my pieces :)
use the menu to the right to navigate to each individual piece, and then click the title of the piece once you're there to return to the top of the page. feel free to contact me wherever if you'd like to discuss writing or anything like that :) i don't expect its likely but please link back and give credit if you do share my work elsewhere. poetry is posted in full while longer prose pieces will be snippeted and then linked to another page.
shout-out to ellipsus for letting me copy my works as html rather than having to format them myself
please be aware that some of these pieces deal with sensitive topics that aren't warned for.
poetry
sweet theatre
it is a sweet kind of theatre
to watch a woman drown
flower petals glaze the water's edges
the pollen caught in her petticoats
melts until it gilds her shoes
it is a sweet kind of theatre
to watch a woman's fear
she thrusts stems in a king's face
a queen's nose
her rattled screams never wanted
it is a sweet kind of theatre
to watch a woman left alone
what is a woman when no one listens?
a perfect tragedy
she is untouchable
it is a sweet kind of theatre
to grasp a woman in your hands
to drink her
body and soul
devour her
it is a sweet kind of theatre
to drag a woman down
feed her words like candied violas
do not let her breathe
leave them on her lips when she spits them out
it is a sweet kind of theatre
to let a woman drown
to pick up her limp body
[drizzled in the nectar of words gone unheard]
to consume her
it is a sweet kind of theatre
to relish
Ophelia.
mother tongue
i lost my mother tongue before i was born
my mother’s mother carved the words on its grave
the weather every day i visit that tomb is dreich
is grey, is miserable, is untranslateable until it isnt
is unknowable until explained
my childhood monsters are three-pronged:
chained unicorn, corralled longhorn
never free as they wander the broad-narrow streets of grounds long conquered
the cry of the mockingbird is louder than whistles and whipcracks and jangling spurs
they were never there and now they have returned
lone star, independent,
no one has ever been quite like me
even my sister exists within the boundaries while i am stuck outwith
ootwither
my presence as vulgar as it is improbable
impossible in the dark eyes of my mother
and the pale eyes of a military man i will never quite know
the thistles hide in the grasses of a place i cannot call home
to tear my soul to pieces with royal purple petals
so i bleed the colours of a clan unclaimed
and a clan that was never mine
i have fallen far from the tree, trampled by a bull i cannot hold onto
i lost my mother tongue before i was born
my mother’s mother twisted by its loss
i will lose my father’s love in no time at all
his father warmed only by lit cigarettes and dying engines
paper proves i belong to two places
but neither belong to me.
vassal
make not a sound
stop singing
run away
vagrant
you should remember nothing
you will remember despair
the moon is your ruler
her love is luck is loss
you are tied to her
but only by the earth
taste triumph until your pulse
breaks away
tape your heart back together
from memory
defy her
victim
dare to doubt her voice
for she will always ask why
leave her in the silence she made
do not comfort the light
it is only a mirror of absence
it is only the ghost of a lullaby
finish this
voyager
lone fool
leave her eyes behind
let her mad dream lie
dead.
prose
141 words
Beau had buried the dead before. He was no gravedigger, but he still carried a shovel as he wandered the plains between towns. He had learned what bodies hitting the bottom of graves sounded like.
He had learned that no one else wanted to hear it.
Beau had only buried what he loved twice. His mother was the first body he’d buried, when he used to wrap them in shrouds to protect them from the dust. Tonight, he buried Jericho. Jericho. The only thing he’d had beside him as he buried nameless bodies, as he stood vigil until sunrise, was finally laid beneath cold, dry earth. Jericho had left him after promising he would never.
He had nothing left to stand with, not anymore, not when the last thing he had left was six feet under dust.
So, he walked away.
cont.
Jericho had died before. If his Father had been telling the truth, he’d been born dead. It was the storm that came that same night that seemed to bring him back. Jericho was no logician, but he could spot patterns from three miles away.
Every time he died, the rain brought him back.
Jericho usually didn’t mind dying. Le petit mort was named so for a reason: death was the final, pleasurable end. Of course, for Jericho, it wasn’t particularly final, but it still brought him peace in a way not much else could. Not until Beau. Beau, too kind for his own good. Beau, who always spoke so gently to the horses they’d hire to travel between towns. Beau, with his sad eyes and beaten shovel. Jericho had promised he would never leave him.
Jericho had always been a liar. But this death had been cruel; had been needless. This time, he had somewhere to go when the rains would come.
He would always follow Beau.