D. B. DEVILLIERS

Poetry

Tag: love

August 19, 2023

Trinity

if for a moment you can breathe, steady
your spinning head
hold this solitary thought:

a moment might drop by and
say hi
say hi back.

the world is old and heavy
resilient
in its image we might be made.

you know what this cost. you paid.
you earned what it cost.
this is how this is supposed to work.

we scratch around bugwise on its
skin. lush forest and oceansweat salt skin.
everyone wants to be part of something larger

and we are. all of us, we are.
in this moment, and there only ever was
this one, we are.

the world is so rich and vast and true
and you are so integral
a part of it.

broken, us, skittering off thrown across the ice
towards our respective indefinite destinations
the great beautiful dark. what sounds carry

in the one moment. steady breath.
the only real love poem
I ever wrote.

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June 3, 2023

A Case Is Made For Dustin’s Roof, Jury Impressed But Ultimately Unmoved

a pretty picture drawn on rawhide
bloodybacked on the reverse
and you should see the wall behind it.

the wall says: hi! I am the wall. I hold up
the roof. and the roof says: hi! I am
the roof. I hold up the sky. or I hold it back
rather. don’t want to face the sky
without my intercession. eye of god
won’t look kindly on the things that
happen here, no sir, I am the
roof. I shield you from unblinking
brother sun, unyielding, and the little stars
who chitter away his absent hours
called away on business to the
very ends of chistendom. so exposed, each and
every nocturnal
indiscretion better
left unseen, they’d see
(and many! you’ve enjoyed
haven’t you)
how they talk
how they like to
watch—an indiscretion perhaps
of their own

they would go to him in whispers, covering
coy little smiles, knowing he’ll
stove down the firmament, final dawn
stars all, moon, the first man
samson’s temple won’t bow for you, nor I,
they tied him with twine and he
won’t even try. eve not hungry this morning
nor jonah’s whale—he swam untroubled
and on His palms the largest legionnaire in judea
swung his sledge and broke nail
after nail
after
nail.


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December 25, 2021

The Impossible and Extraordinary Density of an Ordinary Life

you can smoke another cigarette
you can make a cup of coffee
you can make dinner you can
send and receive text messages you can
stare at a blank screen and you can
be intimidated by its potential

people fight entire secret wars nowadays
behind screens
people bomb real live people to death from
behind screens
people do things
some people really do things
a man in a factory on the other side of the
country built my boots
a woman in a factory on the other side of the
world ran an injection-molding machine
which cast the set which bore the
shot that killed me
and the timeline split

the timeline is constantly split
between 0 and 1 are an infinite number of
points and you are one of them
and I am one of them
and between us a smaller infinite
number of points
and between each two of them a
smaller infinite number of points
and then there you are again and there I
am again
we are somehow between ourselves
and the infinitely small infinitely large gulf
splits in loops of loops of cells
interlinked within cells
interlinked
microscopic unions as far down as you or any
god or hack poet can look
and all the way up too
how could you not be terrified I am
fucking terrified I am exhilarated at the
wonderful terrifying possibility of the tiny
world we both inhabit and comprise

most things are not important to me
most things mean nothing to me
but there are exceptions
I am not dead

somewhere out there is a universe in which
everything is the same except I am
constantly on fire
and somewhere else I am in love with
love and we have a nice family and
happy children unhaunted by
natured and nurtured demons
in a universe orbiting the nucleus of an
atom at the graphite tip
of a pencil.

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March 27, 2020

Ten And Eight Tenths Of A Mile, 84 Westbound

There are words I imagine
I imagine
for when your life explodes without
much warning
there’s the sudden ice storm the rain which
freezes damn near instantaneously upon the asphalt and at
sixty miles per hour of course
there’s the old spin there’s the old hello the
passing semis
a hundred yards back
what can you do
hold steady touch neither the gas nor the brake
my father taught me well
and the embankment was conveniently leniently inclined
and the center of gravity in a small cheap commuter car is
thankfully low for the rapid lateral transition of traction
there are words
there must be words for when four seconds feel like forty
there must be words for when you nearly kill
yourself and two of your best friends
there are too many things are happening all at once
but I got me two options
and I intend to take the
harder one.

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August 18, 2019

Stock Images

where upon this shore will we wash up
kill my loneliness and I’ll kill yours
there we’ll be til we tire and finally retire
and wake and wake and wake and there
we’ll be upon the shore
shipwrecked stranded on a highly populous island
stare if you’d like
aspirants alpha and omega
sign your name in his book and we’ll
wake up on the shore with
things to say
I was born in love
it was everything else that did it.

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August 7, 2019

The Author vs. The Protagonist’s One True Wonderful Idealized Love

What a wonderful pretty thing you are
and oh it hurts it hurts
I’d like for you to do such terrible things to me
and I to you
such nice and terrible things
shame I’m so far away from this everything
scene in the movie cuts soundtrack to tinnitus white noise ring
protagonist gazes about him at people continuing
conversations he cannot hear
blurred perimeter
good looking people smile very white smiles
laugh surely very honest laughs if we could hear them over the
riiiiiiiiiinggggg
left right pan
where the fuck am I
who the fuck are these people
where are they
who the fuck am I
and you you electric master of all creation
though I carry all the weight and merit of the protagonist
and the author
I cannot speak to you
or will I ever
any longer
or ever
you’re too too
words fail.

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July 11, 2019

If I Liked Me Better I Bet I Wouldn’t Write So Much

I want to be loved so bad
and I am
let it be enough
and I want to be liked so bad
and I am
let it be enough
I just don’t know why anyone would
let me be enough
let me really believe it
I don’t know why anyone would
and maybe I can be something more than confused
and maybe then my father won’t have to take some sunny day to
bury me
maybe we’re all gonna go to college and we’re
all gonna be doctors and lawyers and we’re
all gonna die real slow and by the time we
get to the heaven we dreamed about as kids we’re
all too busted up and broken to recognize it
and anyway I guess it isn’t really there so that’s a
silly line of reasoning
if you get to live long enough do you get to reimagine it
I hope I hope I really really hope I
really really hope so
thanks god that’s all I’ve got.

 

Personal note: things are much improving.

 

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August 5, 2015

Strength

Of course
you can give your heart to
someone else, but it’s a heavy
thing—
if you cannot bear it yourself,
how could you justify forcing it upon another?
How could you force a person
to carry your cross
in addition to his own?
It’s better, I think
to instead grow
stronger.

Learn to love yourself.

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June 1, 2015

Thoughts of You

I didn’t think of you when my eyes went wide
when the buzz began and I was brushing
residue from my stubbly, sleep-deprived face
when the sky was brilliant blue
and the summer air felt fresh on my bare knees
but I thought of you later.
I thought of you as I crashed hard
when the liquor which came for free
returned to take its toll on my weary mind
because you aren’t the rush, the buzz, the high.
You are the dread crash and comedown
when the drugs have run out, much like you did
and you come to fill that vacant void
from somewhere across the wastes of time and space
but you’re a ghost, and these thoughts occupy me
like water poured into an endless pit
left me wanting always more
and never receiving.

I thought of you then.

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December 4, 2014

Kingdom of Ruin

I was a city surrounded
by colossal walls of
stone and masonry,
impervious to attack,
built when battles past
left me crumbling
but then,
you appeared on the horizon
and approached my gates
and I couldn’t turn you away.

I didn’t understand
the mistake I’d made
until I was burnt down,
when my city had already been
razed to the ground,
and you passed by the gates
never to return
again.

What remains of me
wanders these ashes,
the flames long faded,
the ruin gone cold
and I long for you.
The walls still stand
blackened but intact
defending my domain
from an enemy who’ll never again
attack.

As days become years,
I’ve come to realize
a hard, bitter truth
that I hide with false pride:
if you appeared at my gates
ever again
I’d raise them for you
and welcome you inside
to my kingdom of ruin
my dominion of dust.

I wrote this one maybe a year ago about a particularly nasty breakup. Those emotions have by now mostly faded into oblivion, of course, but I still enjoy the poem quite a lot.

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