sloane eliot mariem [sloane alone]

I could have called you but I chose instead to marinate in our mourning

this morning I take with me a carry-on of research, of reasons we went wrong

the carrion smell from the corpse of us again I feed

you know, she said, i’m not always this crazy but sometimes

the death in us is dreamlike, by which i mean i don’t always know whether or not it’s real

still, the stinking, the sting of the spear in my side still waiting for the bones to break when my heart bleeds out

what heaven is there for girls like me who love death like an absentee father, who want to be filled with its emptiness, who need the sticky cream of its void to birth black holes inside them

he appeared to me again in a dream unexpected in an afternoon respite after a long absence and sat quietly at the end of a table while my face reddened and peeled, rash-like and i missed him, worshipped his eyes like flies, like beelzebub, silently kissing his plague-ridden feet in my mind

when i forget to maintain my anger, i feel your danger creep in again and again with the memory of your soft hands and foreskin has there ever been a greater love than your fists on my face, drawing blood and desecrating the vessels within me

you strike the air around my body and your want to hurt shifts palpable; i feel electric,  magnetic, our current flows from god itself.

i can’t breathe without you and must learn to be dead but i’ll never walk that golden staircase to transcendence because i don’t get hot for what’s right

what plague is this that holds me down in willing participance to your violation my misery stays hungry for your hate and i relish the vitriol you spill in my face

i live inside your wailing.

i’ll lie still again beneath you to feel your head slip to its home, to feel your hips angle toward god and push my insides toward sweet oblivion

i’m out of body and see myself in black and white, bathed in red light inside your domain where you keep me and it’s home from here, i watch myself arch my back to breaking’s point, freeze time to preserve a moment’s agony in memory, a beauty, a tribute to this black beast i serve who re-appears on whims to tear me down

and if i could just trust in your devotion to destroying me and only me, i might let you finish the job

(and... i... want to do more!)

big thank you to the vapors crew & our photographer & collageist @DeirdreKoala

— lady fav-a-lot (@rubybrunton)

;_;  stoppp, i’m gonna cry. 

Heresy for the Nonbeliever / Mistaking Real Things for Shadows

 No refuge here, not with you

no room for my veiled language

                     (you’ll find ways to understand)

what is this dream state, what is this where

together we kill my ex-lovers

              (in dreams)  in dreams

Together we make [me] prime for your taking.

        What is this

                        Heaven knows

             (Something Cosmic)

 I don’t believe in

              Anything

                     (don’t even search for what I cannot touch

                                                with my own two hands)

Every moment with you: heresy for the nonbeliever

You terrify and

             we are both,

you said we are both

everything    (everything)

Everything: we make notes,

       are aroused and

                         don’t you know better

Your hand on a mound; fist on my back saying

‘whose are you’ and of I, of course, I succumb so

you can lead me through the pain, a cleansing

                          fantasy

what’s real:

In 1984 two Americans fucked in Kaiserslautern

In 1985 two Czechs fucked in Opava

and don’t you know better

than to fuck writers

sidelong glances at each other

don’t you know better

           (we are both)

everything: cells that grew and mutated

thirty years in the making and

how are you  (everything

                                  i’ve wanted)

a fantasy

        (illusion / delusion)

I recognize

everything;

your hand on my throat

speaks of tenderness

          and I’ll give myself to you wholly in moments

my thin fingers turn you on

and this is

        everything

your fist on my back, again: ‘who told you you could move’

wetness, instinctual grabbing as if to save a life (ours)

how to do this without the refuge of words or

secret spaces, how do i fear in front of you

learn in front of you, believe in front of you

grow warm, grow warm, until the cold realness

                                         (pneumatic)

this   last-ditch

        fantasy

and didn’t you know I’m a nonbeliever  

reformed romantic, lapsed Catholic,

                          building her gods on the backs of men

                                                          (like you)

another one for my pantheon, i offer

eternal life

      filling my void

                                (a Sisyphean task)

and don’t you know i know better;