The Amaranthine Poet

Toy Box (A Poem About Serial Killer, David Parker Ray)

How many times did you play?
And play your tape,
David Parker Ray?
Voice sharper than your tools
How many hollowed skulls
Swallowed holes on the shelves
Inside the toy box
Filled with reek of
Whatever stained the
Chains and Ice Picks
Like metal snakes and fangs
On the floor
Drawings and Diagrams
Guide the hunt
And hunt some more
In a trailer in the desert
Your ritual begins
Take out candles
spread them over fire
Wash a load, load limbs in dryer
Before
Playing with your dolls
Your bugged out eyes
A picture in every mirror on the walls
But no door. Where is the door.
No escape.
Your poor lost victims
Murderape
Vacate which premises?
Near the city of Truth or Consequences
(Though you had none)
In the cold quiet of Elephant Butte
Your body salts their wound
Their bodies salt the lake

Tar Brick Trail

ice caked star
stuffed in the holes of this tar brick trail.
I walk the darkness
leading to you
I’d like to say that
the milky silk
snow lacing each crease
is the palette
and your calling voice is
the paint on my finger-
tips ready to swirl
over ice and melt
as rainbow puddles
on the trail.

the closer I get,
the more I become
a cell shaken in the furious globe of you.
clouds settle down
their hands are dipped in the
black tar
watches with a wet eye as
I walk the path to meet you
unlock the door to your car.
stars and everything else
slam against the window.
blue and bluer bursts of the matter that we become.
the emulsion of your breath and mine. Smoky mirrors in the car. I am in your center.
and as I leave the tar brick trail will whisper
until it ends.

Debauched

Racketing, rickety

Obsessive spite

Ending noise of nightly fight

Stand, sit

Laugh, hit

Scratch, spit

Sprung zip

Strap, strip

Bind, bit

Slap, fit,

Trap, chip

Crash, split

Force tip

Moan, groan

Slip, BANG!

Crap, sh– .

One proclivity

Being chivalry

-jenna awad

There is a Place

There is a place I have been. A place where I want to stay. But it’s so hard to step away from this obnubilated world. Everything is a distraction. Everything is an obstruction. Everything pulls me away. I go to scary places and hide away from safety.
So, what can I do. When I am being pulled in two directions. All of me wants to go with you. But part of me always stays with the world. But. I cannot be. Cannot thrive. Cannot exist. Without you. I am lost. Nothing compels me the way you do.

And I still remember that night…

When they stopped and put the instruments to rest. The voices became as still as the past. We knew you were there and here and all around us. Faces never more beautiful as when they looked toward you. Reflected your beauty. Tears never more pure as when they became the myrrh that covered your feet. And what we said to you. Whispered and shouted. When you filled the atmosphere. When your presence was as sweet as honey. Incense from the tender sun. When we didn’t care about raining gems, dripping crimson on the tops of our trembling hands. When we didn’t care about who we were or would become. When all we cared about was you. The ocean that rushed over the fire from our heads. Cool and green and shimmering stars and dew. And we knew your name. The name that was once within an ark of a covenant, written upon our hearts. The name that is warmer than the golden flakes of sun on the face of a tranquil rose. The love, that tore the curtains down, bursting from our cores. The ocean crashed into the arid shore of our souls and our praise was its powerful, roaring song. Like birds dispersing, quivering over a blushing horizon, was our awakened emotion. And then you came to me. I was not just a face among many. I was not just a face. The billowing white around me. Stuck inside the mirrors of diamond clouds. I’d heard I wasn’t supposed to touch you. Don’t blemish the lamb. I was fully aware of how I bled. Afraid to stain the pearlescent white that ran like silk below your feet. I cowered back. I could never be them. I was too deep. Too far off. Pulled behind the black bark of trees rooted so tightly to the world. My feet were tangled in the knotted weeds, in the blackened boughs. And then that ocean came again. When you looked down at me. Captivated my heart. And nothing could express what I felt. Not the grandeur of a landscape sculpted by the winds and seas, nor a nocturne sung by the rustling leaves and the mellifluous cries from the honeyed beaks of the sweetest birds. What filled my heart in that moment overwhelms even the most consummate of all glories. You came down and swept me up. Pulled me close into your arms. The ocean came and ripped apart the bonding roots, took me out of the blackened tree. You stayed with me. In the place I’ll never want to leave. In the place I’ve been waiting for years to return to. No one could ever save me the way you did. You defended me in my weakness. Though I have never been strong, you’ve covered me with your holy cloak. Amaranthine and precious. This world tries to consume me but you protect me. You studied me. Knew me in an instant. Renewed me in the instant that you held me and knew me. You wept for me and with me. Your tears came through me. A scintillating fall of cascading waters rushing through me. Purified the wrong within me. Illuminated the dark surrounding me. Filled the holes inside me. I breathed when you put your hand on my heart and understood my affliction. And in that moment. I remember. You are my refuge. You are that place that compels me. You are that place I never want to leave. You are that place I will always return to. You are the place I can never leave. I Am. Yours forever, Jesus.

Mother is Foam

Hovering beneath the frail skin of lupines.
The bubbles from some unknown foam
Misplaced earth or misshaped tongue
Mothers stretch delicately from
Our sides. Drops of dew
Beading on our stems.
Until she evaporates into the sun
But this mother is no dew. No flame of thought
That simmers until we
stop
When rivers are angry. or hurt
They foam.
When peace receives them
They are wet and slick again.
When devils
blind pigs
They foam.
Their mouths and cankered cheeks. White and running.
I’m running. Away from the
Voice of the foam. Crackling and popping
Fizzing and shifting.
Rainbows swirling in each bubbled eye.
This mother has too many eyes
To see
Me. Whom she still grasps
Because Nature is a sadist.
But her eyes gaze within her eyes.
Fails to see the streaks
On my frail skin.
Overtly gleaming under the
Tangerine sun
Red and running.

jenna awaddawa annej

Torture Is Not Poetry. It’s Torture.

My regression is my cocoon. I smell the dust on the walls. Hold them close. My dolls. My mind has become a room I have been enveloped in. Heart is pounding at the door. Go away. This is our secret place. Where I think and think. And think. And never. Never feel. You keep saying you’ll soon be gone. So go.
I have learned. Strength will not tread upon fear. What we need will never become irrelevant. Life will continue to be irreverent. Brutalizing masters with the snap of their own whips.
Human connections are suffocation.
I will always be afraid. I will. I will always be afraid of you. Faceless demon. Ominous and marred. It’s irreversible.
Life is irreversible. Damn.
‘Sliding down the slippery wings of softer birds who plunge into blacker skies.’ Torture is not poetry. It’s torture. Your pain will never float on lily white clouds. Your sorrow will always succumb to pain. Your tears will never soak the clouds and cleanse the world. You offend the moon because you will not revel in the pearly milk of his light.
You keep saying you’ll soon be gone. So go.
I’m returning. Regressing. Embracing. My cocoon.

-jenna awad. is my name.