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An animal with flashing eyes of gold and blue-grey,
Gunmetal sunsets with feral forests
Rimmed by dark deserts,
Sank its teeth into flesh and blood,
Pierced through muscle and tangled
Porcelain canines into my veins.
.
Rivers of sand and green and dead dreams
Rage through the empty hallways of slate blue
Turning me red, turning me into the hues
Of a fire I could never catch or touch or taste.
Black dashes across the circle winding
Warm invisible arms around us.
.
White-capped terror, fresh as blood
And as startling as crimson across concrete walls
Exposes the truth, betrays the ugly fears
That would chatter those sharp teeth
Were they not bent in a grimace,
Not smiling at me.
.
I feel the insistent hum of trauma
Buzzing in the bones of the beast,
Of the creature with bark and bite
That bays the night away
While most souls have tucked themselves
Into lace-soft dreams and silken desires.
.
The creature weeps.
.
The quiet, moaning sounds echo through unconquerable nights
Shadowing the brilliant eyes and I can hear
The soundless agony moving through the beast
Untouched as the deep sand of the desert.
As formless as the wind
Lashing across vacant lands.
.
Agony burns pale hollowness into a face
That ought to be bright with color but is
Split open, cleaved apart by grief,
Stitched together by silent wisdom.
I can hear the silver-white sorrow
Whispering its stories against marked skin.
.
I can feel them in the flesh curled against my palm,
Beating with the rhythm of the beast,
Begging to be unleashed and unburdened but they stay
And the pain screams against my hand,
Lances through every joint
Until the deep air of my soul rattles.
.
He howls at the things that haunt.
I hear the stories that taunt.
.
The darkness in him is kin to the slithering thing
Consuming me from within,
Turning the currents of color grey.
Shifting the tide from day to night,
Breaking open the sunrise into despairing lies
And between us, the screams harmonize.
.
It makes a pretty sound, connected by the earthquakes
Rumbling underfoot and the overzealous crack of hands
Against earth fighting to spark enough pain in the palm
To scatter the ache clustering behind ribcages warped
By the hollow cries of loss.
The sorrow flows and fills and finds the holes in my bones.
.
I can taste the salt of the beast's tears.
Feel their brothers roll down sweaty cheeks
Scorched by the rhythm of insistence,
Of the desperate belief that the fight against self
And memory and the shadows wailing at our feet
Will be rewarded with the loss of this pain.
.
The flash of honest eyes snap me back
To stale, uncirculated air.
The familiar press of wide gentle paws
Wrapped around vital points
Hum with taught trust and tremble
With ancient terror forged in the fire of failures.
.
Pinned and paralyzed, the persistence finds me.
Desertion is no option and low in my belly a war ends.
Great thunderstorms crackle in my lungs
And lightning electrifies the breath puffing across the
Fine and untouched hair decorating the arms of the beast.
I know these hands, these forearms, these wrists.
.
They elicit no fear.
.
There is no fear to find,
Not in the silent corridors of the sobbing beast
Who makes no noise when he fights or cries
And likely would stay silent even as he dies,
Decorated in fine sand and the dust of death.
The whispers of the world cannot change my mind.
.
The beast with flashing eyes coated in shining danger
And spray-painted warning signs
Pulls and pulls until the abyss in me meets the black in him
That together haunt the undulating ocean of space between us.
I am reeled in and caught by the weight of an empty hand
Flirting with the thin skin covering my carotid.
.
Because the beast in me hears the monster in him.
It tastes the same metallic loss.
Feels the same soft skin of grief cupped against its palm.
It cries over the same horrid injustice of never managing
To curl the tongue around the shape of this agony.
Our beasts are helpless to the river raging in this space.
.
There is pain staining the universe between us red.
It leaks into the pale cheeks of the beast,
Scratches bloody letters across his skin and I can read
The hollow cries haunting his thundering eyes.
It rains the same acidic drops on our beasts,
Washes the slabs of blood-soaked concrete the same.
.
The growling loss reverberates off broken bones and pours
Into the chasm stretching between until a wrist
Stretches through the air soiled with rust
And lets me grab hold of the isolated rage and grief and terror
Pulsing erratically beneath my palm.
It begs a silent favour from my grasp and grey eyes shatter.
.
The beast in me promises little but vows in earnest
To feed the beast in you.
.
It swears to crawl into the darkness
And find peace in the fight,
Shove beauty down the throat of trauma.
Ravage the empty fields of meaningless survival.
It vows to hold the flame and let it burn
Until there is nothing left for it to catch.
.
The world that shudders and startles and pulls away
From the unforgiving slant in the eyes of this beast
Cower from the blinding light of a full moon and vanish
When the day shifts to black, starless night.
Something calls across the void and we have chosen
To answer the words of a ghost, of our ghosts.
.
Each minute pressed flesh to flesh against this beast
Bellows the fire of want deep within the black space
Clawed into my being where dark memories
Flash and bang, rattle and howl,
Through the moonless night disturbed only
By the necrosing faces fading to memory.
.
Something will be left behind.
In the space between our fingertips that never can vanish
Where pained eyes ignite and souls collapse,
Something will grow and fight and flourish
And the beast within me knows that it will be born
From the white-furred beast within you.
.
Its eyes will flash, my teeth will bite.
Night will rise in the tangible place we formed
With our palms and molded with our breath.
In the middle of the space we leave behind,
Where our beasts locked jaws and hands and eyes,
We will finally find silence and harmonize.
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Silver Serpent Books
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About the Creator
Silver Serpent Books
Writer. Interested in all the rocks people have forgotten to turn over. There are whole worlds under there, you know. Dark ones too, even better.
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Comments (1)
"Desertion is no option and low in my belly a war ends." This line really stuck with me. I love the story of battle and struggle, with great descriptive phrases. I love the way this line shows the resolve of the combatant. What an amazing work!!!