King of Iron Hearts

by Giana Darling

So that anytime I was frightened

  Anytime I felt threatened

  I could look in the eyes of my villains

  And remember

  I had the power to end them

  What if the beast in the story

  Preferred his talons and fangs

  And the echo of his mighty roar?

  What if he enjoyed striking fear into hearts

  So they never again had a chance to hurt his own?

  The beast stays a beast in this one.

  My love is a fist

  Clenched hard

  Inflexible

  Impossible to miss

  When it hits you in the face

  My love is a dagger

  Cold edged steel

  Sharp

  I use it to carve scars

  In your skin that spell my name

  I remain a cruel man

  Uncaring

  A villain at ease in his skin

  But my love for you is kind

  If that isn’t magic, what is?

  Not all princesses need Prince Charmings to save them

  Sometimes

  They have dragons who protected them

  All along

  I am at ease with hatred

  Comfortable with deviance

  And friendly with rebellion

  I wear my wrath like a leather coat

  And my venom is a cloud of second-hand smoke

  You see me and want me

  Do you know why?

  Because I am the edge you need to fall off

  The adrenaline rush you want to try

  I am too close to Death.

  He hounds me like a loyal shadow

  Whispers dark delights in my ear.

  I am his friend.

  Disciple.

  I learn from him the way to take men apart

  Like dissembling a tool.

  They learn to fear me too.

  A walking nightmare in motorcycle boots.

  But what about you, sweet girl?

  So close to life

  So full of pink peonies and gentle verve.

  What would you say if I told you

  I wanted to be the nightmare you claim for your own?

  It’s the art of a poet

  To take something unerringly ugly

  And give it the right words

  To make it something lovely

  We watch the stars

  To pull down the blue ink

  In the wide bowl of the sky

  And use it to write philosophies

  About the universe beyond the curved slope of our horizons

  Because sometimes

  The dark abyss of the unknown

  Is less lonely and less terrifying than our own remembering

  What a self-fulfilling prophecy it is

  To pave a yellow brick road

  Line it with exit signs

  Protect its boundaries with monsters

  And then grieve when people inevitably walk

  Down that path

  And out my door

  The bomb in my chest

  Ticks louder

  Each day

  Counting

  Down

  To

  A

  Time

  Where

  I will self-detonate

  And implode

  If only there were gentle hands

  To reach inside the chamber of my chest

  Cradle my ticking heart

  And bravely turn it off.

  She wore black

  And coloured in her many scars

  With red sharpie

  Like fresh blood against the ancient wounds

  She wanted to remember every hurt

  Illustrate every painful memory

  As a warning to everyone

  And herself

  That she would never forget

  This is a story of boy meets evil

  With the face of an angel

  And a body that could tempt a saint to sin

  Of a time before the boy became a man

  When he met the demon

  By the name

  Of

  Delilah

  And spoke her title in a breath of supplication

  This is the journey of that boy

  From the sweet stumble over lust

  To the willing jump he made

  Thinking he would land in

  Love’s perfumed embrace

  This is the story of what happens

  When the boy lands on the spikes of cruelty

  Savagely impaled by lies

  Where he brutally bleeds out

  This is the story of what a woman

  Will do

  For

  Revenge

  The legacy of men.

  Sometimes

  I yearn for the apocalypse

  So that all the nonsense will implode

  And the only things left

  Are you

  And

  me

  You were born a pretty fish

  Put into a pretty bowl

  To swim around looking pretty

  For the rest of eternity

  What would happen if the glass smashed?

  Would you grow lungs and legs

  Deformed, but free?

  Or die

  So pretty

  In the glistening glass?

  I was born in a stinking mire

  But I made it into compost

  Took sustenance from the refuse and rooted in the soil

  It was on the filth of my mistakes

  That I rose to the greatest of heights

  And I was all the stronger for it

  If you succumb to the heat

  You will melt to your core

  And nothing is ever as strong as something

  Forged from fire.

  She was a witch, a bitch and a cold-hearted queen.

  She was a witch

  Made of magic I wanted to shape in my hands

  A force so great I shuddered at her power

  And reverently learned the shape of each spell

  So I might wield her.

  She was a bitch

  More magnificent than any woman I had ever met

  Because she liked her world cold and anti-septic clean.

  They judged her for that and her words

  The way they hit their targets

  Precisely

  Rat tat tat

  A semi-automatic weapon with a chamber of red lips.

  She was a cold-hearted queen

  Who ruled without aid from a throne she made herself

  In a kingdom of steel towers and glass ceilings

  That she punctured with the lance of her ambition

  And watched crumble to dust beneath her stiletto heels

  She was a witch, a bitch, and a cold-hearted queen.

  Sticks and stones would never break her bones.

  (It was easier to hate her than submit an application to be loved by her)

  The witchcraft of womanhood

  I sipped from the chalice

  Sweet moonlight down my throat

  Silky and silver as the ribbon of water

  Sewn through the moss-covered ground

  At my bare feet

  I danced over the green mottled earth

  Wet mud sucking at my toes

  Packed earth vibrating with the kick drum beat

  Of the revellers circling the fire

  At my naked side

  Women revolve around the flames

  Leaping through the sparks

  They chant in one voice like an echo

  That emanates from the earth

  The howl of wolves

  In the dark bowl of night

  Echoes eerie

  Like a gong struck in my chest

  They call to me

  And naturally

  I follow

  A girl is a weapon

  Whether or not she knows how to wield
her power

  Is another question entirely

  I don’t want to give you the world.

  I can’t afford a diamond ring or a house so high on a hill.

  I can’t take you on a trip or pay your way through school.

  But…

  I can give you something I’ve been aching to give

  Since I first saw you so confused on my stoop

  A child without a dream

  You see,

  I can give you you.

  Let the love of your life be the woman looking back at you in the mirror.

  She is your best friend forever and your tireless champion,

  If only you’ll give her words to speak and the power to be

  Seen.

  Sometimes the only lesson you learn

  Is from a mistake

  Not worth making again.

  You can’t light a fire without kindling.

  The scraps and waste of life that didn’t work out

  That tore strips off your soul

  And ripped through your defences?

  Those are your tinder to light your dreams on fire.

  I love with my whole soul

  But the weight of that love is too much for some.

  They drop it in the dirt.

  Trip over it as they run away.

  One day,

  I hope I find someone Atlas strong enough

  To hold it up.

  You broke her.

  So I took her and taught her how to fill her cracks with gold.

  She is tangled up in his dangerous love

  Wrapped in the yarn of his malicious lies

  Like a fly trapped in a cotton web

  I want to be the shears that cut her free

  I’m a night person

  Because she works at the 24/7 diner

  Off exist 99

  I’m a pie person too

  Because it’s the only edible thing they serve

  She was deep dark waters

  And I was never taught how to swim

  I was afraid of her sharks and currents

  The absolute blackness at her depth

  But as I watched

  She tossed and churned

  Eternally turbulent and ill at ease

  So, I took the chance to soothe her peaks

  And dove right in head first.

  Love is sink or swim.

  Who told you

  You were hard to love

  And what made you

  Think that was a horrible thing?

  Everything hard is worth having

  We spend our entire lives

  Doing the hard things to survive

  I will tell you now

  I can survive your love

  And I want to

  What makes you tremble

  Alone in the dark

  What is the stuff of the nightmares

  You imagine at midnight

  Let me know all those things you fear

  So that I might slay them

  Even while you dream

  I would break my own heart a million times over

  If it meant keeping you safe

  From a million heartbreaks of your own

  She was a live wire I wanted to hold in my hands

  Take her electricity between my teeth

  And feel her currents race along my skin

  She was the shock I needed to come alive

  Touch me

  And

  I burn

  A lit match to dry timber

  The press of your lips on my skin

  Douses me like amber liquor

  And up I go

  In flames

  Baby girl

  Don’t think

  I’ll forget that beneath the sting

  Of angry bees

  You taste as sweet as honey

  Her beauty lay

  Within her brain

  Like a pearl trapped

  Between layers of pink velvet

  I thought I needed

  Currency

  To buy it

  Class

  To own it

  But I realized the only way

  To gain a pearl

  Like her

  Was to be gifted it

  I’m sorry if I kiss you too much

  Too long

  And

  Too often

  But I know the time will come

  Where you won’t want my touch at all

  And so

  I take advantage

  Of your lips

  And that smile against my smile

  Because when it is gone

  I fear my mouth will forget the shape of yours

  And the taste of yours

  Even though my heart with forever mourn

  You went to hell

  On a one-way ticket

  Condemned and beaten

  Only to meet Satan amid the flames

  He took your warm hand, kissed your fingers with cold lips

  And said,

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  She was conceived, born, and raised in the light

  The dark, they told her, was full of horrors

  If she stayed far away from the shadows

  She would thrive

  So why did they whisper to her like lovers do

  A caress at the base of her sensitive spine

  A sinful kiss of desire at her neck

  Rage tucked like flaming tissue around her

  Strange multifaceted heart?

  Because nothing is all black or all white.

  I fell into the deep abyss

  Between the mountains

  Of love and hate

  Arms pinned

  Heartbeat shallow

  Mind awash with the fear that this was my new and bitter forever

  It was not comfortable but there was some safety

  In being alone in the dark

  With no one to hurt me but myself

  I tried to work myself out of the pit of despair

  But it was hard to remember

  the heart was made to be broken

  and the only one who could mend it

  was me

  She was an old coat

  With pink silk lining

  A cracked vase filled with

  Passion red roses

  A hundred-dollar bill

  Found in a forgotten purse

  She surprised you with her beauty

  And instead of judging you for your shock

  She blessed you with her kindness

  Instead

  She had daddy issues.

  She wore these problems

  Shame-faced but bold

  Like a tattoo that seemed

  A good idea

  While drunk.

  I won’t lie.

  They drew me to her

  Those daddy issues

  But not for the reasons you think.

  It was a call to action

  For a man like me

  To show the woman what she could be

  If she had a man to love and protect her

  While she fixed her problems herself

  What is more dangerous?

  A man with a gun

  Or one posed with a pen?

  The kind who threatens your safety

  The one where you might end up dead

  Or the one that will never let you go

  Who will trap you forever with that pen

  And his ink

  In a poem.

  You can call me beautiful

  Compare me to a summer’s day

  Or a spring morning

  Romanticize my winter storms

  Into cleansing tempest that stir your soul

  But we both know just like the

  Mother nature

  You compare me too

  I am so much more than that

  My summer’s day could scorch you up

  My spring morning could leave you b
lind

  And my winter storms could rip you apart like confetti

  I could as easily kill you as kiss you.

  Damaged souls

  Aren’t broken irrevocably.

  They have a condition;

  PTSD.

  After wars of the heart blew open their ribs and scored shrapnel into flesh,

  They dream about the horrors of battle

  Stare at the scars that will never fade

  And feel the ones on their soul that will never be seen.

  The magic of healing

  Is that such a small act

  Can make a lifetime of destruction seem small too

  Wrapped in your arms

  Washed clean by your faith

  Day by day

  My damaged soul is made once more whole.

  Be water

  Constantly moving

  Flowing through time and space

  Carrying the debris of the past

  But still

  Streaming

  Full of life

  Do not let life

  Turn you into ice

  Trapping the detritus