It’s Poetry Tuesday! We are going to go back through all my old notebooks and look at the god-awful poetry I wrote when I was an angsty teen and then you will get present day Michelle’s re-interpretation/headdesk horror-filled embarrassment.

Cannibal

Dripping blood
Splats on the floor
Intoxicating stench
Weaves its spell

The beast has risen
Taken over my heart
Bloodlust clouds
And I give in

Ivory razors flash
Sharpened nails dig
Flesh ripped apart
Copper liquid gushes

The fountain beckons
Bright crimson
Bend down close
I whet my thirst

The essence of life
Revitalize me
Meat of the sacrifice
Deify me

Rending and tearing
Gnawing and chewing
Licking and feasting
I sate the hunger

Bloated and full
Content yet guilty
Bow to pray
Beg for a cure

Sirens sing the answer
Quickly rise
Lope into the night
Disappear from view

Time to wait
Wait for fresh prey
Wait for discovery
Hiding in plain sight

Aaaaaand sociopath Michelle strikes again! This is one that I definitely wrote in high school and it was probably Junior year or Senior year. I know this because that was when I got a bit more gruesome. I was devouring Christine Feehan and Laurell K. Hamilton novels as fast as I could get my hands on them.

This was also the point in my high school career when I took a Creative Writing class and was ready to murder the male contingent of the class because of the stupidest project ever. We were tasked with creating two characters and then we essentially round robined the characters. Every week we would each submit a new chapter using two characters. You only got to write your characters two or three times I believe. Well, one of the very special guys in this class decided to be a jerk to one of my characters. He wrote my trans character very poorly and I think had something terrible happen to him. So I sent his character off the rails next time he came around to me, thusly:

Blood is smeared on every available surface. There is so much of it. Who knew that the human body could hold so much of the damn liquid? There are gallons of it. Gallons of free paint! I laugh as I spread the metallic substance across my cheeks. My eyes. My lips. I can taste it. It’s still warm. Still carrying the essence of life within it. All over the walls I have painted my macabre masterpiece with the crimson blood.

Tito is dead.

The air is thick with the smell of raw meat, like freshly ground hamburger. It slides down my throat like something tangible and I catch the whiff of sewage buried deep within it. I wrinkle my nose. I should have been more careful. I know not to tear into the intestines. The bowels always leave a nasty smell behind. But I got so excited this time that I ripped into them like a child at his Christmas present, the soft squishy insides exploding and oozing between my fingers. The remains are slowly rotating around and around on the ceiling fan.

Beneath the window lies the poor sap’s rib cage. No organs reside in it any more. It is empty. Slick and clean, but still bloody. The heart is skewered on one of the bedposts. A small offering to whoever finds him. Many of his brittle bones are nailed into the soft, giving sheetrock. They stick out. Glistening white coat hooks waiting to be used. Little bits of flesh and insides are stuck under my nails. It’s going to take forever to get them out.

The air is disturbed by the fan causing the loose skin hanging off the end of the bed to flap. A flag of true honor. His damn wall to wall carpeting is saturated with blood. Black with the violent color. I can see it dripping down into the apartment below. A wet solid splat as it lands on some bald guy’s head.

I can never seem to remember how many things there are inside the human body. It never ceases to surprise me all the little parts there are. A hunt commences so I can try and find each and every tiny bit and roll it between my fingers. Bathe in the hot spray of blood. Delve into the forbidden recesses of the human body. Discover all its secrets. Scrabble and scrap until there it nothing left. Everything is scattered around the room. Pieces of what used to be a whole.

Snagging Tito’s head by his greasy hair, I bring it with me. Humming I swing it back and forth, my grotesque baggage. I bring it into the shower. I strip out of my ruined clothes and soap up. Chattering amicably with my dead friend I scrub hard at the caked fluids in my hair.

I should have been a coroner.

Needless to say my classmates, and I think my teacher, were kind of horrified. I think I then wrote this poem as a follow up piece. No one fucked with my characters after that.

I have continued my interest in the macabre by watching eight seasons of Criminal Minds, the first 4 or 5 enough times to have pretty much memorized them. I am now finally getting into the ones I missed with season nine. I also had a very short lived serial killer obsessions where I scoured wikipedia for necrophiliac serial killers due having read about Jeffrey Dahmer. Serial killers are terrifyingly interesting people. I think the reason people, younger people especially,  become obsessed with horrible things like serial killers, cannibals, and necrophilia is because we have so little to measure our life against. Our life experiences are so small compared to something like that that it helps ground us.

I think it is also pertinent to note that I LOVED Disturbed when I was in high school. I was once listening to (and probably singing under my breath) their song “Down with the Sickness” on the bus and some smart ass from my grade decided to ask me if “my mother knew I listened to music like that” – as much as I was a goth and generally dark person, I was still a goody-two-shoes and general know-it-all – and I very calmly responded that of course my mother knew I listened to it, why wouldn’t she? Again. My poor mother. She would come downstairs at 6:30 am on a weekday to find Linkin Park or Disturbed on the kitchen radio. I don’t know if I can ever apologize enough.