To See A Book

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The creature weeps.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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He howls at the things that haunt.

I hear the stories that taunt.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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They elicit no fear.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The beast in me promises little but vows in earnest

To feed the beast in you.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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