Poetry about Loss – Page 2 – Theater of Sorrows

Visitation

Mysterious “I Heart U” on the outside of a hotel window, 13 stories up.

I owe this decimated mind a sabbath
Its lush landscape drenched in fire, scorched to the ground, nothing left but shocked shadows –
Wandering among the bones of ash that once were loves’ anatomy
Corpse flower pupils, dilated with unfinished memories… Breathe in… breathe out…
I have gone away, into a galaxy unfamiliar, this –
Nocturnal feast where stiffened-spine beasts gnash the stars between their teeth
Pop them open, so that they shoot sparks like firefly tentacles across that endless, velveteen sky
Where gothic, wing-ed creatures fly, and funnels swirl that swoop you and I to ill-seasoned tombs…
Ambivalent umbra
Silent, gyrating, unfamiliar repose between this world and the next
I close my eyes and inhale the stagnant air, longing for just one bittersweet scent of you
Even in this darkest hour
Hope is an artistry that thankfully, fertilely slips through combustible fractures
Unfurling, prowling the shadows, hellbent that there might be the smallest chance of alchemy
– At the discretion of angels and demons, of course –
Which births, at the very least, our own private language, between this damnable here…
And the cold, steely, unfathomable blue of there…
Your apparition
A visitation –
A dark, velvety thing, which swallows up the diaphanous moon
Skeletal remains of us – the bones of romance
Littering the sun-baked fields where crimson-petaled malice was sometimes in full bloom…
You were a vision I first saw in a sloshed wonderland –
Jackal with a raven’s wings, libation in an anointing cup
Drink it down until you spin, until the walls melt and it comes back up
Pulpit philosophizer with bent eyes, warrior’s armor fastened with 1,000 growling wounds
Morrison voice
In your own personal church, preaching a poet’s dictionary definitions
Tangled around warped, cement memories…
That burn is angry, boy –
Romanticizes dead relationships and dead dreams
And how deliverance demands a sacred sacrifice –
The reflection of love a myth in your starless eyes…
Temerarious deeds mangling each kiss
Charisma and apologies on your lips, along with the perverse
Your breath hot as you murmured against my mouth
– I’ll take your body and your mind, and make them worse… –
Blurry “accidents” that you were used to gathering –
Gravebound, to be buried beneath your prized angel trumpets, wrapped in omissions
Still, you penned a masterpiece; Intimate, lyrical memories painted in convenient, pretty poetics –
And, I’m in devil territory, dedicated to my own madness
Celestial fetish
Let me pretend that some desperate incantation is more than just an apparatus
Let me have just one divine intervention, one mellifluous, seraphic afterglow…
Your breath slithering along my flesh, as I lean into this tamarind womb –
A honeycomb; Part of it holding 13 East side cells filled with remorse, could-haves and should-haves…
I wouldn’t beg when you were here, but I’ll beg now if it will wake me from this cold, florescent fate
Unravel this surreal terrain that even Remedios couldn’t have foreseen –
Give me just one more second with you…
I’ll search in unexpected places –
Black witch moth hovers among discarded things; Your sign to me of resurrection?
Have you finally come to give me my goodbye?

Mio

Rik 1968-2023

Alchemist
Alembic eyes that saw through wounds, truths that few would comprehend
You came to me from the shadows, arms full of specters that you unpacked haphazardly
Tossing them around my sanctuary
Without warning, you led me into the valley of the damned
Stripped me of my church, my cloth, my order, persuasions and devotions
Until I was like a newborn egg; parchment smooth
Shaped me with calloused hands, into a pyre
Then lit me on fire
And I, I flew –
Crow soaring toward raven
Scars stitched to scars with inky thread in an atemporal coupling
Cosmic kiss with you, my beloved Mio
Cerulean cathedral continuum, pendulum of, and between, two souls
Incantatory equinox of moonstone and moonflower
Your tears my water
Your breath my heartbeat
Your words my psychomancy
Your death punching, puncturing my addictions, my afflictions, my dreams, my Eden…

Metamorphopsia
I’m looking through an hourglass of insidious pain
Black feathers arched, wings trying to grip these thorny, roiling clouds
Cigarette smoke a pungent elephantine talisman in this empty house, during this unflinching blue hour
Firewitch am I, full of rage and holy listening for any sign that you are still near
I am languishing among all of this gristle –
And the brutality of all of these damned, festering, lacerating, excruciating poems…
I cannot smudge this vile, writhing wretchedness away
Shrieking at the silence, tearing at my hair, my wounds of madness wailing against this intolerable hell…
I chastise the angels, though they too are suffering the abruptness of your departure
I curse your demons, curse the lies, spit on my love –
Then take it back again
I am choking on remorse and more haggard than any ancient crone
I search for you among the birds, the rivers, fire, air and stones
I bleed my pain, write it down and read it to you like I did when you were home…
And I know that you would understand, that I curse you for leaving me alone
So fierce, so brilliant, so beautifully savage
And now you’ve left me stuck in Wonderland
Trying to make sense of up is down and down is twisted
And fuck the platitudes, and Book of Condolence, and most of all – fuck my wishes
And… all the time in the world won’t. fix. this.
Sticks and stones, tears and bones; I’ll keep my promise – keep your words close
Can you come to me in a dream? Let me know that you’ve Finally. Found. Home?
Nighttime sucks the breath from me
Witchy, tumescent moon is bittersweet
Helps me feel close to you…
Plump, glowing, ripe with knowing
Loving witness to epochs of loss and mourning tears. Now? It’s my turn now to grieve
Send my love to you
Wrap you in its warm cocoon

Dedicated to Richard J. Balog

Brilliantly talented poet, warrior, loved, tormented soul. We all deserve to make our own personal choices. I just wish that you had had enough love and support to have chosen anything else in this world. Anything, anything else. I hope that you are finally at peace. Finally home.
XXO Siempre.

At Every Turn

I thought that you were hard to love
Like sewing a butterflies wings
Like exorcising ghosts by bringing back the dead
There’s honesty, and then there’s being cruel
I never meant to is the worst kind of deceit
Love melting into scars
Emptiness strangling the stars…
I thought your eyes were brown, when the road fell away behind us –
That dried up town in the rear view, where we tossed dirt onto the demons
But all I see is grey, casting shadows on your shadows
Rusted memories twisted round you
Pelting undertow threatening to drown you
I thought that I could take away your pain –
But I guess I don’t know how to
And killing time won’t devastate what’s devastated you
Demons’ bones in piles, but specters still gloating, spinning pompous smiles…
Grind the perverse gristle into broth –
Swallow down what’s edible, and leave the rest to rot…
Messenger eyes upon you, beak thrusted toward a hazardous moon
Naming you their kind –
Just like I sensed, the first time…
Feathers left in cobbled nests
Of thread and twigs, and torn, half written words of love in purple passages…
I’ll sew your wings, stitch them deep and strong, through your skin into your bones
So you can soar through sunflower galaxies, then I’ll whisper you back home
Let my body be your soft earth, where you can kneel down to pray
My eyes like liquid runes, spelling out you’re not alone
Those infestations gestating chaos in your abstract mind –
Come, give all that to me
I’ll paint it into words only for your ears –
Ten thousand juicy valentines…
We’ve had trouble staying on the road
Broken glass and crunched, metal-punctured dreams
Grapes dead on the vines –
We’ve dragged our scraped up hearts behind
But oh… the way you taste…
Like licking honey from the comb
I want to inhale all your words, all your sweetness, all your wounds
And oh… the way you hurt…
It sucks the marrow from my bones
Until I ache and bleed for you…
I gave up trying to understand what fate made clear so long ago
I thought that you were hard to love
But maybe it was me?
It’s 3am and the snow just keeps falling… falling… falling…
The cities lights make me feel melancholy, just like you often do
I think that sadness fills me with an absinthe bliss, like being stoned on poppy stew
And I’m sorry for the harsh words, and I’m sorry that I’ve been unkind
And I’m waiting, and at every turn –
You’re on my mind