Rhett Talley: ‘The Oathmaker’ and ‘The Voice’

The Oathmaker

I cannot slither into your skin,
Lean into the warm bombastic plastic
Mould that holds the emptiness together.
Nor will empathy in floods avail.
You are yesterday’s rainbow:
The disdain of a set sun.
Behold the oathmaker who carries
His verity in his boots.
For there is no love in my sex:
It is the creature mining itself of itself for itself.
It is the outrage of the animal:
All tooth and claw
As I draw you nearer.

Rhett Talley

The Voice

The voice you must listen to
Is the voice you abhor
The one that speaks direct like a thorn
In a heel or worse, a voice in a dimming din.
In Chaos and Order we teeter like children
Anxious for the apex
And repurposed at the base
If we have the bearing.
But we don’t.
And in time that hurling upward thrust we make
With lesser and lesser intent.

Rhett Talley