ALEXANDER FANNING - POEMS

Alexander Fanning is a poet and chef who lives in shepherdstown West Virginia. This is his first published work.

Spring Melt  ​

Did you think your kiss could bring 
Back beauty to the Black-Eyed Susan? 
That the soft caress of your ever-hungry lips 
Could make the bruised apple innocent again? 
 
The weight of your smile shall not shatter  
My will to remember. 
I will not look to your soft eyes  
And hope that they have changed for good 
 
I know the storm will rage again 
In the quiet of our home where only I can hear 
You will tear at my sails and sink me down 
Down to where there is no thought but you 
 
I will take myself from the well where you wait 
For I know I will surely fall in, should I come close  
I will find one whose eyes do not leave bruises on my skin  
But touch me sweetly and melt my layer of ice  
If, such a one exists.

​​Wet cell. 

I wish I would’ve trapped you in a poem 
While I still felt the same 
 
When the spent candle of that love  
Did burn bright flame 
 
As inhuman as the waves on the loam 
now free, lost I roam  
 
But still I smell your recent rain 
Closeness and Absence, left with disquieting tame 
 
Forever laying in our quiet home ​

Drinking

I drink to sleep like the dead 
So the phantoms wouldn’t come 
I drink to calm the  
clamoring voices inside 
 
I drink and I take them home 
Not for love or lust, 
but so when they come 
I can face them
 
I drink so I can stop being myself 
It must have been me 
who invited them in, who showed them 
Such a sweet vessel
 
I drink so I can feel dead 
Each night I kill myself 
Socially acceptable suicide  
Yet, still they wait
 
And I have to choose. 
 Hell with them, or  
Hell with me.

​

Blood ​

Am I destined to be 
What is in my blood? 
 
I see your actions  
Rising in my boiling blood  
Breaking the surface and  
Scorching those close to me 
 
Still, these hands  
Don’t seem to be mine 
They pine for pain 
So i'll turn them to myself 
 
If im destined for blood 
I'll make sure I’m drained.

​

It's nice to have options . ​

Standing as my toes dangle  
Of the sidewalk onto the street 
I like keeping my options open
Each passing car an opportunity 
I wouldn’t do that to the driver though 
Still it’s a fun dream 
Like walking across a bridge 
Fantasizing the fall. 
Dreaming the death.  
But I'll keep my options open 
I’ll let cigarettes and alcohol 
Creep in as they are wont to do.  
The fall will happen, Is happening? 
Is bound to happen, Has to happen.


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