SHUDDER
By Dustin Pickering
Shudder
Love, shudder and face me:
look at these cold, keen eyes
and terrify them.
Make sound into light
and drive each fault down harder into my heart.
I am numb with confusion
and this madness makes me inept
at revealing my truth…
at seeing the beauty
or knowing its service to my lies.
If love is penultimate whisper,
it must show itself at the end of time
and not come to the edge of the pool,
waiting for the instant of sinking.
I become numb as the Novocain of my heart
flows through my anticipation…
every dream, every thought,
usurped by her bountiful eyes
looking at me,
exposing my darkest graces.
Never Resist
This is how worlds happen,
the darkness mingles in the light
like two lovers who never resist each other.
They intertwine, hypnotizing
themselves into believing
there is a grander purpose to their mingling.
They never discover it
but their creations look at them
and reflect on their spontaneity.
One truth turns into another.
They lean on each other,
grieving and burning
like a small atom dying in friction,
becoming a grave of itself.
Nothing true dies.
Only we are alive.
As thinking beings,
we reflect the intensity
of night
as we succumb to the daylight.
If I was a serpent,
I too would tempt you
as only throbbing could.
About the Author:
Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press, a small Houston-based press responsible for Harbinger Asylum. Harbinger Asylum is an award nominated literary journal. Pickering is the author of two self-published collections, The Daunting Ephemeral and The Future of Poetry is NOW: Bones Picking at Death’s Howl. Chitrangi Publishers in India published his poetry collection Salt and Sorrow, and Hawakal Publishers published A Matter of Degrees this year. He is published online and in print and his poems have been translated into Albanian and Portuguese. He has a soundcloud account under Poet Dustin Pickering that hosts his acoustic songs and spoken word pieces.
