but the taste doesn’t satisfy you as much as it used to. You still crave summer, but sometimes you mean summer, five years ago.”

— Alida Nugent

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wrath, calmed

True love lives in motion

moving with hands that strike

and grab at seams.

My intentions like a lion's hunger

tearing at the tendons of your heart

eating more than I can swallow.

You know me better than I do

unchanging, only aging.

The pathology of my heart, surely

we are estranged for I am strange.

Your crocodile tears

covering a tale that isn't mine.

How do you spin wax over words?

pour cement out your eyes?

encasing my love where you cannot lose

my retaliation is aggression

You and the war you cannot lose

letting me win the battles that keep me down.

Your captions without pictures

bruises without fists.

You invite rot into our home,

where my narrative slips

like a tongue that does not follow

the rhythm of my mouth.

Finally, I put a price on my time

so you cannot spend more than you can afford.

I dismantled my alters

left my sacredness at your doorstep

to be free or to be holy

I'd rather be wrong than with you.

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do not enter

We built safe houses from brittle bones

plucked out from the dog's dinner

There was strength in numbers then

even when it was just the two of us in this world

sitting on the floor in front of the hermit crabs

nothing left to laugh about.

We watched them crawling, finding new shells

while you pinned dead things to cork boards

never killing, always mourning

I never want to be like that.

Loving you was like giving up

a promise as if to say

There's nothing else but you.

Charting out our pain, numbering grievances

my grief is so much smaller next to yours .

Falling asleep next to the window

I drag you closer to the sunlight

you pull me backwards.

Could you love me without my darkness?

If my poetry sang of God? The flowers? The people?

Would you let me go if you couldn't come with me?

I want more than this four walls

and splintering foundation, peeling plaster

For better or for worse

but always for the same old worse.

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Still here?

Gone, but reverberating.

Drowsy from the loss of you

wading through resentment

clawing at rock-bottom.

I should say less, do more

reach out and touch your face

recover, reinvent.

I am still here, barely

Barefoot in the doorway

clutching invisible words like a prayer.

You gave me life lessons

I gave love that only youth can muster.

What am I looking for back here?

Reversing stitches

I know better, I think

than to forgive you.

You rummage through old happiness.

and pictures of us in twenty years

with the faces scratched out.

My grief is the quiet kind

boring, reoccurring aches

that you will never recognize.

So suck, and drain

until we are husks of dried blood and skin

splayed across crumbling bones.

I utter you to nobody

each syllable stinging

like a curse on my tongue.

Your name still attached to mine

etched into me dying.

I am still here,

afflicted by you.

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Love From The Pavement

I want a love that kills me

slowly, as the rain hits the window

and I count the intervals between your breaths

like a lullaby I can never unhear.

I want obsession

for your closet to be filled with my clothes

my sleeves tangled in yours

you put my dress on like you're being held.

I want your anger, your misery

splashed out on the dinner table

hurting me, hurting you

like your worst moments are still our moments

I want freedom in your greed

to know I could never escape you

I want a thousand love letters

detailing my capture.

I want your arms and legs

every price put on the line for me

without question, I'd do the same

trade my life for a second one with you.

I want absolution

for this to be the last thing I ever feel

sweet eternity with you

encased in a love that won't let go.

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God-Fearer

I fear you like a father

Wrapped in my Armageddon coat

I know I let you down like a father

but you stay in my periphery

hovering above my lettering

your arms tracing my shoulder blades.

Sometimes I feel the devil inside me

bleeding into my lungs

even archangels can fail you so

how will I ever fare?

in all of my pride, in all of my dirt and grime

I fear the cruelty that festers in my blood

and I fear what I may do, I fear your eyes

if they turn away from me.

some days I cast myself apart

your flock and your house

worshipping their versions of you

all of them dying, hanging

yet you feel alive to me.

I see your face in endless landscape

I hear your voice in the bellowing wind

I sense your presence, peering into the ocean.

I often wonder if I am wrong

if all I do is sin to you

when I was created was I set apart?

do I have to choke on my words? My love?

You don't reply. But I feel you here

Can I take that as answer?

when I am tucked into bed

with ethereal hands and invisible warmth

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nothing is ever split in half

my heart came out full

spilling love

I give and give

someday I'll have nothing left

I was always afraid

somebody'd take it all

leave me empty.

I slip and slip

on wet, crimson floors

was it always this way?

my white dresses stained

the sheer volume of it

has it always been my fault?

But to love is to be beautiful

So why do I feel so ugly?

Enough!

No not like that!

Tell me who will take

What I can give?

Then refill me

leave me full of them

like I have never lost anything.

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untitled love letter

My bed smells like you

I never thought my life would be filled by you so much of you

I count the days, the hours in between

the footsteps to your place, stretching my legs longer

hopefully get there faster.

I stir my feelings into your coffee in the morning

trace secret letters on your back when you sleep.

I love you like it's spring in the winter

fall for you in the summers all over

Dirty talk in innocent embrace

leads to sweat-sheened sweetness

and the steam bouncing off the shower walls

coats my skin in the smell of your soap.

I have forgotten my purpose here

our love is religion, our love is peace for all time.

When my tears stain your chest

you don't ask for anything in return.

This is the love I prayed for when I was younger

plucking dandelions out of the field behind my house

I must've pictured someone like you then

because I feel like I've known you all my life.

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Packing Old Suitcases

Loving you was like forgetting how to love myself

I was nineteen, all new and forgiving

bearing my heart to strangers and giving poetry away

I was polished, mild-mannered, I still believed in soul mates.

Now I am made of pins and needles

never laughing the same way I did before.

Now I wonder if my lovers love me,

or if I'll ever see those parts of me again.

I unmake those thoughts every night

I keep my mouth shut, I dare not hope

for someone that can replace the light you took.

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I wake up in the piles of my remains

I fear your face in the streets, I can't sleep without praying

for a safe night's sleep, a rested soul

that closes my wounds, that takes me away

from the hell that was being next to you.

I unmake the monster I became

I undo the damage, I retrace my steps

who I was before you changed me.

But my worst is you on a good day

my love was tenfold what you worked for.

I asked for nothing

You said you couldn't give me that.

The wound is closing every day

But my anger does not fade

I miss who I used to be

But I never miss you.

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My devotion

My devotion is tired, my devotion is long

My devotion manifests in nightmares of you

where I wake up having soiled myself

From fear or excitement I do not know.

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My devotion is my undoing, it is my secret

My devotion turns back time every foot I place forward

and I turn to face behind me in a moment of weakness

With nothing staring back at me.

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My devotion should expire, my devotion can fade

My devotion lies inside a hidden compartment within myself

collecting dust I swallow and words I misplace

and I forget again and again where I am.

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My devotion is you, my devotion kills you

My devotion remakes you up in a different light

where you are still just as equally devoted to me

despite the distance, despite ourselves.