Gerunds

We are no fragile poets, he said
sipping panaceas;
no,
we bleed in these bloody times.

Our descriptors screech–
show calluses.

Our gerunds
are heavy-laden,
participled
and unrelieved.

In our time
we’ve had sex
with the dark and delicious.
Our tiny lusts are autographed
on our eyelids.

We have ridden the night bull
kissed cold similes
licked razor blades,
cut ourselves;
knew love only fleetingly.

Our body linings
are lined with scabs
layers upon layers
exposed.

Our infatuations have been tattooed
on our foreheads and we consume
what we love most.

We’ve known villainous reprieves–
raw extremes.

We’ve seen our low expectations
sucked dry;
our joyless roses decline to bloom;
we have seen steeled excusings,
blatant excrescences
resent-mes,
poxed regrets,
vampire ideologies,
deeply cutting debaucheries
and Unspeakeries.

We’ve had
our wisdom wrung
from emotion’s sponge;
our oases
have been carved from pulp existence–
our meanings extracted
from Carpathian realities.

We are no fragile lovers then
opining on slippery metaphysical surfaces.

We are similes’ survivors–
denizens of the electron brainscape;
computer voices winnowing;
down into the strangled night;
trying to re-dream all things;
uncallouse our callouses;
make our determination is un-sunk.

We are the roughly loving
cheated from the real thing
forced to substitute dream
for reality
razor-blading
constantly between
the seemly and up the unseemly
denizens of the Almost.