Unsung song of Wilfred Owen
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
________can be heard from the soapboxes calling for them from sad hands.
Screaming glimmers of good-byes.
________My stubbornness flowers the tenderness of patient minds.
Voices of pleasure in the light-blue trees
________and girls glanced lovelier as the old times, will never feel again.
Slim subtle hands, all of them touch queer disease.
________This disease, I poured it down the veins and half my lifetime lapsed
Someone had said I didn’t have to beg
________Smiling they wrote out my lies.
Tonight it seemed I escaped encumbered sleepers to be fixed.
________Lifting distressful hands I knew by their dead false smiles
we stood in Hell.
________I watched idly by as a tale of potential endings unfolds.
After the wildest beauty mocked my glee
________I knew they would be swift to miss the memories of stress
Then, when even truths began to lie too deep for my spirit
________You, my friend, you frowned through me.
I smiled at you.
________Because my forever is too close to stop doing this.
Prufrock wants to make love but can’t
the evening is spread out
upon a table
of restlessness.
Quoting the killer in your life
The yellow fog licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.
Let’s fall upon a soft October night,
there will be time
To face the faces that you and I meet;
There will be time for days of
hands
mouths
thighs
backs
Time for you and time for me,
But do I dare? Do I dare turn back and disturb your universe?
For I have known them all already,
I have measured out my life with the voices dying
Beneath the music.
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you
The eyes that shouldn’t fix you.
Shall I say, I have watched the smoke of lonely men
I should have smoothed your hair with long fingers,
Stretched on the floor, you and me.
But though I have wept
I have seen the places you would cut
If I hadn’t sang to you that day.
And in short, I was afraid.
To smile,
To come from the dead,
Come back to tell you that is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
they know what it will do to you.
Slapping the asymmetrical beauty off of your face.
And in short,
Two sads
do not make a happy couple.
It makes two sads
Into
two complacents
that aren’t alone.
Epicenter
Your voice box sent
Shock waves Sound waves Shivers
through my systems
You couldn’t look at me
out of drunkenness
I couldn’t look at you
out of fear
that I would get lost.
Your sounds charm me
Noises fascinate you
Our entangled sensations
Shot out an infectious vibe
Everyone could feel
But not experience, because
we
were at the epicenter.
It was the most beautiful
fleeting moment I have ever attended and
I didn’t know how to tell you
That you
crackedshatteredobliterated
The shell encasing my human.
I will take the titles you have given me
And brand them on my collar bones so
People can see how you make me feel.
You said
You, miss. You are beautiful.
I said
You, sir.
You are unlike like anyone I have ever met. And you asked me what I meant.
I said I’ll write a poem
And maybe figure it out that way.
Well… at 6 a.m. while listening
To your ribcage cadence
I tried.
But somehow I lose the words in
________________chaotic
________created
________________________crisis.
The words get lost on the only road that leads
my brain
to my fingertips.
So I’ll tell a truth for every dare I give you.
I just can’t right now
______________Try anyways
I don’t know who I am
______________Go exploring with me
I’ve never been alone before
______________Tell me I don’t have to be
You’re leaving in a year
______________The star that shines twice as bright burns half as long
Truth:
I fear that this is something that belongs
in a museum
on a pedestal
rigged with alarms
surrounded by guards
because if I were to touch whatever this is…
surely it would shatter.
______________Dare: super glue and duct tape
Kambria is 21 year old college student fascinated with language. She lives in her hometown studying communication whilst eating too much junk food and getting tattoos. She is relatively new to the published poetry scene but looks forward to getting her name out there in a different form.
–Art by Dia Takácsová