Poetry 2024: How Monstrous If I Healed, Soft and Savage, and Infestation in Written Word

More than half of my sketching is in written word. Drawing is a tool to tease out the visual structure, the perspective, the colors, and all the visual details of a piece, but words hold the soul of it. They help me find the pieces of myself that need to be put into an artwork; what is necessary to give the work life.

These poems are grouped by the piece I was working on when they were written, but many overlap and some serve as points of transition, delivering me from one work into another.

Open Wound


How monstrous 

if I healed 

and never cried 

for you again



Soft and Savage


This soft and savage wound

A chiming, aching, bleeding echo in an empty courtyard…but for me

I am emptiness

I cannot touch you, so I'll touch nothing at all

How beautiful, a life that mangles in its end

How beautiful, a love that undoes you

I will tear myself apart to keep your shadow close


I Am Not


Where have I gone?

I am hollowed out, yet full to bursting

A vicious, bloated emptiness

I am only the things that have hurt me

I am not…


Rabbit In A Ribcage


Abandoned by breath

Wrapped in fraying bone

It does not still.

Vigilance beyond sanity.

Its own heartbeat

A stalking terror.


Hyperventilate with Me


It does not come.


Requested with a heatless burn.

Sought through straining sinew,

Clawed and fruitless grasping.


It does not come.


Limbs evaporate.

I break apart,

Scattering.

The day fades.

The world is soft and buzzing.


It does not come.


Knot Magic


Tie a knot for those that harm

Tie the next for friends unarmed

Twist the cord and cinch it tight

Cure the ill, bind the night

Hang the devil from a tree

Without a backward glance fast flee

Knots of three: breeze, wind, gale

They knot the noose when fire fails

Bound to earth, sea, and sky

Only the vessel cedes and dies


Bound


Knotted guts

Knotted breath

Knotted tongue

Never rest

Taut and tense

Tight, secured 

The boundless bound

A heart interred


Binding Spell


Gather hurt

Gather wrath

Lay them close

Tie them fast


Make the bindings leave a mark

Lash the chest

Bruise it dark


A prison built of twine and tongue

Weave the spell ‘round innards wrung


Calm without

Rage within

Chew the bars through straining grin


Atlas of Worms 


I hide.

From you. For you.

Unfit for human consumption.

My mouth says, “I am fine.”

My soul screams, “I am not!”

I am weak and let you find me.

Offered comfort shatters against my living, writhing wall of pain.

Holding it up and back, I tremble, struggle to prevent your exposure.

I am weak and the wall falls upon you.

Pressed into the earth, my worms bite through your flesh as shame sinks its teeth into mine.


Sorrow’s Garden


I thought I felt the burrowing as it chewed into my core

It was not burrowing, but a blooming

Bright despair unfurling

I the Mother, the living well of this pain


Bring a comforting word and you risk the reaching tendrils

Sorrow’s garden, wild and unmanageable

I can offer you naught but an unfair trade: pain for kindness


Devouring Pain


It is dangerous to speak to me

For my hurt is bigger than your kindness

I will swallow your comfort ravenously and give you pain in its place 

I will open my chest, my mouth and chew up your joy

I'm starving for it

The feast affirmed by your tensing posture

The warmth ebbing from your eyes

Dripping down your cheeks

Gathering in the corners of your mouth

Weighing them down

You'll start again, softer, with caution

This attempt will be swallowed too, by you or me

I'll lick my wounds, cleaning my plate

You'll leave hungry, stomach aching


Using Format