This house has been set ablaze; ashes rain like snow,
covering what has become my deathbed.
A weighted blanket of ruins lies heavy upon my chest.
Laboured breaths and the taste of soot coat the back of my throat,
stifling oxygen from reaching the whites of enervated eyes.
Blue-tinted lips incoherently whisper, flirting with my demons,
living in purgatorial gloaming
whilst my spirit hovers between diminishing light and shadows.
Reality blurs, amalgamating with hallucinations
where demons dance in a macabre ballet,
reenacting repressed sorrows,
torturing an undead heart to the brink of insanity.
With each twirl, each act, tales of desperation are etched onto flesh.
Riverlets of blood stain the sheets bright red,
as tourniquets are nowhere to be found.
There is no way to halt the flow;
emotional instability will be my bloodletting.
Every second ticks by a little quicker
until each heartbeat grows fainter.
A clenched jaw relents,
eyes roll backwards,
and a damaged soul is severed from its mortal coil,
yet its fate is left undetermined,
flailing in the in-between forevermore.
Coagulation Starter – 3-28-24
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Coagulation
Finally, my blood began to coagulate,
Flowing like insomnia
Between the wounds of dawn and dusk
When wounded memories drip pools of enigmas,
Fleeting gossamers of absolutes,
Drying into sticky puzzles.
Bloodied dreams wander labyrinths,
With no exits,
Leaving spatters of millstones
For ruminating relics to follow,
Thin images of wispy encounters
Fade
In lost chords of words,
Ghosts gel from gashes.
Impostors of reality
Spit rebellious clots into ruminating plateaus,
And phantoms,
To leave a crimson stain
On unwelcomed daylight and martyred Mondays
Stirring penance from clotting confessions.
Tourniquets unbound,
Veins transfused congeal in coalescence
As platelets and corpuscles gather yesterday
Into the flow, a cadence, blood pressure restored,
The pulse of reminiscence throbs
Memoirs course through venous vessels,
Then seek a place
To dream.
He would beat her up for the last time
It wouldn’t be hard to provoke him
The usual wrong word did it most days
Why do you make me do this
What is wrong with you
Forgive me
She would enjoy this one
The very last one
Bought you flowers
You know I love you
Do you
What the hell does that mean
What the hell
The drug would temporarily paralyse him
Enough time for her needs
He punched with his right fist
She cut off his arm
The odd kick with his right
She cut off his leg
He came round screaming
How you doing babe
You in pain
Don’t worry, it’ll pass
Ambulance, get me an ambulance
Say the word
Please, please
No, not that word
The other word, I love you, that one
I love you, ambulance, please, please
Babe, why did you make me do this, forgive me
Just going to take the tourniquets off
I’ll put them up here
If you get them, be quick
Remember to release them every fifteen minutes
Oh, one more thing
Love you babe.
The dope man drives a car
9 miles long and 3 miles wide
Those are someone's daughters
who will have to pay for this ride
There is gold upon his fingers
rings jingle-jangle from his nose
People look up, then look down
pretend not to signal him as he goes
A breath, a sigh - a lust gone wild
Junkies who buy his poison
are some desperate mother's child
Fingers dig and fingers search...
fingers spell out a prayer...
Let that money for the dope man
be safe in a pocket somewhere
Rigs are primed and rigs are filled
Blood tells its story straight
Tourniquets and flexing veins...
mad moans as the bodies wait
The dope man drives a hard bargain...
He wants the strings to your soul
He sells dreams - he sells visions
that take a terrible toll
It wasn't difficult
to learn the history
of you,
to wipe away the
foreign imprints
of other souls,
and misplaced fingertips
on the geography
of your body.
The hard part was
allowing my hands
to fall,
learning to
unweave my fingers
from yours,
and stop the awful
ticking
seconds
of remembering
you.
I managed to walk away,
slightly scathed,
still able to smile.
But,
I still write the poems.
I never learned how to stop
writing you into the pages.
What was once my escape
only pushes me
in remembering us,
making me realize
that your absence
was never truly
real.
And now you sleep
under a blanket of bombs,
learning the art
of tourniquets
and bloodshed.
And I'm still here,
trying to
figure out how to
forget you.
6 a.m.
I saw your pain compressed in
Tourniquets and plungers.
Memories condensed to tears.
Cooling your hand holding bottles.
Dripping in puddles that flowed,
With white wind down glass tubes.
When you pressed for it,
I asked you;
Why you wanted too
So badly –
Maybe you did not hear me.
Then I asked -
For the attention?
But you were done talking.
“The affection is still free”.
I should try not to waste sentences.
At the hour of mid morning,
I remembered when I first saw you.
Walking up the sidewalk,
And I thought to myself:
Yes, I would - So I did.
Smiling ghosts made perfect faces,
Dancing off cigarettes on my front porch..
Yours ran to catch you.
As I watched with mine,
You walking home.
I pass a year and you in a store,
I heard you don’t cry the same,
Not like you used to.
You looked happy - I guess,
Or maybe it was, I hope you are.
You bring the razor blades
I’ll bring the tourniquets
We can slice our skin in midnight’s moonlight
And unify our wounds so they bleed in the same river
But we won’t die
No, not tonight.
Tonight, we’re nothing but a pair of dirty kids
Cutters with satanic minds
And ice encrusted hearts
And no love from the world
Showing them all we won’t hold the pain inside anymore.
Spilling our lives on linoleum
While dancing to the sound of our favorite songs
Splashing our feet in the crimson storm
It feels so phenomenal.
Maybe we should bleed out, baby
Dissipate into the ebony
So profound and tranquil.
Let’s change our satanic minds
And leave this sickening world TONIGHT
C’mon baby, double suicide.
Let’s crash our ice encrusted hearts together like two wayward cars
Me and you die in a world of scars.
Unfettered passions congeal with confusion
each night as in darkness, my mind's journey roams
depths of desire, deviant and untrusting
leaving me despair.
Twisting tourniquets ever-tightening grip
as urges of fantasy relieve torment
in tranquil pools of obsession, life falters
yet intensely grows.
Weeping rivers cast onto downy cushions
meet their demise in sonant voiced billowed plumes
that cosset my fatigued head with caresses
of indulgent dreams.
JF March 16, 2009
A chill wind bites coyly at exposed necks,
not yet draped in tourniquets of wool.
A wrapping of white, buries ribbons of asphalt.
The ways fills with metallic horsepower.
Goblets of slush like spittle fall, splat,
upon once virginal snowfields.
The rape of Winter had begun.
Rutting like rabid beasts in heat,
the roadways lay revealed before the power of the storm.
Cumulous clouds belch from grills of chrome.
As Winter like the Sabine Women, weapon in hand,
pummels the oncoming horde with icicles.
Power falls from an angry, cloud-filled, sky
weighty and white, Winter defends herself.
The surge of day brings forth an endless tide of travelers;
trampling her breast, ravaging, the once pristine vista;
shredding the thin veil of purity, only the Goddess brings;
laying waste, in mounds of mud like filth, The Mother.
She curls inward. Her indrawn breath freezes gears
grinding, screeching, shrieking the earth succumbs.
In snow like ash she lays vanquished.
Rolling along like a stumbling tumbleweed,
Programmed youth respond like robots.
Social norms are tightening tourniquets,
Restricting the flux of creative flow.
Wiggle room is considered a luxury.
Churches corral and prod like cattle.
Spoon-fed youth shackled to fantasy
Are taught to rebuke science as fraud.
Rebellion begins with autonomous thought.
Logic tramples faith based dictation.
Live like Jesus, but know that the Bible
Was written by man with ungodly agendas.
Freedom is found in the life of a Sheperd,
So stray from those who foolishly smite.
Jesus, the liberal, rallied the desolate
And turned his cheek at the mention of war.
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