Karaoke

Oh boy did you want
That concillatory mess
A dress up game
With something beautiful
And broken
You loved my taste
Some half fulfilled fantasy
Where you could
Do lines off me
I would say please
That full throat tragedy
To take the bag of bones in
Promise everything
Once the shine rubbed off
I’m just another collectable
Trinket
Dust me off
Put me on the shelf
With your other acquired
Misdirections
When I cum
There’s something complete
Discrete
Not to talk about in popular company

Keep it a secret on the street
I see you
You see me
This isn’t a game of hide and seek
But of what we might be
I’m too alone
Too salty
Dripping prose and parody
My nights spent
Filling a space
Where someone else
Is meant to be
Off track
Legs around your neck
Falling in love with a feeling
Of what you want me to flee
Isn’t it lovely
When you blame it all on me
I never asked for a thing
Until you offered it all
To me
There was poetry
Filling ashtrays twice
Finishing my bottle

And making the minimum space
For a girl that looks
But is afraid to see
She locks herself inside
Struggles with intimacy
Cause you’ve got that
Acoustic voice
Those clutching hands
That I’m important in
Until it burns the filter
While I’m blowing you
Up and off
Comfortable in misery
Yeah you got me

To All the Ghouls I’ve Loved

Dear Carnivores, 

As of this moment I regret to inform our readers and writers that The Carnage Conservatory will be on a temporary hiatus,  we are no longer accepting submissions at this time.  Thank you to our long time readers and all the talent we have had the privilege to publish.  You have been the most wonderful group of people and inspiring group of people.  

Addendum: I am hoping this will only be temporary and that we can begin again fresh by October.  If anyone is interested in helping me manage The Carnage, if you want to help us to continue and aid in the relaunch,  please email me at Emilysm737@gmail.com. 

Your loving horror hostess, 

Emily Smith-Miller

 

That Girl in Your Head

There was a lightning bolt tattooed on her tongue
About to strike you might say
To make any dick she licked hyper electric
She was a manic dream girl
Before there was a prototype
Scar tissue and issues and candy coated Prozac
Pulling dyed wild hair over one eye
She writes songs about the weather
She plays the the banjo in her thong and bandeau
Knee high socks and blow jobs in the bathroom
There was a girl, she looked like me
She changed her clothes now she’s some kind of fascinating
Drinks coconut water, through a straw
Likes Mad Dog and 20/20 hindsight vision
They say collision is a cataclysm
Headlights off in the pouring rain
She plays catch me if you can
There’s a bench with her name
Etched in the granite back
She liked it like that
Black marks on white skin
Living in sin, planting lilies in December frost
And they said she’d go on like that
Pulling weeds in her bedroom at 4AM
She was a flash bulb burning
Ambulance screaming
A yearbook quote 10 years after the fact
Someone said ‘She’s the girl in my head’
They all drank their cocktails, they spoke her name
He still sits by her stone soul when the clouds change
But like the words on her ribs,
The song remains the same

Faith In the Face of Fiction

You were screaming
you were bleeding
some lamb at the slaughter
placed face down
on the bed tied with nylon
waiting to be taken
You don’t feel anything at all
kneeling for redemption
supplication and abduction
self flagellation
leather on your lips
you deserve this
Having visions again of fingers
walking your spine
wondering if you ever had a choice
or if you were born for moments
of masochism and madness
if today was just another reason
to wake up to watch the sunset
if the burning bushes were a trick
of the light
If Moses was a prophet
maybe he just wanted something to believe
needed the stories to make him see
the leaves for the trees
like you and the needles
Will they tell you how it ends
does it just take one hand or two
looking up you see God
in the eyes of a black mask
sometimes the saints and saviors
are the murders and sinners

Final Countdown

There you go in Pontiacs
That still have tape decks
Listening to that Beck song
The one you used to fuck to

Her. Legs. On. Your. Shoulders.

Forget the space shuttle crash
Drinking vodka and orange juice
Losing your virginity to someone
Whose name now has an epitaph

Headstone. With. The. Marble. Angel.

Walking away in the rain
While she calls out your name
She’s got something inside
You’re too scared to look back

Dead. Before. Day. Number. One

They said happiness was a state of mind
Looking for it in bottles with colored labels
In between her thighs you place your tongue
You have failed them all again

This. Is. The. Final. Countdown.

Love in Wires

I feel the sickness of the stitches
Pulling at my belly
Where they took it out of me
Where I used to be
Now there’s only bits of cyber fragment
Circuits computing my cellular level
Will I love or leave
Raise my hand or drink from the glass
Marked poison
Someone wrote a code for me
In lines of binary
To keep me from fucking up
From fucking those
I don’t know
I will keep my laser eyes
Trained on simple happy faces
Say grace with the good girls
When I kneel beside my white sheets
In my white room
I will know there is nothing
I will calculate the tiles
Count the quarter beats
Instead of hearing the melodies
There’s just a scar
To remind me what a feeling was
I fall in love with fraying wires
Sparks just so I know I’m alive
A good little guinea pig
A perfect experiment of bad girl
Gone cybernetic
I’m pretty just because
That’s the way I was programmed

Growing Pains

Taking time for transformations
Baby fat and Carolina blue eyes
Swallow the shedding skin
I’ll eat up the metamorphosis
Internalize what I’ve been

She keeps applying make up in a paste
Pale face kohl eyes blood lips
She’s going out tonight
Turning into woman’s other purpose
Mother, lover, crone, whore

Patent leather shoes shine
Up her dress and she’s looking like innocence
She looks like a dime store child star
She won’t get far before they strap her down
Shoot her up with war and persecution

Prejudice ate the baby
Wolf stole the girl
Lady’s not a lady
Girls play double dutch
And they’ll all learn to fuck

Wedding Fruit

Silk and chiffon beaded with mother’s pearls
Something borrowed, something blue
Her face the Carolina hue of asphyxiation

Hung under orchard dropping putrid fruit
Shedding seeds of morose melancholy
With tears from a bride to be

Left to swing a rotten apple from withered tree
Toes touching tips of the overgrown green
Satin shoes kissing daisy blooms

Glazing gaze fixed on her day of unattended womanly bliss
The marriage arch twisted with lilies of the valley
Funeral flower the foreshadow to her noose’s tryst

White sacrificial ornament of delicate disillusion
Ophelia for the altar with bruised throat contusions
She was left alone spurned to fall on her own

The leaves of romance dripping morning dew
In the summer wind she blew
Twisted with the breeze dancing above flowers of her final memories

Now the ghost of girls to follow, the lost lovers bereft, hollow
Tying their sorrow in a knot and bending the branch
To sway gentle, in death’s final poetic memento

Show Stopper

Sex on stage with dollar bills and cocaine
dancing for your demons and daddy issues
we’ll turn this misfit into a mistress
and she’s lacing up her back
pierced rings wrung through satin skin
pull closed muscle and bend me backwards
take this baby out of her corner
88 inches of therapy in g string fantasy
oiled legs wrapped around shoulder blades
closer closer closer to the tongue
sweat smell perfume and secretion
mingled with desire spread thin
spread like the eagle of this woman
stretch your demand to touch the toes
never figured for a tease with hair grease
we’re ready to take this apart
one article at a time
miss me when I’m gone
collecting green backs asking for another
3:56 minutes of show stop mop up the liquid
one song to make them cum
one chance to bring the climax
and she’s the best

The Current State of Monsters

I tattooed you behind my eye lids
so I can see you while I sleep
the darkest dreams come from unrequited agony
Splintering the soul
cold and resolute
Dead flesh on a warm body
bending in the mortuary
when love is only irony
what better mockery
than trysts with blue lips?
I’m a spider web
hearing your whispers on silky threads
whispers of life to steal.
Vampires on Valium and Vicodin,
sucking morphine through the vein of addicts
Even the monsters are sedated.
We’ll string them out in motel rooms
with snowy TV screens explaining misery
in an Iphone ad
White noise and scabbed ears
you stopped making sense
when I sewed your lips shut
You can only live once
but I can die over and over again
that’s why they say that hell is repetition
and we’re all living in it
with the daily shopping queues
text messages to lovers
who are fucking your friends
while watching re-runs of the Real World
Status update
They say that jaws and claws are scary
I think the terror is wired
plugged into the world
but you always told me I was the devil
so I should know the root of pure evil
And when I close my eyes
you’re still watching me