Room 102

I am sure, if you were to kiss my ankle,
you would taste salt.
While unarticulated thoughts squatted in my cortex,
threatening to leave if I should force them
to show themselves,
a tear happened.
Actually, it was more like two or three
tears, but I didn’t count and my poems
are mostly lies that don’t mean to be
till the words scuttle onto the page with their
nutshells and similes
so let this be accurate
for the sake of… something.
Oh, there was a boy,
of course –
rendered both handsome and god-like
by his nature and by my own
absurdity.
In that order.
This tear, it came with
a warning, which was nice of it,
I suppose.
My face collapsed against
the will I like to pretend I have,
brow, nose, mouth,
the whole bloody lot of it
went “whoomph!”
then the tear came,
went

Drip

and landed on my ankle.

The nature of the universe
makes certainty unwise.

But

If you were to kiss my ankle,
just under the slender silver chain
that sometimes surprises when seen,
slightly to the left of the single freckle,
lightly flicking your tongue
over the narrowest curve
between calf and foot…

If you were to kiss my ankle,
You would taste salt.

I blame the moon, of course.
She zeroed in on you, fattened and bored
and made you go quite mad.
Should you have noticed my recent bouts
of temper (although I am sure you did not,
insignificant as they were), forgiveness
would have been foremost on your mind.
But that bloated orb with her beams of
delusion had other ideas and I fear
she may have ruined you.

Then there was that earthquake
in that place. You remember the one?
Perhaps you don’t. Understandable really,
given its effect on your reason.
Say, wouldn’t it be some kind of bittersweet
irony if it was tearing down bridges and setting
them aflame at the same time as we… never mind.
I can tell you what it wasn’t: it wasn’t my doubt;
that could never have expressed itself to you
without my explicit awareness and consent.
Tectonic shifts.
It was the earthquake.


I have also heard that something was in trine
with something else. Jupiter perhaps.
Or was it Mercury? You know how these planets are.
It must have been on that day when I most assuredly
did not convice myself there was someone else
and that noise was not what was left of us
going tha-thunk
tha-thunk
tha-thunk
down a very steep hill and into a ditch. No, silly,
it was the planets trining. Or whatever you call it.

Your mother’s new hat cannot be entirely discounted
either.
One never knows with previous ownership.
Not that we are the types to believe in curses
and bad energy and the like. But that hat
came into our lives at exactly the same time
as I most definitely did not make any kind of
drunken phonecall to any kind of ex because I wanted
someone to reassure me I could be loved when
you wouldn’t. How else to explain that argument?
It seems to me that cursed hats
are an overlooked threat.

Other factors must be considered:

The soup that may or may not have been out of date,
the birthmark on your hand or the freckle on my knee,
the Moroccan mint tea,
the something-or-other in Mongolia,
the bird that landed on my fence and looked at
me funny,
or the fact that I love you so deeply and dreadfully
and desperately so that it wasn’t me
It wasn’t me.
It wasn’t me.

They bled into each other,
slithering as they shed
the skins of Before.
He ripped the top from a mountain
and scooped out its innards,
handing them to her
as she summoned the skies
to their feet and bade them
to do as he wished.
'All' he said.
'Infinite' she replied.
They could ask for nothing more.

Anna Russell

She screams for More;
this is her battle-cry, this Boudicea
adrift from her chariot, tearing through
unfamiliar land, always crying
More.

Her shield is a battering ram,
her sword an axe. Give to her,
helpless as you will find yourself to
withold. Give to her
and she will take,
she will take before snarling the torn-lipped
snarl of the ravenous.

She wants to wear your skin
like spoils of war, tear through your ribcage
and feast upon your heart, wailing for
your soul as she dines. Adorning her head
with your eyes, her throat with your voice,
again it comes:

More.

Wordless and sightless you hear it,
snatched from your own larynx and
uttered in your timbre yet saturated
in the void she exists in.

She wants you to love her,
love her more than anyone has or can.
Hurt her and she shines,
cut yourself on the blade of her hunger
and watch her smile.

Still, she wants more,
consumed with battered reflections
of images she cannot bear to see,
yet unable to cease. Unable to admit she must.

You cannot win.

And nor can she

Anna Russell

(this is a re-working of a poem that was intended as a companion piece to one called Exploding Aphrodite, which can also be found on this blog).

I'm down to my last
Cigarette,
Fingernail,
Nerve.

The night has folded in on itself.

I don't know where you are
Again
You won't pick up your phone
Again

I know, without needing to be told
That you're substance-happy and incoherent
Again
And that if I talk I'll only nag
Again.

And so it comes to this,
It has to.

I'm too tired to perch
On the pedestal you made for me,
The one I proudly, foolishly clambered atop:
The fall has left me ugly

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

But I cannot do this any more.

Anna Russell

Southern amber
And memories
Colassal, ripping sadists of memories
Chuck's poetry,
Liquid fire in baritone,
Soothes me.
Unscrew. Tilt. Release.
This is the way
Of the fractured heart,
She will smack you in the face
With the Truth of Yourself,
Much like
The Amber and the Fire
Is my glass half full
Or half empty?
I don't know.
Turn it up
And pour me another.

Anna Russell

Your innocence astounds me. It just
sits there, blinking incomprehension at these rocks
I drag behind me, the ones I hang like the teeth of
enemies from my neck.

You have not been hurt enough. But I cannot
bear anyone but me having the power to
do it to you now. So we are here.
I need you to get this.

I want you safe. Because I love you.
I want you to hurt. Because I love you.

I want you to understand.

My demons feast on things you cannot comprehend.

And so I seem as I do to you.

Tonight, I'm going to fuck you like I hate you
and you will thank me in the morning.

Anna Russell

I have swooped upon experiences,
With a tongue tip taste,
Swallowing them whole should
My curiosity be piqued one notch
Above the norm.

I have breathed out men like dust.

I have sated myself,
Stuffed myself,
Yet left them wanting more
As I smirked.

I have spied from great distances
Faces that intrigued me
And wordlessly brought them
Directly opposite mine.

I have feigned ignorance
In adolescence,
Then made pretences of knowledge
I did not possess.
I have grown into myself
And been only myself.

I have seared through men like white heat,
The swift passing leaving me unsure
If I have even left a mark.

I have excused myself with phoney pleas
Of ascetic needs.
I have shamed myself, once or twice,
With all too real pleas
For the status quo to remain in place.

I have yearned, hurt and fucked
Hard;
Gripped fat swollen dreams
And handfuls of hair
As reality ebbed like
Laughing oceans
From under me.

Each time,
Each sense in its entirety,
I have gulped it down.

But love,
Steadfast and reciprocal
Love,

That,

That eludes me still...

Anna Russell