Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Saturday, February 11, 2023

Hyena

 

Charming razor, second-hand heart,
faceless blank walking the orchards in a black duster,
you've brought wine
and dying birds
for my birthday, five months late. 

There are no seasons scenting your skin anymore,
you're a false summer,
holding up a pennant
that says, "I am here. Drop everything." 
In love with folly, and mock moons, I turn into midnight and let you in.

So tenderly I used to touch the icicles in your hair.
If there are graves in Heaven,
that is where your bed beckons
and always there is a woman reaching up from it,
a hallucination who would do anything for you, even as a phantom.

I told my girlfriends back when you caught me in your spring snare
and I starved very prettily
in your net like a sachet,
I said, "I have kissed a hyena and borne its laugh.
Collect my bones and boil them, my mother-song will stun every April blade.

Charming razor, second-hand heart,
frost your sham love with French cream so that I can bear the taste
as I spit it out.
Bring your playthings
so that I can crush them with the pestle of my tongue and destroy them,
especially my old devotion that spoke such fine poetry in your scavenger ear.
________

for Word Garden Word List--A Season In Hell.


Image: I Dream of Reaching by Ivan Pili. 

Music: Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa Your Heart Is As Black As Night



11 comments:

  1. Chills. Raw, rough, real! Erotic in the best way. I know what it feels like to be caught up in a snare .. my starving was not pretty nor sweet as a sachet.

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  2. "When I'm bad, I'm better" indeed. In awe at how you put such amazing words and images together. Over-the-top good.

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  3. This gave me goosebumps to read Shay! As sweet as it is bitter, and as lovely as it is wounded and hard. No one ever writes of love and the hurt it sometimes throws us as you do my friend!

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  4. This: “I turn into midnight and let you in.“ and especially this: “ If there are graves in Heaven, / that is where your bed beckons”. Stunning.

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  5. Yes. I agree with all of the above. Such stunning imagery and such raw emotion. Like qbit I really loved the line "I turn into midnight and let you in". And the last 2 stanzas really blew me away.

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  6. Quite amazing. I found myself caught in "kissed a hyena and borne its laugh".

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  7. When the sun begins rising in the west and setting in the east life — it turns things around, and youth and patience fade as your world is off its axis

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  8. Grim and inviting...the kind of thing you can read until it gets under your skin.

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  9. I agree with all that has been said - just brilliant :) (AJ)

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  10. Dark and beautiful and a perfect accompaniment to the image you chose. This line is just so edgy and awesome:

    "frost your sham love with French cream so that I can bear the taste
    as I spit it out."

    And I absolutely love the whole of the second stanza <3

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  11. So well done, Shay! I love this line:
    "In love with folly, and mock moons, I turn into midnight and let you in.

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Spirit, what do you wish to tell us?