from here to christian apology by ghostinafog, literature
Literature
from here to christian apology
in the end i break my teeth on the cyanide almond.
the capacity for evil is trivial and irreducible.
it is a rock in the bloodstream,
it tumbles in the purifier and never gets out.
no you can't wash this out. you can scrub & scratch yourself
into a corner through little transgressions.
they say loitering on the edge heightens one's senses
to things like pastel bricks of scarfwork
& liquor store workers who remember your name.
they say hanging up on scam calls will
cost you an earthquake. is this an earthquake?
what little love there is
slinks gently like a beanstalk
wilting on the steel fen
i remember you bribing gods you did not believe in
just to stay safe. dropping someone off
on the other side of town, you'd say "here is a good deed,
let's hope this counts."
i thought what kind of a heart is this,
racking up points before Christ.
-
now you say there is no entertainment other than warfare.
lives stretch for so long
half the country stops drinking for new year's,
instead staring into the frosty sky,
waiting for another missile or plane crash.
the diseases you get stick along for the whole ride,
siphoning life out. your lungs wilt and stick
like cobweb to a burnt
they say there's lead in the water by ghostinafog, literature
Literature
they say there's lead in the water
at the next party i will introduce myself as a pool
where the moon scatters your reflections into buzzing stripes
framing a city square where you somehow
have to pick a direction. all the people that i sift through,
like grainy coal i'm too tired to plow,
sit at the curbs where gravestones should be.
maybe i am a student in lurking Leviathans, the unfolding
of new bottoms when you think rock bottom had been reached,
hence the meaningless hurt that echoes in the water.
no one wants to be known because there is nothing after
that can be seen from here, hence the overwhelming
victory of death. Charon offers a ride t
go to the loneliest place,
fumble in its silken innards
for keys, rabbits or fizzing candy
when our only obligation
is to never give up on listening.
after hell's frozen over,
you wake up to fern frost's
apologetic drawings:
"took a while to find the words."
after breaking your spine by ghostinafog, literature
Literature
after breaking your spine
you had blood all over your elbows
you did not believe anyone could cry for you
i could not talk to you for days
i hid in attics like a sparrow
i hid under beds like a mouse
my friends and i spied on our neighbours
and stole watermelons from a stranger's house
none of us knew how to love
we were given assignments with no instructions
i did not know how to scream or to move or to kiss your hands
if they said they brought you back alive so i crouched behind a bedframe
when the door of unknown opened
i turned away.
after that day, you never believed me.
in my own time, i did my required readings,
learned to un
after the failed debate by ghostinafog, literature
Literature
after the failed debate
weigh these words
on your way to soccer practice:
"tell that when you kid falls prey to probability."
you don't feel it,
penciling leaf shapes in your
air-conditioned Range Rover.
he'll be elbow-deep in bloody sluice, skinning salmon,
snap.
tell that when it's your child in its jaws.
we are hard-wired to survive,
not to seek out any truth.
they say it takes Titanic to crack an iceberg
so this is where your world ends; a whimpering missile
fizzling out in the snowfields of another's eyes.
40 years of retinal char,
yet burnt pan drippings
collected on your tongue
tonight a red pain buzzes across your chest,
ribs clamping the sky's curtains, forcing
space inside itself.
but you will yourself back
onto cold hard bedrock, letting
eyeballs dry out,
adjusting to the dark-purple,
searching the recesses of corners
where not even spiders scurry to sweep the floor.
sewage water hits the back of your throat;
this is not fear of death
but of being uncovered,
unpeeled like a garlic lightbulb, sinusy
pink insides with rotten eggs brewing
exposed;
the million eyes of unnameable
bulge out
in uncomfortable contact.
you awaken not to re
to the left is uncertainty, to the right is death by ghostinafog, literature
Literature
to the left is uncertainty, to the right is death
sir you can't sleep here
you can't sleep anywhere
the home you saw on TV was someone else's mountains,
you will have to carve your own.
yes, and lead them there.
yes, and point out the direction of sunrise
yes, and teach them to dismantle a fake.
and i know your stomach coils like an eel
from the thought of the work.
it is not fair,
cogs riling the rotgut empty
already, and now this underskin snake.
but last time we all fell asleep on different benches,
hugging our branches like cats on life's tree,
we woke up in hell;
there is no other way,
That was in tougher times,
against impossible blue.
grandmother sold mittens and icy dumplings,
cops would not shoo her, still young in a black mink coat;
crows gathered around her to peck on sunflower spit.
i almost drowned in the crisp snow
running up to her to ask for a rooster lollipop
in the only hue of orange
still worth pursuing.
It was that colour
that dragged me through sore-throat nights;
dark would swoop down on the community parking lot
as if it heard me uttering a singsong chirp,
hundreds of candles flickering on
in the eyes of windowed monsters
waiting f
it's all over the newsfeeds now:
the dust bowl opens up in a former gravel pit,
swallowing the trees' burnt-up broomsticks,
an electromagnetic storm lashes out at its tail
in our whirlpool
laundromat brains
whose storage rooms fill up with dried dragonflies
still
wriggling their feet.
the insomniacs of us fight bodies
kicking themselves back up,
shove snakes writhing in a hose-dance
into a barrel of ECT sleep.
wind howls all throughout, a woman crying for help, perhaps,
trapped at the bottom-right
corner of a community pool,
but who knows when night shushes us black and slippery, a squeeze
sudden collapse of the integers by nawkaman, literature
Literature
sudden collapse of the integers
the day becomes an hour
becomes a pomegranate moon, dangling on
before and after little oceans, the imperfect domain
of memory; vivid colored birds
singing Sunday roars of time (and a time after)
and the future rises hushed
over the edges of a mountain- it was there
before we knew it
We are both foreigners in a house we once shared. by Quelythe, literature
Literature
We are both foreigners in a house we once shared.
Reacquaint me:
your mother died last year; my boyfriend has left.
You wring your hands beneath the table, where you think
I cannot see. I refuse
to care; instead I
line up lovers
between bites of toast.
You've taken to staying out
late, I've taken
to sleeping early. We exchange
carefully chosen words-- the ones
clipped of meaning.
Reacquaint me:
here we are, breathing the same city air,
both of us trying to seize our own brands
of happiness. Yet what is that
but a passing shadow of sun?
In the darkening afternoon
it illuminates us
at our prime. We can no more
claim it
than we can trap
the loves of our lives
to our side.
Reacq