olliewrites-blog

[olliewrites-blog]

(S)laughter

Sunset hues sob into blurring tree lines,

and I scrape at blackened soot windows;

teeth like bleached stallions

glint and gallop in rising moonlight.

I laugh as I grapple for breath in a flooded room,

brined in a sloshing bath of tears.

  I linger over dead men’s graves,

asking to join them in their retirement.

The cage that follows me screams,

wailing its refusal through peals of giggles.

It gives me no clemency.

I cannot grasp intangible elation.

  At the cusp, I am no match.

My self loathing clamors at brittle ankles,

confining me in my veiled limbo.

I want to escape, searching for liberation.

Begging eyes peer at me through soiled panes,

but the drooping smile of a noose is more inviting.

[olliewrites-blog]

Wind Chimes

The world died a long time ago, and I suppose that when it did, it birthed me in its wake. When I took my first breaths, the Earth was taking its last; there were more deserts than trees, whatever green that was left held with little regard. After all, why take care of something when one knows that it will die no matter what they do? No one could save a world that they’d murdered with their own hands.

I grew up playing with sand and living in a tiny house that was run down enough to have leaks when it rained, and rain was a rarity that I saw perhaps thrice before I was ten. I never knew anything better, so I was happy, always running around with my sisters and playing hide and seek in the desecrated houses around our own. No one lived in them, and no one could; we were the last to have the panes still secure in our windows, and our door didn’t hang off its hinges. Any others who’d remained were already gone by the time I could speak, and when I began to venture out with my sisters, it was a wasteland.

Nothing killed us but ourselves. War polluted, radiated, and the Earth was angry; it fought back, drowning and crushing and blowing away, until governments crumbled and monarchies withered, mirroring the forests that could never keep up with the smog. I never saw it, but I read it, the illustrations advanced for their time but alien to ours.

I was content, however, for a while. I had family, and that was what mattered. We were going to die one day regardless of how we lived, and Mother always told me that death would take us somewhere better; she reasoned that, even if it didn’t, black silence would be better than what we had. She was a pessimist, but I didn’t blame her.

The day came when it snowed; Earth had become unpredictable in its fury, and we had become lax with our concerns, assuming every day would be sunny and cloudless, hot enough to tan our bronzed skin with freckles and cherry burns. We had no blankets, and Mother couldn’t get the fire to stay alive, the wood too wet even though we ran to find it as soon as we woke to see white. It became frigid, and I had never shaken so fiercely in my years, but Mother was ever protective, and clutched us tight.

In the end, all that saved me was the smallness of my body and the weight of my Mother’s warmth as we tried to sleep away the blizzard. When I opened my eyes, it was silent, windless, and the outdoors had already begun their thaw; I felt locked in place by stiff rigor mortis and frosted joints.

Mother and my sisters were gone, and my bracketed form wept in their arms one last time. I was only ten, and I was forced to become precocious beyond my years the moment after I buried them in the dunes that piled out back yard.

I lived years in the same manner; loneliness was a constant state, the house always so quiet and only hearing sound when I would talk to myself or hammer away at a repair to keep the elements at bay. It was all for naught, but it gave me purpose, that of which I would have none of otherwise. I, unlike Mother, learned to keep a fire as soon as I could, and eating became easier as the canned goods that I would steadily steal tasted better hot. The grocery stores weren’t close, but I had nothing better to do besides walk to them, and the nonperishable foods were still plentiful.

At times, I was secure, and I found contentment in my monotony; however, there were times when the silence rung in my ears and forced my tears to burst and my chest to constrict. I had never experienced it for myself, but I could almost hear the rush of traffic, the clacking of trains and the whirring of helicopters in the night. I could recall the sound of wind through clattering leaves and crickets crooning love songs; sometimes I even heard a distant tinkling of bells, bright and happy, like I had not been in many years. It was all in my head, though. It had to be.

I was alone, and I always would be. Venturing to another settlement would be pointless; I would never make it, not with the burden of enough food to last me the trip and only my feet to carry me the distance. Besides, I am tired, and moving would be pointless when it would all be over so soon.

I spent my last night outdoors; the porch had long lost its screen, but the roof, however deformed it had become, still hovered over me. The rusted drum that I used for my fire was alight, flickering and dancing along the walls and the shallow plains of my face. All it did was exaggerate the darkness that puffed under my lids, but as there was no one around, I didn’t care. I watched the marigold and azure light the dunes just outside, and the moon created a backlight that made the still and hollow night seem just a bit less dismal.

For me, it didn’t make a difference. It didn’t matter if the nights were ethereal and the days were bright. I was exhausted, and I was alone.

When I did it, I did it fast. Father died when I was small, perhaps only four or five years old, and he only left a few things. One of them, Mother had never let me touch; I’d been permitted to try on his big, oversized coat, pretend to smoke his pipe, yet I had never been allowed to touch what Mother called a “gun.” She wanted me to know how dangerous it was, yet I knew that she never anticipated that explaining it would be the worst thing to do; I would never shoot it by accident, but that night, it weighed my hand down with purpose and promise.

I didn’t feel anything, and there were no moments of careful deliberations in which I reconsidered what I would be leaving behind. I watched the quivering light on the paneled ceiling and opened my mouth, sighing heavily. The night rung and echoed with the sharp punch of sound, and the last thing I heard was the soft dance of wind chimes whose song was my only friend.

[olliewrites-blog]

Resumption

I wane and flex as tides do,

my will fickle and fluid;

I see my life as cumbersome smoke,

an intangible entity that cannot

be kept in a corral of quivering teeth.

 As I dangle precariously,

the wind an intimate voice that coerces,

I feel fingers and palms

grapple at tenacious cloth to ground me.

My kilter is disrupted; I am wanted still.

 Maybe the lapis sky will never dye my lips,

but my once ruptured quintessence is inert,

and I refuse to leak pearlescent carnelian.

I am careening into branches of arms

that guide me to my latibule.

 I am no longer desolate.

I have been purloined from my crux,

replaced into an enveloping hearth

where I ameliorate in a glow of rapport.

Shrouded in yellow roses, I rise.

[olliewrites-blog]

Satellite Boy

I can construct sentences that he has never said

from the simple reminiscence of his voice.

His timbre is gentle and lulling;

it is full of the remnants of lives past,

a distant and ethereal memory

of laughter that permeates and heats my skin.

 He is a nebula, his colors explosive and infinitesimal.

His hands are all engulfing presences,

warm and dewy like early summer mornings;

I am weak for the moon craters

that fold into his cheeks

when I am graced with his solar smile.

 Quasars may blind me,

but he will render me helpless,

leave me gripping and clawing onto the hope that perhaps

I can pull his brightness into the spaces

between my ribs.

I can comprehend it, I think, if it is close to my heart.

 I swear that he has stardust

tremoring between his lashes,

glittering and shifting as his eyes crinkle.

I have only ever seen him smile;

when he does, he has galaxies

in the infinite resplendency of his irises.

 I think he walks on stars, one by one,

in his spare time; asteroid belts whirl at his feet.

He draws Orion and Aries

with his fingertips,

Delphinus coming to life

beneath his temperate palms.

 When I see him, I am initiated through the atmosphere,

barreling into the cosmos

as my inhibitions trail like comet tails.

I can’t help but be stricken,

mind stumbling drunkenly and raucously

as I try to define his pulchritude; these words are not enough.

 Please, someone must stop me.

I cannot fall like this, plummeting carelessly

back to this dull earth.

I know there is nothing for me here,

in the macrocosm of his entirety;

I will be shrouded by his ardor.

 He is so much more prodigious than me;

his very being extends,

kind and clement.

His heartbeat is the staccato rhythm

of jovial transmissions

that listlessly orbit me.

 I am inconsequential;

I am a dormant terrene,

loose and sailing through perpetuity.

He is a satellite boy, pirouetting flawlessly

just out of my reach.

Our gravity pulls like ocean tides.

[olliewrites-blog]

Peep

Flickers of thatched light

used to dance uninhibited

over deep mahogany skin,

and she would smile at me.

 Mornings were meant

to bring brightness, new breath;

She would pull every single one,

with soft and trembling lips.

 Fingers would ghost, gentle,

over the loving dip and curve of her waist.

She would hush me,

murmuring words of affection.

 I was happy; I was okay.

The things that scraped fear

into the grit of my bones

were visions of bliss with her.

 She was laughter, quiet nights,

fleeting kisses against

soft thighs and searching palms.

I loved her; it was sweet and raw.

  The letters would tide us over,

until three months later,

when we would run through crowds

and we forgot that others could see.

 They piled, hurting me.

I read words that mean nothing now,

and I ignored the regret as it brewed,

weighing me down more than her love.

[olliewrites-blog]

None Can Touch Her; None Can Touch Me

The night caresses my body;

I am wading through fog

searching for leverage

in the intangible trenches of white.

 Such is the mistress, untouchable,

her inky indigo stark and vast.

I cannot grasp her,

mentally nor physically.

 I breathe in crisp wind as it sweeps,

the tempest’s dewy caress

so restless and afraid.

I tremble in solidarity.

 I watch the people bow and pray,

in endless fields of lavender and amaryllis,

to a deity who is blinded and dimmed

by their luminescence.

  Here I lie, humble and unassuming.

I will not treat her as my maker.

She is my equal,

and I am as ethereal as she.

 Oh, she is so exquisite.

Rays of chartreuse and iris dance,

flickering between soft tapers

of naked, dormant oaks.

 Flurries of alabaster,

soft yet raw, fall slowly.

Distant, haunting points of light

flicker in the tired depth of my eyes.

 She smiles at me, full and white.

Her grin wanes and swells,

every evening new;

it is her very nature.

   She is ever changing,                                                                

yet I cannot move.

I feel her grow and peak

between the notches of my spine.

 I love her; I do.

Yet, she is unreachable,

and I must watch, stagnant,

as she shifts into blinding cyan and brimstone.

[olliewrites-blog]

Bearing

If I run until I leave behind vermillion pearls on the pavement,

like tangent proof of the purging of my burden,

will it finally leave?

What if I manically claw open my skull

to allow the mire of my mind

to be worn for all to see?

  Will my loved ones finally understand

the unfathomable deterioration that I feel?

I want them to know how perilously I need to scream.

I wish they could know how I ache to fix myself;

I don’t want to be broken.

But it’s okay, it’s fine, just breathe; I have it good.

 At least that’s what mom tells me.

I can feel it; that lie, that pressure,

like black worms that crawl up my windpipe to choke me.

I can feel it at the apex of my collarbones;

It is a stark taste it in the hollow of my throat,

burning like bile-acidic, raw, and swelling.

  My blankets are like a vice;

they are tendrils that bind me,

holding me down like callused paws around my neck.

Every sinew in my body begs me

down to the sunset hues of my marrow.

Please; please stay and forget.

 I want to, oh, I want to.

Because I don’t want to die;

I just want to sleep

for as long as it takes,

and let this incubus suffocate

in the infinite novae of my unconsciousness.

[olliewrites-blog]

Ensnared

The feeling of being unknown

burns the heart like a summer wildfire;

I can no longer hold the shape

of the warped and thorn laden mold

that I have long been forced to lie in.

  I am called “she”,

but the weights on my chest pull me down,

and distort my spine like a weathered mountainscape.

The ache to correct lumps in my throat,

thick bricks of coal that beg to dislodge.

  There are days when “she” makes me whither,

yet “he” can never be right;

I am corrected when I ask for “they”,

as if I know nothing of the language that I speak.

I reside in a plunging discord of condescension.

  The way I shiver and cringe

is reminiscent of the unyielding autumnal winds

that wrack through dying greenery;

I am an intruder in a body that is not mine,

and every curve is a dangerous ravine.

  Expectations are my noose;

I must be a “she” if I paint my face

in glitter and gold, lashes black and poised.

But my body does not allow for the passing

androgyny that society so vehemently demands.

  I am so very tired.

It is like drowning, the given sex

a never ending tirade of waves

that drag me into the depths of discomfort.

I live every day in skin that pulls too tight.