Description: This is a fairly long work. It is a poem written in 7 parts. Marilyn Manson did inspire this poem so I dedicate it to him. The only things really truly relevant to his life is the part one and the first part of part 2 where the italics ends, and the over all idea of the poem (perhaps other bits and pieces too, like the nightmares). Otherwise this is all me just working off an idea.
2 questions for you:
1. I haven't really settled on a real title yet. Any suggestions?
2. Should part 7 stay in future tense?
A Sane Tale -------------------------------------------
A Sane Tale for Marilyn Manson
1
In your reflection
you’re blind to what I behold
so you cover it up
in a guise of rebellion
You say your heart beats dark
and pale your face
rubbing with your palms
blending well
stain your lips the color of a sore
or of the saddest bile
Finally lining your eyes
the way a skull should
you leave your breath on the glass
after you close the door
I press in my fingerprints
and watch them fade
2 I want to leave a dent
rough and deep
and traumatize the world
to truth.
I have failed.
Fallen into cliché
and have eaten
part of my soul.
I have failed.
You hold your fingers
to your lips
the tips bruised
smudged red-black
when I turn you hide them
behind your thigh
eyes and chin softly aside
I pulled them out one by one
3
You keep a case
of two gently overlapping parts
made at 13
its glass stolen
from your mother’s menagerie
of china dolls
The oak sanded smooth
when the day
became unbearable
Filled it with stricken watch faces
dissected in your hands
when time no longer mattered
as long as it kept you unseen
Large flat
and pale as river stones
to minuscule and brazen
like foreign coins
They lie cradled in cotton
some naming hours of death
others baring their parts
their blood scattered
shaped in tiny brass wheels
4
I’ve never felt your tears
the way the strip of gray carpet
between the plaster and bedside has
I’d find you half eaten
by the hollow darkness below the bed
the edge of the comforter
gently riding the angle of your jaw
and sigh of your bare back
trying to hide the mess
Beneath the comforter
your right arm would be outstretched
hand clutched on the side of a handmade case
the kind that stilled wing beats
I’d rest my ear
against your cream-hued shoulder
my legs on yours
and listen to your nightmare
between inhales
I knew I could
never turn back.
5
I keep a hinged wooden box
a small window of chicken wire
cut in its front
Something I bought
when 15
painted its sides the deepest shadow
and its inside churning carmine
Filled it with severed rose heads
pungent and dry
one for each time I turned a boy away
rusted skeleton keys
buried near a child’s grave
and a single crow’s feather
I found beneath your pillow
the night you cried
and thrashed in your sleep
6 I want to leave a dent
rough and deep.
Your lips a thin line
as you snap off the head
of a budding rose
its vulnerable color
a barely protruding pustule
If I spiral further,
Nail-less fingers peel back the sepals
would you do it?
then hand me the insides
7
I’d like to hold you
cradled in a bath of prime roses
within an expanse of black porcelain
our eyes guided
by the warm hue of each synced heart beat.
My right hand
would keep your chin above heated liquid
clear as obsidian at its weakest
tendrils of its sweet vapor caressing your cheekbones
The white on your face
would tear away in cloudy beads
your raw lip-stain smear
the black around your eyes
would blur into the creases of your smile
Your fingertips would trace my lips
then I’ll know
as your pupils dilate from flat to depthless
their color contracting from broken
blue-tinged gems to nearly colorless
My left hand
over your lungs
I’d hold you in this bath
as you leave your mark down my cheek
A truth to treasure
This is a lot like an epic Robert Browning poem, but with a dark and gothic twist to it. I could picture every image you described in my mind, reading it reminded me of watching an old black and white film with dark images and eerie music. Now for your questions. I definitely think the last part should be in future tense, it brings hope to the poem, and gives it it's own personality in a way. Also the subject matter you are describing in part seven seems to go better with future tense. Now for a title. I'm not good with them......but here are a few I thought of for this one:
Black Roses for a Saint
Black streams cut his pallid face
Riddles in a Rosewood Box
eh i dunno hahah. But those are the ones that came to mind. The poem is awesome, keep writing. You put a lot of feeling into it.
Submission Name: A Sane Tale
