Manipulus

Photo by Lucas Pezeta from Pexels

The gasoline is leaking out of your bad shoulder.

It’s been hurting since you put a hole in the wall

Because she didn’t let you hold her.

Now her face is just an apparition, fading so fast,

And your head is a long lost ghost ship

Fleeing all the safe shores half-mast.

The thoughts intrude and bite down with their incisors

As you recall promising her a sure grave.

Yet – her spite knew you’re none the wiser.

Now her body is cold but you barely touched her.

You merely gave her a foolish idea…

Maybe she was pushed by a bluster?

The flies are eagerly circling your puny defences

But you have all the good explanations –

Only you can’t say it to their faces.

The road ahead spirals like your fetid self-pity

And you know you’re forever haunted,

Even if you leave her bones in this city.

-JW

Capitulare

Photo by Lucas Pezeta from Pexels

She’s at the piano, playing her fingertips numb and soul sore.

Tinsel in her hair, glitter on the wrists, her childish mind at war.

The party around her roars like gunfire, she almost disappears,

Blends into the background hiding behind her faceless peers.

She’s on her tenth cigarette even though she quit a long time ago.

Whisky in her system, fuel in her one-track mind ready to blow.

No sadness, no regret, just a ton of anger in a short linen dress –

But don’t lose a finger comforting her, she’ll never confess.

She’s rearranging the thoughts but coming to the same conclusion.

The shivers slide down her spine, hurting like a contusion.

“What’s promised, must be fulfilled,” she silently whimpers

And tries to ignore her own violently shaking fingers.

She’s on the balcony unamused, not even slightly entertained.

The man by the bar represents all her guilt doused in heated shame.

The bottles stacked on expensive tables shatter at her sight.

Her lungs collapse under the relief of crashing into the dolomite.

(The people sigh as he winces:

“She wasn’t in her right mind.”)

-JW

Ultimatus

Photo by Lucas Pezeta from Pexels

Every portrait on the wall has wandering eyes,

Every time I look at the phone you have me paranoid

But I don’t take my own advice.

There’s no privacy in love and no respect in control.

I might act like you’re fooling me greatly

But your lies are barely staying afloat.

So I confess to you all my deadliest urges

And you say you hope I would just get it over with,

Not taming the darkness that emerges.

You keep pushing me further, calling me distasteful.

“If you ever leave, I’ll know I was right,

You were never faithful.”

Words can build character, they can burn down cities,

And after months of hearing you on the loop

My anger turns into pity.

Every photo on the wall has my lifeless eyes,

Every time I look at you, the poison sinks in more

Until all self-preservation is paralyzed.

-JW