Philip Roth

Those around her noticed it
in her removed mannerisms
This she considered often:
she wasn't whole anymore
Thought she needed someone new
to balance the equation
A beautiful face to see
right through her old damages
Truly it was her own mind
that had really betrayed her
She was whole from the outset,
it was the love that fractured

Forest Runner (edit)

He ran, for he could not
bear to move gently there
He had something within
hurling him forward at
a pace unmatchable

Proud, he tried regardless

All there was, urgency
Bending the forest's limbs
brutalizing others
At sporadic moments
leaping down the hillside
to slide upon the leaves
No destination known,
just pursuing a void

Water forced from the clouds
came down upon the earth
Bits of forest matter
adhering to his skin
His hair ensnaring twigs
Mud, leaves, moss, and lichen

Their decomposition

He could smell its richness,
and ever so slightly,
tasted it on his tongue
He wanted to become
some small part of it all,
absorb it through his pores
until he would rupture,
unfurling in a spout
heaving fungal decay

Got the Best

I've heard it said
"It got the best of him"
Like he inhaled it,
an involuntary invitation,
some curse called down
Entering through the nostrils
to entrench itself
A fine film of vaporous oil
coating the bronchial trees
Or "it got the best of her"
Gathered her idiosyncrasies,
the gestures only you notice,
and placed them in a basket
to rot and go to waste
To ferment and oppose there,
still smelling so sweet
Well, I hear it said,
as if it's a bad thing
Still, the only thing I want
to get the best of me,
baby,
is you

Knowing

It was the gaze that gave her away. Eyes upon him in the forest. She saw him there, and he felt it all at once. Just before, his eyes passed over her form without immediate knowing. Dappled sunlight, cast shadows of leaves, her skin. The knowing caught up with him all at once and his legs stopped dead. His eyes rolled back over in a rush and she was there wearing the kind of curiosity bestowed by a secluded vantage. He half-expected her to turn and disappear into that foliate backdrop, but his knowing did not stir her.

Theirs

He concluded theirs
was of greater magnitude
Kept
in a vessel all its own,
apart from the rest
He thought holding it up
to compare it with the others,
did it no justice at all
To do so,
would be to cast a shadow,
to drown a nurturing light
No,
this was separate,
in a vessel all its own
Ornamental, yet functional
Bordered by copper and lead,
a chamber of ideal conditions
And there,
it incubated

Customers

Their eyes, somehow cavernous, blinked frequently - as if pleading. It was desperation there. Urgency too. Sometimes they'd just toss the substance on the glass, once a rich yellow of luxurious splendor, now tarnished grey or brown by the squalid environs they inhabited. They needed to trade it, so they could trade some more. Who knows where they slept? Somewhere you wouldn't. It'd put them in some heavy-limbed half sleep after that initial euphoric rush. Those first few seconds made it all worth it.

I can't decide. Conflicted all the time. There are fleeting moments of rage for their self indulgence and inconsideration. Most of the time it's pity.

Cormac

"They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing."