Under Tempest Waters
Or, Two Poems on Deadly Desire & Ruinous Romance
flash flood, flash
palms flecked with sawdust cypress planks resting at your feet, eyes drifting to the ark you call haven to the horizon beyond land of milk and honey your false promise my false idol. shoulders heavy with gospel truth as i finally realize the angel and devil are one and the same. a divine revelation tolling like a siren, a bell tower, a lighthouse awaiting the storm, not tomorrow but today, ramsay! for my vision of you remains distorted a surreal dream perhaps seeds of forbidden fruit spilled like tears the fig forced down with the sword of wonders puncturing, cleaving the heavens and the earth eden’s tree of knowledge sprouting fruitless mortality the word, the truth, the light revealing itself. no longer enduring, fulfilling, living, breathing— your hand outstretched waiting for my clasp flesh of the beast my heart of clay cracks like the ground i stand on mercilessly foolish wisdom wiped clean. for forty days and forty nights i have had daydreams of life and love and beauty millions of prayers left unheard, unanswered wondering if i’d ever see a ray of sun from under your somber shadow teeth stained violet-black from your temptation wild and ripe, tender honey sweet sentiment spoiled sour. i see it now. i see it, now more than ever— like the flash flood flashing before my open eyes. the gates are open waters so holy and infinite mighty and everlasting sweeping me off my feet like you did so easily so unbelievably effortlessly. oh icarus, godless outlaw, feathers and wax cannot carry a sinister soul bearing no goodness to sacred sainthood. i do not weep when the tide pulls you down and this time, as i swallow what feels like centuries of bitter, breaking darkness my lungs welcome weeping winds i earn my wild, wandering wings and my spirit lays peacefully to rest.
slumbering sandcastles
churning waves, midnight butterflies as my footprints in the sand match the imprinted echoes of your time here on earth, briar rose, dear aurora my sleepless beauty, please rest easy whoever said “sleep when you’re dead” never actually wondered about those sleepless souls wandering, for your foggy eyes barely gift me glance, your charming prince in a life long past, or maybe hamlet, our tale tragically shakespearean. ophelia, ophelia, o, woe is me, ophelia, return! could true love’s kiss be your saving touch? i can see the eternal ache for sand in your eyes and a blinking awareness of being awake after choking on the brink of life and death— sorrowful suffocation. there’s a lack of freedom when one is confined to a permanent state of conscious unconsciousness. i thought death would be freeing. i can’t carry this burden of memory for its weight is too heavy, pounds and pounds of beach molded into structure, architecture, sandcastles of past and present and future, for our real home, an apartment through the canyon, now feels empty, secluded, insanely forsaken—with rooms too big to fit just one. am i now mad? am i mad for watching the phantom of a former romance under silver moonlight dance the final dance before judgment, the blade in your corpse’s chest too violently deep to sparkle among dying stars? sweet sleep belongs to the righteous, and who’s to say you were without sin, any more virtuous than i? i as your spectator, your specter pulls back the curtains of our bedroom and drinks in the sunrise’s pale palette coloring your hollow, sunken cheeks with a tint of golden-shadowed blush, feeling the shore wash between your toes. the dawn of newborn day, the verse of a newborn song, fated to a restless rest until the sun itself burns out and the sea itself dries out to nothingness. for even within these sandcastles you cannot slumber— only pray for a moment’s respite. truly, i thought death would be freeing.





absolutely beautiful! you have such a strong poetic voice 🫶🏻
Amazing work <3