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Children in the Soul GardenChildren in the Soul Garden

I'm tired of the constant roses
That germinate in my cheeks,
I wish to prune them
Back to roots.
How full they must've looked
As I took your spiritual virginity
During a process I didn't fully grasp.

It was then I realized
That we are more
Than human beings;
This life can't part us.
You saw me through an eye
Set above the two
You look through
And down the centuries
There I've stayed.

I struggled to believe
All that you've told me
Until I felt it myself and knew,
I saw through closed eyes
The way you held your hand
In front of my face
And put the other behind me –
A magnetic feeling bet

NecrosisTracing the tracks
of tractor wheels,
the ruts lead me
to a cemetery.
I pass the grave stones
of those I’ve known.
I wish for their sakes
I had mourned.

Fairy-rings grow there,
the moss like black squares
on a chess board
against sun stained grass.
I think of this land
and wonder whether
if I dug deep enough
I’d find the bones
of the men who fought
and died there.

The trunks and branches
of trees I knew
are cut and piled.
I offer my own limbs,
but am not accepted.

The bramble bushes
in which
as a child I’d hide
when playing with my friends,
have been pruned and trimmed.
I’m told this aids growth,
I preferred it bef

PurifyIn a sink
Of bleach, bicarb and disinfectant
I add soap for the sake of it
In an attempt
To wash my hands of you;

It only burns my skin –
Red raw and peeling.
I wrap them in cling film
And black backed tape.

I pad like an alley cat
On the glass
Of stolen cars
And broken windows,
Though I'm not light enough
To avoid bleeding
And so leave
A trail behind me.

I'm mailing out my medical record
As much as my CV
While I wait
And take
My tattoos off
With a Stanley blade
To re-arrange them
Into another shape.

BulimiaBulimia

Arms wrap around
White ceramic
Curved like the inverse of a spoon.
Bleach and piss,
A picture of two lovers,
Something less than this.

Fingers search my mouth
And throat
And find the stench
Of cheap meals
And expensive cigarettes.

Heave –
Lungs deflate
And I cry
Onto the lenses
Of my glasses.

Up comes the meal
I have just prepared
Into the hole
Where all shit goes.
I try to crawl
Inside it.

Lost in NeverlandLost in Neverland

Children dress in their parents clothing
And in their naivety
They imagine maturity, precipitating it.
I have played dress-up
In some strangers clothing
And am so far gone
I have forgotten
Who I was before it.

I am imitating Peter Pan
In my own warped Never Neverland.
The lost boys wear my face,
I see myself as I make sure
I murder each of them.
As they reach maturity
They attempt to put
Their daggers in my belly,
I must cut them loose.

IngressThe lustre of exposed low wattage bulbs
misleads a moth into the bathroom,
where dampened wings would keep it
moving in circles on the off-white wall.
The repetition of the circumference
opens the brickwork to the sky.

A truck driver pulls into a service station
after waiting for the mileage to outdo the clock.
While washing his hands
he kills the moth with his thumb,
and with his fist is pulled through;
a feeling similar to the sensation described
in the one book he’s read.

It was always area codes he remembered
that without the sister digits
are worthless, as much use
as the telephone box he stands in.
He has a road map
but not fo

ReverieReverie

I'm told by creators
That she is an android,
No more real
Then the dream that contains her.

Still I kiss
And attempt to reprogram
The binary of her mind.

Tenderly with her lips
And not her tongue
She touches me,
I know I've succeeded.

And so as I sleep
I see
Her hair
Falling from
A pony tail

And her pale skin is smooth
Needing my uglier palm
Against her rounded cheek.

I think of her eyes
And hope to return
But cannot
When I close mine.

Bruises from YouthBruises from Youth

I will exchange these tattoos for bruises
And collect the set of raspberry coloured wounds
That travel down from flesh to bone.
I know what I must do
To make them stay
In the hotel of my skin.

At six ft three I feel small
Like two children
Standing on the other's shoulders,
Wearing a trench coat
To disguise their youth.
A boot polish beard convinces some,
I've not yet fully figured out the trick.

SedativeI dismiss your despondent lips
that I’ve seen smile
too few times.
I must shiver
when I’m with you;
there’s no warmth left in your face.

Inhaling the exhaust fumes
of retired buses
forced back into labour,
I feel myself slipping
into the unconsciousness
I cannot find at night.

I dream of you,
it does not surprise me
the way it did the first time—
I sit and think
while I try to eat my breakfast.

There’s a homeless man
standing over me when I wake.
He asks me for money,
I’ve still got my wallet
and give him what’s inside it.

A pigeon with broken toes passes,
you’d have wept.
I follow and f

ArtificeThe rain outside is audible,
A static crackling.
The grey sky parts like tidal paths
On rocks
For the blue to come through
Behind it.

The tress, it seems,
Have forgotten their breeds
Though they settle for rainmakers
To deceive their spectators,
Watching like gargoyles
From their windowsills.

Smoke and ButterfliesSmoke and Butterflies

There is a butterfly struggling for life
On the windshield of a car.
Its wings are rich
But living isn't bargained for.

The man inside the Ford Mondeo
Inhales the smoke that snares,
Fumes that take away
What he shared with her.

His wife sleeps,
Pressed against another man.
She's unaware her husband discovered
The love she shares without him.

But she's slept with lions far too long
And breathes the way
Her husband does.

There is a man somewhere
Parked under stars,
A hose pipe from his exhaust pipe
Is held by the window and the doorframe
And he inhales it.

ObjectiveObjective

The perfume on my pillow
From where it framed your face
And the eyes that found me
Looking back
At them

Like sundials
Wherein I lost
My sense
Of time.

One-Way StreetI always thought
we would both leave,
but as you grew older
I wondered whether
one of us would be
left behind.

Our friendship failed
as strangers became neighbours
and you left the town
I’ve come to realize
is equal in spite and beauty.

And so I stayed
until eighteen
but return regularly,
through the fields
I walked in as a child
drinking the wine and champagne
I found in hedgerows.
I cracked them open
and swallowed both
the alcohol and broken glass.

I took a stone from the byway
to my new home
and in time
I threw it
into the wetlands
I discovered.

I’m reminded of the scar line
after I ripped my bicep open
on the barbed wire

A Kind of CommunicationA Kind of Communication

I'm still watching
The sun setting
From my window sill.
Lain in S shapes
With you,
My neck is rigid like stone roman arches,
I don't distract your sleeping.

I can smell spring coming
And see it in
The growing bulbs of daffodils
Rising from top soil
Of the mass graveyard
That is this country.

From disjointed sleeping
And nightmares where I scream
I am woken
And stay in reality,

My voice is different then
And not like the octaves
At night
In the window sill,
Talking until dawn.

The Green Waves of Midland EnglandThe Green Waves of Midland England

Silver skinned trees –
Birches bear the wood
And cast passing horses
In shade.

Dew drops on grass blades
Glisten;
From afar it seems
As if the sea
Had found its way
In land.

I try to fit my feet
Into hoof prints,
I am unable
And to the stable they lead,
I follow.

The stable hand attempts to put
A feedbag
On my mouth,
I refuse her.

Put upon my knees
I am saddled,
Chained
And left to walk and graze
The field.

I find with every revolution
The grass and the dew
Looks less like the coast.

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A Boy RemainsA Boy Remains

I have made a promise
And broken it,
An epiphany demanded of me
Lays cracked and broken
Finding my feet as home.

The women I see
Reflected manifestations
Of what I want to be,
One unable to look
With eyes that sting
With beauty, lust
And the need to fuck.

A civil war of sexuality
Contains me
In the no man's land,
Imprisoned,
The cell is my body.

In the war I have my sword
That I bury in the enemy,
I give them need
And strangers leave,
I plead this grief
Those never met cannot sting when left
Only a boy remains.

Lactating FlamesLactating Flames

A gasoline baby
Abused by a flame
Sparks disturbed from nowhere lands
Immediate ignition,
Addiction to instant gratification.
Inside a flammable mind
An island forms once the magma cools,
Resembling pavements
Of the modern age;

I am preferring concrete
To grass beneath me
These days,
Streetlights to trees,
A flame to rain
And a burn to a kiss.

Wearing white lipstick
Like sugar sprinkled
Thought it tastes of salt
Still it melts, caramelising
Into sickly treacle
Under overt temperatures
Of the burning child's kiss
As if breast feeding
On this stranger's lips.

Imaginings Mask RealityImaginings Mask Reality

Intravenous conversation
Given as short, sharp whispers
Like animal testing
My words are cosmetic
(Anaesthesia and the procedure)
To confirm the lie
That I am a better man,

Nauseated now
By the hollow words
Propelled from my mouth
Like Molotov cocktails
Manufactured by riots inside,
A waging war without cause.

My eyes integrate then with the trees
And the birds falling from them
Features black and burning
I am blind now,
Adapt in only self important languages
Written in the lettering of my ego:

My sexual appetites
And all I ingest
Leave me looking back
As a stranger to that time,
Evolution has

Liliths DigressionYou could be my Lilith
Conjured in sleeplessness,
I see only an hour
Before the day is betrayed
And night is born again.
I recreate another's love affair;

To you I am Adam.
My first love, my first wife
You wanted equality –
Flawed dominance –
Control on top of me
While I penetrate from beneath you
And so I banished you from Eden.
You became a daemon,
Wondering the earth
Seducing the seducer,
Sex with the archangel – Sameal –
Both good and evil,
He snakes inside you now.

Of academic reasoning
You became a symbol
Adopted by the feminist,
Labelled Mother Goddess
To oppose those that would keep wome

An Ode to BlueI look at the girl with the blue bag
And wonder what she keeps inside it;
Her dreams perhaps,
Or has she imagined mine?

There's a scorpion on her thigh,
Deceiving me.
I'm unable to distinguish
Beneath the dark
Of the desk she sits at
Whether it's an omen or an invitation.

Her hair, blonde bangs,
Fall and frame a Russian face –
She was born in Northern England.
I have seen that face someplace else,
But I've forgotten when and where.

I watch her writing,
Does she use her pen for me?
On paper she'll create
A world from inside her mind
And put it with her belongings
In her bag, it lies open
And I can see inside it.

Prescribe the MoonPrescribe the Moon

The birds take twine
In their wood-like bills
To lasso the moon
And drag it down,
They shall take the tree tops
When the work is done

Even close
I wish the moon
Outweighed the sun
To cast her lunar light

And night would fall
The bed shall call
Sleep eternal
Leaving me to dream
As long as the prescriptions filled
Regularly.

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Submitted: August 20, 2011
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In The Windowsill

by ~Obsidian-Nightfall, Aug 20, 2011, 5:18:22 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Urban & Spoken Word

I’m left naked
reflected back from the black
outside my window.
The houses out there
are identified by
lonely empty holes lit by bulbs.
Trees hang like lashes,
blinking in the wind.

My make-up’s smudged,
I rub blackened fingertips
over and around my thighs.
I break the scabbing skin
across my knuckles
and wrap my hand
in my pillow case.

My head is heavier
than the rest of me,
I sit in the windowsill
to sleep,
misquoting stories I’ve heard.

In The Windowsillby ~Obsidian-Nightfall

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Urban & Spoken Word

Critique by !QyJx Aug 20, 2011, 11:43:35 AM

To me, your poem is about the moment when you realize all your feelings of inadequacy is your own fault. I interpret the ending of the poem two ways. In one way, perhaps the speaker wishes to start a new when they wake, and rest from the weariness of this self inflicted guilt. On the other hand, perhaps the speaker has reached a point of hopelessness, that, despite the realization that "the blood was on their fists" and they have control over their fate, they do not wish to continue living, and are laying down to sleep for the last time.

I enjoyed reading your poem, your imagery is unique, vivid and evocative, and I can relate to the feeling the poem conveys.

In your first stanza, the last two lines, "Trees hang like lashes/ Blinking in the breeze." confused me a bit. Do you mean that the lights hang from the trees? Or do you mean that the trees seem to droop? Are you referring to eye-lashes, or to the punishment? Perhaps rework this to be more clear.

In your second stanza, I feel that the lines "That refuse to thin,/ Trees stand mocking." should be separated by a semicolon rather than a comma. You are communicating two separate, yet related ideas.

In your fourth stanza, second to last line, I'm not sure if the comma is appropriate. Since you are explaining where the blood on the fists came from, perhaps you should use a colon to indicate the line "A wound I know is mine." is an explanation for the previous line.

All in all, I enjoyed reading your poem, and am going to go ahead and

it.

What do you think?

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*TheDarkenedBride Nov 28, 2011 Hobbyist General Artist

if only people showed more understanding to themselves...

~Obsidian-Nightfall Dec 7, 2011 Student Writer

Yes, if only.

~neuroticmnemonic Sep 22, 2011 Writer

Dude....wow...

~Obsidian-Nightfall Sep 29, 2011 Student Writer

Thank you very much, very happy to know you liked this piece...

~RequiemsandReveries Aug 20, 2011

Wow...this is powerful. And I get it.

~Obsidian-Nightfall Aug 27, 2011 Student Writer

I am glad to hear you say that, good to know my words are understood... Thank you very much...

~MeineSehnsucht Aug 20, 2011 Writer

Fine work, though I'd suggest you shouldn't use the word "nigger". No white people can't say no nigger, only Patti Smith. Afro-American doesn't sound though. Negro?

~Obsidian-Nightfall Aug 27, 2011 Student Writer

Thank you... Yes indeed Patti makes good use of the word, but I think language is for all to use, that is what I have done here to capture a smiler feeling to that splendid punk-poet...

~MeineSehnsucht Aug 27, 2011 Writer

In that way.

~Nekonixi Aug 20, 2011 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Wow... Amazing.

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In The Windowsill

In The Windowsillby ~Obsidian-Nightfall

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