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Best Poems Written by Isaac Werner

Below are the all-time best Isaac Werner poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Central Park, Jungle City

All the following are true: you love him. 

He loves you. 

You are not ready to be loved like that. 

He confesses how long he’s looked for a place to worship and, oh, you put him on his knees. 

On his knees for you, how long will it take before you’re back to his level? Collapsing onto the floor of a college dorm, you bleed and he cries. 

But you’re both on your knees, and in the winter of your lives, the warmth is all that matters. 

It is murder, but all that matters is that he agreed to hold you as he slit your throat

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Watermelon Gum: a Poem About Identity Crisis's In the City

The words “watermelon gum” and “stifling heat” shouldn’t be synonymous with the sentiments that ripped me to shreds during the month of July--and although all I can think of when I see your face is the chlorine and kool-aid you force fed me, these past nights have been considerably ill-inducing. I used to think summer and winter were different, but they have both done nothing but reopened the wounds--why can’t I stop vomiting? “If you hit the walls and they do not echo,” he tells me, “that means they’re older than time.” I slam my palm onto the walls and the sound opens up the part of me I had closed off, and suddenly I can see God standing off to the side, observing. How do I tell him that my mind and my heart have stood longer than the structure I lost myself in? The word “watermelon gum” shouldn’t be synonymous with your false sentiments, but I asked my little brother for a piece of his watermelon gum and now I cannot stop vomiting. I asked you why you turned into a loveless ghost, and the heat trapped in by the concrete walls prevented me from hearing your answer--I asked God why I could not breathe and he told me he did not know. My first mistake was letting you tattoo your emotions onto my sleeve, my second mistake was chewing that damn watermelon gum again, my third mistake was falling in love. I leave the songs Runner, Empty, Yellow, and American Boyfriend on repeat--I told God I could not breathe, and he told me I wasn’t trying hard enough.

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King of Peace

My body is a mirror, a vessel plated with crushed diamonds--in the autumn whenever an aspen tree enters through my bedroom window, I try to ignore the sounds of the decaying leaves and creaking branches. 

They tell me that the jewel of a body I was given doesn’t reflect the moonlight correctly, that the heart on my sleeve is getting too much blood in the carpet, I’m too much like Venus when I strive to be Mars. Red leaves look black in the lack of light and I can feel the rubies that circle my head like a halo, breaking and shattering, and it pierces the space within my head where a garden grows. 

The aspen trees keep speaking to me, saying that the sapphire underneath my eyes from lack of sleep turns others away from me, “You look like a pile of boulders that can’t hold up the world--God gave you a task and you can’t even complete it,” They tell me. 

“The men of Mars would never accept you, soon you will fall as Rome did and fall into the velvet of the sea and drown.” 

“You don’t deserve the diamonds in place of your skin, give them up to beings such as us who will die soon, as you won’t leave as quickly as we want to.” 

My response forms into branches of my own, the gems shrieking in my body and I float above the bed that has molded into the corner of my room. 

I am ethereal and beautiful and I am the mirror that speaks to me. I deserve the things I was given, and I don’t need the women of Venus or the men of Mars to solidify my beliefs for they are mine and mine alone. 

I am the mirror that speaks to me, a vessel plated with crushed diamonds.

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All In Bloom

I am the moon and you are the sun. I would say you are all the stars in my sky, but as the Earth rotated continuously around you, the number of stars started to shrink. You’re shrinking too, but you’re just the Sun, at least that’s what the horizon tells me. The horizon goes on hikes with me, and while collecting pine-cones, it gives me advice from the songs it whistles as we walk. “Be wise like the blue spruce, be as cunning as the sea at night, do not spend your life revolving around the Sun,” it tells me. “You are pale and quiet, and everything that the Sun touches turns into an avalanche of molten rock. Try not to melt around the Sun.” The horizon guides me until we reach the top of the mountain--you are there, the ocean is there, the spirit from the beach is there, the girl I used to be is there, and the trees have surrounded us in a circle, quietly humming as the clouds drift away from your face. I see that you are also accompanied by the aspen trees, and as a creature of light, I infuriate them. Us, as a duo, infuriate them--sometimes I just wish you wouldn’t give them as much cinders as you do. I am the moon, and you are the sun. On most summer days, you face away from me because you are ashamed, today I face away from you because I am now too warm from the excessive given light, I am no longer in debt to you.

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A Poem In Which Nothing Is True

The Messiah you see painted on the ceilings of your churches and on the floors of the convenience stores on the corner are me--I know that you’ve wished for a better savior in the past but right now I’m all we’ve got. The abstractness of this entire situation has started to turn into some hopeless kind of evil, and I’m here to tell you that it’s okay. It will be this kind of evil that carries you safely through the hazel tempest and you will be grateful because I told you-you had to be grateful. It will be this kind of evil that holds you when God refuses too--it also happens to be this kind of evil that God despises, so let it embrace you just to spite him. 

The angel you see wrapped around the hay barrels and around the weeds in the front yard is me--I know that you’ve always imagined us to be terrifying and otherworldly beings but right now I’m all we’ve got. If you decline to take shelter underneath the sunspot of my wing, then I will have no choice but to abandon you in this godforsaken town, it is not what I want but in the end, it will be what I have to do. The evil that is casting its silhouette over this suburbia is much, much stronger than me, and it will be up to the soloist who refused my offer of safety to defeat it--we will not stand a chance. 

The god you see stumbling through the mountains with a broken leg is not your real god--he is an imposter and the fiery devotion he inspires within you will color the sky red instead of blue, it will not grant you forgiveness and allow you to repent for the things you didn’t even do. I have spoken to this god, and all I saw when he spoke was the vultures that flew too close to our heads and how yellow the storm clouds looked, this god will both be the beginning and end of us and it will not be me who allows this to happen. I am both the Messiah and the archangel of flesh and blood and love and everything that makes you human. If anything, I am more human than you.

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Catatonia, Collapse, Abiding Love

I kneel, bow, and make myself into 
A rock to ask God, 
King of the Universe, 
Give me the amateur. 
Hear my cries, Lord our God, 
And give me him. 

I plead, beg, and erode 
My rough edges; 
Almighty One, 
I want this one to be terminal. 
Please, God, place the 
Obsidian in the core of my palm.
Let this strangeness of love
Feel familiar, once more. 

King of my Universe, 
Please let him become familiar. 
Almighty One, 
I swear I will get it right this time.

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Cinnamon Girl, Four Minutes and Three Seconds

I am a girl with a body made of soil. We catch falling embers of fire in our bare hands with laughter;

And later I catch your eye across the dance floor. I can't find a way to open my mouth. 

I dreamt once that Aphrodite was a human soul with her arms full of lilies, and I dreamt once that you were a sun-kissed god remaking my bones into wildflowers. 

Please, love, devour me.

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Seven of Cups: Reversed

I kissed your cheek in front of them all, and in doing so, I think I damned the both of us. 

You, to be left crucified and bleeding and paying for my sins. 

Me, to be left wandering and wanting and never to see your face again. 

So, I watch Rome fall. We both watch Rome fall, televised through the stained glass windows of this neglected place of worship. I can only see the red, the blood. 

"You are something awful, something so horrendous that I cannot even say..." 

Break my ribs and dive your hands into my chest, feel the beating of my heart. Oh, how it both beats for you and show that life isn't always warm. 

"...cannot even say that I love you."