Poetry through the Seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I need a job.
I need some cash.
Nothing too intense.
Something that won’t last.
Jobs can defeat you,
grind you up and eat you
in a double meat patty
of rage and disillusionment.
All around me,
people stare
like they’re anyplace
else but here.
If you want respect,
get a dog, not a job.
See yourself here
in ten years?
Run!
She slept with him,
but knew it was wrong.
He wasn’t even human.
She’d spent so much time
wishing him dead.
Hell, she’d tried to kill him
more than once.
But he was a poet
and something in his pain
spoke to something
in her pain,
and when they lay together,
the building crumbled
around them
and all the reasons
not to be together
slipped away.
He’s my enemy, not my boyfriend
(though sometimes
I can’t tell the difference).
He says his darkness
is in the past, but his edges
are still tinged with black.
He tries to hurt me,
but I’m too busy hurting him
to notice.
The more damage I do,
the more he loves me.
And when he’s bad,
I long to kiss him.
Smashed together,
we can’t part.
Pleasure, pain,
they’re just the same.
Walls cave in.
Ceilings fall.
As do we,
amid the wreckage.
If hate could kiss,
would it be beautiful?
If love would last,
could it be kind?
* * *
Scent of past love lingers,
clinging like lace against my skin,
tattoos of pain no one can see,
intimate like a friend, like a torturer,
intimate like a friend, like a kidnapper,
intimate like a friend, like an executioner.
The scent of love lingers.
On fire
with hatred,
danger camps
on every doorstep.
They burn witches,
don’t they,
to cleanse the ills
of society?
Trouble stirred
into caldrons of chaos
while the accusers
hide under their beds.
Symbols tattooed
on the skin of the tortured
remind us
something’s always out there.
Can’t fear be teacher,
sewn from scraps of sorrow,
guiding us with knowledge
rather than arming us for battle?