Two By John Tustin

BLACKENED

Memories blackened
Daydreams blackened
Love blackened
by her shadow
(I cannot grow in it)
by her fiery grip
(and I suffocate)
by her heel
(I flatten like a bug)

I drown in her version of love
Her passionate hate a bottomless fissure
Her will a cloud of furrowed dust
that blots the sun
Her will a rainfall
that pounds endlessly
without respite
killing the battered roots

Blackened in her glare
Charred by gleaming eyes
of accusation
Her fist
her mercury tongue
a barrage

The skin falls from the bone
and she wears the skin
and dulls the bone
into a flawless
uselessness

I cannot look into her face –
a face of glass and ice
without compassion or aching
The mouth that demeans
The lips that deny
The eyes that wither
The ears that ignore

She is not a rifle
She is a needle
She is a gasoline soaked rag
She is a scalpel
Deliberate is the word
Careful
to only cut out
what is still soft,
not blackened,
not touched yet
by her poison

She eats my flesh
and throws my eyes
to starving vultures
But she cooks what she eats

And I am cooked.




REALIZATION

I sit in my boxers
listening to music,
reading poetry,
typing these words,
contemplating the status of my life,
my relationships living
and dead,
my belly resting on my thigh,
my madness resting on my sanity,
my eternity unstable unsaid,
my eyes blurred,
the lines blurred,
my nose smelling rotten life,

and I come to the realization
that
not many really need me

and none
want me
at all.