Slow was the first pulsation of this heart but fast would its thrum be through life. Mother read in the stars on the chart that we were to embrace you as eventide embraces the light that is soon to depart. You unsettled us with the fixated yellow grin: we knew sanity and your smile were apart from the moment you held the bluntest knife and set into mother’s skin a most demonic art.
I drank the ink poured down the sink then sank a little lower I wish to think with lenses pink I’ve wisdom of a knower But I confess I am a mess as shown within my stanza So I shall dress my deep distress with adjective organza
I gave the voices your tongue to hear their words in the voice of another. How differently I hate myself when the recital of criticism takes on a separate tone. The ex-plosives are missed as your snipes detonate in an uglier timbre. The richness of that trill is taken as an ever renewing esteem tithe, gradually depreciating my self-belief’s valuations so the bare bones can be given back to the earth cost free. Would the words you made me delete have made any difference? They’ll greet me when I finally give into the bitterness and momentarily regret all I hadn’t the chance to regret before.
Drops of boiled beeswax poured into the lap of eventide fixed up the familiar face Soul syphoned as tax with lips forever widely untied yet draped in smatters of lace Bright acrylic lacs whispering old words that formed and dyed a novel paint palate case Dry anticlimax from feeble watercolor tears cried at night end's bitter disgrace Broken into scraps less than what it could and would provide more than all it could erase
Locked behind bones wrapped in brocade an indelicate escape plea screaming inward for a reply. This bustle will surely outgrow the short lived modesty debut. One could claim you're on a crusade offending nobles in a spree until it's protests can outcry, overpower, your own deep woe - setting you down, trapping anew. Perhaps you'll set to work, or trade Or marry yourself a marquis. Resolve your fate with one more lie: he undressed you patiently slow then treats you as more than a screw
Knotted tightly in my psyche is a feral call: a plea to return to an unvisited place where unfamiliar arms can bring rest. Routine saps the life from my soul - within safety it writhes in silent agony Lacking nourishment unknown - unnamed. Hunger looks inward to survive famine. Ravenous claws stripping only prime cuts - psychological filet, served bloody and rare. I will be the last to walk away from me. The world unrecognisably cold and damp under the footsteps of a more fulfilling life
I know this night, I know its call. Agony wears a harpy's grin to tempt the lungs to drown within. The bedfellow of cortisol; this life raft needs prescription scrawl before we're buried in its skin. I know this night. A panic button protocol shotgunned with cheap raspberry gin. Hope: the very first deadly sin that chokes us all against the wall I know this night.
Death's kiss, with all of it's surgical precision, cannot wash away your scent. Sweet burnt marshmallow pooled in the final sands of the hourglass - a tar to keep the coffin sealed. Stale espresso left in the morning dew whispers that it tastes the same - a brew far more bitter than the lonely truth.
Walking in the shadows of your footprints Trying to pretend I can see you still Hoping I just might Knowing I won't. Wishing the trail leads somewhere final Fearing there's an end Hiding from the present Abandoning the past.
Am I to be poured of cold glass and dance with death in soft pink gin? We'll spin upon a tailor's pin wearing the tarnish of brass. Bewitched in gaze, sunk in morass, I tread both lines in mortal skin. Am I to be poured of smashed glass and dance soft with death in pink gin? Reaper smiles sickeningly crass rapping bone on pondering chin with a heavy sigh of chagrin. This moment of visit must pass. I am poured out of cold smashed glass while death dances soft in pink gin.
The Poet Armistead 