Jump to content
  • Join Gay Authors

    Join us for free and follow your favorite authors and stories.

Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

A year of schoolwork: poems I submitted for a grade - 1. Seasons

CW: violence and gore (Columbine and Serial Killer) and sex (Serial Killer)

Spring

Columbine (Ballad)

 

First there was the constant itching.

Then came the awful squirm.

Something shifting under the skin,

his palm a writhing worm.

So nails dug into flesh like hoes

carve furrows into dirt

and from the gash flowed vital blood,

like rain that floods the earth.

He drowns in it, or so it feels

when everything goes black.

For frightfully, a growing thing

comes crawling from the crack.

When he awakes the wound has gone

sewn shut by twisting roots.

All that remains to show the truth

a tiny pale green shoot.

He tries to hide his new companion

with gloves and careful smiles.

Daily he finds it grows and grows

as if to thwart his guile.

So then he thinks “I’ll cut it out,

violent abdication.”

The blade sinks deep into his skin,

agony/salvation.

Too late, it seems, for when he pulls

his flesh back in a flap

he finds beneath that vines now curl

‘round bones with blood now sap.

He vomits when they start to move

snaking ‘round his innards

a wicked mind all their own slides

up and ever inwards.

His body now is not his own,

it belongs to the vine

And from his palm it’s flower spreads

A purple columbine.

 

Summer

 

Anything’s a poem: An Essay Outline

 

“Summersong”

by the Decemberists

presents it’s audience with an

idealized summer as a metaphor for

Thesis: (and criticism of)

the way that romantic relationships

can be idealized and undermined

by that idealization.

 

It repeatedly juxtaposes beautiful,

perfect imagery against a dark,

Support: crawling underbelly and utilizes alliteration

to lull the audience into a passive state;

to brush these darker moments under the rug.

 

“Waylay, the din of the day

Boats bobbing in the blue of the bay

In deep, far beneath

all the dead sailors slowly slipping to sleep”

Examples: and

“Been saved, the warmer the waves

I felt us slip into a watery grave”

are both examples of this literary tool in

action.

 

As you can see, “Summersong”

is an excellent example of poetic technique

Conclusion: highlighting theme and clarifying

the message of the broader work.

The song is one not of the glory of summer

but of the folly of artificial glorification.

 

Fall

Serial Killer (Sestina)

 

I want you to love me

like a serial killer

Drill a hole

in my head,

make me wish

I was dead.

 

Taste my flesh, dead,

red, raw, gushing your

nails like knives, wishing

to carve virgin skin - fresh kill

into fresh filets, fish dripping headless

and blue - eyes like holes

 

waiting to be filled, holes

gaping, wide and wet and dead.

I’ll give you head,

one more for the freezer, my

tongue frostbitten, cold teeth killing

tastebuds across skin like a wish

 

but I don’t know what I’m wishing

for, so just treat me like the hole

that I am. Come to me, killer

and fuck me till I’m dead,

till all I can feel is an open wound, your

friction the only thing in my head.

 

Give me the gift of no heading

no future-tense pathetic wishing

clean me out, clean me off till my

bleach-white skull all lined with holes

is thoughtless and shuffling, living dead

sounds like heaven when your head’s a killer.

 

And when you’re done, my killer,

and I’m lying on a kitchen floor headless

and dripping, just me and the dead

flies, eggs already hatching under my skin, wish

me luck before you toss me in my shallow hole.

I’ll need it when I’m finally without you.

 

With nothing left between me and my head.

Just this dirt-filled hole and the other dead,

all wishing they too had the love of a serial killer.

 

Winter

The Giving Tree in White

 

Winter came to him like a mother.

Branches withered, their fruit long rotten,

snow dressed the giving tree

in white.

 

And his hands ached

From clutching

From clutching

From clutching too hard

 

She always looked so stern

arms akimbo, looking down at him,

a whisper of a smile, disapproving.

He had no reason to be afraid.

 

She taught him well

or as well as she could,

stern words and calm correction -

he had no reason to be afraid.

 

The line soon grew worn from careful toeing

eyes always down so not to trip and fall to either side

and her praise was warm and kind, almost like love.

He knew he had no reason to be afraid.

 

But still his knuckles were white

from clutching

from clutching

from clutching too hard.

 

Love sat wide and heavy

a yoke on narrow shoulders

and he, always unsure

exactly what it was carved to carry.

 

So he dragged it on the ground

always looking for a worthy burden,

something heavy enough to deserve him

but not so heavy it would snap.

 

She told him once

“Life’s not so serious

as you make it out to be boy

lighten up a little.

 

Anybody with eyes can see

you’re clutching

you’re clutching

you’re clutching too hard”

 

But words like that they don’t set in

when your palms are lined in half-moon scars

so he lived his life on a tightrope

strung across the void between stars

 

She asked him once

“What’d I ever do to make you feel

like nobody could ever want you,

not even yourself?”

 

But that answer wouldn’t come

until there was no voice left asking it,

pale marble sits heavy and quiet

under the apple boughs.

 

Hands gripping branches soaring

once clutching,

not clutching,

but spreading in the wind.

 

Spring came to him like a mother

stealing his nights and selling them to the sun

and flowers dressed the giving tree

in white.

Copyright © 2024 MythOfHappiness; All Rights Reserved.
  • Like 4
  • Love 5
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

You are not currently following this author. Be sure to follow to keep up to date with new stories they post.

Recommended Comments

Chapter Comments

The Giving Tree in White hit me hard. To me, that’s an immensely powerful poem. Your class is fortunate to have gotten the first readings of these. 

  • Love 1
Link to comment

Spring and Fall were well written but disturbing; but I guess that was the point.  Summer was really nice.  Winter however was very powerful.  I truly felt the emotion behind this one. They were all well written, but this one was truly special.  

  • Love 1
Link to comment
AC Benus

Posted (edited)

The Columbine poem has left me contemplating it for days. You had me running to a five-min. google search for myths relating to the flower, which proved, yes, there is one relating to this type of flower, and no, I had not heard it because authors like Ovid and Robert Graves did not find it compelling enough to talk about (a point on which I can agree).

So, that leaves us with Columbine as a national scar on the American psyche . . . perhaps this watershed moment is what readers are supposed to connect to. The high school massacre was a form of suicide for the murderers too . . . lest we forget, and perhaps I was meant to delay my comments all along, mulling over the poem, until today -- five days before the anniversary of event the NRA piggybacked extremist moneymaking on. Million and million of dollars, and countless lives lost since then because of them.   

However, a large part of me wishes I did not know your poem came out of an assignment/workshopping effort, because the results are truly amazing. I suppose -- and you should defo not comment on my mind-wanderings, because I'm not asking you to, nor am I in anyway 'expecting an explanation,' as so many out there are when they encounter challenging artistic works -- the poem is a modern exponent of Ovid after all. Transformation in his Metamorphoses is often the result of tragedy and unwanted transitioning from one state to another (usually due to violence as a forced agent of change).

But just like many of the Roman's tales of transmogrify, the protagonist in your poem seems to unveil their true selves to us. Perhaps tearing at the veneer is for our eyes only, for the one "feeling different" knows there has been something growing underneath the whole time           

Edited by AC Benus
Link to comment

Some excellent poetry here, but it left me a little raw. Some imagery was dark, and that's not a bad thing. Your writing is effective, and Columbine is astonishing so. Giving Tree wields power for sure. Thanks for sharing these. Cheers! G

Link to comment

Your poetry made me stop and think. Again. And Again. Probably for longer. Well done.

Link to comment

I had to think about these poems for a while to absorb their full impact.  The others have pretty much described the raw feelings your poems evoked, so I'll merely add to what they've already stated.  Thank you for sharing.  

Link to comment
View Guidelines

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Newsletter

    Sign Up and get an occasional Newsletter.  Fill out your profile with favorite genres and say yes to genre news to get the monthly update for your favorite genres.

    Sign Up
×
×
  • Create New...