poetry page

Greetings! Here is a small sample of poems that I have written over the last several months...

Warning: These are not light poems. There is some mature material in them...

All poems are copyrighted. © 1998-2001 Amy Peacock

Untitled

The tears run down my face
and into my ears
giving everything a watery sound.
I can't figure out how to be here -
in the moment with you.
Total separation from my body?
Is that what I desire?
Do I know the real meaning of desire anymore?
Have I ever?
Self satisfaction allows me to
disconnect from my world-
from you.
But I know there is something wrong.
I still hunger for
disconnection -
to stop thinking
and feeling
and emoting
just long enough to bring it all to closure.
Lights off have a purpose two fold:
Envelope me in darkness and thus
keep your eyes at bay -
Shade the distortions in my face -
the flush of my skin, tears welling up
that would betray my
carefully practiced and controlled
breathing.
Whereby I have learned to turn weeping
into false sighs of pleasure.

Needles

Today I dreamed
That my mouth was full
Of needles.
Wedged into impossible places
each with a glittering end -
A jewel, a decoration.
Pulled one by one
until my mouth was clear.
Afraid I would swallow.
And then,
As it always is in
sleeping horrors like these,
there were more.

Whispers of Wisdom

Some people speak of writing
As their life line.
That thing they do in order
To not go mad.
That thing they do in order
To make sense of things.
That thing they do in order
To express that which cannot be expressed.
If I were lucky
Writing would be that for me too.
It is an eternal chase for whispers
Of wisdom
The teasing of a lover
The love of self.
Divine-ness is in me.
And only wants
A blank sheet and a working pen.

Unwilling Dreamer

Her dreams consist of
Pink mists
Hovering over dark hills
Of people
Avoiding her in bars
Of broken thoughts
And though she's never
Dreamt of a caged animal
She feels like one sometimes
Hunted (by the murderers in her dreams)
Lonely (because of her self-loathing)
Dangerous (because of her self-possession)
Hated (by her self)
She tries to reach out in her dreams
But the wire around her neck
Cuts
Her cries are lost
Missing
She longs for a freedom -
She can't give words to it -
A freedom that has no life 
Because she can give it no meaning
And so sometimes 
She lets the wire
Cut.

Leavenworth

In this place
You cannot be sad.
The sleeping Earth
Will not allow the
Darkness to seep in.
She is dressed in white
And resistance to her
Crystalline beauty
Is useless.
Evocation of that which I know so well –
To be in that dark place –
Is impossible.
At once, there is peace and restlessness.
I have had more than one thought today
About curling up – on a picnic table?
A park bench?
And soaking myself in the crisp auras
Of my surroundings.
And snow mixes with rain,
And, somehow,
I do not mind.

Under the Stars

The black sky
Is a fitting backdrop
To trees
Which, though I know they are green,
Look grey, ghostly grey.

And the shadows
of spindly and naked branches
cast spider-leg shadows
against the false glow of the ground.

I created a chair
Out of snow
And my black scarf
Folded and laid out.
The cold seeped through to my legs
But I did not care
As the snow,
Wet and muffled,
Fell from the trees above.

God how I wanted to
Lie down there in that place
And sleep under the stars,
Among the stars.

The Unapproved Doors To Nakedness

Last night I dreamt of a doorway
The swinging kind like in an antique saloon
I remember warm colors on both sides of the door
Golden hues and dark woods
Long and narrow and mirrored.
I was with someone
I don’t know who she was
We were traveling 
We were different from each other
Polar opposites maybe
My two selves
We weren’t supposed to go through that door for some reason.
One side was approved of
Like school or a fancy restaurant or a library 
Somber, but good

Each time we went through the door
(she led me I think)
We were stopped by a woman
Like a barmaid.
She said something to us that I cannot remember now
Like we weren’t supposed to be there.
She was firm, but not hateful
She let us pass.
We weren’t planning on staying though
And we paid her no mind.

We were just passing through
We were going somewhere.

The dream skipped a beat 
We started over several times
Each time having to pass through that doorway 
Into the forbidden room
Forbidden by someone else though --
I don’t remember feeling like it was a horrible place
But it was not the superficially good and pure 
Like the place on the other side
It seemed sad though, like the people at the bar were 
Haggard and lonely, tired, old.

But we were just passing though.

Front to back
Inside to outside 
Good to bad

These were the motions of the dream

When I awoke 
I could not go back to sleep for some time.
I made hot chocolate
Thought of the father that I never knew
Fathers seem to be everywhere lately.
Perhaps he was at the bar, perhaps not.
Maybe all those tired old strangers were me.

The Tomb

I have this need --
A need that I don’t know how to fill --
To dig my way out of this
Self-made tomb.
Ancient and musty
Filled with poison gas,
Surrounded by old bones
And gifts to the gods --
Things to take with me when I die,
For my journey into the next world.
But I think of the dirt I have to dig through
Think of it under my nails
Small pieces of Mother Earth (of ME)
That feel like two-by-fours;
Spiders that dangle from overhead and
That wet smell everywhere.
And it's so dark.
Dark.

I dream wakeful dreams of sunshine streaming in on me
The dust of my former home
Sparkling in the light from above;
Yellow and silver columns
Suspended in the dark surroundings.
I dream of life-force entering my body.
Pure light.

And so I lay down on my bed of stone
To capture those few minutes of glory
That come between wake and sleep.
For I believe dreams are voyages to
Those places where we know 
But won’t accept because we are afraid.
And wakefulness is just too much sometimes.
But those half-dreams --
Ah, they are the stuff that keeps me in bed.

November 3, 1998

From Behind the Waterfall

This corporeal life
Sickens me.
Belching
And shitting
And pissing
And fucking
Our way through life
Disgusts me.
And I hate this distraction
My body
I feel selfish and stupid
I hate my body
But I cannot escape it
Not yet, maybe not ever.

Behind the waterfall
The water is a curtain of blurry thoughts
It separates me from my self
There are colors and shapes there
But a sheet of oil rains down.
It forms a pool of self pity
In which I wallow.
Christ, do you not think
That I can hear the chastisements now?
But I cannot see how to step from behind the 
waterfall.

Plain and simple
I think about being dead
All the time
I watched a dog die today
His life slipped away in the most effortless way.
And I wept and blubbered
Like he was mine.

And so far my thoughts
Are not too real
I think about George
And I wouldn't’mind seeing things
Through temporarily dead eyes.
My thoughts go to running off the road
Or hitting a deer
But then I mourn for the deer
They have a beauty
That makes me cry.

I think of all the hate
In the world
And how people kill and how
Animals kill and how
I can kill
These are morbid thoughts, I know.
But they are not very real yet.
Still, I lay in my darkened room
And my mind goes to that dark place
And I feel the blackness
It is coming.

And these thoughts
They pour from me like blood.

***************************************************

Home   Résumé    Links    Poetry   Pavonine Studios
Art Gallery     Personal