Lou the Lover

When I wrote this persona poem a while back, I did not do so out of veneration or sympathy for Lou. I did not write it to make a point of any sort. I just sat down one day and decided I wanted to write a persona poem that actually said something, with no intention of letting anyone hear it. When I read over it, I decided that I enjoyed the writing regardless of its subject, so I would post it.

Lou the Lover

The ballerina’s first spin

Caused a crack

To arise from the bubbles

Buried beneath the

Smooth of her joints,

Scraping against each other,

To the surface

For a breath of air

She heard it nice and quite

Clearly too

It was jagged and

Truthful too

But a silent alarm

Sounded beneath the tightly

Formed canvas on the drum

Of her skin

It reminded her

Of the imagined inhaling

Of her noise

That prefaced the suckling

of her tongue

Against a bloody tooth or two.

The noise made

When a man pushes a white stalactite

Into a cave of fleshy pink

It all came from her smile

Perfect and demure

Wide and stylized

Bleached clean to

Look almost squeaky

With its shiny sheen

And the way the news

Kept informing her

Of another rapist

The rapist traveled around town

Quite impressively, really

So that he might find and bind

A woman or man

Made no difference, really

And with his body

Slowly intuit a grind

A deep and slow twist

Of his hip

He liked the way smooth curves

Might try to resist the waves

As they advanced

In a crooked

And corrupted

Ebb and flow

Every day

These people walk by

Without an idea of danger

To linger in their eye

Every day

With a nudge and push

They assert

Themselves

In lines full

To brim just

For a taste

Of something sweet, maybe

A cupcake, a smoothie

A cookie bleeding

smudged chocolate

From the impact of the sun

Everything in this world

Is just so damn stable

And so maybe

He found it alright to flip a table

He wanted the earth to quake

And when he walked at night

Grabbed his prey right

When they shook beneath

All that girth

He piled on top of them:

Mirth

Just because

Like a concerto

Opening into the room

He could feel every force

Move and writhe

As though skin were dirt

And he was Gaia

Giving birth to worms

He never needed

To force his way into beds

He could cause enough

Heads to turn

That his heart should

Not need to burn

But what use was it

When they moaned mildly?

And even when he ran

A soft leathery hand

Across such a smoothly

Formed chest

He found he was

Empty like the rest

And those too

He gave them nothing

Unforgettable

Or entirely new

No matter what,

Afterwards,

They might mew

But when he seized

And they shoved

When he heard them

Muffle and shuffle

When he slid his hand across

The wide map of their

Soft body

To feel the dips, the valleys

The crested hills

He knew he made something,

Stirred a fire somewhere

Within them

He made them

So full of burning,

Fire for escape

Rage, hate, fear

Maybe even arousal

Love, for those weird

Ones that resisted less,

So he wondered

How they expected him

To loathe himself

No, the workers

In the factories

The buzzers

In the office spaces

Would loathe themselves

For their every repression

And harmful digression

But he shook things

And the worst harm he brought

Were a few minds

Shattered open like egg shells

Just more statistics

And in some way

He was better off than

The news anchors and high up

Law officers, because

At least he knew those numbers

He knew them sometimes

By the bite mark he left

When breaking the flesh of their shoulder

Or the laceration

That ran straight and

Smoother than a river

Marked by the crawl

Of his fingers

He knew those numbers

Better than every

Single statistician

And search engine

In town

Every time he

Escapaded to a new

Menagerie of derangery

He liked to spend himself

Hot and heavily

In the seeping and weeping

Artery of this piece of love

He clung himself to

Yes, he knew that

One day, they’d unzip

Those double helices of his

And the mystery would unravel

Like a chromosome

Cleaving itself in two

To create I and you

He did not mind though

They would uncover him

One day

In fact

He looked forward

To the moment

The door swung open

And they’d find him

In his chair

With a smile

Blood in a cool pile

Smoking steel in a firm grip

And a hole

So deep and so wide,

Were it he were alive,

He might just want to

Struggle inside

~Austin R Ryan

I Met Poetry

I found poetry

in form of a flighty fay

A light and pretty fairy

viewing the land

with eyes open and wary

 

I saw poetry

in the struggles

of seeking and being sought

heard it scrape echoes

out the bottom of a bottle of pills,

A cold wind trying hard to give me chills

The grimmest of the grimdark

An apocalyptic apothecary

A regular coal mine canary

bleating out beats beneath

feathers colored too crassly

and a bent beak

jaundiced just right

 

Poetry and I met

At a gallant gala

Where I saw it

Step to strict form

 

It spoke in fine tune

for the lover and loon

before it danced the

Sestina with idling Italians

and sung a blues sonnet

to rowdy revolutionaries

and pouting prophets

 

Poetry invited me

to a snappy café.

We talked in stilted

flow and rhythm

trying terribly to rhyme

 

I cornered poetry

(Just when it got big)

for an autograph.

It just threw me a mirror

and told me to write

a god damn book

 

Poetry and I

had a falling out,

when I wanted ideology

and it trended to the miscarriages

of so sharp a reality

 

I kneeled at Poetry’s deathbed

and heard it spout gibberish

Let it mouth references

to Shakespeare’s obscurities

Before its cold bulging veins

pumped bursting pluralities

that would prove too much

for a never healthy heart

 

Like Poetry,

I resolved to speak

until I would draw a fine line

and let words

From my mind and mouth

Like blood

From my body and health

 

~Austin R Ryan