Monday, March 1, 2010

Poetry Break #3 - Pierced


1. Whispers grow to screams

In the busy coffee houses

That I frequent,


The waiters – they don’t know me

But lately, they spill my latte

(Almost) at will.


Grungy gamines

Trip and fall on the lines and verses

That I feed them;


They’re never hungry –

And they only sniff at

The pages of the books that I leaf.


2. Prying eyes make it difficult

For me to ascend the staircase

To the stage where


A podium and the microphone

Long fashioned into a lonely noose

awaits me;


My trousers soaked through

With hot coffee

and cold spite


Cling to me

like the words that I peel off

One by one and discard upstage.


3. I rise and take my place

in the lonely spotlight

nevertheless


To aver the angst

On behalf of my

Shiftless generation;


Scared shitless generation

With too many stories

To tell


And bubbles

like the bile to the back of my throat and spills out of me like so:


4. A goth-ed chick

Stands before me


The Dark around her eyes

Absorbs the light


In a monotone drawl

She says:


‘I am the queen

of mono-syllabic rage’

And bludgeons me

With her soliloquy.


5. ‘Shit!’ She calls me.


‘Bitch!’ I reply

And shift my eyes downstage.


I search the glare

For a love long lost.


And try not to recall

How I was once impaled


On that love

Pierced and tattooed


And Twisted as you.


6. Was I Ever more


Than the object of

Your murderous fixation?


Another one of your

Trampled flowers


Another door

That you preferred to keep closed


And the retreating light

From above the threshold


In the face of your rage


7. Your eyes juxtaposed

Bring me

Sharply into focus


And line me up

With the horns

On your face


Four legs and four feet

Hastily scratch

The dusty ground


Shaking the folds

Of her dark grey

Skin


8. And shakes

the empty branches

of a tree long silent


And a heart that

still trembles

And pines,


For the shadows

That haunt its every corner,

And the yearning


Each time

the rhinoceros climbs down

And peers in.

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