King of Iron Hearts

Water, sunshine, soil

And poof

A plant

I thought hope was like that

Love was like that

And while I had the seed to sow

You gave me nothing to feed it

I am a fallow field.

I kept waiting for all the dirt and rain

Of my life

To blossom into flowers

But I guess

Sometimes

Dirt is just grime

And rain just falls

So many men try to drown their misery at the bottom

Of a bottle.

Why don’t they try to drown it in the rain?

Or trap it in prose at the bottom of that bottle

And drown it in the sea.

The natural remedy for all maladies.

Definition:

Increase the stakes, especially in times of dispute or conflict.

I don’t want to be the phoenix

I want to be the serpent

The snake is not

The sly evil thing in the grass

Of Eden’s garden

It is the serpent

A healer and fertile harbinger

The two twisted heads on the staff of Hermes

The serpent is the middle of black and white

The dual expression of good and evil

The serpent does not die and is reborn anew

The serpent evolves, changes, and grows

Shedding the skin of the past but retaining the memory

So that when it slithers forward it does it wise

She was sharp as a heart attack

A woman in need of sacrifice

And reverence

Who understood her worth

And demanded payment

For her venerable affections

I capitulated to the fury of her need

Cut my heart out of my chest with her dagger

Rusty with old blood

The stain of other lovers

Who had failed to fill her greed

I handed it to her

Still beating

Thumping against the silver platter

Like a war drum

She looked me in the eye as she took it

In one pale hand

Raised it to her lips and licked the aorta

Until it throbbed

“I will consume you whole.”

She promised.

The man is the sacrificial lamb in this one.

I slayed my demons

With my bare hands

Stuffed the heads

And mounted them on my wall

So that anytime I was frightened

Anytime I felt threatened

I could look in the eyes of my villains

And remember

I had the power to end them

What if the beast in the story

Preferred his talons and fangs

And the echo of his mighty roar?

What if he enjoyed striking fear into hearts

So they never again had a chance to hurt his own?

The beast stays a beast in this one.

My love is a fist

Clenched hard

Inflexible

Impossible to miss

When it hits you in the face

My love is a dagger

Cold edged steel

Sharp

I use it to carve scars

In your skin that spell my name

I remain a cruel man

Uncaring

A villain at ease in his skin

But my love for you is kind

If that isn’t magic, what is?

Not all princesses need Prince Charmings to save them

Sometimes

They have dragons who protected them

All along

I am at ease with hatred

Comfortable with deviance

And friendly with rebellion

I wear my wrath like a leather coat

And my venom is a cloud of second-hand smoke

You see me and want me

Do you know why?

Because I am the edge you need to fall off

The adrenaline rush you want to try

I am too close to Death.

He hounds me like a loyal shadow

Whispers dark delights in my ear.

I am his friend.

Disciple.

I learn from him the way to take men apart

Like dissembling a tool.

They learn to fear me too.

A walking nightmare in motorcycle boots.

But what about you, sweet girl?

So close to life

So full of pink peonies and gentle verve.

What would you say if I told you

I wanted to be the nightmare you claim for your own?

It’s the art of a poet

To take something unerringly ugly

And give it the right words

To make it something lovely

We watch the stars

To pull down the blue ink

In the wide bowl of the sky

And use it to write philosophies

About the universe beyond the curved slope of our horizons

Because sometimes

The dark abyss of the unknown

Is less lonely and less terrifying than our own remembering

What a self-fulfilling prophecy it is

To pave a yellow brick road

Line it with exit signs

Protect its boundaries with monsters

And then grieve when people inevitably walk

Down that path

And out my door

The bomb in my chest

Ticks louder

Each day

Counting

Down

To

A

Time

Where

I will self-detonate

And implode

If only there were gentle hands

To reach inside the chamber of my chest

Cradle my ticking heart

And bravely turn it off.

She wore black

And coloured in her many scars

With red sharpie

Like fresh blood against the ancient wounds

She wanted to remember every hurt

Illustrate every painful memory

As a warning to everyone

And herself

That she would never forget

This is a story of boy meets evil

With the face of an angel

And a body that could tempt a saint to sin

Of a time before the boy became a man

When he met the demon

By the name

Of

Delilah

And spoke her title in a breath of supplication

This is the journey of that boy

From the sweet stumble over lust

To the willing jump he made

Thinking he would land in

Love’s perfumed embrace

This is the story of what happens

When the boy lands on the spikes of cruelty

Savagely impaled by lies

Where he brutally bleeds out

This is the story of what a woman

Will do

For

Revenge

The legacy of men.

Sometimes

I yearn for the apocalypse

So that all the nonsense will implode

And the only things left