What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

poem/nights like this

I am only ever a poet on nights like this,

on nights

.

when the moon inhabits my blood like a ghost,

and the sepia fingers of bourbon or wine

or some other tangible spirit spread

.

through my heart like jasmine,

vines in my veins as the flowers pop up

as poetry.

.

Safe as vinegar.

.

Once, I was an all-hours poet,

star-tongued and raw in my words

as a bone splitting skin; I was

.

beholden to the grief of sleepless nights, the grief

of sixteen years that knew too much and not enough,

a melancholic bruise that lived

.

in fingertips aching for ink, pens, keys,

the words in my skin

worn as tears and the blemishes

.

of love.

.

I knew I was doomed; I knew

the poetry was a madness, that I wrote

like sonar in the trench-depths,

.

every verse an eyeless eye that lead

through silence, under the hard red glass

of unrequited lust; I knew

.

that if I were happy, the words would flee

like foxes before the hunting-horn –

.

and I was right.

.

These days, I try to summon the same old pains

like ifrit or genii worn into shadows

by too much use, as thin as old scarves

.

in daylight. I do not regret my joys,

those gleaming saviour-truths that defend

me against the grief I thought would claim me – but

.

there are times, even now, when I miss

the terrible clarity of drowning,

looking up at the world and knowing the air that bubbled

.

from my bruising lungs was a window

I could look through only once –

.

and so, there are nights like this,

.

when I can recapture with age and art

what youth endured by force, and the words

come flowing out in the same blue rhythm, the same

.

second heartbeat, bumping between

the plastic glyph and the fingerprint

.

and pinning my soul to the gleaming screen

like a butterfly pinned to museum felt:

preserved and glazed and beautiful

.

but dead

as last year’s dreams.

  1. cloudsinvenice reblogged this from fozmeadows
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  3. razziecat said: Brava.
  4. undyingdoom said: I just wanted to tell you that this poem is one of the most beautiful things i’ve ever read. it made me cry.
  5. undyingdoom reblogged this from fozmeadows
  6. fozmeadows posted this