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Best Poems Written by Brian Cochran

Below are the all-time best Brian Cochran poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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When I Grow Old

When I grow old
Will I forget to remember
All my regrets?
Will I be kind to myself
With memories
Of a universe of time
Forfeited to fear?
When I grow old
Will phantoms fog my eyes
Will ancient ghosts sing me lullabies 
Until I fall away Into dreams
Now mournful and cold?
Will I find myself awake in the dark
Praying,
Listening for that one lost beat
Of my heart?
When I grow old 
Will I have the strength
To bear the weight of a world
That never was?

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Phoenix

Sometimes I want to scream
“This is not me!"
But then who would I be
Without these reflections 
Of the world outside 
So I abide 
In the lie of conformity
And do my best to ignore the enormity 
Of the universe inside my head,
All the things I should have said,
All the mountains I could have climbed 
But for fear
I have resigned 
Myself to a life of uneventful safety 
Forgoing the magic and majesty 
Of living in flow
For a self-made cage of despair and regret
However…
My epitaph has not been written just yet
My grave is six feet too shallow 
And I have no use for the myths of yesterday
Or tomorrow 
Here is where I start
Now is when I spark
It is the hour of my birth

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When the Bough Breaks

When did we stop seeing,
When did we grow up and stop believing, 
When did it all become so real,
When did we become afraid to feel,
When did we lose our sense of wonder
And start piling up things 
To hide ourselves under
When did "I'm possible" become impossible,
 How did we get to be so hostile.
Has the bough broken? 
Have we fallen so far?
At exactly what point did we forget who we are?

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Sepsis

I feel you like a gaping wound,
A great fetid, gangrenous maw
That will never close.
I feel  you eating me alive, 
Your disease,
Penetrating brain and bone
Psyche and soul.
Leaving me twisted, broken 
Decrepit and defiled. 
Your love is vile.
You  whisper promises
To spiders and flies 
Of my stone-dead corpse
Rotting in silence
Amid decaying forgotten things.
Gladly,
I kissed your putrescent lips,
I tasted your sanguine affection,
Ingested your infection.
You have become my drug.
My life.
Loathsome,
Yet I love you still.
Lost in your mephitic grace,
Wasted.
I wait…
You are the shine that blinds
And distracts me from the pain
Of your ministrations,
Your manipulations. 
You sing and caress
As your virus oozes through my veins,
Burning away all that I am.
You kiss and cajole me 
Into believing that this is love.
Lust.
I feel your desperate hunger
As you burrow deeper inside me,
Hollowing my heart
For your carnal pleasure. 
It feels like love.
Your emptiness feels like home.

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Pretty

I’m not interested in ‘pretty',
The television fantasy of reality,
Boxed up and bow-tied.
That pre-packaged, overpriced 
Slice of life
Bought and sold by the pound
Of flesh,
That one-size-fits-all 
(Except you)
Kind of beauty.
Give me flaws and faults,
Hills and valleys, 
A crooked smile
And miles of interesting skin.
I don’t need made-up and maxed-out, 
Sucked in or thinned down.
I want to see what’s real,
In all of its abstract 
And unconventional glory: 
Asymmetrical faces,
Lived-in bodies with scars
And traces of the story
Of someone who is just not quite right
For a modeling career. 
I want to see the face behind the mask,
Natural-born, 
Unadorned, 
Non conformed. 
Perfection is a myth,
Beauty is chaos.

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Blue-Black

Deeper into the blue
My indigo shines bitter and cruel
Darkly ablaze through velvet haze
Like the wilting rays of a world-weary sun

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Desire

He leaves me breathless,
Whimpering in near madness,
Sated,
Desire abated…
Until my thirst returns,
An eternal, soul-searing fire that burns
Just under my skin,
I yearn for him within.
Passion is stoked
With every stroke and caress,
With every kiss I am blessed,
With every touch I am thrust
Upon the altar of sacrifice, 
Where love fails to describe
All that I am willing to give
To live for just a moment
In his grace.

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Anodyne

I feel you inside me 
As blood races to my brain
Screaming your name.
You burn through me like an acid flow 
And everything I know is left in ashes.
You move me to extremes,
Out of the in-between
Were sadness lies just behind the eyes,
Into the realm of sound and substance.
I feel you inside me
As I come to the brink,
And to think
My little world seemed so important.
You are love,
You are my drug,
You are fire incarnate,
You are the state of grace epitomized.
You grind my soul and shock my senses,
Shake and shatter my defenses,
You break me and make me whole.
I feel you inside me.
I drink you in.
Electric nectar surges through my veins.
I am swept away 
To the place where you are,
Within and without,
Above and below,
Everywhere and nowhere.

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Amaranthine

He kisses like dark skies
Bewitches with dark eyes
And rains down upon me
A mad, storm-born love.
In the wake of him
I am lost betwixt and between
Reality and the illusions thereof.
He shines with blood and fire
Impels me beyond desire
To a realm out of bounds of mind.
We swell and surge like liquid night
Like life in flight 
Expanding 
unfolding through space and time.
By savage grace I am free
With feral lust I see
The unabashed violent beauty of the night.
With his touch I am razed
With his breath I am saved
And borne up to soar empyrean heights.
Slowly now I return
As softly drips
My love from ensanguined lips
Finitude as surely evanescent as a dream.
With a kiss he whispers my name
Again, again and yet again
Forever and forever and forever
Amaranthine.

Details | Brian Cochran Poem

Charlotte's Ebb

Foul is fair in the spider’s lair
Where madness hangs upon the air,
Where misery is company
To ancient bones that sit and stare
In darkened halls, at crumbling walls,
At wicked shadows that slither and crawl.
Where phantoms tell tales and logic fails,
Where sanity lies cold and pale,
Where dark-winged things flutter and scheme
From a mordant mind bitter and frail
Drenched in gloom is the spider’s room,
A sovereign sphere of ascendant doom
Like a monument razed to an open grave,
She is a gaping, fetid and festering wound.
Hell is caving in.