Poetry: Selections From John Patrick Robbins

Sometimes Indiana

 

I miss you as the moonlight cascades through the window to illuminate that space beside me where once you did lie.

 

As it does remind me that no matter how incredible a passion burns it can equally be extinguished within a second.

 

As I can recall the scent of your hair upon a pillow that serves as only a vacant space. Much like this heart that still despite my best efforts beats within my chest.

 

As true love is never gauged in trinkets or even photographs that capture an image, never a connection.

 

As pain is always a promise no matter the best intentions upon the beginning of the journey.

 

Sweet as the honeysuckle that once did linger within the summer's scent.

 

But as I now devote myself to death with every unsteady hands pour I can never deny your place within my thoughts.

 

We can erase everything but the scars and the memories.

 

I knew you once as you in turn, you knew the truest version of a reflection that is no longer me.

 

Sometimes I could die in peace, if only I knew you did upon occasion.

Take a moment to recall the ghost that has very much become me.

 

Sometimes the past's reflection beats the future's non-existent promise.

 

Permanent midnight is all my soul does truly know.

 

 

 

Totally Killing It

 

My liver that is, with any hopes of a peaceful ending that doesn't resonate with a heart monitor's flat line.

 

As it rings out like a train whistle's departure, announcing that yours truly has moved to a warmer climate.

 

Some will scoff and most writers will be far too self-absorbed to notice let alone shed a tear.

 

Of course,  I celebrated most of my contemporaries passing, not to honor them so much.

As mainly to praise the God's, I no longer have to read a goddamned submission from them ever again.

 

I mean I don't think of it so much as alcoholism as it is drinking with a purpose.

 

Besides, I only drink twice a week.

Weekdays and weekends.

 

So yeah....

 

Cheers and better luck in your next life.

 

 

 

Then Again

 

Often I find placing anything more than a drink order from a human being ultimately a great disappointment.

 

I had vanished within myself again to abandon who I was to somehow hold out hope I could find some solace within another.

 

How did it turn out, you may ask yourself?

Well, I am once again here before this page with a half-empty glass upon a freezing night.

 

So in other words...

Utterly disappointing and par for the course.

 

 

 

Oh Miss Báthory

 

Did your plans of immorality go askew with your first for depravity?

In a quest for the ultimate beauty did you in turn find only damnation?

 

To bathe in the blood of the innocent, the skin so very smooth, beauty is a thirst to hold onto something that is but a season.

 

Futile was this journey, but then again, my demonic dearest love, are they not all futile to begin with?

 

As your deeds legend in cruelty did spread upon the winds echoed to even this day kept alive by the wicked and foolish like myself.

 

As it's said in your final days, you knew total isolation, yet a glimpse of you was rumored to have been exquisite.

 

As flawless was the flesh you so did deeply covet that so few would ever see until your dying day.

 

A wicked daughter embraced by an even more twisted fate's ever so weathered hand.

 

Miss Bathory do those darkest desires exist upon whisp of legend and a now dead memory.

 

Shunned forever from view and embraced within the arms of demons and akin to nightmares.

 

Fate is a cruel mistress, as so were your deeds etched within the fabric of time.

Warm as the crimson life force in which you did bathe.

 

Cold as the vessels from which you did extract this ever so precious liquid of existence.

 

Elizabeth, gothic in beauty, corrupted within the vacant space that once did harbor the cruelest of souls.

 

 

 

 

 

John Patrick Robbins, is a Southern Gothic writer and editor in chief of the Rye Whiskey Review whose work has appeared in Piker Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Fixator Press, Horror Sleeze Trash, Punk Noir Magazine, Disturb The Universe and The Dope Fiend Daily. His work is often dark and always unfiltered.