That Day I Lost My Hearing...

If I had been in Faye’s place I’da shot you
too Ira, damn.

There must have not been a,
one, lonesome star in your sky when you drew
her close and choked the phone cord tight
around her neck. Oh your little white lamb bayed,
her chalky skin flushing. Your eyes, rage kissed
and amber, burned. You were on fire that night,
like many gone by, with death destined and wished.
You must have looked away as that darkness,
that silence grew, cause she reached the pistol
tucked under your pillow and six hot coals
reached you.

And you and I both know you’re marked.
When you started that swill your fate was sealed-
and awoke in the hospital. Satan is real.

THANK YOU

If you’re reading this then thank you so much for the kind words, support, and constructive criticism i’ve received on tumblr in the last two months. The summer should bring big things!

Blind

Under the hard blue sky
I shudder,
consumed by the immense music of noon.

The iron sun calls me
the dirty light
slender
and charcoal black.

I can do nothing

but stare

licking its burner



licking

its

burner


-Rafferty Swink

Setting Out

Now build a cage, a chest, a tomb, in haste

to hide mistakes from the birth of the dawn.

Forget my name, suspend me here alone

neither alive, nor dead, in notebooks bound

tight. Yet my tears may dry. The wind may howl

a mesmerizing drunken dirge - someday

so thick the rain will force your cracked hands to

let each apology parade softly

down your chin in delicate misery.

Visitor

Alone in the Oregon grey, each tree stands
naked in the cruel beauty of winter.
Whiffs of smoke,
like ghosts with silhouettes of ash
cry lonesome apologies
in the quiet rain,
their faint echoes in long forgotten tongues
are swallowed by the dark of the day.

Dear Los Angeles,

When I left you told me we’d meet again
and that things would be different.
Now smog clothes the homeless,
their pockets spilling with designer drugs.
They replaced our wooden fence with chain link.
Now 1610 Marine St. is menacing and Venice Beach
is a millionaire’s spectacle.
Illusions of strength mask infant tears.
Whores grin under palm trees, teeth crooked
like lines on dollar bills crumpled
and kept in their bras.

You told me when we met again things would be different.
Last I saw you, you were on the floor of the kitchen,
the arc of your spine curving against the worn linoleum
as you let out one last gasping breath.
There is a part of me still standing there speechless,
as you lay, unswept and complete.
The paramedics carried my childhood
out the front door with you.

You still can’t answer my simple question,
where are you?
The murmur of the boulevard remains.
At midnight constellations of streetlights mirror the sky
like a dark pool reaching farther and farther into the desert.
And the breeze blows through Marine Park just loud enough
that I can still hear you say goodbye.

-Rafferty Swink

I Fell Apart Before the Night Did

I awoke tight chested and soaked, even in
only shirt and underwear, by the moist heat.

Through the blinds a sliver of light, unbending,
stretched past dingy socks
and settled at the foot of their bed. Outside
the relentless glow of the desert town
held the lowest parts of the night at arms length.
Clouded and pooled up,

torrid hatred throbbed in my stomach - wasps all
biting their way out through my skin, behind my
ears buzz-buzzing, filling my nose and mouth. And
they still slept soundly.

So I took the iron. Before he stirred I
had a hold of him – bam! She rose. Oh those wasps
screaming, rubbing bone, biting, oh crisp metal
kissing flesh – again! – out of fear at first, then
something much greater.

Now it’s six. The sheets are the color of dry
rose petals, the floor is peppered with stingers,
and it is quiet.

Saying Goodbye

With dusty evening shadows nearly gone,
One hand in my pocket and the wind wound
around my neck, I heard the frosted lawn

crunch with each of my steps – from the woods’ browned
leaves to the most barren branches I went,
back to the place where my worries sang aloud.

I dug a hole in the cold dirt with bent
knees and hands bare, and buried you along
with a box of letters I never sent,

then I rose solemnly, and ambled among
the twists and brambles in silence, slipping
back to memories that once held me strong.

Is it cruelty or kindness that letting
go is never the same as forgetting?

Away From Happening

My children will not grow up in the East.
Here is too close to the birth of the sun: fore in the shadows
of the setting West there is a virgin Unknown whose lust
grows in twilight.

They will not grow up disadvantaged.
Being raised away from epicenters of so-and-so
culture, surrounded by the civilized, shall free

them .

My children will grow up in a world that is bigger.
And they will see that there are no more Cowboys and Indians-
but there may as well be- entire states are lost
when they wander too far from New York,
land too vast and too wild to be forgotten.

Away from happening, different things happen.

Candy

The plastic plumes sway. In billows of reds and oranges and blues they mingle, lipstick and no underwear, platinum blonde and a stiletto twist into a fisheye.When she shuts her pocket mirror she knows it all clashes.

She smiles, remembers the quivers of each man who doubletook, and trash is worth the thrill. Too much suntan and too many rhinestone promises and the trailer door won’t lock. But in rooms with no clocks time doesn’t criticize premature wrinkles.

Cosmo sunsets birth disco ball moons full of unquenchable thirst and vacationing delusions of celebrity. The freeway cries with the same slow agony of every poppy lost beneath that concrete vomit stain on the Mojave Desert called Las Vegas.  

Returned is her mystery. Kept in untouchable lust, kneeling on all fours while at the same time placed on a pedestal too high to reach. Every man grows sick and hungry like they’re fucking they’re gorgeous daughters. Hey mister!

And it’s only a twenty-minute cab ride to get your throat slit by the night’s prettiest addiction. Only ten minutes until ejaculation after barbed wire is fed into his anus. They’re only plastic flowers pushed off the bedside table. It’s only spit on his chest,

and only eighty dollars out of his pocket.