decad(a)nce

Intoxicating: sophisticated- 

a dainty and supreme expression of violence 

the dark nuances and projections 

surfaced all at once. 

Demonstrating a novel understanding of the art

She danced like a final poem,
subaqueous

battered and betrayed.

A bath, a mother’s paintbrush,

an unhinged door

a pink bed spread, a music box, a once-beloved stuffed animal

abandoned, keeping in its furry clutch the discarded innocence.

Such a sweet 

subversive rendering of someone else’s madness

a coil of eloquence, a cascade of perfection-

her hair and the red curtain that fell loose 

and swept the vast stage.

Legions of dust pounced, creating a low cloud;

she, along with the rest of the dancers, leapt above it. 

Fragmented and immersed 

the audience aged with the story-

at the cusp of malevolent desire themselves

their legs ached to spring from their seats.

The rows of velvet cushions 

suddenly felt as spectacular and ceremonious

as the edges of buildings;

the polished rim of the high stage

the skyline, the horizon, the subalpine. 

transfiguration

i have only dreamt of running

Behind the bars sits a figure, blackened by the vibrations

of a recurring need to shelf books

and mend things. The itch

is not paid attention to. We were always told

that itches go away when we do not scratch them;

discomfort is alleviated when feelings are dampened.

During the strained hour, the inverse of a harsh three o’clock scorch,

the man sits before the beyond

and places his palms against the glass.

I am no more than a lizard, he thinks to himself

And whistles suddenly, an embarrassed and troubled afterthought,

to assure the empty room that he knows freedom.

Of course he knows song.

During the night when every household

silently sighs into the cold, suffused by the good and placid absence of clamor

Each room unfolds and unlaces,

Nooks of the secret life;

The hallway becomes an endless stretch of reliving,

Anyone’s footsteps absorbed by the certainty of the carpeting

The nighttime reveres the vitality

of the blanketing quiet.

And no rabid monologue, no tempestuous resonance, no despair

is too dark and irreconcilable

for the calm absolution encountered in this dimness.

His pacing quickens at irregular intervals.

Heavy and sodden with inane fantasies,

He wishes the world were watching.

This is noir, he whispers

The fairytale cannot be worn now.

The apex desire

Sincerely moved by the taunt of abandon.

He is a poet, a dynamic conscience,

Shepherding words and manning the virginal expanse of the white page,

But he only dreamt of running

past phase

H Y S T E R I C A L

milkprose

I am a delicate reader and therefore know nothing.

 Among other things, we have forgotten what it means to be at war.

The immune collective

Scatters in the wake of romanticized bloodshed,

The rising phoenix

Does not glow,

And the divine white bed

Smells of grass and vegetation, moments after a rainstorm.

The true battle brews in the tension

Between sovereignty and ordinary compassion.

A budding metamorphosis

My markings pulse, and pulse steadily-

The childhood and the dirty new age

Cling

The orchestra is washing over

We were never taught to swim without the masks.

Defeated and dark

There’s a stain now, on the bed 

It looks as if a chair sat on it

Naming the diorama

Solitude finds its most joyful expression

and the madrigal delights in the shut-eye collapse.

The thrust of turpentine

overwhelmed by the fragrance of wood nymph hair, the view of luxury

cascading before the slump of the velvet

ebony couch.

Content with the displacement of throes

The blurring arrives at the simultaneous point of completion, and the wind

Grows still. It ascends to a dead chill

Stabbing against the smooth of the skin.

And on the windowsill lined, rock salt

And new dust.

and below each vantage point,

a placard indicating its name.

I am the only catalyst of unrefined movement,

The only interlocutor aware of the reality-

There is an audience, an opera, and I hide, almost naked

Behind the heavy of the reddest drapes.

The destitution of this craver clothed

By the imperial darkness of the abandoned exhibition

You will give me a name. You will evoke in me a flame
And your other self will put it out.

Flagellant

Again with the claws. Self-inflicted

this tongue, these fingers, this damage

the whisper of the battle horse. The precise instruments

of divinity lodged, sinking into a socket

pierce and flaw and want.

The tuned black fibers framing the sensual eye

fold into a sleep,

the dead trees darkening

into silhouettes, raven sketches, before

the setting of a scathed sun.

Scars

the mare does not know,

her high bone grazed by lashes,

she does not despair.

Corrupt my learnt dance with a selfish word

And you will witness a resolve. Execution

Upon execution

This hand will not fail to deliver.

with a stained glass sphere warm in my palm, I withdraw

Into the thinking

that with each new vein of exploit

will come a rose.

There is nothing like the sunken sadness

Of having been snatched out of a scene

Comparable to the most obscure expression of paradise.

Nadeshiko

“Bone” was not a hideous enough word-

he went with “calcium staff”, and I sighed.

The truth was that I craved the sight 

of bones shoving against
the thin film of skin

more than he relished versifying
the blue-black cloak of pretend misery

that warmed

his slippery self. He stayed squat within a shell

with a bleak pattern. A textile

not transcending the skin

of a damp pavement.

He carried himself like a glitch.

A patch of confident disproportion

he was eager and therefore unaccountable.

He always took his meals alone.

(I sit before pianos

not dining tables.)

 *

Symphony” was too bland for him-

he reworked it into “a superimposed array of aural fragrances”

and I tapped my finger on my thigh.

 He attempted to write me down.

Throngs and throngs of thick description

saturating the image

of the thin of my wrist and wit,

filling in the hollows.

The lather of his voice

informing his memory of mine,

retelling its echo,

summarizing my song.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.