Mad

Mad

Beneath a tracery of wires and glimmering stars we planted the seeds of our sinister intentions:

To go mad with pleasure.

Spreading, touching, shrieking like birds, talons gleaming black. Cries from the deep. Blur of living visions. The mouths of hounds and dark carrion birds. We consumed each other, we Eaters of The Dead.

Like little promises, our fingers laced and locked.

We clung to each other throughout the night, until, like shadows, shifting between worlds, it all seemed to fall apart.

The terrible machinery of her emotions burned behind eyes that demanded blood.

I gave her reasons without apology for the sacrifice, and lay softly upon the altar.

Only fools guard their throats in the presence of love. I bared mine, inviting my ruin like an old friend.

Instead, she collapsed; the weight of her lay on me like a shivering blanket.

Though the Dawn found us we had lost ourselves only to wake in each other’s dreams.

©️ JM Tiffany

Oblivion

A flower of unknown origin, she flourished in the wild, blooming florid and bright in joyless places.

Her photosynthetic biology made for curious tendencies. Delicate and sensitive, she was a living star rising from a rotten world.

She was capable of altering consciousness and could fill my head with the strangest dreams.

Heartsore and desperate, I followed her gossamer trail until I found her, in a sapphire night, amid a grove of dead trees.

There I drank her melancholy nectar to drift down a river of forgetfulness.

She loved the lonely places and traded in lost things, so I gave her my soul, while she fed me oblivion one petal at a time.

©️ JM Tiffany

Mirror

I longed for release, and cried out until…

The Wound Mother came.

Howling, she squatted over The Black Wolf’s jaws.

I screamed into The Void as it licked my skin.

I wanted to be small, to be delicately held, to know the feel of loving hands.

But I was swallowed by shadows and caged by fangs.

I wanted to be a ghost then, to make something soft from something hollow.

I wanted to shine, but I was broken. I became a mirror, and all who saw themselves in me bled at my edges.

©️ JM Tiffany

I Am A Ghost Amid Invisible Ruins

Most will never see me. They will never know the quick knife of pain, taught and arced, gasping for breath.

They will never know the blistering sparks of the burning nerve.

They have not crawled through the numb fires of broken columns, or the warped shadows of dead futures.

They will never know the well studied ceiling, the constellations of textured paint and cracked plaster.

They cannot grasp the listless longing of endless unwanted rest. They will never know how I used to run and leap, will never know the power, strength, and grace of my body or how it was ruined in pursuit of glory.

They will never know how I wished for death, or how I ran towards it.

They cannot understand that I would jump once more into the fire.

©️ JM Tiffany

John Lee's Dead

John lee’s dead and the motorcade winds toward the old hill and its chapel choked with vines.

The clouds are dark and swollen. There’s tears in his widows eyes, and ravens deck the branches of the trees as they roll by.

As the gates groan wide the clouds begin to burst and the sky throws down its spears, a thousand tears on John Lee’s hearse.

Now a hundred dark umbrellas like black flowers bloom around a pit that yawns to swallow one more memory in the ground.

And John Lee’s window’s weeping in a veil of black lace (Though some detect a smile, If only just a trace).

The priest, he babbles nonsense about heaven, God, and sin as the casket slowly lowers in the low and mournful din.

The dearly beloved who are gathered here today will forget death in an hour as they drink their tears away.

And John Lee’s funeral’s over. He’s down too deep to dream, and only grass will go there and not until the spring.

© JM Tiffany

The Murder of Molly Brown

Have you seen the cat-tails Shifting beneath the bridge, Gathered in the shadows Down by the water’s edge? Have you heard the whispering That rustles in the reads? The rushes, they are speaking For there’s blood upon the weeds. And there’s a faint impression, A sadness in the air. A ghost of trauma lingers on To guide the seeking stare. And now down to the water We’ll gaze beneath the sheen To see the lifeless angel there, Drifting and serene. We wonder at her beauty, Her breasts, pale and bare, And curious we tremble: Is that image truly there? But then the water shimmers And things are put a’ right. But, Molly Brown was murdered here, And just the other night.

©️ JM Tiffany