poetry | Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

19/Dec/2013

Social Moth

Social butterfly? No, a moth. Daytime, I wriggle and slip in-between and dissipate. The social lubrication ushers me; my smile, unfaltering, propels me. I hang from the ceiling. I rub up to people with the grease of a well-oiled machine. We intergrin, anecdotize, thank each other for the pleasant company.

Nighttime, whenever night is, all this liquid wavers within me, leaks out through my pores. I toss, turn. I never sleep. I hang from the ceiling, all my water rushing to my head. All my blood at the edge of my skin. I rotate. I burn my sheets after sleeping.

13/Sep/2013

a short list of things which are currently swaying in the wind:

The charred body of your yapping dog,

the rope it hangs with,

the branch of the tree it hangs from, though some of that swaying is indirect, and

the leaves on it, like little hands with three thick fingers each, waving.

The grass around the circle where your yapping dog burned, but not the crisp, brown grass inside the circle

The flagpole I erected overnight,

the ropes that run up its body sounding like lashes of a whip every time they hit the pole,

the victory flag itself.

5/Sep/2013

The Rabid Dogs #4 – Taurobolium

Bull’s meat is consumed at the top of the stairs

The butcher has been told to leave the blood in

Juices run, in familiar grooves, down these steps

Trauma bonds us, it binds us, I have never felt closer

than when she picks me up to shield me from the blood and

her camel back breaks, I am in her arms, I feel the spine snap

Every vertebrae clicks out of place, and her screams scale the stairs

where they are met with growling and finely honed teeth and drooling

I want my teeth honed

I am already angrily drooling

18/Aug/2013

Tribal

If you scan deep enough, deeper than where the blood comes from, you will see where the ink spills out. It finds its creases and grooves, and it flows down the inside of your skin until it reaches your ankles, where it fades out.

If you look at the sky, you will see where the ink runs, you will see patterns in the criss-cross, and you will know the names of the brightest lights.

Everybody’s blood is the same colour. However –

You and I stare at the sky the same way, we have the same tattoos hidden under our skin.

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