Stephanie Smith is our November 2009 Selected Poet 2

You can email Stephanie at imajican1978@yahoo.com

A LOVER'S ASTRAL JOURNEY

I awakened staring down at myself the other night.
Sleeping soundly. Dead to the world.
A cord connected me to myself like mother to baby.
I realized I could go anywhere. Do anything.
I could fly like a bat against the moonlight.
I could soar into space and beyond.
But instead I traveled to my lover’s grave
and went down deep inside.
I saw the face I once adored deteriorate.
His hands were folded together in prayer
while bugs crept through his clothes and
formed a society inside his rotting chest.
I wished I could meet him in this plane I was in.
To love again. Be free again.
To swim the seas of passion once more.
But oh my wish came true all right.
Out of the sky floated my lover with
another woman in his arms.
They laughed at me.
They tore that silver cord that attached me
to all I’ve ever known.
Now I dwell here on this plane, in an eternal fog,
lost and hungry for my lover
who bides his time in the arms of another.

ALL THESE ZOMBIES

The dead men lumbered
down the bloodstained streets
creeping through the blackish night

With fading memories of a
former life they turn over a
neglected cry as thousands more
arise from tombs and lonely crypts

They mingle with the living in
a macabre dance of rot and flesh,
of breath and death

We once were these men
And they us
We once were
all these zombies
turning into dust

DEEP IN DREAMS

Deep in dreams the angels sang to me
with choirs of demons in procession
rhythmically ripping at my insides
tearing my flesh with such passion
the heavens came crashing down

If I can only glimpse through this blackness
If a trace of tomorrow could be found
I would not bow down to the beasts of my
subconscious that subsist on flesh and bone

But there is no living here for daylight
is but another dream to be dreamt
on another night in another life

GIRL IN THE SHALLOW GRAVE

They found her wrapped in rose-scented linen
A dead face of innocence despite her sins

How quickly the time had passed
between breath and decadence
between warm skin and vacant eyes

And we stare endlessly at
ourselves in the bathroom mirror

wiping the blood off our hands

MISSING HER

Her memory follows me down the stairs
into the murky basement
Sifting through the chest of photographs
into the vestibule of my nightmares
I find images I don’t want to remember

But here I am
missing the strawberry scent of her hair and
the skin she slipped on in the darkest hours
I tore it all off with this blade
I didn’t think she would bleed
But indeed I bleed for her and
undress myself now to join her

SUCCUBUS

she arises
out of a hypnogogue
determined
to shatter minds
cut through the night
like a knife
passionate blood
raining down
like memories
down the drain
like waste
to find solace in
your silent screams
to pick at your scabs
and wipe them clean
only to tear at your flesh again
and again…and again

Stephanie Smith

Stephanie Smith is a poet and writer living in northeastern Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in such publications as House of Horror, The Monsters Next Door, Niteblade, Not One of Us, The Ranfurly Review, and Sein Und Werden.