08-29-2024, 05:43 AM
Here's an autobiographical poem that could do with a bit of work-shopping as I don't think it is working at the moment (including the title)
Pornography in the Woods
The Woods, long since lost to the inevitable, were to us
an infinite playground, filled with feral teens, oozing lust and
hate, aiming fake guns at our tender flesh. We would have
to run, swerving like crocodiles to escape the metal sting,
Someone lost an eye we would all intone, not sure if it were true,
thirsting for the time when we could do it too. At night, we knew
the Woods inverted, lonely fires illuminating the distaff leaf, smoke
and disappointment drifting through the canopy to fall upon
council roofs, an icing made of negative, a photo undeveloped.
Come morning we would find the smoldering campsites
left over from the night before, rocks and cans and magazines,
abandoned by a retreating army of one, maybe two.
We would reach in curiosity for the relics of the top shelf,
bronze skin and masked wives, posing awkward and profane.
Mothers, daughters, sisters arranged in an awkward vanitas,
legs always akimbo, a vision, a version, of another world,
a world that lay in wait, a panther hidden in suburban trees,
waiting for the opportunity to drop and crush our skulls
between its teeth, but let us live with newfound wounds,
holes that let the light in, sunlight blistering and blackening
the pages still old and torn and tender, to burst to flame and fall to ash,
an end of summer butterfly, still crisp around the edges.
Pornography in the Woods
The Woods, long since lost to the inevitable, were to us
an infinite playground, filled with feral teens, oozing lust and
hate, aiming fake guns at our tender flesh. We would have
to run, swerving like crocodiles to escape the metal sting,
Someone lost an eye we would all intone, not sure if it were true,
thirsting for the time when we could do it too. At night, we knew
the Woods inverted, lonely fires illuminating the distaff leaf, smoke
and disappointment drifting through the canopy to fall upon
council roofs, an icing made of negative, a photo undeveloped.
Come morning we would find the smoldering campsites
left over from the night before, rocks and cans and magazines,
abandoned by a retreating army of one, maybe two.
We would reach in curiosity for the relics of the top shelf,
bronze skin and masked wives, posing awkward and profane.
Mothers, daughters, sisters arranged in an awkward vanitas,
legs always akimbo, a vision, a version, of another world,
a world that lay in wait, a panther hidden in suburban trees,
waiting for the opportunity to drop and crush our skulls
between its teeth, but let us live with newfound wounds,
holes that let the light in, sunlight blistering and blackening
the pages still old and torn and tender, to burst to flame and fall to ash,
an end of summer butterfly, still crisp around the edges.