love – Page 3 – The Works of Mitch Worden

Fiction, Friction, Addiction

A million things are meant when I hold you to my chest.

A million more arrive in the words delivered down your throat,

hoping the loose lip rivals of warships keep their tremors quiet,

and whatever could be is allowed to be

before a Sisyphean mind turns blind to chance.

A million things are meant when I write across my abdomen,

contorting the cartography into cacophonous scars,

each mark shouting a million more verses destined for dead ears,

having changed frequency years prior,

existing only in memory’s secluded channel.

A million things are meant in a forceful shove in response.

A million more erupt in how I wed myself to hypotheticals,

where the only place we find peace is where we can never be found,

locked deep in the remains of my heart,

counting shards with broken fingers.

A million less is the best from which I observe in you

and the shakes of the head to any question ever-after unanswered,

rendering what could be to never be in actuality,

blessing the word of depression as sainthood.

It’s all I ever hear.

It’s all I really know.

( ❤ Mitch)

Observations in a Sea of Dead Saplings

Fighting to let your trunk grow tall.

Carving a place in the deep dark light.

Suckling on the touch of gin won’t offer purchase in the soil,

yet a fleeting vagrant took the role of the sun.

Drips from his bottle leave behind a garden of graves.

There’s no shovel big enough to unearth a semblance of solace.

I’ve got the warning signs of history etched into,

and I weave it into parchment as a message for your heart.

My body is the map of dead-end dilemmas,

the conduit for a misguided rage,

cutting holes and folding over creases to invent nonexistent escapes.

My body is the map to follow as I unravel.

The canyons of handheld glaciers are a lesson in twisted geography.

There won’t be profit earned from willing flaws into existence.

Sitting in depths where arms cannot reach down,

you’ve penned the story prematurely,

using words to paint a self-portrait of a target:

The Kezia of a rampant apathy that drains its passengers,

dropping off the remnants in a junkyard.

Are you proud to lay in a garden of graves?

Is it a pleasing fate to let another feast on your rays?

Has it been wasted time to stretch out surgically for a gaze

that saw nothing but a passing billboard sign,

driven by and never noticed?

Starring over scarification that endures through cycling years,

I wonder if it lasts forever as an artillery shell’s cave.

How far and long the struggle has gone,

and it doesn’t mean a single thing yet.

How far and long you’ve started to slip,

and I find no solace in any of it.

( ❤ Mitch)

A Passion for Demolition

Proudly do we stand on defeated ground,

waving around battle flags under a blanket of white,

settling a settled score as if we could settle for less.

These boards could be stripped of all nailed down to them

until mist-laden remembrances are the enduring remnants

to testify to the ruin of bodies deemed crippled by inadequacy.

A hammer to the trusses for mistrust turned fatal.

A blow to the basement where innocence once so lovingly bowed.

A blaze for artifacts dated by faded meaning

until we are all that’s left

before our temples are laid to rest.

( ❤ Mitch)

Dreamhouse

Refusal of a farewell to picket fences.

Adjusting the metrics of memory to compensate for loss.

Exclude present thought for a dreamhouse fit for ghouls;

a past fit only for dolls.

Dressed up in expectations expired,

luring in for discovery with bright walls and passion calls,

visiting rooms of unborn embodied by industrial recollections.

Current views through the mirror scrape off the paint.

Relevancy infuses disease into the bones of a home.

Out of state to the rhythm of children’s footsteps

as they rove about a dreamhouse fit for ghouls;

inhabitants fit in a vision of us

that died in a closed door,

severed phone conversations;

hurried steps from the imaginary.

( ❤ Mitch)

Dissected Attention Span

Hers was a fatal nothing.

Stretched across to negate awareness,

a back is pressed to the wall,

scratched delicately with fingernail signals.

Savored sensation

absent of substance;

inundation through imagination,

searching for more in laughter than reaction.

Caressing impressions ethereal,

mere mites on a mind

lacking conscious form to compose itself,

registering desire in tandem with attention,

in purgatory perpetual,

undermined in persistence.

The foe is an unspoken encirclement,

existent in the air between bodies

so meticulously intertwined

without ever been close from the start.

The Villain Has a Butterfly Net

On a proper dose,

I’m blinking through the fogged windows,

having clarity when viewing the shapes of your arms

and the damage done by a scavenger’s talons.

Left scratched up in the far side of the ward,

there wasn’t a phone ringing.

Despondently turned towards the infinite blankness of white walls,

you brushed your fingers across my palm

and swore this had to be forgotten,

and if there were any vultures peaking under the door,

the story that’d come out would clip away your wings.

Shaking in an unstable state,

I felt I turned to paper in the plea you made,

softly resting on the tiles without a heart of gravity.

Peering through the spyglass of a drained capsule,

I saw you as the pen writing the narrative out;

two shattered bottles of ink embracing in the crash,

focusing thought to bring a solid out of a melting dream.

Yet in a flash that reflects back to me from the black,

a carnivore’s face is bursting through the hospital,

and his blazing eyes are locked into your stare.

Yet in a flash that reflects back to me as I tremble,

I spy ten thousand lies described on the shadows dwelling on my face.

We could trade our scars for a chance to pass the stars.

I’d tear and twist the fabric of our foes

to build the escape that’d see us careening out of step,

but so dangerously alike in the limp that plagues our wrists.

I couldn’t promise then if the door was wide enough.

I couldn’t promise then there’d be no letting go.

I couldn’t promise then and I can’t promise now,

but I’d wish more than anything to take you home.

Nurse the power left in those beating wings.

There’s a chance in space where spinning out is ever closer.

For this, I’d charge through debris with you,

further every mile away from the sway of a vulture’s preying.

On a proper dose,

I see the handle turning

as you take a plunge outside.

It was as if I never knew you.

( ❤ Mitch)

A Boy, in Parts

Truth comes foul

when the comfort of falsehood

loses footing in reflection,

geometry proven irregular in critique

with wanting eyes plowing for faults.

Unsustainable, the boy mutters,

tripping over cigar ash smiles

and knife hugs.

Dead-end motives

seek the next trial

to fall first, headlong,

losing by default in absent glances

where lust swings wild,

its direction uncaring for appearances

like cigar ash smiles

and knife hugs.

Unsustainable, the boy mutters,

enraptured by the rupture

cleaving through action and reason.

Desire comes aimed for the aimless;

quick fix dilemmas.

Lipstick scars

bandaging the whispers of displeasure

until withered

as plastic roots undo,

support decayed in reflection

when wanting eyes see only “no” as an answer.

( ❤ Mitch)

Dante Didn’t Go Far Enough

Tell it again

exactly how it’s planned

from forearm to cheek bone,

where you’ll lay down an empire of stone,

buried into skin’s fabric

where razor edges cannot grant escape

and a heavy touch comes a weighted reminder.

I watch you sink deeper in my dream hell

poking a pitchfork from floors below

to prod the anxiety to action,

prompting inaction at the doorstep,

seeing a blank parking lot

and the only path taken by its population of you and me,

as I got along a separate way

drinking in the fear of my dream hell

as a disrobed obsession rings the bell,

guiding her off on an odyssey temporary,

providing nothing to chance.

Pulling the plug out of urgency

to drain the pooling jealousy,

knowing now how it’s planned

from frozen toes to ruffled hair

where you’ll construct an empire of stone,

tucked into nooks beyond reaching,

all feeding the nervous engine to splutter

in the depths of my dream hell.

Lurking low in lost landscapes,

it’s an eternal calling card

of a sinking, sad fantasy.

( ❤ Mitch)

Closed-Heart Ventriloquism

We stopped talking about the blaze.

Kicking about in the ashes,

scattering remnants of once-proud timber,

we eliminated all mention about it.

It tracked on the carpet.

Soot stained the sheets.

A day’s shine could clean for a time,

but the thought proved braver than ignorance.

We stopped talking about it,

yet we know it will never leave.

Unfortunate, to be the Fault

To fail forwards on a single message,

I am wed to be at beck of your convenience,

my expectations consequential to your command.

And in tracing steps in rubble,

no footprints match your own in dust and discard,

as if I were but a passenger to this obedience.

Outlined in rags is where my reflection lies

when understood in the veins of your demand,

crawling to craft snow angles out of fragments.

Failing ever far forward for futile fables,

I am awed by the absence of convenience

when my own messages are unheard.