My poems: decomposition

decomposition

I want to tell you the truth:

I have been waiting for you
to give me the knife

watch my mind
in decomposition
and open a new door
where you won’t enter
at least physically

watch time disappear
between the passing moments
we did not share

raise your dead hand
in confirmation
and tell me
what’s inside me
that needs to be freed

the truth is
none of these dreams
make me wash the blood off my hands

I have been waiting for you
to erase me

I have been waiting for you
to suffocate me

but the truth
is that the mirrors within
obfuscate
disintegrate
what’s always been concealed
in a black light
behind the closed eyes
the isolation madness

the barrier
where I catch what you said
between portraits and hands
and passion habits

a journey that will take me
to a severed place
which is so familiar

Robert Olen Butler: Severance

bought a new book today, just now. Heard about Butler's short stories in the meeting I had today with other literature and translation researchers. I always think the meetings are a bit boring at times but the truth is that I always learn something new, and even more important might be the fact that I always learn about a new book I haven't read yet or heard about. It's what happens when you're surrounded by literature aficionados. I always leave those meetings wanting to read more than I already do. And here is something I haven't read in a while, short stories. I used to read a lot of short stories in college and I really enjoyed it. But I stopped doing it for a while, for no apparent reason. And now I feel like drinking a bit of that again. And I will. Soon, after I finish "The Killer Inside Me", I'll start reading hopefully one of the best of the genre, certainly an important name in the short story contemporary world. He was in Lisbon for a conference in my college so that's why we started talking about him and his books. Also I was intrigued when I found out that this book was about what people supposedly said before being decapitated. Some people might find it appaling, well I don't, I think it's an interesting thing to write about. I'm very curious to know how he did it and what he made of it. And also I'm curious to find out how 1 page short stories can come to life. I'm just very curious about the whole thing and this book has been so praised that I might as well give it a try since its probably an interesting subject matter for me going in anyway. New books, new stories to read. Going back to the past in a way, reading short stories again. I feel like it. I feel excited about it. Besides, short stories always puzzled me, it's a part of literature that makes me want to know more.

Robert Olen Butler - Severance

poem of the day: Heroisms, 4, 5

Dan Beachy-Quick

Heroisms, 4, 5

4.

I speak these words directly into his yawn

Open cave of
his dark almost kind
of fire-lit mouth

And the shadows there my words form these shadows
In the back of the hero's throat

A world we applaud where chained to the ground
We watch the trees walk past us. There are other ways to describe the year:

Seasons of
The hero's boredom.


5.

Where the horror is comparison, honor sees
Hands in the trees instead of leaves—

Honesty asks why the applause is so quiet
When the wind blows so hard—

Breath is the atmosphere at utmost extreme
Where the lungs are flowers—thought the dew—

The sun doubts everything, a general statement
In whose light the hero sees these helpless things

Beg mercy, beg darkness for obscurity—
We do not comprehend the awe, it comprehends us—

When leaves fold in halves they look sleepy
Like eyes, but these eyes are fists

Poem of the day: I measure every Grief I meet

Emily Dickinson

I measure every Grief I meet (561)

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes –
I wonder if It weighs like Mine –
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long –
Or did it just begin –
I could not tell the Date of Mine –
It feels so old a pain –

I wonder if it hurts to live –
And if They have to try –
And whether – could They choose between –
It would not be – to die –

I note that Some – gone patient long –
At length, renew their smile –
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil –

I wonder if when Years have piled –
Some Thousands – on the Harm –
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm –

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve –
Enlightened to a larger Pain –
In Contrast with the Love –

The Grieved – are many – I am told –
There is the various Cause –
Death – is but one – and comes but once –
And only nails the eyes –

There's Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –
A sort they call "Despair" –
There's Banishment from native Eyes –
In sight of Native Air –

And though I may not guess the kind –
Correctly – yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary –

To note the fashions – of the Cross –
And how they're mostly worn –
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like my own –

Hide Inside

we are just like these sand dunes

always trying to hide from something

even though we are stronger

than everything else that can haunt us

Is this what we've become?

My poems: the spiteful

the spiteful

I close my eyes
when you lie
beside me
during sleep

it is grief
now that you’re inside me
in belief

let’s relive the past
once and for all
and be spiteful

there’s nothing quite like the morning dew
when it’s being swallowed whole
in a sort of darkness
that resembles us

what we are
now that it’s too late to stop
too late to stop the stains
is nothing like a symbiosis
but it is always a reminder
of what might have been