Tag: poetry

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Dance with the Dead

Sometimes the things we think we’ve killed and buried are still very much alive. How those terrible things can rise from their poorly dug graves when we don’t properly lay them to rest. How they take, and they take, until we make it right; for the living are the envy of all the dead. 

They rose from the mud, mangled, ugly, and unloved. They reached out with longing limbs, and I burned every one of them that dared to touch me. Only after staring at my own singed flesh did I see that the only thing the fires of my wrath was burning—was me. 

So I went down. Way, way down to that great graveyard within myself, and finally let the dead have their say. They showed me the path I sought was always the path I’d avoided. That way meant going back, and I had come so far from that awful place. Together we traced the fractures back to their foundation, and gazed upon all I had refused to see. Staring at the epicenter of every tremor in my life that caused the earth to open up to swallow me, I did not blink.

As I smiled back into the abyss of that malicious maw, I learned that bravery is not defined by the absence of weakness; but measured in how many paces we move forward when we are at our weakest. Step by fumbled step, I walked weakly into its jaws. For the only way out is through. 

The dead are all sleeping now, having finally completed their great work. I couldn’t tell you if that rest is forever, but you’ve seen what happens to people who get used to the ghosts.

We are, all of us, haunted. We must, all of us, be brave.

– I G

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In Defiance of Disorder

I open my eyes
and set my sights to this moment,
and only this moment.
I let go of all I used to hold
and leave it behind me,
for they cannot touch me
unless I choose to stay.
My thoughts matter not,
no matter how beautiful,
or deplorable.
This breath is the only truth.

I am not whole,
nor am I incomplete.
Adversity introduced me to myselves.
I am many things
now.
They are all true.
Neither wholly good,
nor devoid of goodness;
they simply are and deserve to be.

– IG

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Son of Saturn

After years of silence
the man who made me said,
“If my sons could stand up to me,
there is nothing in the world they couldn’t face.”

How the barbed flowers of hate again did bloom,
as I plucked their petals
and ate that truth.
I would trade all of this strength for you.

And when I did finally face you,
the great dragon of my life,
I realized after all this time
you were only a snake.
A deceitful beast without wings,
armed only with poison in it’s teeth.
I’d made of you a Titan in my dreams,
that devoured his children
drunk and gluttonous off curses and a prophecy.

I was the son of Saturn.
The Patron Saint of Patricide
with thunder in my heart
and lightning in my eyes.
When I brought the storm you conjured
you cowered and slithered beneath the ground,
and I parted the sky out of pity
lest you drown.

I know well the myth of our legacy,
what your father did to you–you did to me.
So I offer unto you a new prophecy;
the curse of Saturn’s Father
is broken by me.

– I G

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Venus in Virgo

In my dreams
it comes;
the thing I flee.
It feels me recede,
like a low tide being dragged
by an envious moon.
Love only looks for me when I leave,
and I am all out of goodbyes.
Insomnia always did suit my eyes.
All black and blue beaten by the truth;
that we are helplessly tied
by these invisible threads.
Felt only by the heart
and always fucking with my head.
The strings that coil and entwine
and bind you to these dreams of mine.
Do I dream of you
because you pull
on the other end of that line?
Tethered so tender to the softest parts of me.
How I’ve tried to sever the strings
and stop all of it,
cause I ain’t no ones puppet.
But I have yet to learn
how to kill the things I can’t see.

– ian gallows

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The Advent of Aries

In fevered dreams come profane desires that quicken the flame I learned to keep low, lest it overtake me. For I have been burned, and singed others’ skin in return. So I stand before an ocean and kneel before Poseidon’s feet, to drown these embers of longing beneath the waves, holding them down with both hands in a place where they cannot scream. But they resurface, baptized in the wake, with blue faces and forgiving eyes. Mercifully, they lay siege upon my shore, and all my walls are now made of sand. All defenses laid bare by a patient sea, the heat turns the sands to glass as I gaze into the eyes of what I once thought of as an enemy. I hear their song now in my ringing ears; they tell me to fear the fire is to fear myself. As Aries heaves his mighty axe over all the stars above, I open myself for his bloodied blade. Unmake me. Forge me in fires not born of my father’s flame. Make me the sun and watch me shine.

Ian Gallows
3/21/2021

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The Quiet

Sometimes I tell myself that there is a day, not too long from now, where things will be quiet. Where the weariness of constant conflict has been replaced by a hard won tranquility. When the mud from these trenches will be left on my boots, and I will tramp barefooted in the long grass of green valleys under the bluest skies. A day when these deafening moments of unceasing fire linger on only as a ringing in my ear to be drowned out by the crashing of gentle waves and the soft breath of a sleeping lover. 

On that day, in the quiet, I will be forced to confront who I am when the fighting stops. Adversity introduced myself to me–but who am I, in times of peace? What is a warrior without his war? Why is the mightiest foe the stranger that greets me in that space of silence? 

Sometimes this part of me, the sharpest part, howls through the noise and pierces through the silk of this delicate dream I dare to sow. Because it knows well; this thing we fight–we fight forever. For there is soldiers’ blood in me, no matter how much I bleed. Though that voice cuts deep, it is the same voice that talked me down from every ledge and told me to remove the gun from my temple. The same voice that saw me through every long night when demons whispered louder than the angels screamed. The voice that tells me that the quiet comes in small victories found in daily and often quite invisible miracles; where the beautiful fragility of life shines boldly above the depths of its horrible cruelty. It passes, elusive and fleet footed, seen only by weathered eyes that have gazed at death and did not blink. 

Sometimes I tell that voice that there is a day, not too far from here, when I know that the war will be over, and serenity will find us in the solace of solitude and I am no longer a stranger to peace. Where under a familiar roof, my aching feet will have finally laid roots and I can lay my weapons down; for I will have slain every dragon and taken back what treasures they stole from me. When the name I’ve inherited is no longer a curse, but a gifted and holy promise. A day, a most glorious day, when avarice has had its fill, when the wounds have finally been sewn shut, and I no longer need to listen to the voice of the soldier to survive.

Sometimes, in the quiet, I even allow myself to believe in these things. Because today, in the trenches, in the mud and the blood, under a blackened sky of gunfire, belief is all I have.

– Ian Gallows
2/28/2021

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No Safe Word

I had never held love
but it held me;
hostage with a shotgun pointed at my knees.
Staring back and forth between its eyes
and the iron sights
I gave in to its many demands,
it was all I wanted–just to be wanted.
Thinking if I ever stopped giving
that it would leave
and I didn’t want to be alone again. 
So I gave it all I had.
It left anyway,
leaving a trail of gunpowder perfume.
Looking down at the hole it blew straight through,
I have the audacity to ask myself
if perhaps they were in the right. 

It came to my door a beautiful beggar. 
It knocked with anxious hands of alabaster,
tiny things that seemed incapable of pulling a trigger
because of the way it nervously played
with its hair between their fingers. 
I let it in and it took everything, 
and I parted with those precious parts gladly;
hoping the very skin off my back 
that they had peeled off
with those perfect little hands 
would help see them through the winter. 

All the parts in you that were broken
and in dire need of repair
will think this is what it means to love,
and you will have every right to fear it,
such as you perceive it.
Now the windows are closed,
and the doors are all locked
and we bark like mad dogs at anyone that knocks.

But what if I did all of that to me?
What if I always knew
what those hands were capable of 
when they knocked on my door so long ago?
Maybe I was so utterly about the business 
of destroying myself completely
that I took down the gates of my city,
begging to be sacked and  plundered.
Cause honey, I am a masochist,
and there ain’t no fucking safe word.
I opened the door
so I could find a reason to keep it closed. 
To preserve what remained of me,
in a fortress of my own making
that would become a mausoleum;
because the only things in life that do not grow
are dead things.

I did this to me.
So that I could show the world the wound
that the wind still whistles through
as inarguable proof,
This is what love does to you.

So we close our windows and lock our doors.
And bones break against our stone;
but it’s not us that hurts anymore.
We are wounded creatures wounding creatures.
Fulfilling our own prophecies,
and building safe and quite predictable futures.
They may have pulled the trigger
but I placed the gun in their hands,
walked up to the firing line
and showed them where to aim. 
Cause back then, there was nothing 
I was more in love with than my own pain.

– ian gallows ©

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Somewhere South of Zero

I don’t have the words.

In my weakest moments
I sought the power of symbols,
learning how to weave a series of lines
to name the monsters of my life.
Dragging them out from the shadows where they hid,
reducing them from nightmares to mere scratches on parchment.
Or orchestrating a divine procession from a pen
that would paint a better picture of life in my mind;
like a spell spun from a sorcerer’s silver tongue.

As I struggle now to articulate and name these things,
these most monstrous things,
I am reminded of that helplessness
as I stand static in their shadows;
crippled and bereft of all magic.

I don’t have the words.

Because I am somewhere south of zero. 
In a cold place of long night, 
that consumes all of me 
just to make it to that far off sunrise.

To that first break of quite luminous warmth
shot straight through this night’s dark chest, 
that dares me to hold fast the hope
that soon, very soon, 
I will have the words. 
I will again have these devils named 
and make grand parades of their funerals.
I will capture the very essence of that resplendent dawn
that crowned my head in golden victory,
and there I shall leave it.

Etched in the icy ground with my frostbitten fingers,
a most glorious spell to light the way,  
for all the others who find themselves
somewhere south of zero.

– ian gallows

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INSOMNIA

I only see my father in my dreams.

When I sleep, I always go back to that house. There is always the house. Always the cold pale blue of his eyes.

In both dreams and my memories of youth, I can’t speak. He has stolen my voice and it will take me a lifetime to find it again. With all of me, I hate him for making me so weak. Soon, I will come to hate myself for my weakness.

Out of spite, out of instinct, I grow. Contorted, but uncompromising. I vow to myself I will never be weak again. I lie to myself until it becomes the truth. I sell my soul for strength, for my spirit only sees salvation in the arms of vengeance and I pay the cost with my body gladly. Harsh hands have molded soft clay somehow into steel.

Years pass, I have kept my promise. In nightmares more vivid than any day I throw my father into the walls of that house until they both break. Too blinded by the redness of righteous rage to see; now I am him, and he is me. An acolyte, building a temple brick by brick with every vengeful dream to worship the very heat of hate I’d come to love. I will be a man before I tear it all down so my children never walk through its doors. Going gray as I kill the god I’d learn to pray to and finally take back my soul

I still see my father only in dreams. Now, he is mute. The ice in his cold eyes melt into a wrinkled face whose age makes me curse how much time we wasted. I ask him questions, so many questions that have broken my back through the years to carry alone; even with my newfound strength I still buckle under their collective weight. I implore my father, help me lift this burden. I am begging him and he still will not answer me. He has already given me everything he has, and there is nothing left.

In my heart, I buried my father long ago. Can someone, anyone, tell me, how do you mourn someone who is still alive? Whoever now wears his face, I do not know him. All that is known is: it never had to be like this–but it will always be like this. That lesson has been lashed across my back a thousand times over, and a thousand and one times I forgave the lion tamer that held the whip. The one who had the power to make me forget I am a king of beasts. But father, look, I have found my claws and remembered my teeth. Aren’t you proud of me? Let God never say I did not honor you for never taking the same arm raised against me. You may have stolen my pride, and in your eyes you were always in the right–but tell me now, who is left? Who mourns the man you were, everything I know in my heart you could have been, with me?

Within the cemetery in my chest I lay my wreath of grief at a grave that bears my surname. It blossoms with petals of pity, and, in spite of my greatest efforts, an undying note of longing in a song I’ll never stop singing. My heart was not meant to compose only laments. It never needed to be like this, but you will always be like this. Though my love could not change you, that is no fault of my love. I leave you where you always wanted to be left, alone.

The dreams sometimes still visit me, drifting in on quiet nights when my heart has no vacancy. There is always the house. Always the cold pale blue of my father’s eyes.


Most nights I just fight the sleep.

Ian M. Galloway ©

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It Comes at Night

I whispered,
“It’s the sweetest thing,
so I have been told.
But my love has all the value of dirt
where only crooked things seem to grow.”

Then you turned to me and said,
“My dear, to those who dwell in deserts
fertile soil is worth more than gold.”

But how could I hear you
when I wasn’t ready to learn?
I was back amidst the arid lands
you dared to speak of;
as if that alabaster skin ever knew
what it was like to burn.

As I drowned
in the frozen waves of those dying dunes
yearning for a shore they will never touch,
your hands reached out to bring me back to you.
Your faltering fingers only certain
that they pointed towards the truth.

But I recoiled,
protecting soft spots
as if you were trying to sink your teeth into my throat.
I will never forget that look on your face.
How those eyes quaked so loudly
they damn near spoke,
“I will never again see you the same.”
And no map on Earth would ever lead me back
to the treasure of that sacred place;
when you were holding your heart out to me,
and with preciously parted lips lovingly said my name.

In my wild youth these eyes were all but blind.
Your gifts came in unfamiliar shapes
wrapped in colors I didn’t recognize.
You tried to teach me there was nothing left to fight,
but I was raised on savage sands
to take what is mine;
and what am I without my knives?
You saw how my skin was burned
from the desert I barely survived.
When you offered me the shelter of your sacred shade
my instincts could only scream at me to take flight.
I mistook your love for the all the dangers
that used to come for me in the night.

ian gallows ©