I have them, more or less than others.
Not a contest of territories.
Simple survival,
more or less,
the kind that can make you harden, cold.
The freeze that never thaws.
Stay gold, Ponyboy.
No time, slow time.
The ticket to our monstrosities.
No out. No gliding to the light in vitriol.
“Who can compare?” screams what is left of nobility,
brimming will, cut down to a stump,
death head, full of fuel.
Games immortals play. The pretext of clown;
upside of your dark side.
Winter kissed,
I fight for alternate endings
while you engage in sexy toy talk.
A feral ballet,
vanishing finally like traces of snow on the lawn.
I have before me books on a wall,
the laughter, or is it rage, of crows behind,
broadcast to the sky, in depth, inside.
An image comes with the engine.
Torn out teeth; no sleep.
Abandoned, you’re never off the brink.
It follows you like a dirty instrument
waiting to play its melody.
A slender imprint to a dappled persona,
my concrete I, and in the stripes I see
the red in our flag. Hemorrhaging.
Mental and physical.
A brush within, a blush without.
No use to close your eyes.
Noiseless walk in empty rooms lost
endless or endless
embrace of your dying brother
half a leg on the dirt,
half of you, caught.
Play it loose.
See the door to the basement.
Don’t choose.
K. D. Rose is a poet and author. K. D.’s book, Inside Sorrow, won Readers Favorite Silver Medal for Poetry. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have been published in Word Riot, Poetry Breakfast, Candlelit Journal, The Voices Project, Strange Poetry, and showcased in the Tophat Raven Art and Literary Magazine. Publication is forthcoming in Stray Branch Magazine, Ink in Thirds, BlazeVOX Journal, Literary Orphans, The 2016 Paragram Press Anthology, and The Nuclear Impact Anthology. Her latest release is Brevity of Twit. She has a B.S. in Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Social Work.
–Background & Foreground Photography by Jon Damaschke