“Spore Suite”: A poem by Teri Louise Kelly

SPORE SUITE

 

1.

Twisted like acid

Drops

My heart is a sanitary pad

No tears fall

In the desert of my soul

The wind howls

A serenade

My bones chime

Walking this empty land.

 

2.

Not fucked up,

Fucked down,

down to the pit

where beasts eat

& bodies squirm

where the pain is ecstasy

& the genocide reins

where sins multiply

& gargoyles laugh at impurity,

this hell you talk of,

exists within,

go to it,

consume its madness,

shit out its knowledge.

 

3.

Talk to me

through the bars,

I don’t bite,

listen to my words,

set me free,

hide me in

your chastity.

 

4.

Vomiting up boredom

pissing in the gutter

of dead end street

on another frail night;

shooting blanks into

another empty void;

needing nothing

wanting everything

fucking anything

drinking anything

chords & ropes & bells

& fists & boots & blood,

living here is ugly

in a beautiful way,

i was born on the tracks

run over by life.

 

5.

Those tenements of love we erected,

from bricks of lust & want,

crumbled in the tempest,

turning slowly to slums,

where bare-footed dwellers

& beggars, traded piety

for ammunition.

We could only sit and watch the fall,

stoned and inebriated,

through vacant eyes;

staring down wasteland promises

& shopping cart truths

wheeled through desolation

by promiscuous cunts

& vagabond slags.

We shed our clothes & our skin,

scoured rubble for clues,

until our bones bled;

builders we were,

Shakespearean sots,

architects of our own demise.

 

6.

Stilled by a bad blood transfusion;

thorazine shuffles toward identity crisis

inter-species communion, cerebral destitution

juice extraction – high-pitched screams

battery acid lozenges

creaking fairground rides

a non-ferrous  smile before you leap,

Out in the garden it/s raining ash

the running men sport surgical masks

jump-starting burned-out wrecks;

Beating hours on dead skin drums

with shinbone sticks

Re-winding time – re-engineering a house of pain stay

to meet all your serum needs

in pathos one they’re cooking spores,

spreading the word via pot-bellied microwaves

I can’t make it out on my own,

the exits are tied with intestinal tract,

the box is dead; the despot hung

All I got left to do, is sit here numb,

Dye my mind blonde

blend in with the pale-faced mob

as they run rampage

down dead clown alley

again tonight.

 

7.

despise it with a passion,

that four letter word,

loathe its manipulative device,

the way it blinds & corrupts,

spreads septic disease

tortures & kills romance

asphyxiates lust,

breeds infidelity;

that incestuous courtship it nurtures,

murders independence,

drags its swastika from the bedroom

to the courtroom.

Swaggering through lives

with bastard bravado,

& illegitimate sentiment,

bludgeoning honesty

coveting deceit;

love is a plague,

to which we all succumb . . .

 

8.

Let go or hold on,

watch the masks dissolve

the facts dissipate

in the murky gloom of innuendo

a moment dies

another is born,

there are no steps to retrace

no prints to track

this is the void between truth or dare,

the blurred line;

& you can stand or fall,

live or die,

on the strength of three words,

one heart,

two lies.