Three Poems by Gary Priest

I Want to Destroy You

I want to destroy you.
I want to dismantle that smile from your mouth.
I want to end this construed nightmare.
You pollute my routine.
Each day your tongue pokes through my skin.
The pink flick of it teasing every time I get within range.
I feel that sentient breath on my neck as I sprawl contemptuously on the couch.
Your swiveled seduction, your corrupting content pulling at me, trying to finger a response from the dead weight of my worthless intellect.
I hate your carefree dissemination of details.
That "don't care who's watching as long as someone is" spiral.
I am watching.
I always am.
An insect in the information.
The data dung that you present feeds every wretched instinct that I have.
The thick client of jealousy strung between the spaces in your messages.
The windows of imagination filtered through a grey past.
I know your perverted operating procedures.
I see your malignant machinery as it grinds through another host.
If not destruction then details.
Break down the syntax of your betrayals into flirtation, fixation and fucking.
Those are the parameters that define you.
Scare those daily batch runs of secrets that re-engineer your needs.
The outdated programs that no longer fit your architecture, scrubbed through filters, discarded with tardy unresponsive system message.
The new prospects, ready for beta testing.
The old glitches that you cannot reject.
The ones that cause you problems, fracture the continuation of service, demanding memory and speed of reaction.
But your encrypted deceit is unbroken.
Hidden behind a glossy user interface.
I cannot destroy you.
I cannot devil the details from you.
All I can do is watch.
And wait.
And not participate.
Hoping for the courage to one day disconnect.



Love Can Be So Fucking Dumb

Love can be so fucking dumb
an insolent, temperamental triumph
of stupidity over sense
because here we are defenses down
and everything means something else
in this fucked up lexicon.

Love can be so fucking dumb
a drunken cocktail of want,
volatile elements of war
with juvenile delinquents
those envious, devious, carnivorous
little bastards.

Love can be so fucking dumb
it makes good judgment redundant
with the slapdash accelerant
of lust,
drenched like paraffin across the skin
logic and every other survival instinct
are reduced to ash one by one.



The Grammar of Goodbye

In the last week
everything felt like an ultimatum
or a bad joke.
Nothing felt like farewell.
No full stop.
Just endless commas,
lists of faults,
lists of wants,
And a few changes of tact;
with uncertain use of semi colons.
Both of us unsure of
the grammar of goodbye.

Gary Priest writes poetry and short fiction.  He lives at the end of a dead-end road, which may explain everything.