Tag: fiction

The Deep End Baptisms

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Push me out of a window straight into an unforgivingly deep water.

Tell me I have to repay the pain,

Have to die for the slaughtered.

Cover my ears and push my head under, drag it down to the sea bed.

Ease the muscles, tie me down with kelps,

Make me feel unneeded.

Braid my hair into the seagrass, silence my lips with the sands of time.

Let the scariest of creatures observe me

While I cry in pantomime.

Let sharp rocks bruise my skin while the moonlight shoots sorry glances,

Ensure I give into this numbing stillness

While everyone else dances.

-JW

Through The Breaking Glass

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The mirror image is screaming through the breaking glass,

Asking whether it can leave me

Back in the past.

And I am leaking blue eyeliner tears in my morning coffee

Over yet another honed thought

Trying to cut me.

Who knows why one would choose to live in this mind

Seemingly made and controlled

By an enemy of mine.

Each move I make is a misstep but you already knew this –

It takes one look to notice

My eyes serve Anubis.

But it takes two to carry the weight in my secret pockets

So I cover the mirror again,

I chain and lock it.

My reflection objects less and less each coming evening.

It must have noticed how fast

Our chest is bleeding.

-JW

Ungracious

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Much to my own dismay,

I’m once again checking in

With what small people are selling today.

Their words do entertain

But I’m a sucker for discomfort

And I let them spread my chest pains.

Whenever they call my bluff,

The the doors lock in place firmly,

They scream that it’s never enough.

I wonder all alone

Whether being the bigger person

Will ever feel like a home.

-JW

The Mirrors Might Lie

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The cold water hurt a little when I jumped off your dock,

Navigating the clashing waves and the plunging stocks.

My mind threw malisons your way, two cents a flock,

It drew an evil eye in your fields of bloody crops.

No, I’m not heedless of the times you’ve saved my life –

Just to dig a deeper grave and blithely call it mine.

Dark thoughts are like horseman, no need to come in fives.

They sting like bullets, they open flesh like knives.

And I swim through the breathlessness in burning lungs,

I wish for a calm coast under these thirteen suns.

The mirrors might lie for you in some ungodly tongues

But deep waters will hide me

Until you empty your plastic guns.

-JW

Diet Honey

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Your lips leak diet honey, the bees love it all the same.

They overwork their hours so you would know their name.

The stormy coasts don’t frighten when you drive a sugar rush,

And when the clouds tighten, their wills turn into mush.

Your severed limbs seem dancy while your two heads sing.

They bow to the bared bones and kiss the rusty rings.

But as I scream in terror, they laugh at me with pity.

The clothes they made me yesterday will no longer fit me.

So I get high on diet honey, I lose spite to fleeting words,

Stumbling through the hell you summoned here on all fours.

I wonder how to ease this noose you’ve now tied around me,

I wonder if I should because the others wear it proudly.

-JW

Mirror Wounds

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They say “beauty fades” but only when I’m fully disarmed.

The gnashing teeth near my cheek, meaning nothing but harm.

They make paper planes out of magazines, then fly them my way

Until I weep those bright ads with seamless smiles into my rosé.

Even in my dreams the harmful words chase down my pride,

Telling me I’m great as is and also – which parts of me to hide.

It’s never enough products unless it’s too much for their taste.

It’s the same standard for everyone, but you can’t simply copy/paste.

And I wonder whether this is the most isolating of feelings –

Slashing yourself in the mirror with words until you’re bleeding.

But they repeat “beauty fades” like it would make it less painful

When their teeth sink into my skin the next time

They call my mirror wounds distasteful.

-JW

Lips Of A Crowd

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I enjoyed our love much better when I saw it on TV,

With pre-written sentiments and romance

Measured in electric scenes.

I wish it was harder to move onto the next faked paradise.

But the promised lands keep rising

So I refuse to compromise.

I wish I was sorry, I wish you could hire all the best critics.

They would promise you that it’s fine

To never share the writing credits.

What you offered in shine, you held back in desired solace.

I bet nowadays you laugh at those who ask

What it means to be honest.

Maybe some great stories are not supposed be this loud,

And it’s better we ruptured quickly

Between the lips of a crowd.

-JW

Unwanted Appreciations

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Roaring applause is sweeping the halls, just roaring applause.

Where most saw a green light, I took a silent pause.

The lungs stopped expanding, they collapsed within me,

One final attempt by the sadness to gracefully kill me.

And some electric bolts shot out my holographic shoes.

You could easily find me if you followed the blues.

There’s a clock in my body right where most hearts lie.

It counts the times I’ve split my chin open and apologized.

The crowds get louder but my feet is fleeing the scene.

The rocks in my pockets dance like some cursed fiends.

But the sound of the claps still follows, even after dark.

Perhaps if I embrace their “thank yous”,

I won’t have to fight so hard.

-JW

History’s Greatest Heartbreaks

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Writing letters to the ghost of your face in my window never helped.

My pencil was sharp enough to kill a man

But I stabbed books on the shelves.

I carved harsh words into the rocks hiding at the deep end,

Wishing I could take a jab at you instead,

Just to let go of this empty feeling.

My starving mind exhumed the memories and made me look

As the skeletons of our love faded,

Turned into thieves and crooks.

But maybe evaporation’s more beautiful than combustion,

And not all the history’s greatest heartbreaks

End in a crime of passion.

-JW

The Things You Leave Behind

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Wish I could return your plain white T-shirts

To the hell loop where Satan caught three fevers.

The news call my exit a violent seizure

When you’ve barely loved me for two whole seasons.

Letters keep coming so I write off my pity,

Dry my hands in silk dresses from the long lost city.

Your bitter tears echo as my tongue grows slippy.

The diamonds you bought no longer fit me.

And I lock the gates, cover them in barbed wire –

In case I want to flee my soul and retire,

In case I seek out a gun for hire

To kill your belongings in a ceaseless fire.

Doesn’t mean I don’t have the means to do it,

To drown the reminders, all the nights in Munich.

But they won’t imbibe touline or lighter fluid

And I know one day I’ll profoundly rue it,

This abyss of my own wrong doing.

-JW