I Give you One Option

By: RDV


I plan the constellation
And make no move for the orchestra.

I teach how to prostrate before
The Olympians and I never
Recite a damn prayer.

I crouch under the weight of
Moonlight
But have brooked a thousand tides.

There’s the thoroughfare,
There’s the subway
And there’s the pavement;
Pick your sweet choice

While I croon the song
Of my collapse on
Perfect cue,
While I quell the
Intravenous rampage
Of my soul.

A Song

By: RDV


Take your mind out of yourself
In homage to my unconditional concern
Tell me who your mannequin was.

I want to see you nodding
At my spastic call.

Let me know where you’ll
Spend forever.

You never stop completing
half of me.

A Decade Ago

By: RDV


Come, make me believe in your reality;
Teach me how to think that you’ll never go away.
Bring back what was too perfect for my understanding;
Under bright spotlight, show me the glitter
Of your glory, the acme of your eternity.
Make come true the fairytale of my adulthood,
Zap me into a wistful dream of me and you;
Endear me to your senses
And forget me afterwards
Because I never could stay entreating just one beloved

A Representation of a Representation

By: RDV


You dare cut me open
When you’re not prepared to see what’s inside?
You turn your back to my demise,
Shielding your ears
From my delightful howl and
The publication of your rancid cowardice.
How come you were ever there one second
When, the next one, you toppled
The precipice of my logic
And overshadowed the summit
Of my devotion?
Over me, you leered like
A god in exile,
Always knowing which
Soft place of mine to pick.
Over you, I’m trying to get,
Like a quarry I lost track of
And soon forgot.
Between you and me,
Soon will be
A great gap to span,
Lengthening earthward to blindness,
To my buried recollection.

The Lonely Perpetrator and the Harbinger of Murder

A/N: This story is not entirely mine, rather it is a premise of a psycho test I’ve heard of a few years back. The twist though is of my working.


By: RDV


On the dreary day of her mother’s funeral, Clara fell in love. And as she shed fake tears on her open casket, so shook the rainbow bouquet of mourning loyally propped up in stands and baskets all around her. In synchrony gushed forth the wail of the bereft, of relatives both unknown and known, who were draped in black from head to foot, from one hand to the other. Even Clara’s weeping sank underneath it as her mind fought hard to maintain outward lament. Then finally, all at once, the chaos subsided, as though the hand of the conductor lowered to command silence. In its midst came swooping a form, seemingly from nowhere; it was a stranger from an unmarked history coming to witness the hysterics of Clara’s family in their lowest level. His recipient was that of continued quiet, tinged with a surprise none wholly concealed. And as he strode forward the body of the departed, none could mistake his presence as something other than a result of voluntary sympathy. Clara stared at him, his profile rising like a statue beside Clara who had began clutching more and more firmly the ledge of her mother’s encasement. She saw nothing less than a bundle of mysteries in him, magnetic and forceful, as a partial shadow cast over the man’s face, thus dramatizing the mystery he induced. She dared not look too long for fear of revelation; she knew not what the man was there for, nor cared. Instead, thoughts intruded her mind such that she would fail to come to herself in the following days.

Then he spoke in a voice that was clear and isolated from anything else heard. The words he offered were condolences, mere condolences of someone who was detached yet concerned; there was nothing to them. And though she had turned her gaze away, she knew that he was looking at her with kind eyes. She just nodded in response, face the other way. Then, as if a wordless understanding swept between them, he turned to leave. His steps thumped against the carpeted floor and he was gone in moments. Clara felt the place where he stood become saddened by a kind of chill, as well as the shiver that rose out of the shadow of his departure.

At length her mind and body began accepting the fact that bared itself to her in her solitude and sleep. She, unappealing and spinsterhood-bound, let her niggardly love be captured, in consummation, in finality. As time ceased to become brief and the period of thinking about the stranger stretched to months, she let herself go. Thus in her hands, her sister, her closest blood relation died.

Once again, her home received the familiar service. The wake was less grand, and the flowers diminished in number. Outside, slashes of rain tore through the atmosphere. The stranger, the only enduring feature of last time’s funeral, returned within hope. Clara, now more restrained in her mourning, welcomed him. As she looked him in the eye she became aware of the searing recognition of her folly. No longer was she trapped in the wily net of his charm and hauteur; for she knew, even as his face, for all its faultless contours and elements, brought back the memory of her dead father. She cupped her hands to her mouth, not knowing whether to run or to remain. This must be, and indeed he was, the long-lost son her father grieved for in his tumultuous life. This was the half-brother she never dreamed of meeting.


It took two lives to realize it, three lives pushing daisies to regret it.

Sanguine Stream

By: RDV


A/N: Stupid poem for those who hate their period. Obviously, this is for girls only.


Your wave reaches every shore of my irritation;
It makes my flesh crawl each time you go about your monthly business,
Leaving me uncaught, rendered vulnerable.
You arrive on some wild pretext of biological necessity;
I put up a militant defiance just to prove otherwise.
But you board on nonetheless
And your punctuality is simply proverbial, inexcusable.
Oh, what disorder quenches thy passion?
Tell me so that it may become extinct in me,
You mischievous egger-on, you killer of mood,
You defiler of plans.
Bring me once again to adolescence,
Or better yet, back underneath the womb of anonymity.
Should you decide to un-hearken my orison,
Then shall I pray for menopause and painful old age?
But I will not drag you to witness my last breath.
Never.

An Alternate Theory on Existence

By: RDV


They care about now. Anything that happens before and after the present is a matter of no concern. They know that wherever they failed in, it isn’t in keeping life intact, moving and streaming. Life isn’t bad in general; life is informative, hardly superlative, largely manageable. If put to measures, it occupies pretty much the middle ground. But all the same, they are done with it. The years ahead will not bring back what was carelessly thrown away.

They stand shoulder to shoulder, inflexibly, to watch the planet fall apart. Both have stopped respecting it as a work of god long before they stopped respecting it as an ultimate necessity. In the place of the formerly green torch of bright prospects, burns the seething fire of surrender. The bodies lay prostrate in consensual absolutism; let those who want to live yet do the worrying later. But for now, let the gradual fusion of deathless poetry and zealous sweetness wheeze through completion. Finally, bear witness to the victims of the battle as they scatter in the dimness of the Arctic hearth, not knowing if they are leaving or entering life once again.

Afflatus

By: RDV


In a voice that was becoming slow and shaky, his teacher, twenty-three, coursed through the hidden words of Wordsworth's pages, parlaying, it seemed, what the poet so perspicaciously tried to hide from the latter generation. Excluding the loll of the solitary air-conditioner of the classroom, the whole place was in distinct quietude, the class in voluntary rapt attention. Her voice was naturally soft as it stretched toward each corner, and her words, becoming plain through repetition, was absorbed with equal willingness.

He, seventeen, stared. Like any other cub led astray, he planned to scam his way through love, through fantasy, through believing in dreams. He wouldn’t find pre-slumber a peaceful lapse, nor the lectures in which he had to sit through day after fearful day. He figured that he was in love, as his concept thereof became other than it was, the very reverse of what his idealistic boyhood had explained so painstakingly before, a long time ago.

Her notes droned on, the lesson continued in its usual vein, as he paid the penalty of disturbance. She discussed the elements of love with such precision that the class couldn’t help partially grinning, partially releasing restricted gasps. He sat discovered by the pithy, witty eyes of the admired one. And the look he returned was confused, agonized, ignorant. Pick any. Once again his mind had flopped back to guilt-tripping, brow-beating its dark half for its careless daydreaming, and its main target of abuse was his sanity. Then he saw her curl her lips in erotic suggestion. He tried to smile back but not finding anything to smile about, just held his gaze down. He supposed that the modest response he just showed would propitiate him in her eyes. A renascent desire came rearing its head up. Whatever present means it could grab onto, it would sure do so, pertinently. And he would be victorious in his assumption. She would come to him.

When the class cleared up, he strode toward her table where she stashed her stuff back to her handbag. He asked her if they could talk. She would’ve indulged him on sure ground. She raked up a smile, dazzling just being there, which he took to mean as a go signal. But before he could feed on his mental entreaty, she shook her head. When before, he would take the gesture to mean a dozen different things, today it simply meant one dark thing.

Without further words, he walked away. It wasn’t the end of the road; worse than that, it was the beacon of continuance, of persisting fantasy, which, relative to his capacity, would torment him through thick and thin. At the end of the day, nothing changed; it began with hope and ended with its blatant opposite.

My Teenage Fantasy

My Teenage Fantasy


Disclaimer: I don’t own DMC and Aladdin. I don’t own anything but the OC in this fic.
I also don’t own a lot of elements in the story; I guess you’ll know which if you read them.

Summary: A girl falls wildly in love with Dante. Yeah! She loves him so much that she decides to leave her home and go to the DMC world. DANTExOC.

A/N: The OC/girl’s whole name is Marianne Suez. She’s in high school and she’s crazy about Dante; her ultimate dream is not to gain scholarship in Yale University to major in modern languages, but to be with Dante forever and ever (even if it means living in torrid Somalia sans victuals for 100 million years) and to keep other girls’ hands off him.


-------------------------------------------------
Chapter 1: Marianne Goes to India


Love comes all too suddenly—Corny 80s love song by a defunct, forgotten boy band.

Marianne’s POV

I curse the day when I fell for that bullcrap. Of course love doesn’t come suddenly; it is subtle, slow, and unexpected. Love is rather like a slow death; that’s what my CSL teacher has taught the class. I believed her because she majored in Philosophy in the most prestigious University in this country and everything she says is true and reasonable and clear and makes sense, unlike what I’m saying here. I confess that I’ve been watching too much of Asian TV series that my mind’s been poisoned by so many ethically incorrect stuff about love life. But I don’t think it can be helped because your only choice of TV amusement was Asian love series or animes and I pretty much can’t do anything but to watch them too. So I watch them always and that’s when people around me started noticing that I took so much time daydreaming. I don’t really hate the feeling of delusion, in fact I love it because that’s the only way by which I can execute so much freedom. But I do hate it when something comes after that. Like what happened last Wednesday in my English class. I was there, stuck fast at seat 3 row 2 (look how well I remember it). After some minutes drained in, the whole goddamn classroom warped! I just read the 12 volumes of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket so the first person who came into my mind was the book’s villain, Count Olaf. I thought that the count might be playing filthy tricks on us Earth people but when I studied the weird atmosphere around me, I noticed that there was nothing so a-series-of-unfortunate-events about it.

But there was, however, something so Devil May Cry about it. I thought of Capcom but immediately forgot about it when I saw a familiar ancient castle in near ruins. It was designed with the same old elements; low fences, un-cemented ground, and the typical gigantic clock on the center tower. I recognized the place the same moment I learned that my dream came true! I was smack in the middle of DMC world and yes, I was in the same bloody world with my Dante!!! Be prepared Dante, I’m going to rap—I mean---find
you. I thought. Ehem.

I thought that the scene was cute; but you know, its cuteness was far from being the point. Whenever I watch anime with scenes like this, the first thing the warped person does is to panic. So apparently, I would have to panic because it’s cute to panic because you know, typical OC's are not at all cool and swaggering when they enter an unknown fantastic world for the first time. Actually, they are always meek because the authors want them to be so because demureness is cute and cool and it rocks so hard it rocks everybody’s world till he’s bloody stoned and yeah. Anyway, I began my labor and tried to panic. After several breathe ins and breathe outs, nothing really happened to my nerves.
Maybe these bloody vessels were trying to tell me that it’s bad to panic because panic strains them and sometimes snaps them. It was bad for their blood, more like. So I decided to do what a normal girl would do; relax. OC's can be shy and relaxed at the same time so I thought I would still pass to be one if I relaxed and shied myself.

After relaxing, which I did pretty well by the way, I decided to take the next step of the ingenious operation; to ‘search for help’, i.e., to find a battle field. If that doesn’t conjure to mind Dante and his sexy moves, then go to hell. You know, I’m not really sure why I had to find the battle field ‘for help’ but that’s the same thing OC's do when they enter a fictional world for the first time. But my attempt was a little different from that of the OC's’ because they seem to always come by the said place by accident. Sometimes it’s because they’re being chased by perverts but since there were no perverts to chase me all the way to there, I decided to go there myself. This also goes to say that no heroic performance like Dante-saves-me-from-the-pervs would take place. I think it’s rather too different from the real world because there, no matter how beautiful one looks, no pervert would dare chase her around. Nonetheless, I think it’s a goddamn good idea to go to a very danger-ridden place, am I right?

I found an open space amidst the palace grounds (how lucky) and lo! There were the DMC demons glaring red at me! Whew, they must’ve really wanted to turn me into a damsel in distress so that Dante would come to my rescue!

Whack!

The next thing I knew was that I was still on seat 3 row 2, and that my forehead was strangely swelling. I hung my head and saw something weird on the floor; a moccasin. That shoe was worn by Mr. Tanaka a little earlier but why was it there? My forehead was murderously painful and…I think it’s pretty obvious why.

‘You were dreaming, Ms. Suez. You were muttering Dante-Dante all the time; what’s up with the name anyway?’

‘Nothing, sir.’


‘Nothing my bum. Hand me my shoe, girl.’ He glared at me and the creases on his facial skin were being more visible. ‘Did I hurt you much?’


‘No, sir.’

It was just a dream. Fuck.


I went home feeling dreary. It was boring in this world without fictional figures, live 3D people, I mean. It’s been a month since my fairy godmother went on a vacation to Majorca and I couldn’t describe how alone I felt without anyone granting my wishes. It sucked right out, sucked to the last degree. I went to a shrink to see how bad my depression had been and learned that it was that bad. I told him that my fairy godmother was away and that I couldn’t have my wishes come true that’s why I was apoplectic with this kind of acute loneliness.

‘Too bad for you, Ms. Suez.’ He told me sympathetically. ‘I understand the forlornness. Uhm, why don’t you try taking a trip to the Indian desert; maybe you can find something there.’


‘Like what, sir?’


‘The magical lamp of Aladdin, of course! Don’t you know? It grants wishes. You said that your godmother won’t be back till next month and you can’t stand another month without wishes, then there’s the journey open before you; search for the ancient genie and make your wishes come true!’ he said hysterically.

‘There IS a way after all. Thank you, sir!’

‘That’s okay, Ms. Suez. That’ll be $230.’


I left with many hearty thanks. The first thing I did was to surf the net to find info about the magical lamp. I printed out the map that the 40 thieves used and read a lot of histories about it. The spot was located at the base of the Calcutta desert and was uninhabited for the last 2000 years. Ancient residents often died of sandstorms and collapsing dunes. It had a pretty bad rep for tourists that no one really cared if the lamp existed; people were afraid of the place. I readied my stuff for the trip and got a plane ticket to Calcutta the next day. My parents in this story are nonexistent because I realized that if they were here, they wouldn’t let me go on with that trip and of course my life would definitely suck and be embittered after that. And besides, OC stories don’t really include parents to get in the way. Am I right or am I correct?

It was the first time I took a trip to India and to tell the truth, I wasn’t that excited. I used to watch a lot about that country in National Geographic Channel and the portion I saw was nothing so nice. It was about the shark attacks on the country rivers and I was chilled of the thought…sharks in fresh waters could be damn scary. Anyway, the flight lasted 7 hours and it was a straight one too. I alighted on the airport in the morning and was again depressed that no one was going to welcome me. I freaking hate that feeling, you know; it seemed like nobody ever wanted me. Anyway, I hailed a cab first thing, showed the driver the map, and asked him to take me to that desert; specifically to the Mystical Cave of Treasures. The driver didn’t complain or refuse because if he did, the OCness of this tale wouldn’t be complete. I should really be making a point to make everything easy for me so I could be like any other OC. By the way, I was thrilled to learn that there were no rivers in the desert which meant that there were no sharks. I paid the cab driver $90.

I entered the cave which was carved very beautifully into a giant head of a lion. It practically had no difference with the one in Disney’s Aladdin. But there was a challenge; the Lion’s mouth, that is, the door, was closed.

‘Open sesame.’

The lion noisily gaped its mouth to reveal stalactite-like jaws. It wasn’t a challenge; I was just kidding.

I was in a trance and a little too scared to enter. Then I thought of the lamp and the genie and my wishes and the labors I went through for this quest. I’ll get it, I settled and entered the cave alone. I also had with me the map inside the cave to guide me. The lamp was in the heart of the place and it took a bloody bad time to get there. I was wary not to touch any treasure while getting there because the place would fall into shambles if I touched any, so said the internet. I finally saw the lamp, grabbed it, and rubbed it. The genie puffed out and he was nothing like the genie in Aladdin. He was ghostly and nefarious looking, like the Merchant of Venice.

‘What is your wish?’ Said his majestic, awfully frightening voice. He was ghastly white, transparent and wearing a stupid Indian turban.

‘My wish is…I want to be transported to the DMC world!’

-------------------------------------------------

The next thing I knew was I was in front of a White Hall. I called the genie to make another wish.

‘What is your 2nd wish?’

‘Make me a princess in disguise.’

‘Your wish is my command.’

I was a princess in disguise the next moment.

‘Any other wish, madame?’

‘Make me the most beautiful girl in the world.’

‘Your wish is my command.’


I looked at the mirror and discovered that I was even more beautiful than the young Sofia Loren. I had purple hair, blue-gray-violet-green eyes, and supple flesh skin.


‘Another wish, your highness?’

‘Err, make me the most talented girl in the world.’

‘Your wish is my command.’

And I became the most talented girl ever.

‘Yes, Madame?’

‘I wish that both Sparda’s boys will fall in love with me—no, not merely in love; I want them to be insanely in love with me.’

‘I hate to break it, lady dear, but that’s against the law.’

‘Uh, that sucks…Aha! Then I wish that that law were broken.’

‘Huh?’

‘You heard me, genie. Sweet is my triumph! Hahaha.’

(wipes forehead) ‘Sure thing. So does the love wish come after that, lady?’

‘Yes, definitely!’

‘Oh well…Anything more, Lady?’

‘Make me a Mary Sue, genie.’

‘You already are, my fair lady.’

‘Oh. Then, I wish I were a family friend of Dante’s.’

‘Very well; your wish is my command.’

And I landed on DMC soil.



TBC

A/N: Stand by for the next chapter when Marianne meets Dante, this time it’s for real!
.

Homecoming

By: RDV


After seven years, Tony, everybody’s dreamboat, returned to his hometown.
He had no sooner touched down the pavement when the news spread. Phone lines suddenly went haywire. The neighborhood waxed enlivened, like a withered weed receiving liberal amount of water for the first time in many days. Heads turned. Hands waved. Faces beamed, glorified. Girls who had loved him, in a long-ago time, peered through their windows. It was Tony, no less. He bore the same pretty face that kidnapped their hearts, broke them, returned them, only to kidnap them again, today, seven years later.


Candice, ironically the owner of such a suggestive name, wrung her hands, occasionally heaving them up to her chest. A cardiac arrest would’ve been the only result Tony’s return would bring her, provided she didn’t contract insanity first out of excitement and fear, the latter she couldn’t as of yet justify. She had loved Tony for twelve years. She was twenty-two years old. Tony, now twenty-nine, was of a marrying age. As a young girl, Candice had kept that love locked in herself, within that impenetrable safe inside her called secrecy. All the girls in the neighborhood didn’t do likewise. They fawned after him, openly. Depending on their luck Tony would respond with a meager flirtatious word or two. But he never saw any of them the way they saw him. He, too, was a person plagued by introversion and his thoughts were known to few.


Tony wrenched their house’s door open. Inside could be heard an exhilarated squeal, courtesy of his mother who single-handedly raised him. Love filled the air. And so did warmth all of a sudden.


From across the street, Candice felt herself touched. Tony was back, either temporarily or permanently. At any rate, he was here, and Candice would be fine. She had waited for this long enough. Often at night she would lay down, indulging herself in childhood memories when Tony, seventeen, she ten, taught her how to play ping-pong at the town’s clubhouse. It was the first time a considerable semblance of communication formed between them. In the following years they would become friendly. Tony would treat her like the little sister he never had. Affection was present; love too was there. But both weren’t deep enough. On the day of Tony’s departure, Candice appeared sad, as was apt. But none of that sadness ever gave hint to what was beneath the surface. There was depression and devastation, like a massive heartbreak she had no choice but to embrace.


The phone rang. Candice jumped up. Of course it would be Tony. He would announce his return, in the hope of pleasantly surprising her. They would have a laugh or more and she would be blasted off to the past, remembering and rejuvenating the girlhood crush.


“Candice, I’m back!”


“Heard it through the grapevine. So what’s up!?”


“Long story. Why don’t you come over for dinner for details? We’ll have a good time.”


“Alright then.”


“At seven. I’ll cook.”


She put the phone down. Her heart rate increased exponentially. She couldn’t tell if Tony had stopped, or intended to stop, treating her like the child that she was. Gosh, it had been so long ago.


At seven-ten she knocked on the door. Greetings were exchanged. Tony’s mother was assigned the task of entertaining Candice at the living-room while Tony applied his finishing touches on the meal. Both women chattered, with Tony cluttering on kitchen utensils.


“Tony’s wife, Linda, and their son will come over next week. I haven’t met either of them. I’m so thrilled and nervous.” Tony’s mother said cheerily.


A few seconds had to be let by before Candice could absorb the information. She smiled, but not in the way she purposed to.


“I didn’t know he got married.” Was all she could say.


“Honey, I didn’t know too until he told me this morning. And believe me I’m a proud grandma.”


“Oh, you should be. And a proud mother too, I trust?”


“You said it.”


The dinner commenced. Tony briefed the story behind his seven-year absence. He fell in love, for the first time. He said he always knew he had to go places before he could find the one. “It wouldn’t come to you; that’s what I always told myself. I was right. There never was a more amazing lover than Linda.” Candice smiled and smiled. Tony’s heart was never encrusted on his hometown’s ground. He was always restless, leaving no opportunity when he knew he could leave.


Because Tony was persistent, she told him about her studies, generally how she spent those seven-years far too removed from him. She had to make some things up in order to make her life seem more meaningful than it was. All along, in truth, it was all about waiting. Waiting for this return.


“To your studies.” Tony made a toast.


“To my health.” His mom replied.


“To your family.” Candice lifted up her champagne glass.


As they sipped, Candice knew that that she’d never be happy for him.

Trade

By: RDV


Pain’s favorite company is misery. Laurie, twenty-one, knows this as she has just again been dumped by her boyfriend of two weeks. She has known so from experience. Story is, he has accused her of two-timing, feigning to be scandalized, which she didn’t reprove or demur. She just slumped there, speaker still on her ear, at a marvel how three days ago their arms linked, at the park, and no one would’ve denied how happy they looked. Her best friend has told her just the other day how they were so like a pair of notes swinging in perfect melody. Now, she seems just like the opposite, her claim to happiness wearing thin and broken. A more sensible person would have fought back, but not her. She was unrehearsed for the call, for his blares and his curses, too surprised that she didn’t even have time to think to cry and break down. She didn’t say anything, which the boyfriend, now rightful ex, probably took for indifference. He said fine, and slammed down the phone, causing the sound to echo inside Laurie’s ears. It was then when the magnitude of what happened crashed on her, at the last possible moment. And sadness crept up to her. Now the feeling resides inside her, knowing that their hearts no longer beat at the same time. A tacit understanding has been made; nothing more is to be said. Suddenly she becomes sensitive to the cold. She pulls up the bath towel to her thighs, welts caused by prolonged laying on the sheets smear her legs. Then, in a very subdued manner, she laughs. That break-up is the worst yet she’s ever come up against. No one has ever spoken to her this way. Usually when her past boyfriends cut the ties, they did it very reverently, with great regard to her dignity. This one, however, treated her like dirt, like she was a whore or something. Laurie weeps further, suffering from the shock of realization. Almost at once she feels something warm up from inside her. An acute sensation is settling down on her, something very similar to inebriation. She doffs the towel and lets it fall on her feet. It’s over. The cold has passed. Laughing still, she begins understanding what all those tears mean to her: Love isn’t a reliable feeling, never was. In her case, it is a mere optical illusion to which she’s unalterably drawn.


And there in the light, the male species abandons her.

Doppelganger

By: RDV


Isn’t it a crying shame that
I never quite saw you leave a trace?
I slipped my hands through the gaps of the gate’s bars,
Somehow watching out for the symbols
Of your demands, never really reaching far enough
To touch what was left of your time.

My anxiety was lax,
As the adverse effect of
Your loving calmness;
Instead there stood the hasty retreat
Of your luggage.

I thought of it as little as possible.
I succeeded insofar as indifference was concerned.
I didn’t squawk, you didn’t respond.
What name could be gained
from making a contrast between me and you?
When my mind is poisoned
By the non-secrecy of this daft-act?

In time, your generosity reared its head,
Which I bludgeoned thoughtlessly.
Brandishing my arsenal of capitulation,
I greased, even more thoroughly,
The muzzle and the trigger,
The conscience and the implementer.

Suicide Brunette: For Michael

How carelessly beautiful you were
When you paraded with your
Lopsided curling lips,
Gesticulating your sexuality
While I listened to your rhythm
Which otherwise was never there.
I could still capture the fleeting film
Of the dance you commenced
When the music, raucous but glam, rolled on;
When trumpets shivered below your steps
And the applause suffocating.
I almost believed in your levitation,
There, as my eyes devoured the whole of you.
You deceived me for nine precipitous years
And more.
Until one day the notes dwindled,
No longer filtering through, but instead,
Backing away into a black dirge
Against which I fought so hard
Not to acknowledge.
I saw the velvet sheet supporting
The weight of your bones
That once so insensibly
Electrified your flesh to orchestrate
That beautiful jig.
Waltz with me once more, Michael;
Dance with me to the inflating and deflating
Strums of my mourning guitar.
Hum those words to me,
Those lurching, lyrical syllables of your tongue,
Because not once in my vigil
Or in my tranquil repose
Would I see you lowered in a casket;
Not once would I concur to the hands
That plundered that beautiful soul
One day, a lifetime ago,
When I looked at you
With a feeling so separate from inane adoration.

No Recompense: For Chris O., wrongly prosecuted

On a gray overcast afternoon
You appeared like an isolated shot in the dark,
Clad in the affection of honesty,
Somewhat resolute
But hands rigidly locked on each other
In the very waxing of fear.
I bore witness to your tears,
Gently fought back,
Sincere as they got,
The opposite, the demeaning oxymoron
Of the words that came storming
Out of your lips,
Pleading not for compassion
But the end.
You quaked the world,
Broadcasting your guilt
As you prostrated before
The ruthless, shameless consensus.
We, in turn, bought, endorsed,
Published your incrimination
As we celebrated the justice
That simultaneously departed from your world.
Twelve savage years in the hole.
We stole your youth,
Victimized your blood.
You offered it freely without a sigh of protest.
But how could we not see
The blinding, blatant, blaring
Eulogy of your tragic innocence?

Would You? (For N.O.)

Would you rather that I pretend
That I don’t see you?
When you squat
On the dirty pavement of P. Noval
You devise the vilest Tsunami,
Subcutaneous, in me.
And I, sustained, plod onwards,
Shoot one blink your way
And I’m gone, defused,
One tape, one cord,
One sliver of memory
Among the competent,
Glittering millions that scatter
Everywhere around you.
Would you, in your unwitting
Childishness, pick it up,
Even at random,
By accident if you will,
And one day, eras from now,
Confess that somehow
You can tell that it was I,
Your faithful shadow,
Deathless companion,
Who threw that pixel of me
Down at your feet?

Sobriety Declined

By: RDV


My mutual fiend,
My mental drama,
Do you recall the seamless surface
Of my anger?
I barred you from my kingdom
The other day,
And over and over again.
Not that it matters
When you’re around,
Only it does when you
Are not.
I see the peak of your head,
From the small window
Of chance that I’d ever
Bother looking to that direction.
But either way
There you are,
Haunting, solidified, masterminding
My bedazzlement to the last.
And I,
I know every raspy sound you make,
Every streak of your wholeness,
Real or imaginary;
The only thing I fear
Is finding it impossible
To unclasp my hands
From your formless, slippery
Body.

Curse

You were like the rescue boat that never came,
The impious chapter of the story
I thread so mournfully, so faithfully,
In order to break this jail of endless comfort.
The bars are cold only in contact with my hands
And beyond I see, not yours, but the disappearing eyeballs
I recognize as my own.
I am like the tempest of the waves you sail on;
I belong to the weedy hands of the dark,
Always groping to find the burned cavern,
Hollow and black, of where your presence
Should have been.

The End

By: RDV


He could say he hated her each minute till the day he died, but he wouldn’t run out of hatred.
He hated her when she was near, loved her with passion when she was far.
If the marriage could fit in an easel, it would be one clump of burning
Books, full of stories, wild and tragic.
That marriage was nothing but a fragile structure;
One pull from the bottom and the whole thing collapsed.
He had thought of restarting the relationship from nothing, all over again,
Or from the middle, or even at the end;
In thinking so he realized that nothing
Would have made a difference unless
They were changed for some couple else.
A misdeed, their parents called the marriage; a crime, they later labeled it,
A toil that brings no reward, a war one could not get out of unscathed.
He said her name as though it was something he could never pronounce
Without looking like he was chewing on poison;
She said his name as though it was something bitter
She wanted to spit out of her mouth.
Disgust.
Disdain,
Are those what men get for marrying women
Just because they are well-endowed? He wondered.
He wondered at the oddness of forgiveness, acceptance,
When, as a young man, he was untouchable, cold, and unapproachable.
But in her presence the ice king veil fell down on his feet
To reveal the lover, to let her life take shape inside of him.
The seed of doubt was sown not long after,
Whereupon she went home,
Stinking of some other man’s scent.
His silent jealousy later resurfaced in a hideous form;
It hurt her, it threw her all over the place, bruised her
Until both were tired of the shrieks
And the sweat and blood the rumble required.
She cried, enduring cruelty, a weakness he sometimes envied.
He didn’t cry, because there was too much hate;
The hatred that preoccupied him even in his sleep,
The hatred that drove him mad with love
And passion for her,
The hate that lingered in the last of his dark days
When she left him, not for his deeds,
But for another man.
In the loudness of the drone that was her absence,
A clarity came to him; that hate was natural, elemental,
A thread that pulled them in the same direction.
Now, with her gone, he was grand in his success as a cuckold.