vena's poetry

The six-fifteen developed faults or what the platform learned to call the little lapse between a life and service interruptions. Each wrist wore work the way a wound wears gauze: Preoccupied attachment. A woman mouthed I'm running late her breath crosshatched the glass; Haunted by an hour lost passed, and now it's past her.

The tannoy cleared its rusty throat: "We thank you for your patience." A subjacent obstruction, an unforeseen disruption— delay incurred by human error a function of malfunction. One cursed the stranger underneath for stealing Tuesday’s pay, I stood aghast; the hive mind glassed have you no concern beyond your task?

By noon the lines were running clean. New York City drank its gin, slicked down the morning’s misdirection, then clocked itself back in.

Seldom I have felt a damsel; more-so some dame who'd overstayed her welcome in the parlour talk of horrors she was taught to face.

I almost longed, no, begged at times for some unruly, thrusted lust only so I could rehearse the little speech of my disgust.

I’ve drowned before i learned to float to keep my head above obscene— for when the moment could arrive the plastic stars peeled off my dream.

A sudden, fleeting, horrid pass alas, i’m shocked i could amass< Such instinct born of cloth and hair? Unseen behind my teddy-bear?

I assure you, hell has no room for one more hound who pounced too soon. They call it flourishing at last, the gift of grieving petals passed.

If a tree falls in the forest, it still can shed its bark; so if you touch my collar in the surface of the dark, the gracing hail of doves, my headless meadowlark would you come forth with hand in glove please; complete the sparking spectral arc.

I’d love you to death, to every moribund breath Till you played Lord Banquo, and I the Brave Macbeth but before me is no handled dagger no skean where spirit enters matter only the rags of your threadbare sleeve, O darling, don't unravel me.

No father—no son, could ever compete, with what slips silent through my sleep; my ivory vision, lucid dream, hidden where the walls convene; cryptic in your charms, emerging from the gentle grip of night's unfolding arms.

We’ll be as sleeping chalk outlines feathered angels stilled in snow, waiting where no ill can brew where only horseshoe rivers flow. If heaven will not lower you, I'll rise by falling slow.

I need to see the source, how life itself sprouts from the soil, and follow its due course; above the stars, to reach cloud nine, find lady time with no remorse

To see the silver swallows sift through sleeping lotuses that drift in sapphire satin, waters blue, almost as it were a clue on how to live a life of ease that always brings me back to you

As lithe as willows in the air swooning sideways with no care tranquil in the veins of fire persistence that some swans require where nothing is and yet is seen the green is threaded into choir to paint a faint, idyllic scene you hold it once, and feel entire

I long to see the morning dove before it gets caught in telephone wire.

You smiled, and silver teeth were threaded to something humming under mine— a dewdrop tremor, lightly fretted, rolled down the cord of our design.

We are stitched before we gather, spindled laughter, smoke on breath, a lattice laid beneath the lather of skin that sings itself to depth.

I watch your gestures— how they shimmer, shadows I've rehearsed for years, how every “brand new” face grows dimmer as the old script reappears.

Futures not achieved still linger: branches brittle, barely sung— firewood waiting for a finger to warm what once was scarcely strung.

And when you reach, I feel the pulling crude as wire against the bone— all my almost-clones still calling through the voice you make my own.

There are no first encounters, only returns that murmur, failed in fervour— the crowded hush of being lonely within the lining of the server.

My heart has lost its wind again, a punctured sail in a polished sea. The harbour keeps applauding, while every current disagrees.

I'll impale myself upon this white picket fence at noon, dig a narrow little grave with the handle of my silver spoon.

I keep adjusting the aperture until only shadow fills the walls. They traced a ring above my head, convinced that light could cure it all, that holiness might cauterise the quiet bruise beneath my gall.

But gold remembers how to fall. By dusk it kissed my neck, It clasped my throat like jewellery A sugared, shackled, nervous wreck.

Born to the purple, I'll leave in shades of blue.

They asked what colour your hair is. "Whichever colour makes everyone else's look wrong." Highlights of a summer fling, lowlights, midnight rendezvous, every part of me you’d want is yours— I’d cut off my hands and give them to you.

I measured all the strangers against the blueprint of your face. I ran from love like it was laced; she didn't match the way you taste: peach pits, then a heart attack your tantalising zodiac.

I squint past the green light where even Gatsby feared to gaze. I chart the etchings left to right  like countries no one's thought to name. I’m tickled pink by make-believe just thinking of the day, when we will live where maps give up, and grass forgets from where we came.

The girls still speak with borrowed words, still offer what they can’t. I fold them small as paper birds around the outline of your frame. I've walked this road a thousand times— it always ends the same.

The sponge gives way under my tongue, butter-soft and bright; its sugared breath persuades the day to kneel before the night.

The lemons sing in junebug choirs, in aprons white with flour; they bruise the air with citron suns still warm from Eden's bower.

So I take another hungry bite. One. Then two. The icing wilts to yellow mould, its honey curdles blue.

I taste the rain before the fruit, the orchard in its greed each slice arrives with clay beneath its dimpled little sleeve.

I shovel sweetness in like soil. The frosting sours. The crumbs uncoil. The rind returns itself to wood, the syrup thickens as none should.

Sap beads along my tongue like blood. My molars ring like bells. The branches antler through my mouth and graft themselves to hell.

Somewhere behind my lungs, an iron river fattens, cold; it suckles roots that stitch my throat with wirework of gold.

The birds forget their proper trees and settle in my lip. Lichen buttons up my spine below my fingertip.

Blinding light leaks from my teeth My body—a weathered rusted dream unravels at the seam. —And still I cannot stop my feast.

Dear Forgiveness,

I know we've had our difficulties,

but if you'd borrow Gabriel's finest wings

slip past Saturn’s enamel rings,

I’d meet you halfway in the reeds.

I have no feud with you, you see—

your bride crochets my tragedies.

Did she misplace her velvet gloves

when handing out sweet fever?

Her touch, a phantom dipped in brine,

a pulse that stains the mouth of time—

the heat breeds liars of us all,

makes saints hallucinate their spines.

We float around like boiled birds

above the porcelain bay.

Black commas gather on our eyes

to punctuate the dying day.

I’ve asked you now, I’m closer to

the dappled ocean of your hue.

Your honeybee, your daffodil,

has tipped the kettle of the hills—

smoke rising where the barley cools,

where heaven hangs its fairest fools.

My thoughts all up and went it seems,

my sense, it flies like birds.

My mouth has drifted out to sea

and stolen all my words.

The devil's in the distance,

my body has been claimed.

The rafters hum with violins,

the curtains cough up powdered rain;

each joke I ever tried to tell

comes echoing through cellophane.

You—sphinx of cement and lead

cracked open my sweet porcelain head,

and nested in the china.

You picked my dreaming desolate,

left bones arranged much finer.

Someone, please—

map the thunders in my veins,

explain the language of my pains.

Weathered sea glass in my eyes,

no edge remained to pull the reins.

My heart’s a hammer in my chest;

tie me tight with tourniquets.

If I should come apart tonight,

let its riddles wear my face.

I long to spark my passion,

to pester everyone to hear.

It floods the sky then blurs the dark

like antlers on a chandelier.

I live to live upon myself,

mirrored through old eyes,

to watch a trembling willow tree

teach its ribs to rise.

My fishbowl mind keeps swimming,

full of all you left behind:

I’d soon be battered clean of brains

than let you gaze inside.

I’ve got it down to science—

the way a painter studies ghosts.

I catalogue the idle scene,

then resurrect a glow.

I want to dress my ducklings

like snazzy lemon‑drops.

Take the parts that I recall

and let the rest just rot.

My spiders dance across the river,

bursting open as small stars.

Only then can I step back

and see them for what they are.

And even when I’m drowning

in someone else’s sea,

I can still write my way out

of almost any tragedy.

The clouds have parted, the storms have sailed, And on a rusted spike, my loneliness lies dead, impaled. Its ragged feathers worry the wind, its hollow beak is lily-filled, the crows perch on its crooked arms, and wonder why it keeps so still.

You've got your fingers in my sides, my chest flares open, overexposed, twitching for the flashbulb eyes before the camera’s throat is closed. It is time to claim our prize, these long-awaited, orchid skies, that bloom above the power lines, where paper doves take wing and rise.

But now the scalpel's found the seam, the specimen has come apart; daylight pools between my bones and floods the chambers of my heart.

The orange bell has shed its tongue, the morning bluebird hymn is done. Corridors dissolve like salt the building wearing itself wrong— its walls unspooling into chalk, its stairwells softening as we walk.

I'm so sick it makes me happy, I'm so happy it makes me sick. And still the world keeps peeling back, revealing how the gears all click.

God spat me out like a lungfish

onto the muddy grass;

He never checked what happened next—

I never thought to ask.

I’m made of five too many shades,

my jawline’s soft, my hair just frays.

My hands are bony, lips are pout,

all the curses passed around.

This mirror paints a tragedy:

a scarecrow slumping in its clothes;

ravens lost interest in me,

but to the stake, I remain bound.

The glasses are losing their rose

I see behind the cheap charade—

phantasms, the key must be

I was locked up never free.

Even if I were to throw

away my inspired disease,

am I not left with the hands

That conduct the autopsy?

They say that hatred starts within— a tumour tucked below the skin but ichor doesn’t stay confined; it learns the shape of blood and mind.

For when your heart goes black with tar, your lips are never far behind; they drip with soot, they scar the air, leave bitter fingerprints outlined.

And then your eyes begin to spoil, not all at once, but at the root: roses choke the orchard bare, serpents feast on fallen fruit.

"Save face" is poor advice indeed for those who've lost theirs long ago— consumed beneath the climbing hedge they planted years before they know.

A sculptor, victim to the clay, his likeness swallowing him whole; each stroke that sought another's ruin carved a cavern through his soul.

And if you dare to meet the sun, you'll have to force your bleeding hands through all the names you wrote in red and all the truths you wouldn’t stand. The thorns will flay the ash undone, they'll peel it from your concave head. you'll trail behind a wake of dust like moulted ravens left for dead.

And when you fall through thickets thin, all lacerations, pooling wine, you'll meet the gaze of those you've passed and find no angels, kings divine&mdash Just people looking back at you the way you once regarded them.

There is a city I must find.

I know because it blooms behind

my eyelids every time I blink—

a place too intricate, I think.

Where spirals wound on spirals grown,

staircases bold, encrusted white

with fossil seas and turquoise light.

Their violins are carved so fair

from whalebone ribs and utmost care.

Telescopes of brass and glass

survey the ages as they pass—

not pointed upward, but below,

where buried constellations glow.

The air is soft. The stars are fine.

Time drips sweetly from the vine,

ringing through the harbour bells;

every note expands and swells.

I spend my hours charting it.

Each slender spire,

each bridge suspended over fire,

I sketch until my fingers ache.

I draft new districts while awake.

The only purpose thought can claim

is feeding substance to its name.

Perhaps if I describe it fast,

bind every future to its past,

the veil between the worlds will tear,

revealing what was always there.

If I make the perfect splatter,

will i dissolve through all real matter?

I'll spill between the cracks of things

and wake where every doorknob sings.

Ill do it now,

I must. I will.

I cannot wait another day

for reason to be in the way.

Don't cry for her—your child is lost,

exchanged for something far more sweet.

If you find guts, or wait enough

I know we once again will meet.

I must admit,

it sounds much grander, more severe

than finding feathers in a meal

and swallowing a mouth of fear.

I saw the foxgloves in the vase

grow taller than the window frame,

their purple lips all ringing bells,

all calling out my foolish name.

What else was hidden in the cake?

What else was steeped inside the tea?

How many times had I consumed

the things I’ve sworn to never see?

What else had slipped beneath my tongue,

disguised by sugar, spice, and plum?

Which memories were truly mine,

and which were grown beneath my thumb?

The simple fact:

trust is a glass

you drink before you know its taste.

And once it's emptied to the dregs,

each sweetness turns itself to waste.

I laughed until my lungs gave way.

I cursed my mother, cursed the plate.

I felt the roots upon my ribs,

their petals pressing at the gate.

Digitoxin stole my heart,

and seized my blood, the weaker parts.

She wound her veins around my brain

and pulled my body far apart.

I mourned as though my soul had died,

not from the poison in my side,

but from the simple, sickening fact:

the certainty that those I loved

would never place foxglove in my teacup.