Interrogating A Sickle

What a devious curve

You carry. A burden?

I think not. You, batch of breath,

You shoulder it with mastery. And

Still you yank a trailing sack.

You are so versatile! A

Magicked many inhabit your arsenal.

Do you polish it often?

To make the sour swerve of it 

More proficient? Do you

Let it fester? Let it ring with rust 

So it triumphs with more a tear

And a tug than a terminal trim? 

Do you drag in that crumpled bag

Your face, too?

Your comb-over, your

Strawberry scrubs, your mucus and

Glue? 

A priest, a parasite, a private bud

Born to unscrew. 

How do you come?

Some proud plume of smog.

Hooded, hunched like a parable.

Or do you don a cloak more

Chameleonic?

Blending to brothels, to brooding

Leftovers, to frothing water

Weighing down the prize. 

A perfect plundering. 

Do you smile? When you 

Do what you do and you see it

Through

Do you revel in it? 

How foolish, you're always veiled as

The victor.

But I once read in a fat book that you

Let one slip through. The fat book

That leeched, preached on my

Soul for a decade, until it had

Shriveled it down

To a crooked cashew.

Still fragrant enough to attract you. 

Do you wince after every fake rising?

A pillow pristine, sheets solid with

Formaldehyde.

Do not look so shocked! So 

Typically abysmal!

I know you are sleepless.

Your head heavy with one eye active

For every two.

They say repent, repent

For seconds ill-spent but they haven't a clue.

I know you are sleepless.

Omniscient monarch, clutching

Both sun and moon.

I know your lips are tasteless, 

Your heels are beat-less.

No rest, we fragile crops need

Tending to.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH 

Neutrality

These things are foul things.

Mercilessly cunning, erotic in

A way. I play with them, 

Unhook the cage and let them

Stumble drunkenly from

The ivory cradle.

I love them. I find them

Poking me like pins, a cancerous

Raffle, each begging to be the 

Stem. I am tense in a wire

Suit. Erect, stiffened so I cannot

Evade a single prick.

How many times must I

Employ you? How many ways

Can I twist and tangle you to

Mitigate the brutality of

A sunrise? 

Isn't this enough? Is this not a

Testament, a coin revolving mid-toss?

I once believed these black

Blocks would rise solely from that unholy triad,

If not all, than the ultimate.

Lift the magnifying lens, ignorant iris.

Was I incorrect? Deleted drafts of the

Alchemic buffer.

A high, high number.

But I love them. I collect them

Like butterflies that met fate freshly.

My skull has never been so full

Of phantom wings, tickling.

O what a ghastly scab, neutrality.

A fickle stalemate.

Do not dare to make me state his name.

Do not dare to make me debate with a 

Duplicate of my physical frame.

Yes I reference the deathless,

The glittering ghouls that haunt

All print, possess palette, pencil.

But I'll be hanged for my

Redundant return to the crux.

Ribbon rhymes strapping me 

To a tolerable voltage.

Does that not reveal enough? 

I can hardly count the times he

Brings a soiled Spring to me 

And blooms on page, in pixel.

The ugliest thistle. Good god, my eyes 

Ascend and bend to the

Inertia, darting across the spectrum.

It is a cavernous room, packed

Tight as a pipe with all of you.

My innocence stripped by the

Cry of this vicissitude.

One could pose that I abuse as I

Use, but I am 

Prone to argue. Just lean into 

The mirror. 

Lean into it - I'm certain you'll see it too.

You do not do.

And yet you do.

And still you do not do.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

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dversepoets.com prompt, June 5, 2014

"So what do you believe of language? which is it? the best tool? does language fail?

Answer that, or perhaps tell us a time language failed you. or maybe when you found just the right words."

Completed too late to link, but I figured submission was paramount after a birth like this.