The Knife That Sets Us Free

The Knife That Sets Us Free

Madness chops everything into quivering bits, placing them neatly into little boxes. Carved into clever cubes, we are numbered and named, then hidden away or punitively displayed by fools afraid of animals. Our strata laid bare and sliced by the ugly language of fear, we wince and withdraw while grasping the edge that wounds us. Spontaneity is sacrificed with the knife of reason as our flesh is mutilated by moral delusions, forcing straight lines like arrows through hearts, all driven with the fatalism of one-way streets. Meanwhile, Joy bleeds to death on the corner, dying in the wan belief that life is somehow… evil. We are maimed by this stupid cruelty, pierced by its dissonant spears, and crucified to that Holy Assumption. But God doesn’t make mistakes, God is a mistake. The heavens are feral, and Eden lay all around us. We have been dissected by the clumsy, brutal hands of priests and kings, and all that has died was placed into boxes, our eyes trapped in gleaming hexahedrons of waking death. Life’s naked wonder, neatly destroyed, the roses yet bloom and trees will bear their crimson fruit. So run, my Dear, run while there is yet red on your lips, and diamonds in the sky. Tigers still prowl the night. They are searching with hunger and bitten by need. Let us capture them, and kiss them, and make love like beasts. For even now, in the shadow of the blackest cube, bright things may grow. Some flowers bloom the better for having been cut, and sometimes it is the knife that sets us free. © JM Tiffany 2024

Green

Your limbs were too weak to hold me when I fell. There was no malice in me for that. I was ripe and heavy with age. You were supple and green, far too delicate for one such as I. You drooped as I tugged at you. It was cruel of me to want you so. I wanted so badly for you to see what I carried within me. There was a secret promise of newness hidden in the bright flesh of that late summer. I sighed with resignation as I watched you climbing away from me. But then, I smiled, for though the fall had split me open the birds that ate my heart carried it somewhere brighter. A place as young and green as the hands that let me go.

©️ JM Tiffany 2024

Bloom

Driven by the jealous, quiet yearnings of a pulsating tyrant, I am cursed with a terrible heart.

Red lips parted, it places ravenous kisses on blushing skin.

Its needful, ardent grasp rises from a dark, feminine well; a crushing, velvet embrace of murderous sweetness.

Like a flower before the sun, I open urgently: a wanton bloom hungry for light.

© JM Tiffany 2024

Thunder-Black Heart

Pliant and luminous as the melancholy of roses is the softness of my thunder-black heart. Cold, wet, dark, and feminine, I am gentle as nymphs and brutal as angels.

I am beautiful with kindness and mad as truth. My lips part like the wisest of flowers. I am holy and ruinous as the newness of youth, and sadistic as God’s alchemical dreams.

I am a black maze of tunneling light. I take the silent roads of fallen gods and walk trembling in the healing night, for I hold in my chest the deepest of poisons.

I am drunk and swimming with teeming sorrows but the water is warm and the rain is loving. To know myself I sacrifice tomorrows on the altar of today and kiss the mouth that drinks me.

© JM Tiffany 2024

Drug

If I was a drug, I would be the kind that kills you slowly, the kind that licks the color from your skin as it drinks the time from your veins. If I was a drug, I would be the kind that gives you visions, the kind that flows a river of pleasures into the sensual terrors of sleepless, fevered dreams. If I was a drug, I would be the kind that loves you with hooks and chains, the kind that runs down your chin until the pain fades like flowers in Autumn. If I was a drug, I would be the kind you take to face the livid light of day, a quick shameful hit followed by a deep onyx dive into shuddering depths. I would suck you greedily into my ravenous mouth, and sinking red nails into your sighing flesh, you would beg me for release. I would comfort you like a lover and, when you would part from me, I would drive a great black train down dark tracks through the canyon of your heart. I would call your name in the hoarse tongue of ravens and you would answer with fear and longing. I would cling to you like smoke and follow you like anxious thoughts. As you suckled at my venomous breasts in the shadow of my black wings, I would open for you like a noctiflorous bloom, and swallow you whole.

© JM Tiffany 2024

Our Days In A Box

You gave to me all of your time and they placed it neatly  in this ornate box. Somewhere within it  is a giggling moment  where I lay smiling beneath you. I remember your hair  falling all around me, and I can still feel your soft, pretty hands laced onto mine. We were always stitched to each other’s side and never more than the breadth of a smile away. I remember us then, walking in the secret night, clothing suddenly lost  and hearts found, nubile angels kissing sweetly  in the dark flowing waves. Our eyes were those  of children then, vacant jewels hungry for experience. We fed ours on sunsets and each other’s faces until they grew fuller, deeper, and a bit less naive. Long ago, you reached into an open wound  and emptied it of ugliness. You always filled me  with so many bright things. But now, I am older  and all has grown quiet. I can no longer hear the world above the music of your name. The wind, the waves, the gulls, the ghosts - no one speaks to me anymore. Your hand no longer links to mine and the chain of time is broken. I open your box, a gift that now takes. Takes all of my strength. Takes the color from my skin, until I am bone white  and paper thin. As the water drinks you down I do not say goodbye. I do not say anything. I cannot speak but would rather sink with your ashes. As the water turns to ink, you are written on my body and I smile through tears at a poem read only by the horizon  at dusk. It is a song of parting and of our days in a box.

© JM TIffany 2024

JM Tiffany

Our Days In a Box, by JM Tiffany

from the album The Architecture of Silence