The violin

Then piano

Galvans to

Those unsaid surfaces

And they said to her

You’re a woman of sulphured words surely

Everything you think and feel is written

She smiled inwardly

Wanting to reply with busted teeth and a ripped out shirt, screaming

Hell, you assholes know everything, don’t you hot shot?

Some of us who write

Have more inside than any forest

Could become burning paper

Like an iceburg you think you see our entirity

We are mere dancers on the tip

Of a very deep sink of ice and water

Where undertow and mania pull the marionette

In gizes of wellness, denial, sorrow and unquenchable thirst

Which do you want first? The knife or the open legs?

Don’t dare presume you know how heavy I bleed

Share a slapped drag of my pain

I’ll writhe for you across landscapes of shame

Hit me with something harder dear

You ain’t even close to exposing me

The core of this unchained symphony

Here, let me show you baby

Look in-between, past the guts and garters

What I had to do, to get even equal

When scars are words and stars

But wounds?

No they don’t get put in a book and closed

You can’t see me in that private torment

4am pulling on the leathers of my sleeplessness

Do you know why I never learned to rest?

Remember the feeling of violence caressing your bruises?

Kiss them for me darling then pour the gasoline

When your own hand fondles the blaze it’s too much insanity

Fucking by the scold like the last feeling on earth

No you don’t know what words reveal

Until you see them scratched deep into skin

There you go again, thinking what I write lifts the veil

It was shredded long ago and hung on a Deadwood

The pinpricks of my ache fertilized nothing

Dust to dust, sometimes there’s no fucking translation

10 Replies to “Guts & Garters”

  1. Aw, shit…

    “Don’t dare presume you know how heavy I bleed

    Share a slapped drag of my pain

    I’ll writhe for you across landscapes of shame

    Hit me with something harder dear

    You ain’t even close to exposing me

    The core of this unchained symphony

    Here, let me show you baby

    Look in-between, past the guts and garters

    What I had to do, to get even equal

    When scars are words and stars

    But wounds?”

    When it’s this emotional and the anger and pain are bleeding at the seams, it’s best.

  2. Indeed, there is a primal experience before its attempted translation into words. Bend, twist, stretch, and massage clumsy, recalcitrant language as they will, even the best poets can only offer narrowed glimpses and hints of that reality of themselves and the world, and the exsticy and terror of love.

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