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September 15, 2023

Three Poems

E.B. Griffin

Three Poems photo

Life Bleeds Thick


Life bleeds thick.
Hollow and lonely, but full with conversations, somehow.
Sometimes, to one self.
Life bleeds thick, porous and holy.
It’s all over, and nowhere near done.
I died in you, just a little.
You were part of me a week ago, the best parts, the slumber parts.
You’re the heavy sleep that wakes me.
Life bleeds thick.
I was getting fat before you.
Comfortable, cozy in that ole familiar.
But you rush through my veins as I snort you off the bed, as I cut you up on a mirror and have to have all of you.
A bump is not enough.
It never is.
Life bleeds thick.
Don’t look for rhythm, don’t look for tempo.
Not here.
Just look for all of me in one second and let it crush everything around it.
Life bleeds thick.
Steal it from around you.
The tactile experience of typing and the state of flow in writing is only rivaled by the best sex.
Or the best drugs.
You’re both, so everything is a letter.
Not a dear, but an initial, used for acronyms and coded languages only you and I know, words only you and I speak, with our mouths closed, with our mouths open.
I intercept your breath and give you mine, dying to put life in you.
But, life bleeds thick, and I don’t know if I could do that to someone.

Screen Door


Startled surroundings
of the fire breathing martyrs
collapse under the weight
of questions like:
What's a dragon?
The lot lizards burn you too.
But then again,
anything can break
the skin of mere mortals,
So why not fantasy?
Why not sci-fi?
Why not madmen
on a hot afternoon
with the fan so high
I can barely hear
Don Draper smoke.
I smoke too.
I wheeze when I don’t
and when I wheeze
the squeaky old screen door
on the front of the house
gets upset, thinking
I’m mocking the noise
the screen door makes
when the screen door won’t
let it itself go.
I only mock the flies
that grate themselves
against the screen
because I can see
myself in them
and that’s why I laugh.

I Traced My Finger


I traced my finger down
The back of her time
Spun a web in her belly
Kissed her pulse
Made breakfast but still
Starved
I swam laps up her straw
But still thirsty
Got an erection
From a coke bottle
Bought a bed and left it
Outside
I purged baking soda
Covered it in footprints
Saw my reflection
In a glass hallway
Went to see a doctor
Gave the wrong name.

 


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