dormantdog

[dormantdog]

the rabbit in the forest

a dark wooden cabin

the door otherwise locked

glass waiting for the bite

a hiss snaking through the window

blood sealing the floorboards

carpets frayed and fluttering

stairs collapsed into themselves

like an aged ribcage

leading to a bottomless chasm

bones holding the chairs upright

teeth in an ivory bowl

candles that haven't seen life

dishes and cutlery caked with rot

tablecloth stained of wine

a shadow at the edge of the room

i told you not to come but

you won't give up

until every part of you has died

curiosity nestled in the bullets

wounds sleeping in your body

come into my arms,

let the warmth swallow you whole

in sickness and in health

let the dread take over

licking the plate clean

using your femurs as toothpicks

smiling, pulling your lips into a grin, then

the bowl clinks with newfound goods

and the dust breathes a sigh

[dormantdog]

shining armor

can it be known?

i'm trying to make my way to you

through the darkest forest

and the sharpest thorns

if it's the last thing i do

i'll cross this labyrinth

arrow through the heart

my blood a pink mist

my blade is sharp for you

its loyalty is to the knight

romantic and gazing out the window

do we see the same moon?

i forgot who i was before you

stepping into the skin of savior

i left ten thousands lives behind

to live beside yours

maybe this embrace will save you

maybe it'll burn me to embers

fuel me until i can't run anymore

a phoenix in your arms

i tell myself, after all,

the night meets the morning

only for a few minutes a day

the sky a perfect crimson

[dormantdog]

the leash with no dog

somewhere along the line of my life

i woke up one morning

to find that my soul had slipped out

perhaps in an exhale

as i turned during the night

maybe i had misplaced it

the day before, in a back pocket

or dropped it without noticing

right through the mouth of a manhole

wherever it had gone,

i could not follow

my days now interrupted,

separated into before and after

the turning point being

when i could look inside

and see myself no more

my mind an empty house

feeling like a shell

a bowl for collecting dust

where did i go?

and where do i go from here?

as there is nothing to weigh me down

i feel like i could float away

a gust of wind to take me home

no red string of fate to this balloon

i'll rise closer to the sky

and i won't care to know

what will happen when i reach the sun

[dormantdog]

shudder

the world is stirring to life

falling in the opposite direction

storms clearing their throat

readying their gravel laughter

ink bleeding into the sky

carpets of leaves on the ground

chasing their tails

spinning into the silhouette of a person

with blood on their lips

and scars rumbling under their skin

conversations we're not ready for

it's autumn,

it's green until it's dying

it's kind until it's angry

it's time running out

leaking into manhole covers

a crime nobody can testify against

[dormantdog]

hunt your fate and shoot it down

you are a dead man walking

forgetting names and forging signatures

trying to bribe your way to heaven

what can go wrong?

you'll never know how much we want you

we reach out our hands for you

we've told you time and time before

but a dead man walking is a man no more

than a dried autumn leaf is

so take that pitchfork from the crowd,

take all our memories of you too

when you leave, be gone for good

i don't want this wound of a heart

i don't want to hold your name

dark haired icarus, let me go

your voice haunting my bones

scream so i know you're gone

pierce the sky and bring the rain

the clouds will never be the same

and i will never be alone

as long as i resent you

[dormantdog]

the ghost and the hound

on the other side of the fence

bordering the flank of my childhood school,

a backyard with flowering pots.

at the end of the small stone path,

a back door.

behind the lace curtains,

a cracked window.

an old lady lived there

aged tenfold by our young eyes

my classmates whispered about it--

a haunted house

and the ghost of a woman living in it

(sometimes she was a witch)

the ghost had a dog

ears perky and fur short

we weren't allowed to touch it

but i thought i was special

as if unicorns would approach me

as if they existed for me

and i would reach out to the dog--

the hell-hound, the familiar--

but it wouldn't come

i don't know why this memory came to mind

of the ghost in the house

and its unbothered hound

while i'm riding the bus

taken away by each day

floating through the week

transparent in the reflection

weightless and aimless

only to come home to my dog

[dormantdog]

i never grew up

is everything different or the same?

the years overlapping into a stain

pushing a needle through it

the future was born to haunt me

and i was born to want to know how

a ghost chasing me out this skin

you'll have to say goodbye to me soon

the wishes are catching up to me

you'll never get to love me again

you won't be able to will me into existence

the child died when the adult did

the snake and its tail burnt to ashes

[dormantdog]

i don't answer when the future calls

i'll sink my claws into my childhood

and be damned if i ever let go

you'll never take me without a bite mark

i'll run for all the lives i've lived before

i've sought refuge in the playground

among the trampled sandcastles

where the wasps want to survive

a sole pressing death into hope

a thunder cloud looming

dense and heavy and hungry

a bolt trying to find its home in my head

and pull me out of my fantasy

here i am, shaking and begging

for time to slow pity into mercy

i've left the sun behind long ago

the moon chasing a hijacked car

i won't scream when i die

but my legs will keep running

i'm losing a breath i'll never get back

wasted on a lap around my childhood house

[dormantdog]

waiting for it

sometimes i wish that i was dying

hospital bed and iv drips

something gone within the soul

white roses on a nightstand

maybe then i'd be valuable

cherished openly due to my limited time

i'd be desired, worthy of memories

and i'd get what i want

i firmly think this is for someone else

better used in other hands

life and the will for it isn't for me

i can never understand where to go

i sow my silence and i reap it

gathering baskets of lost opportunities

loose threads spilling out my heart

fabricating loneliness out of them

one day i'll be the bigger person

i'll stop wishing for people to love me

stop telling the stars about what i want

but for now, i'm perched on the windowsill

i know i'm selfish

every bone i throw spells it out

but as long as there's a hole

i'm there to chip it larger

[dormantdog]

breaking the dam

the rawest form of love is like electricity

and i'm biting and i'm tearing and i'm grabbing the cable

my skin feels like it's on fire, my heart feels like it's about to give out

but this is the best i've ever felt

being fed straight from the source, burning all the ends of my wires

smoke filling up the room

alive as i'll ever be

the last lightbulb shining strong before giving out

nothing but a celebratory fire remaining

all i've ever wanted to be--ashes after the spark,

a wish already granted,

salt on the cheeks.

[dormantdog]

(a poem that is long)

for the first time this season,

i'm back at the skating rink

although i can't call it a rink

a carpet of frozen water over a field of gravel

seniors gather around this square in the summer

to play games i don't understand

but now, it's just me

staring up at the sky, i see nothing but the moon

winter has come and settled like a bullet in a wall

leaving me underdressed and caught by the shrapnel

the wind picks up ever so slightly and falls short of an annoyance

i'm still sitting in the snow, blades on the ice

i don't know when i'll get up again, but i don't think i care

i haven't accomplished anything i wanted to today

the wolves are starving. the feast will arrive eventually, when i'll have come to this place one time too many

me or a boy, me and a boy, whichever iteration i'll have chosen to be

hand in hand, fingernail to skin

no matter how far i run, the ice will still be cold

and the teeth will still be sharp

for now and until then, i raise my glass to bad decisions

the only promise i can keep

if i'm bold enough, if i crawl out of my skin

somebody will share my toast and bless my insolence

this late in the night, only the neighborhood cat is listening

uninterested in the figure in the snow

an animal circling the ice and another watching it

i've stepped into my childhood fable

i wave a little, wishing for company

getting only a stare and apathy

better than nothing at this skating rink

where the only skater waits for her self to catch up

from the prompt list made by @mercuriian!

[dormantdog]

(a poem about something on your desk) 

there's a leather-bound book sitting in the corner of my desk

pressed up against the wall, a string wrapped around it

its singular green eye staring at the ceiling

my christmas gift 

i feed it and forget it, until i start growing and growing

a balloon with too much air, my skin strains against the pressure

i unravel the notebook, write down the date, and breathe it all out

it takes in the graphite, pages like teeth

fed enough thoughts to warrant a life of its own

a mouth that can only choose to close

the world's first, second, third man-made audience

diluted by virtue of its nature

from the prompt list made by @mercuriian !

[dormantdog]

(a poem that is short)

i don't remember seeing the sun today

all i know is the four walls of my room, 

the feelings i left in a book i just finished, 

and a promise i can't break:

i will live no matter what i think of it

from the prompt list made by @mercuriian!

[dormantdog]

over and over

if i die, it's death by drowning

melted to a puddle,

back to whence i came

swimming upstream the river styx

holding on to nothing

maybe then i'll finally let go

submerged and blind, nothing else

bubble in my head, whispering

"give me all the air

i'll take it, wrap it

then love it so hard it disappears

and i'll hold it against you forever"

i'm too busy sinking to care

blowing smoke underwater

the light a distorted shard

and i reach toward it

despite everything, i wish to survive

i fight to glue myself back together

yet i've lost too much

my blood in the water now

worst case scenarios are lonely

even if my fate is everpresent

only i am dying tonight

in this basin of lukewarm water

baptized by pain

i've come to lurk under the surface

my eyes unable to see the sun

a body made into a vessel

[dormantdog]

the dreamer's dilemma

the clouds overhead are moving so fast

taking the sun with them

i watch them float past me

no bitterness in being a witness

a blessing behind closed doors

when the leaves have all fallen

and the sky is ever more clearer

i crane my neck towards the light

trying my best to bask in it

take me with you, too!

i can't fly, but i can cry like you do

i sit and i stare, a quiet hope

i will be the only one to see the shapes

the heart, the rabbit, the eye

at least i can take those with me

quickly before they disappear

i've missed my flight and i'll miss it again

homesick for safety and solitude

i'll never be alone if i climb the sky

and if i wouldn't have any limbs to break

when the rain brings me back

a hermit at heart, i am

then, eyes burning, i keep watching

guardian of my own lighthouse

emperor of my own loneliness

[dormantdog]

nothing is close enough

it may just be the start of something new

i wouldn't know until i survive through it

i'm marrying the axe

wedged between the winter air and the tree

a sunset i've seen time and time again

this time i'm not looking

peering at the window through my mirror

i watch the hospital rooms light up

the sky is overwhelmingly empty

yet my frames are so small

the gaps between us are so wide

and lighthouses don't blink for you

i've stopped trying to understand

why everything goes wrong

the cars driving by are part of the crime

lights breathing in and out, panting

i've choked the home out of the room

ribs welded to the wall

making my bed like a grave

wishing to the wrong god

there's a purity to the method

erasing a presence clean

the cold doesn't ask for forgiveness

i still lay it down in a trap

i've broken clocks from waiting

blessings in the shards of glass

soon i'll breathe again

hand over hollow chest

[dormantdog]

heart without a presence

i am your imaginary friend

struggling to exist

throwing stones at the window

my limbs translucent

you've walked right through me

and taken my warmth

why did you make me up?

erase me from your mind

or write me a higher tolerance

let me out of this box

i used to like it here

velvet walls

now the room feels like a mouth

im swallowed like a painkiller

left to dissolve

i want there to be nothing left of me

yet you keep thinking of me

forming me back from dust

remembering me

only when you want to

so i sit in the empty room

banging my head against the wall

it's not your heartbeat you're hearing

i don't think it's mine either

i wish i could see the bruises

they'd bring me to life

a mannequin no more

yet when you come back

i am alive as long as you see me

i stay and love you

or haunt you

they're interchangeable

my lungs cold

my hopes tied to a balloon

that i can watch reach the sun

and disappear

i wish to join them

anything to exist somewhere else

remember me or let me go