Shiloh: Spoken Word & Poetry

| Banquet | Dissolution | Dream Junkie | untitled |


Banquet

My plate spills over, filled
With fruits of strange and
Twisted trees, raw and
Under-ripened, pale and
Livid, and all of them
Hard.

I choke on things you've
Never tasted, sharp-edged,
Shaped like
Stars,
Things my mouth can't
Stretch around, shattering
Dreams between my jaws,
Teeth crumbling in turn.

Fragments slit my throat
Going down. I am
Swallowing
Bitterness and blood, consuming
Myself.

This is the meal of
My lifetime, a banquet
To nourish my soul.
This is wine to
Bleed me dry
This is meat to
Swallow me whole.

Here is my undoing,
My last and
Mortal sin, of
Gluttony, of being
A hole so deep
I can't be filled.
Here is my humanity:
My eyes are bigger than
My heart.

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Dissolution

A strange wave has washed
Down over me, soaking in
Through my skin, flowing
Chalk-white and shaded and close
To the bones. Pale phantoms
Unfurl within my flesh like
Currents of water or
Breath, swelling and ebbing in
Abstract tides, a heave and shiver
You could measure with your
Hands if you touched me.

Stale passions leach from
My blood, dreams dissolved and
Unremembered for years, now
Rising to my surface, gathering
Dark as bruises in the
Shapes of unfamiliar countries,
Shadowed faces, the form
Of a moth.

Is this the season, come
At last, when I will drain
To dust and scatter, all
My anguished warring wills
Flown free in perfectly opposed
Directions, fragmented
Smaller than sand, each
Pale transparent grain of me
Resonating with a final
Harmony of isolation?
Filled with peace and
Emptiness, I will recall myself
Only as embrace
Of wind and distance.

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Dream Junkie

Nepenthe
Beguiling sea,
Pirating my eyes and breath,
Break over me, promise me
Your undertow.

What could you not
Steal from me and, crueler yet, Return transformed?

Love in place of weariness, a
Vanished hand, now
Threading through my hair, a
Mended life, and objects
Lost, now found, swirling
All within your tides.

Play Lazarus for me
Dredge up the dead
I'd quelled beneath your waves,
Wash jewels across their eyes and
Film their skins with silver.
Dare me not
To want them, then
Let them sink
Again beneath your
Swells. Of course my
Desperate fingers follow down, your
Mottled depths close over me, reality
Receding in ghost-glimmers
At the surface.

The sun mourns me, its
Errant child. It fails to show
Sharp edges here, cannot
Rouse my languid blood, its faint
Refracted trickle a pale
Memory. I'm growing phosphorescent, and light
Only what I wish.

Nothing hurts me
Here, except insomnia.
Nightmares, when they come, are
Fleeting: toothy shapes
Glide past above, easily
Escaped with opened eyes, a pounding
Heart, wrecked against the beach.
When I wake I see through eyes so
Choked with water, I am
Ruined for this world.

So lure me down again, I
Swallow without fail, tasting only
Salt and melted
Bitterness sea-changed to sweet,
My regrets and wonders
Shining and renewed, treasures
I must drown
To seek.

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untitled

My skin aches empty in the voids
Your hands have left. The space
Around my edges stings with absence.
Tendriled vines that dormant lay beneath
My winter skin, unknown, ungrown for
Years, unfurled at once beneath your touch,
Now curl away inside with sudden chill.

Nightly in the silence and the dark before
I sleep, I search for trace of you,
Whatever I can share, or draw to me:
A star that burns above us both, on which
I wish, and wish again;
Scattered molecules of air that once
Comprised your breath, now borne to me on
Cosmic winds, impelled into my lungs by pure
Desire; the thoughts that hum together in
Our minds; and all that's stretched
Between us, taut and true, and
Strong as life.

All these remain to me, as well as words
And faded fingermarks, remembered comfort of
Your lips on mine, rusted petals, bottles
Drained and songs heard through the night,
The image of your face behind my eyes.
As I sleep I feel, renewed, the shape of
you beside me, you within.
Guard my dreams and give me solace, all the
Best of me now crystallized in you, a
Shining core revealed within our glow.

When I wake, I turn my questing
Gaze to rising sun, and see
No road but that you travelled down, a
Path to realms I never dared to
Crave, the only path that I can
Countenance as being mine. I stand
Before you now: blindsided, blessed, and
Filled with love; with open eyes I leap.
Stretch out your hand to me to guide me
Home, fix your heart on mine, and pray
My journey swift, and safe, and soon.

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