u/rogu3b0t1313

If I take one look
at this mangled form
wreathed in writhing vines
climbing over
and creeping underneath
my attempts at some semblance
of decency.
At the clawing chaos
of my interior, the horror
of its twisted sprawl.
This contorted chimaera,
goat-crowned back arching
with the ache of being so…
lost.

Labyrinthine,
the foot-worn cobble
and tar of my backroads
and alleys
that wrap themselves
intestine-like
and populate the helical
nooks and crannies
of my uncharted mind.
Roads that turn on themselves
in spirals and lead,
ultimately,
to here.

To this jungle shrine—primeval green,
ancient and moss-infested.
Still primal, sitting halfway into
the gaping maw of darkest
consciousness,
where sits Baphomet,
throned in ruin
and wet vegetation.
Attended to by cave-spiders
and the other blind, pale
and ugly things I,
so dapperly,
convey as middle-class mobility,
as business casual
and a winning smile.

I—Baphomet,
who wears a crown of Demodex,
and holds court so garbed
in Staphylococcus
and Propionibacterium,
tongue-lolling, feral
openly mocking
the trappings of care.

If I take one look at that...

In the little hours I find myself invited
through your sliding door—unlocked,
and ushered into the warmth
of your dimmed kitchen lights, still on.

A warm cup proffered to cold hands,
and eyes that smile softly,

forgiving, and somehow able
to see right through me—fool-me,
fallible and always… outside, looking.
Searching, a Diogenes without a lamp.

Not for honesty—but sincerity.
For the uncomplicated intimacy
of your bedtime routine. Of cleanser
followed by toner, followed by—

a toasted cheese. The warmth of it
in your hands, and in your nature.
Its comfort effortless, unburdened.
For the simplicity of pillows,

of bedroom eyes buoyed by duvet folds
and the comfortable quiet
of running out of things to say
and just talking anyway.

And when I wake, my mind is empty.
Quiet, clean—but full of thoughts of you,
your bedroom eyes. And I wonder, absently,
if they would get a good night’s sleep,

were they to rest on me.

In the little hours I find myself invited
through your sliding door—unlocked,
and ushered into the warmth
of your dimmed kitchen lights, still on.

A warm cup proffered to cold hands,
and eyes that smile softly,

forgiving, and somehow able
to see right through me—fool-me,
fallible and always… outside, looking.
Searching, a Diogenes without a lamp.

Not for honesty—but sincerity.
For the uncomplicated intimacy
of your bedtime routine. Of cleanser
followed by toner, followed by—

a toasted cheese. The warmth of it
in your hands, and in your nature.
Its comfort effortless, unburdened.
For the simplicity of pillows,

of bedroom eyes buoyed by duvet folds
and the comfortable quiet
of running out of things to say
and just talking anyway.

And when I wake, my mind is empty.
Quiet, clean—but full of thoughts of you,
your bedroom eyes. And I wonder, absently,
if they would get a good night’s sleep,

were they to rest on me.

You found me where I washed up on your shore,
an alien translucent thing, gills heaving in the sand.
And seeing my life ebbing away with the surf,
you took pity on my strange grotesquerie and,
having bundled me into the folds of your dress,
hurried me home.

Where you dropped my deep-sea fish body
into your warm bathwater—

and I died, happily.

Because I needed the sea, being as I am,
a thing from the deep, a creature given to the drinking
of salt, who needs the dark to see, and the pressure
of the leagues beneath to keep my fading form
from failing.

How you cried and cried over my body,
your Fiji mermaid.

But I was at peace.

And if my dead fish-lips could move again
and I could speak your language,
I would've told you that I'm grateful still,
that it's the thought that counts, if anything.

The dealer deals the black cat hand and palms the money—promptly.
Softly almost, or a kind of soft at least, forgiving-like,
a hand greased by non-judgement and released from the fetters
of civilized society, and sobriety of course.

The dealer deals, and what a deal. Your warmth, your teeth, your sleep
for a snowball’s chance in literal, Christian hell. Jesus.

You took it though and shook on it too.
And at first your friends thought it was one big joke, the way you choked
out on that linoleum, the way you arched your back, climbing out
of your own body in great pale globules of frog-egg froth.

But it wasn’t funny. And you kept shaking
and shaking
and shaking—until
you stopped.

And the midnight blue outside your room turned siren red,
and the last of your black luck ran out. A raw deal, but you took it—
shook on it, at least.

I wrote you.
From inside my body.

I weaved you a string of words that I pulled
from the deep in me, arranged carefully,
so that its beads would catch
and bend the light just so.

It hurt, you know?

When I cut it from my soft underbelly.
When I handed you what precious little
warmth I have left, glowing pathetically,
cupped in my outstretched palm.

When I tried to adorn your immaculate neck,
with a part of me—the heart of me,
and bruised my knuckles
against the Plexi-glass between us,

and knew.

in my loneliness, I found myself
clawing at holes—finding nothing
but my inner-lining,
upturned duffle-bag that I am.

so, isolated in my hollow cocoon,
I pressed my thumb to the emptiness,
dug into the mud of me and
kissed its forehead into being.

with fistfuls of absence
I sculpted something from memory
half-remembered, could've-beens,
should've beens.

a Galatea sculpted without stone,
a golem without a scroll —
some sad homunculus inside of me.
and forgave it its lack,

its being me,
with a whispered emet
before letting it be.

in my loneliness, I found myself
clawing at holes—finding nothing
but my inner-lining,
upturned duffle-bag that I am.

so, isolated in my hollow cocoon,
I pressed my thumb to the emptiness,
dug into the mud of me and
kissed its forehead into being.

with fistfuls of absence
I sculpted something from memory
half-remembered, could've-beens,
should've beens.

a Galatea sculpted without stone,
a golem without a scroll —
some sad homunculus inside of me.
and forgave it its lack,

its being me,
with a whispered emet
before letting it be.

in my loneliness, I found myself
clawing at holes—finding nothing
but my inner-lining,
upturned duffle-bag that I am.

so, isolated in my hollow cocoon,
I pressed my thumb to the emptiness,
dug into the mud of me and
kissed its forehead into being.

with fistfuls of absence
I sculpted something from memory
half-remembered, could've-beens,
should've beens.

a Galatea sculpted without stone,
a golem without a scroll —
some sad homunculus inside of me.
and forgave it its lack,

its being me,
with a whispered emet
before letting it be.

Do you feel it too?

That fingernail, running—
slowly across your spine,
tugging at the seam of you,
lifting and pulling thread.

Do you feel it picking
at the scab of you?
How strangely cold the air
feels on pink skin—at least
partway healed.

Or how alien the sound of
your own voice returned to you,
its echo, having finally found
some distant surface
to land and bounce back from?

How now it flops around, awkwardly,
as wet and absurd as a lungfish
teleported into the flickering
spotlight of your dulled mind.

And tell me you feel the flicker
finally fuse.

Do you feel it too?
That fingernail, running—
slowly across your spine,
tugging at the seam of you,
lifting and pulling thread.

Do you feel it picking
at the scab of you?
How strangely cold the air
feels on pink skin—at least
partway healed.

Or how alien the sound of
your own voice returned to you,
its echo, having finally found
some distant surface
to land and bounce back from?

How now it flops around, awkwardly,
as wet and absurd as a lungfish
teleported into the flickering
spotlight of your dulled mind.

And tell me you feel the flicker
finally fuse. Tell me you see me
behind these stuttering scanlines,
the way I see you.

The way I need you to.

Do you feel it too?

That fingernail, running—
slowly across your spine,
tugging at the seam of you,
lifting and pulling thread.

Do you feel it picking
at the scab of you?
How strangely cold the air
feels on pink skin—at least
partway healed.

Or how alien the sound of
your own voice returned to you,
its echo, having finally found
some distant surface
to land and bounce back from?

How now it flops around, awkwardly,
as wet and absurd as a lungfish
teleported into the flickering
spotlight of your dulled mind.

And tell me you feel the flicker finally fuse.

I need you to.

tastes like chalk.

like salted earth.
tastes like empty,
and what empty does to you,
to your insides.

tastes like something that shouldn't
be inside of you.
like loss, and being lost,
and losing everything
again.

tastes like an overexposed photograph.
like the voice you told yourself
you'll never forget,
but did anyway.

tastes like something that's fallen
from the tip of your tongue
and into the depths of you.
something as near as yesterday,
and as alien as the surface of Mars.

tastes like anesthesia,
like waking up post-op with less
than you went to sleep with.
tastes like the telephone not ringing,
for days.

like time passing somewhere
high above you.

tastes like that.

Early morning I hear the final stanzas

of their hunting song. Their potent lungs
pelting the air with their there-ness,
their high-pitched keening meaning
nothing but death to insects,
and all the things their beaks had
evolved to delete so efficiently
from existence.

Wind whistling through their bones,
their bodies fall like balanced daggers.
Picking off their prey, all the while singing
of gore and vicious intent. Keening out in victory
with each exchange of death for life.
The metabolic economics that fuel them

the hunters, murderous and efficient,
proud songbirds dominating the morning sky
with presence, and the reach of their song.

Children of their fallen elders,
whose hollow bones have traded the wind
for the turned soil of termite-mounds
and nurture the Earth, now giving
all they had taken
back again.

Early morning I hear the final stanzas
of their hunting song.

Their potent lungs pelting the air
with their there-ness, their high-pitched keening
meaning nothing but death to insects
and all the things their beaks had evolved
to delete so efficiently from existence.

Their bodies fall like balanced daggers,
honed, wind whistling through hollow bones.
They flit through leaves and pick off prey
while singing odes to gore and vicious intent,
keening out in desperation with each
exchange of death for life. Hunters, they are,
these songbirds — proud and murderous,
dominating the morning sky with the reach
of their wings and their song, singing
as loud and as hard as they can
while wind still runs through their bones
and fevers their blood.

They see the turned soil of termite-mounds below,
where their bones must go
to give back all they had taken,

and know the Sun is setting.

tastes like chalk.

like salted earth.
tastes like empty,
and what empty does to you, to your insides.
Like something that shouldn't be inside of you.
like loss, and being lost,
and losing everything again.

tastes like an overexposed photograph.
like the voice you told yourself
you'll never forget,
but did anyway.
like something that's fallen
from the tip of your tongue
and into the depths of you.
something as near as yesterday,
and as alien as the surface of Mars.

tastes like anesthesia,
like waking up post-op with less
than you went to sleep with.
tastes like the telephone not ringing,
for days.

like time passing somewhere
high above you.

tastes like that.

tastes like chalk.

like salted earth.
tastes like empty,
and what empty does to you,
to your insides.

tastes like something that shouldn't
be inside of you.
like loss, and being lost,
and losing everything
again.

tastes like an overexposed photograph.
like the voice you told yourself
you'll never forget,
but did anyway.

tastes like something that's fallen
from the tip of your tongue
and into the depths of you.
something as near as yesterday,

and as alien as the surface of Mars.

tastes like anesthesia,
like waking up post-op with less
than you went to sleep with.
tastes like the telephone not ringing,
for days.

like time passing somewhere
high above you.

tastes like that.

I sometimes find myself

in front of my kettle, cooling,
and my coffee unmade,
hanging inside my own skull.

Suspended by a thread
in soundless space,
like some mindless balloon,

just high enough to touch
the eggshell-white of my ceiling.
String combing the floor

for some corner or lifted edge,
or a few fingers to lace through,
while my wet feet spin slowly

just above the kitchen tiles.

...

I sometimes find myself

in front of my kettle, cooling,
and my coffee unmade,
hanging inside my own skull.

Suspended by a thread
in soundless space,
like some mindless balloon,

just high enough to touch
the eggshell-white of my ceiling.
String combing the floor

for some corner or lifted edge,
or a few fingers to lace through,
while my wet feet spin slowly

just above the kitchen tiles.

...