Jack Szagreus
09-11-2002, 11:25 AM
Here are a few poems and fragments I’ve written lately,
enjoy these children of my recent heartbreak:
Unrepentant stardust addicts.
It’s you I’ve sought.
In knots, initiated.
Wound up in secret shapes.
Empty. Nonetheless.
Our hunger is what remains in the blush of dawn,
as we divide the constellations in our outlaw camp.
Stars of the North and cool moonglow devising
the happy and unhappy fates of beasts and men.
And we together are all smiles -
Lips curling slowly around an unexplained fondness.
Like gentle hands around an injured bird.
Sweetness spoke.
In dreams, delighted.
Kissed. Awoke.
And Unrequited..
Wound up in secret alphabets of desire,
my tongue thrashes like a serpent.
I want to say words that flame,
where thresholds open up into space.
Standing upon that precipice,
all of Earth will tremble under a rain of kisses,
and I will leap into the vertigo of love
or into the gulf of the starless night.
Octarine.
My mouth aches and my eyes restrain tears.
If I tasted you again. I wouldn’t want to stop.
You stung my lips and made them precious reminders
that despite the venom of the world
there is still truth in sweetness.
Octarine.
I’m a victim of foolish yearning,
authoring artful meaning against the world’s suffering.
Forgetting all the while the inevitability of beauty.
I suppose it’s the romantic’s dilemma,
but I’m not sure it really matters.
Octarine.
In you there is the implication of a tree.
Of an orchard. Of luscious landscapes!
I’m delirious with a weird sensualism,
savoring everything with streaming eyes
and an famished mouth.
Always savages, rarely brutes,
and more like pilgrims in our movements
towards this very destination.
At last The End – This stillness,
as it fades or is displaced in memory.
will perhaps seem tragic to some,
and necessary to others.
In the House of Madness
there was never madness enough
to quench my thirst for it.
Funny how tragedy is –
and how necessary.
The honey of the moth is the dew of dream.
Spread your snowy wings over the Empyrean vastness!
After tripping and falling hard,
I laid in the grass, sighs heaving.
Feeling a rare sort of relief,
If only until I felt foolish just lying there
thinking how sexy international postage is:
Ardent stamp-lickers aching for Red Letters,
yearning to be written upon by mysterious desire.
Returning, the highway became a passionate cipher
as my contents threatened to explode. Or collapse.
An umbilicus of smoke coiled through the sky like a garland.
Unable to focus my eyes, I stumbled all over town in the dark
until I stood in a toadstool ring against all logic
and spat oaths at the stern, azure-lidded moon.
Only the moths can attest to the searchlights of my lunacy.
Dark-featured by starlight, like a handful of wine
poured with careful ceremony and drunk with reverence.
My tongue knocks against my teeth in anticipation
of delicious celestial relief.
Shadows spill out and I suck them up like nectar.
"Is life beautiful?" I have to ask,
considering my night-blindness...
I'm fine, considering the continuous pain of metamorphosis. Entire tentacles have dropped off and sprouted autonomous salamanders. Once pseudopods, they're now the Homonculi of the Karcist - skulking cancers formed by the bud-will of a toad-suckled teat.
The old king of being lay dead just beneath the surface of the inland sea, his massive belly slashed, a new Titanomachia ferments in his undulating guts.
Ribbons of Theban text whipping softy in the cool air. Uncoiling. No longer binding. The holes in me gape, light glints against deep crystalline chambers. Lately, my ability to discern my contents has proved unreliable, hence the agonized reveal.
You are the horror deep under water, the moon's inversion, the mirrored fish of chaos. What is yours drives men to haste and initiates them to stillness. The hidden meridians I saw under your skin, laid out in schematics of Taoist calligraphy, were enough to fill me with memories of being electrocuted. I saw crowned and jeweled emblems transmitting lightning strikes through the invisible landscape of your body, I feared the universe was changing in ways incomprehensible to me. A welcome terror.
With a vital breath like almond marachino,
I realize a sort of drunkard’s qi-gong.
My feet slip through the long grass with ease,
spreading a hush for miles in all directions.
I’m thinking about masks, and anonymity.
My thoughts race out, like a bullet from a sling,
Penetrating empty space. Impacting nothing.
The heavens, despite their vacancy, seem rich.
Despite their wealth, seem lonely.
Despite their solitude, seem to invite…
With a vital breath like almond marachino,
I realize that I’m only just drunk.
My footing was loose and I’ve been laying all night
at the hilltop, crying. Moaning softly.
Cursing my own stupidity, I rise up
and contemplate the pointlessness of disguise.
enjoy these children of my recent heartbreak:
Unrepentant stardust addicts.
It’s you I’ve sought.
In knots, initiated.
Wound up in secret shapes.
Empty. Nonetheless.
Our hunger is what remains in the blush of dawn,
as we divide the constellations in our outlaw camp.
Stars of the North and cool moonglow devising
the happy and unhappy fates of beasts and men.
And we together are all smiles -
Lips curling slowly around an unexplained fondness.
Like gentle hands around an injured bird.
Sweetness spoke.
In dreams, delighted.
Kissed. Awoke.
And Unrequited..
Wound up in secret alphabets of desire,
my tongue thrashes like a serpent.
I want to say words that flame,
where thresholds open up into space.
Standing upon that precipice,
all of Earth will tremble under a rain of kisses,
and I will leap into the vertigo of love
or into the gulf of the starless night.
Octarine.
My mouth aches and my eyes restrain tears.
If I tasted you again. I wouldn’t want to stop.
You stung my lips and made them precious reminders
that despite the venom of the world
there is still truth in sweetness.
Octarine.
I’m a victim of foolish yearning,
authoring artful meaning against the world’s suffering.
Forgetting all the while the inevitability of beauty.
I suppose it’s the romantic’s dilemma,
but I’m not sure it really matters.
Octarine.
In you there is the implication of a tree.
Of an orchard. Of luscious landscapes!
I’m delirious with a weird sensualism,
savoring everything with streaming eyes
and an famished mouth.
Always savages, rarely brutes,
and more like pilgrims in our movements
towards this very destination.
At last The End – This stillness,
as it fades or is displaced in memory.
will perhaps seem tragic to some,
and necessary to others.
In the House of Madness
there was never madness enough
to quench my thirst for it.
Funny how tragedy is –
and how necessary.
The honey of the moth is the dew of dream.
Spread your snowy wings over the Empyrean vastness!
After tripping and falling hard,
I laid in the grass, sighs heaving.
Feeling a rare sort of relief,
If only until I felt foolish just lying there
thinking how sexy international postage is:
Ardent stamp-lickers aching for Red Letters,
yearning to be written upon by mysterious desire.
Returning, the highway became a passionate cipher
as my contents threatened to explode. Or collapse.
An umbilicus of smoke coiled through the sky like a garland.
Unable to focus my eyes, I stumbled all over town in the dark
until I stood in a toadstool ring against all logic
and spat oaths at the stern, azure-lidded moon.
Only the moths can attest to the searchlights of my lunacy.
Dark-featured by starlight, like a handful of wine
poured with careful ceremony and drunk with reverence.
My tongue knocks against my teeth in anticipation
of delicious celestial relief.
Shadows spill out and I suck them up like nectar.
"Is life beautiful?" I have to ask,
considering my night-blindness...
I'm fine, considering the continuous pain of metamorphosis. Entire tentacles have dropped off and sprouted autonomous salamanders. Once pseudopods, they're now the Homonculi of the Karcist - skulking cancers formed by the bud-will of a toad-suckled teat.
The old king of being lay dead just beneath the surface of the inland sea, his massive belly slashed, a new Titanomachia ferments in his undulating guts.
Ribbons of Theban text whipping softy in the cool air. Uncoiling. No longer binding. The holes in me gape, light glints against deep crystalline chambers. Lately, my ability to discern my contents has proved unreliable, hence the agonized reveal.
You are the horror deep under water, the moon's inversion, the mirrored fish of chaos. What is yours drives men to haste and initiates them to stillness. The hidden meridians I saw under your skin, laid out in schematics of Taoist calligraphy, were enough to fill me with memories of being electrocuted. I saw crowned and jeweled emblems transmitting lightning strikes through the invisible landscape of your body, I feared the universe was changing in ways incomprehensible to me. A welcome terror.
With a vital breath like almond marachino,
I realize a sort of drunkard’s qi-gong.
My feet slip through the long grass with ease,
spreading a hush for miles in all directions.
I’m thinking about masks, and anonymity.
My thoughts race out, like a bullet from a sling,
Penetrating empty space. Impacting nothing.
The heavens, despite their vacancy, seem rich.
Despite their wealth, seem lonely.
Despite their solitude, seem to invite…
With a vital breath like almond marachino,
I realize that I’m only just drunk.
My footing was loose and I’ve been laying all night
at the hilltop, crying. Moaning softly.
Cursing my own stupidity, I rise up
and contemplate the pointlessness of disguise.