Slices of Rot

Licorice skin apples

hang from the tongue

waiting for gossip

to take its first bite.

Sisters of acid and brothers of blight

troll lips to see which are the most

susceptible to twist what is into what is not.

Night has its purpose…Light has its sin.

Truth has no rescue where lies learn to swim.

©Susie Clevenger 2020

The Sunday Muse #99

Flying Without Wings

Familiar hands press into my shoulders.

So many memories pulse through palms

warming my skin negating distance

with their intimacy…the calm before terror.

There’s euphoria in the free fall, the weightless

sense of air and sky mixing with adrenaline.

It’s where I’ll land that pulls screams from my throat.

Judgement, the patient bitch, steals the last rose

from my cheeks and pushes its thorns into my bones.

How many pieces of my shell can be glued into resurrection?

“Officer, I told him he shouldn’t sit on the ledge,

but he insisted. He wanted to recreate the photo

I took of him on our first date.”

©Susie Clevenger 2019

Real Toads ~ The Unreliable Narrator

Friday 55 ~ December 2017

Hours 

3:00 a.m. stews me in its terrors

of sightless moon and breathing shadows.

In this hull of bones I pick my skull

trying to mine enough halcyon

to fairytale my eyelids into soundless sleep.

Hours hang from the ceiling fan in a dust mobile

teasing lullabies with sand.

Thanatos puts his ear to my chest.

                      &

“Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum” 

December’s moon sings a lullaby

to the childless, but anger roots in

tongues nursing words of resistance.

Autocracy spins the coffers will go dry

if patriots don’t produce a cradle roll

large enough to sustain the wealthy.

Love will not hive a womb with worker bees.

No rages against the icy call of twisted procreation.

©Susie Clevenger 2017

Friday 55 ~ Holiday Edition