I have been running fevers all week and I slept most of yesterday.
I still feel awful today.
Here are two unrelated ten minute poems to cover yesterday and today. ♥
NOTE: I know very, very little about Iron Man. Feel free to correct my terminology!
in this patchwork-patterned sea of blankets
sleeps an island chain
of mossy, glossy, curled-up cats:
tabby-tinctured
pastel-pied
stone and froth
sand and shale
you are the storm
and I can feel your whispers in my bones
eons before you ever reach the sound
you part the waters
send islands scattering
engulf them in pleochroic waves of velvet
and I am Atlantis
aphotic, atramentous
enchanted sleep
cloud of ink
coral-encrusted
you stir the surface
insistent fingers through seaweed locks
teeth of lightning
windward licking
growl of thunder
incorporeal throat
you plunge within
past the lurking reef
past the ruined ships
past the impenetrable dark
past the sleeping monsters
and find what was long lost
I am a spined thing,
brittle and bullet-riddled,
a settlement submerged
but there is magic in your invasion
the spires of my fortress
crenelated and crumbling
quiver
beneath the weight of your whisper
every gate unlocks
every chain breaks
and I am transformed
silver-spun and scintillating
wave-wracked and wanton
arch of back
flex of fists
eyes sharp-arched
and lips nipped taut
the cry of my clarion lost to the sea
muffled in blankets
to outrun the demons
you built yourself faster —
harnessed velocity
bent tachyons to your will
and maybe you knew all along
the heart is a flawed prototype
vulnerable and willful
racing and skipping
leaping into your throat
dropping to the soles of your feet
so you fixed that, too
see, you’re a genius
and your specialty is armor
armor and weaponry —
they’re one and the same
hurt you? no.
you’ll hurt them faster, harder
before the threat has time to fly
so you built yourself stronger
you gave yourself flight
you’re smarter than Icarus
(feathers and wax? please.)
and at the end of the day
after you take it all off —
all that gleaming crimson and gold
all that armor
all that weaponry —
you don the mask you built to replace it
impervious, vibranium
cast in a roguishly handsome
I-don’t-give-a-shit smirk
you hold your tongue like a throwing knife
and you press fingers to glass
as you look alone across your city