Storm ★★★

My stomach turns itself into knots
Balling up like the riggings
Of a storm swept schooner
Tightening within my neck
Wringing like the hands of the priest father
Like the hands of the capsized mother
Over a hole six feet deep
But just three feet long

Carving a hole into my heart
A socket choked with roots
Cut open like nerves
Bleaching in the open air
Severed in the act
Of burying ourselves

And in only a moment
The failing structure collapses
And I dig into myself
Struggling to find air
As the weight of the world pours in
I splinter and split open
And am left raw and floating in the abyss
Yearning for surface

I feel my thoughts constricted
As I grope for roils of nothing
Breathless, dizzy and searing hot
But ultimately
I am as if an empty vessel
And I am rendered void
For in the end I am just a body
Still

Time

An old piece of (very short) prose I wrote back in 2011. Thought I would share it here, despite it not being poetry.

~~~~~~~~~~

When they finally mastered time they realized that the issues were not those of questionable paradoxes. In the end, it was not a concern that I might kill my own grandfather. No, we met our tentative wall much earlier when we realized the issues with displacement - like dropping a ball into a tub of water, of forcing it in and under. They were terrified of literally displacing the universe.

The fix came with the discovery and exploration of the extra positionary states of atoms. Using this new data, they could make travelling more like viewing the world through a glass sphere, or a large window - the things sent back existed in a strange “other” state, a quasi-dimensional super-space that hitched a ride alongside the main “real” plane. To those past peoples, it would be as if a ghost - ethereal, unseen, and unknown. Touching nothing, interacting with nothing. Everyone applauded and declared how amazing and smart human potential was.
But the cost was too great. We could not risk the destruction of matter - that was an uneasy precedent that humanity as a whole was unwilling to cross. So it was forbidden, written into law, at least until a better solution was found, a work around.

We were given medals, the scientists who made the machines, who did the research, who glimpsed, however briefly, into the past. But it wasn’t enough. I for one became entranced, addicted, obsessed. I used one of the machines before it was destroyed, the prototype. I entered myself into the slip of time. They didn’t know, so they didn’t call me back, return me to my own place in the universe. They destroyed the machine. That was my cost, my price for unfolding the hands of the clock.

And yet, as I exist, unraveled and barely conscious, now, I cannot feel regret. I will live these next years , and for who knows how long, until I reach the time I left, and even then I will continue on, and watch the future I left behind unfurl, unable to touch or taste or hold any of it in my arms.

But I don’t care. That is the cost I accept. For now I will sit by and cherish every second, watching you and I. Watching us meet, that chilly day in November, watching us fall in love, remembering the taste on my lips. Watching the love through my own eyes, oblivious. I know I will watch us grow older, how the story goes. Our children, our hopes and dreams.

But this time, I swear, this time I will be by your side as you die, like I had promised. I’ve got one more chance to make it right.

Burn ★★★★

I might admit to a feeling of uneasiness
If I was still capable of such things
If I could scrape free the blind from my eyes
Or raise the veil that clouds my thoughts

I miss him

His body is the cup my feelings spill into
Yet each drop sinks
Into a spiraling void
Endless and irrevocable
Twinkling like stars in the darkness
Until burning out

There is a flicker
Like a flame on the tip of my tongue
I could fall bodily into that
My entire self consumed inside of him
Burned alive or fading out
Emptied of context

But he is a winch that pulls me back

I want to wind my fingers through his hair
The way I want to twist myself
Into the patterns of his thoughts
Make a space for myself against his heartbeat

Imperfect

And now it's past midnight
But I'm dreaming awake
The miles between us
Begin to feel like my intestines unraveling
And I know I should sleep
But I'm going to him
Into the sickly night air
That dampens my shirt and thickens my breath

I feel like I'm underwater

I hear a buzzing
Like a blown out speaker
Twisting and chittering in the stillness
Above the droning cicadas
A dragonfly beats himself
Against the plastic dome
On the light above the stairwell
As if his body were tethered to it
Failing to break free of it's gravity

And from where I stand
I can see the floors above me
The lights for each floor
And dragonflies
Beating their dissonance
In a chorus like electric currents

I trace my eyes upward
Light to light
Until they disappear from view
Lost into inky sky
And a feeling climbs up the back of my throat

A second spanning countless moments passes
And I swallow my held breath
And continue to my car

He's waiting for me
Out there in the empty hollows

And it's time for me to return

Appeal ★★★★

It would appeal more to my sense of dramatics and poetics
If I could say that I were a poison in the veins of the world
The rivers of prosperity torn bereft
All turned to ruin at my touch
I could adorn myself with beautiful tragedy
And denigrate the horrible monster of myself

If only my endless good will did not hold me back
To be emperor of man if not for the sake of altruism

Still, I could pull open the wardrobe of my life
And dress myself in pains and agonies
Wrap failures around my shoulders
And weigh myself down in sorrow

It's not hard to see the world as shades of grey
To shed with childhood the conceit of good and evil
Left behind among tricycles and tops
Rests paramount malevolence
Replaced with only concern for self
And selfish need

But no one tells you that sometimes there is no right answer
That sometimes the best you can do
Is hurt less
Damage less

And I feel like a flame among moths
Feel the fragile moments fluttering at my lips
And burning to ash with my breath
Afraid to speak
They die all the same

And my feet grow heavier with the failures unavoidable
But knowing I couldn't have done better
Isn't freeing
Knowing that no one could have done better
Doesn't mend the time spent
Watching a world shatter in the glass of eyes
That are staring into your own
And feeling yours giving way

And there is a growing feeling
That nips and gnaws at my feet
As I walk in life's parting wake

That when my body finally turns to dust
And I stand at the spiral's end
In front of the host of angels
With skin as pure as milk and eyes that burn like suns
They will speak in tones like eternity collapsing
Saying it's not that you were bad
You just weren't good enough