I Am A Ghost Amid Invisible Ruins

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

Someone Else’s Sunshine

A storm is raging, the ship is sinking, men are drowning, and I keep looking away.

Someone’s saying goodbye for the very last time and all I can think of is you.

©️ JM Tiffany

Paper

I was squeezed and folded through the origami of denial, my paper-thin yesterdays formed of abandoned dreams.

With each crease I was pinched and flattened into the shape of a bird. So many flightless words, sharply folded into a beak that could not sing.

Though once forgotten, she later found me, and touching my edges, I came undone.

I was laid out like a map, the angled scars of my memory laid bare.

The words of the past still scrawled on my chest, I was pinned to the wall and marked with a kiss.

There I stayed for many years, until yellowed and brittle.

My edges torn, she took me down.

Her clouded eyes rained on my skin and I sank into dark rivers toward the sea of her chest.

She crushed the wet ruin of my body against hers, and finally, I sang, between sobs, the hymn of her truth to the woman she never was.

Then, at last, I was torn out of memory, and tossed in the trash, her beautiful voice cast away and abandoned like paper-thin yesterdays.

© JM Tiffany

Nameless

I have awakened in a thousand worlds and found pieces of myself in all of them, luminous nodes like crystalline shards tenuously connected by the resonant strings of Fate.

We were woven together by the fingers of Madness, laced through with ruddy regrets, yet we are brilliant with sleeping power and mindful of our shared pain.

Our voices are many though we speak as one: masks of the Deep uttering payers in the language of stars to the Nameless.

©️ 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 Hell of Ten Thousand Kisses

Why did I want you?

Dark hole obscured by leaves. Empty sound of listless breath.

“Must... fill... this... chasm…

Need... more... souls... for... The Hell of Ten Thousand Kisses!”

(Maniacal laughter).

We stuffed each other into one another’s wounds.

I wasn’t empty but I felt hollow and the shape of your pain slotted neatly into mine.

Sometimes love is messy, like Jackson Pollock or blood spatter analysis.

It’s a miracle we survived, and something definitely died.

Naivety? Trust? The jury is out.

I’m clinging to hope… or maybe just discovering it.

I wanted you because anything was better than being alone with myself.

Now all I want is solitude and a peace so enduring that living things nest in it.

I have let Nature reclaim me and sink into the bliss of this Apocalypse.

©️ JM Tiffany