Kissedbyghosts - Poems

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙀𝙣𝙚𝙢𝙮 𝙒𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣

Sleep drops away quickly as I wake to a strange pain. Something is... Wrong... What is this? There is a lump in my side. I slide my shirt up over the tender bulge. It itches. A sparking, insistent discomfort. There is a deep knot of burning pressure welling beneath a taught dome of skin. A nascent infection? No. Something more malignant and protuberant. I pick the sore. It breaks open. Teeth clenched, I tenderly spread the wound. It weeps a turbid fluid. Beneath, a spider-shaped mass of dark matter, metallic and appalling, is embedded and spreading. Wincing, I prod it, and feel it spasm. Black brachiating filaments spread menacingly, a thousand stygian serpents tracing nerves and veins with fabulous velocity. Screaming, I thrash, until overtaken and writhing in terror. Its sardonic pulse syncs with mine until an odd numbness replaces concern. I feel it absorbing me. Is this how the gazelle feels in the lion's jaws? I should be… afraid. I should be… But I am consumed by the amorphous narcosis of conjunction until, pale and drooling, my simian brain is joined in black noesis to tens of thousands more. We have become nodes, synapses assembled into the new organs of an emerging god. As an alien mind awakens the senescent world is absorbed and… I… am… © JM Tiffany

Swallowed

Half naked and robbed of promise, I fell like Autumn.

Rage and hurt tightly clenched in an aching heart, I was tortured for peace, the coiled viper of my hostile thoughts waiting in silence.

Like leaves on a river, desires and fears became entangled until slowly we sank together.

I could see the vivid color of the world bursting forth, the yellow warmth of the sun still rising.

Our eyes closed in passion, we slid ghost-like and became invisible.

The Summer had passed so quickly.

How joyous we had been. Golden and untouchable until mutilated by words.

Then, we fell further down, like drops of blood, until tired and numb, I collapsed to my knees.

Something within had stirred the poison.

I remembered who I ought to be but the wounds were slow to heal.

On a deep raging river of glistening tears, the souls of the dead were drifting away and I was the last of them.

She walked away then.

I saw the scars I had made, each mark a memory of ruin, and I knew my story had swallowed us whole.

©️ JM Tiffany

Sunrise

In the early morning quiet I listen to the clocks echoing each other’s rhythms.

I sip my coffee and gaze at the lake, a dark mirror reflecting stars too lazy to set.

This looking glass also reflects my thoughts: a flock of restless birds that circle and circle.

As a knife of pale pink carves the horizon, my mind is full of thunder.

In this moment of great peace, I am a storm.

I fill myself with a gentle wind and blow the clouds away.

As the Sun rises in my head, she kisses me warmly and all the world glows.

©️ JM Tiffany

The Spaces Between

Eyes wet and wide, she swayed, dismayed, her broken heart lurching in its pretty cage.

From hope to havoc, her sister’s ship had sunk into gray waters off the coast.

A bitter tenderness burned with the vividness of bare nerves as she said her last goodbye.

The sun had risen in the Midwest and set at last in her heart.

There would be black dresses and strangers, flowers and cards, and children who wouldn’t remember who she couldn’t forget.

A candle of memory she kept lit with warm days and childish games, her unspoken words like shadows in the spaces between sleep and pain.

©️ JM Tiffany

Burn

I am not toxic, though I am polluted.

I am no slave though I wear these chains.

I am not evil, though the cuts are cruel and deep.

I am not afraid though I have lived in terror.

I am not dead, yet Death blooms all around me.

I am not Darkness, for I am made of Fire.

What burns in me is as old as the stars, violent and beautiful as new beginnings.

What burns in me burns in you: the luminous memories of countless dead worlds.

There are no endings, only this spiraling dance of light, smoke, and showering sparks.

God? She is high, and life is just yen-shee. It is no secret that love is like fire, and if you would truly live, than everything must burn.

©️ JM Tiffany

Strings

Ivy and hornbeam the color of honey join the new ghosts of Autumn’s world.

I feel the Sun’s fire on the great pines, as long shadows poke boney fingers through the briarwood.

Crows call in the forest as above the wooded hills of burning orange oaks a sweeping Hawk hunts.

I follow a lone Stag down a trail known only to beasts through a bright sea of amber leaves.

I feel the wildness of hardwood around me, and of balsam firs in the biting cold.

I lift a fallen feather and hold it to the Sun, now a hot coal searing into the West.

Bound by strings of spirit to bone, I would sink with it, through reeds and tall grass, to dream of you.

© JM Tiffany