Er(rata)otica

Where it says kiss,
read a half-frosted candy apple,
but perhaps one that already
has been bitten,
leaking, flesh shorn away.

Where it says scars
think sleepwalking,
a knife-point of instinct
and movement with teeth,
incisors kneading flesh.

Where it says need,
think a guilty reservoir
of raindrops, sweat, and blood,
piled into a lightning struck cauldron:
broil at 450, let simmer, but

let love remain love.
For in this mess of gore and skin
she has no home.

Where it says person,
think touch, a bramble
of fingers, arms, and skin
intertwined, a ball of movement,
pain, and perturbations;

where it says restlessness,
read fingers jittering, a
clenched fist, fingernails digging
into skin, pupils dilate,
lips pursed, nearly drooling,

where it says me,
read a stained-glass statue, and
beat it with a baseball bat, because
my only wish is that,
in your rage, you cut yourself
on my colorful shards.

Where it says movement,
think something sharp, something
trailing blood along skin, running
like rivers, into seas of
lips, tongues, scars.

When it says climax,
read the sun, falling from the sky
toppling through the heavens,
simmering out, a beautiful ending
of sorts, the French put it best, I think:

La petite mort:
sky-born glory fades to black;
a final rush of steam and spray

Necrotica

Almost a Coroner’s report

My my, how things have changed.
I feel nothing for you, and you, well.
You feel nothing at all.

You are a corpse, embalmed now,
before me, soul surely hell-touched
devil-kissed and belly-up in ice,
how wrong I was, how foolish
To court the idea of immortality

but it is far too late
for any of that. Now,
I can only pick apart what you left behind
with gloves, a scalpel, and regret:
the master’s tools.

So your dead skin stretches,
plying from the bones, there
used to be blood here,
before it ran away, flowing out
from purple lips and open-shut doorframes,
dribbling down into the water
under the bridge, The structure kindling
decaying in flame, collapsed to ash.

It left nothing but an empty sort of smell
accompanying me
as I dig through muscle,
shearing away, with ironic care.

I’m counting as I go,
six right ribs intact
another two, barely hanging on
the left side mangled
only three there, the rest
are a smattering of shards:
seasoning for gore.

Beneath the torn remains of lung,
my plastic fingers dig down,
cutting through flesh, down towards what
used to be a heart, before the end,
then necrosis, and formaldehyde.

after being exhumed, It’s
a heavy thing in my hands,
ugly, tar-black, cold.

But you know,
I can’t really blame that on you
anymore, can I.

Counting to Eight

1. Lust

I saw that I no longer cared,
about your teardrops, your sky,
those vast expanses of nothingness
grow like mouths on trees, their teeth
gently nibbling at flesh.

I found myself here,
in your rose garden, which,
of course, is just
a field of thorns,
leather,
and rust.

perhaps the excitement of it all
enthralls me, unnaturally
bound it to me, it bites at my lips
in all the right ways.


2. Gluttony

I found that you are an oyster, of sorts.
crack it open, the brine pouring
over my hands is
succulent, sweet,
and never quite enough.


3. Wrath

I am something wrong, unearthed,
seething flame at the edges
a thousand devils beating flames as

in cruelty,
I abandoned you, leaving
our simple little things behind
for blue lines of paintings,
and a downward spiral.

tear me away from this place,
our place, once sacred, I’ll
burn it down, as long as the heat
singes my skin.

I cling to my sound and fury,
those moments, few and far between
where my soul flexes, flush with power...
because

Without them
I would be nothing.
Nothing at all.


4. Envy

I would speak for myself -- If I could.

Instead, my words fade like smoke
off my harsh, warbling tongue,
into a bright summer sky,
that no matter the vices I slay,
can never be mine alone.


5. Apathy

I linger between bed sheets,
flirt between shadows and a sky
yet unseen...

wishing I could blow kisses to mornings long past
as I watch them, along with everything else,
fade into nothingness.


6. Greed

I know that I am drunk.
I am drunk on this ecstasy:
my words slurring with desire...

the smell of newly turned pages
on a cold winter morning, and
the safety of knowing that you,
are mine,
and mine alone.


7. Pride

I found that I am eternal.
Kiss me, the feeling
brushing past my lips
in a daze of power;

touch me, your fingers
dancing over my skin
in a fervor of need
and prove that I am,
unlike you,
indispensable.

(I suppose, If truly cared about you,
I would have said something
As you wept the days away. )


8. Emptiness

I found…
what have I found?

I taste your blood on my lips,
as my eyes roll back,
the pulsing heat fading
into that ever-present dark --
silence, delirium, topor.

I’m addicted to it,
that feeling brought on by
the tempest, all your rage and thunder
fading into the eastern sky, I miss those days
when we would sit on the interstate, and
watch storms roll over the horizon.

Those roads are all empty now
patrolled only by shadows,
swaying in the cold breeze,
pushing up coattails and,
along with a hollow chill,
drowning my breath in wind

Garrett Speller is a college teacher in Tokyo Japan, a game designer, and an aspiring author. His work has been previously published in the Kyoto Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, and Ink Nest Poetry. His greatest achievement is the look on his student's faces when he dressed up as a banana for Halloween.
IG: @gspeller1002