#sometimesipoem

[kiranatrix]

It was the shadiest spot in the yard,

beneath the limbs of the twisted oak,

and that’s where the rest of us gathered—

us bewitched non-successors—

after the news broke.

We carved an L in the tree, next to A and B...

It should have barely mattered,

we weren’t first in line to be heirs.

This tree was more real than the masked voice of L—

yet it had still cast a spell

that lingered in crisp autumn air.

Will it be Near? Will it be Mello?

Or Matt?, we excitedly asked.

But years later (and too soon) the magic was gone

as we the successors

carved two M’s and hoped to be last.

[kiranatrix]

A skyscraper’s not a home, you built it to be alone—

singular in the sky,

to block the routes that dragons fly

and make them dodge you.

No stone or tree was beautified, but Earth did die

to drip a metal icicle.

You say it’s just a little

and that the gods would understand—

justice makes so many demands.

A skyscraper’s not a home, but neither is the throne

I hide between my fingers.

These useless structures linger

far longer than our victories

that even gods can’t understand.

Justice makes so many demands.

[kiranatrix]

With blood and gold we paint the skies/ and turn from everlasting eyes/ steal fallen angel wings for me/ your kiss is full of blasphemy

@jk-iconoclast

[kiranatrix]

No one should hand me their keys on an autumn afternoon and say

‘come inside, I trust you.’

I cannot keep you under a bell jar or be a paperweight holding down your frayed edges.

I cannot be the Aegis you need, cannot hold up a Gorgon’s head to the world you dislike and turn it to stone.

I’m no good at saying what I mean.

The best I could do is find you some rock, some smooth and polished thing and tell you it was magic.

Tell you to gloss it across oceans and speak longing, and that Triton himself would hold out a palm as it sunk.

He’d keep it as a paperweight to hold seaweed from drifting away

or roll it between scaled fingers as he weighed the wisdom of tsunamis.

Every time the sea spat fury,

it had fallen from his shipwrecked desk and rolled to ravines, lost to darker gods.

But we’d replace it wouldn’t we?

We’d save the world?

[kiranatrix]

It was rush hour when they emptied the cities,

a text message not angels warned you to flee

and you came to me.

What could I do but welcome you in to a home unharmed,

give you strong tea and sympathy as you cried in my arms?

I flicked on the news, trying to stand in your shoes

but felt small as the streams of water pointing towards your street aflame.

We waited to hear any names,

silence between us thick as the smoke that blurred apocalypse.

You said you were safe, and that was true,

but we cried anyway because how would your dog find you?

He fled too, as instinct told him,

better angels that once would have delivered survival.

Was he there now, awaiting your arrival while others raked the ash,

cleared a path too slow while you sat staring at tea,

staring at me?

[kiranatrix]

I’m not supposed to remember the last time you saw the moon. How you faced bad omens and waited for it to turn red for us, subsume us, stop us, crush us like it once tried to obliterate the earth. It failed though, didn’t it? Roped to orbit, a botched assassination and the moon died instead. The wound, Earth’s cratered scars that oceans heal, is the only omen, but real.

[kiranatrix]

Come dig with me the peat fields where the bog bodies sleep, forever staring down sacrificial knives and buried deep. Skull fractures, sawed bones tell the tale: that some old god was crueler than Kira and destined to fail for wanting innocent blood to feed his garden, sprinkled like manure over fields, now fuel. Wanted to while away an eternal fable watching flesh fall like sheaves of old paper.

Can you sink with me beneath tar pits, the graveyards of prehistory? Their residents wandered and fell, or perhaps barreled headlong to flee towards that sticky end when they saw the comet descend, warmed, comforted, preserved in final thought: one last stampede, no more battles fought. They hold back claws in viscous night, saved from light.

Might we fade through the nacre of venomous snails, coiling straight to the end? Where that simple brain devises lethality, towards murder bends. If we ask nicely in primordial language it may believe us gods interceding in evolutionary stages. And prepare us a toxin to end enemy life, a chemical knife to prick regret, brought forth like bile, an unforced smile.

[kiranatrix]

I envy the freedom of birds, take it as an insult as they glide towards warm climes to hide and wait out winter’s death.

In V’s across sky they leave me grounded, a victim of gravity and solid bones as they make paradise their home. A silent world is left.

But one day they may take pity, and grasp my reaching hand in tiny claws— they do not know their strength at all. Forget that hands held guns and knives, forget past feathered lives that squirmed beneath the grasp of others. No hands of mine, but of my brothers. Use seeds to weigh out good intent and in the right moment I’ll sing them such honest apologies: I’m sorry, angels, save me.