Guilty Conscience: A Medley of Poetry

Thief

I’d love to grab those perfect hands
when they are still in the till.
Then I’d snatch them both for me,
till they were soft and numb
with quicksand guilt
and never felt for free.

In the dull basin of a dirty sink

Quietly we washed the berries.
Quickly we drew plans,
but we abandoned them.
We condemned ourselves,
and cautiously washed our hands.

Testing virtue

“How deep is the well today?” she hissed.
She was thirsty.
He was afraid.

“Jack and Jill…
Fell down the hill”
He silently considered.

He muttered a response, and she couldn’t understand him.
Again, she pressed:
“How deep? I need to know which rope to use.”

He stole her smirk,
groped under her skirt,
and witching welled her over.

Steel meets stone

The honing stone asked the blade what her name was
before the stropping begun.
Her angled steel did nothing but dimly glisten, and a war
would be fought before she won.

Ambivalence

Ambivalence was a savory candy cane,
And it’s sharpening cockney handle melted,
A sculpted ship ferried into your flesh towards my stubborn breast.

I flutter and shudder and flounder with palpitating breath.

A plexus of waxing bodies knot together like the hair of a pastured mountain goat. This weaves as rough, scratchy lace against our flesh and we become perfect beasts.

When we stopped caring, we started living.
We became who we once were.
Then we started dying, because we were living.

Without souls, we are but a sticky puddle of holiday candy on a linoleum floor.