For MMM's contest
Inspiration:In Tribute to Harry Crosby: The Mad Queen's Forever Fever by Hypocrit
They burn their blood
and drink the ash with their lungs--
nooses spun and woven around their necks,
they shudder with the last kicks of a
pale corpse, old and weathered but
fresh as a fetus in the wake of lungs black and
polluted as mine.
Seven feeble bones thrash, miniature
and childlike in their lukewarm posterity that
charts history with small, suicide scarred hands.
I forget, sun, they are such tiny beings of time
and death and saccharine hedonism
and they've fallen, stumbled on their
grotesque little feet as they were made to do--
have I thrown them, sun?
Forgive me, sun, for I have sinned
and sin have I brought into my body
with clay and blood and water,
they used to say, a bird with black wings
and the thrust of innocent, lustful hips,
the slow and gentle waking of small spirits,
such small spirits that fumble their unfamiliar fingers
and cry at night--
they think I am the sun;
they are saplings reaching towards
me with their self conscious arms,
unsure in which direction they should grow;
they smoke wildfires and chew rites,
rot and fall into superfluous reminders but Sun, sun,
I do not know if I am enough, if I can love--
have I forgotten, sun?
Sun, I tick with a metronomical heartbeat
and my skin burns, melts into magma
and languid rust. Their lips are
tarred and strung and gashed into their faces;
they taste wealth in furious bite of copper and
snip their lips because my image
is not enough, warped and
and shuddering.
Broken shells of the damned clutter my closet
like whisps and ships-- they've narrow minded
shoulders twisting under the bearings
of a globe, stained and patterned and sewn
with veins skinned from their skins,
pulp, sinew, guttural languages pulled from the
mouths of dying men, and sun, Sun,
I cannot twist my mouths into their grunts and growls
because they have burnt away my teeth with guilt, and yet, yet
they call this heaven.
Sun,
I have kept the leech promises
nursed against my breast and
they have drained me dry,
teethed and teared and gorged at my chest
like starving children yet to be fed--
have I forgotten, sun?
My hands are old and withered into small
silver clasps like a clock, amnesiac
and--
--and
Sun, I, I am dark, my Sun-- Sun, forgive me of my sins
for I have forgotten mercy and wrath;
I drink oceans and swallow up the world
and I have pried my fingers into splits of earth,
wrenched my shoulders into white bones
bursting from my skin like the lecherous gulls
that once plucked at my eyes--
but,
Sun,
Son,
I have not found grace.
Really, really good choice of words. It flows smoothly, and it didn't feel forced anywhere. Keep writing!
Keep writing and I hope to read more of your work sometime! If you need anything else reviewed, just let me know and I'd be more than happy to take a look at it. Until then, keep up the great work.
