For Tal, Quentin, Kay, and Remy.
Melmont as the master of limb slip and shod face.
Melmont as gravel vision and road track revisionism.
Melmont as masculine and minuscule, verdant and vertebra yawn.
Melmont as echo and cordial. As lazer and lantern. Liquid the heart races through the dead and their traces.
Melmont as gift and the gifting as shackle glance and ruination of romance. We reflected and we were stucked.
Melmont as stacked grave and stapled visuals and casual rupture and dirt, dead, rotting.
Melmont as masquerade of the loneliest track. Green sheaths and reverends and plantation dream song rising with sky white (opal) acceleration twin talk.
Melmont as pillar of obsidian and salt to wound analogue. Cruelty as mistress and misplacing the corners. Smudge of light. Liquor leak.
Melmont as bastion. As pigeon song and secret hawk snarl. Beg out the beaks before bucking beneath the wait of the banh mi melancholia.
Melmont as carbon. Melmont as vapid. Melmont as rapid. Childhood. Lush. Fever. Muscle ache and appendage squeak. Squeal as rocks cackle.
Melmont as bolder boozed and cozy. We’ve gotten through this with soak and shine, tussle and thrash. Music to the minions of ravine gods and bellowing bowels.
Melmont as yonder and faun paunch. Before the Melmont rakes cloud and traces of exit purr through trail track. Humming and buzzing of insect sanctuaries exposed.
Melmont crude and crying before we pick up our legs to push through the nudge fields and thick spots.
Melmont as dead alive. Melmont as spirit nouns and thorough investigations.
Melmont as caricature and creature spawning. Melmont as detailed structure of texture beneath palm of skin.
Melmont as Black Slug Walk. Melmont as darkness time forgot. Melmont as pacing and the residue of the sticky ones.
Melmont as divisions and dissections. No rest in Melmont. No peace in Melmont. Ice gray of silt wash to cleanse us in Melmont.
Melmont as furrowed. Melmont and nature. Natural. Naturale. Naturalis. Naturalist.
Verisimilitude before the scotch broom. Yellow flogging of Melmont. Clusters and caverns of light of Melmont.
We ached before Melmont. We strove and stored for Melmont. Snapping of twigs and breaking bending of lore before a cool chill (a warm craving).
Melmont display and displacement. Melmont up close and personal. Melmont and position positive and pendulum swinging. Swagger of color.
Melmont as pit and death vision. The pest of the reality of the confrontation. Depletion of knowledge. Structure of minutiae.
Melmont as triangles. Thirds. Encompass. Morass. The manner by which we speak. The manner by which we hide. Lingual transition. Backflip of posture.
Melmont and truisms. Speaking of truth there were falsities. False expectations. Wandering paths. Wondering snarls in the silence.
Melmont I hold you like a charm. Melmont I hold you like a recognition. Awareness. Blinders discarded. I turn stone over. Melmont, I expose rut and root.
Melmont and gentle push. Melmont and cruelty of pull. The pain of the vibration. Thrust of gravity. Bounce of step. Slide of skin.
Melmont and the vision of friction. Thickness is undaunting. Melmont and the ghosts that weigh. More before more. Dirt before brown. Deep before sign.
Melmont you collapsed me.
Melmont your gradient is upheaval.
Melmont you are soft caress and bitter bark.
Melmont I know not which I see, speak, or experience when within you.
Melmont as hat never worn, as bed never slept upon.
Melmont the ugly. Melmont the control. Melmont the speaker covering blood behind surface.
The Melmont we sought and the Melmont we were drowned with, by.
Melmont you are mystery. Melmont you are courtesy. Melmont you are rapture.
Melmont you let us. You let us as you let them. The gashes wind deeply. The marks are like pulled teeth and scarred wrists.
Melmont your aliens are present and embedded within the fronds of your garments.
Melmont what lies beyond is what has been laid beyond by lightning guzzle and the grapple of time.
Melmont you sit exposed on your haunches.
Melmont sinks before us and does not respond.
Melmont sinks before us and does not need to respond.
The noise of Melmont’s edges is chromatic and cool. Melmont subdues and we do not fight.
Melmont before, during, and after the Cut. Creation as process of becoming mesmerized. Melmont as mesmerizing.
Melmont are these the walls you gave us to gaze upon?
Melmont your ruddy red choke-hold is the trance you’ve concocted quivering.
Melmont your faces crumble more with each breath and stone chuckle suits you merrily.
Melmont you are a prison of triumph and trickle of patterns. Looking upon you the patterns and the presence. The pools of radiance.
Melmont you are a personal pronunciation loving the crude capture of hands made smooth by difference, distance.
Melmont a word with you: a word that defines the images just beyond that which we have labeled “beyond.” And further still, exponentially.
Melmont the tourniquet of stone seethes and stupors. There are blockades of mineral vein and momentary masking.
Melmont the slip of the casket of bandages rocks through the wet. Collapse and spurn. Motion and tranquility.
Melmont this truce is tiring. May we be buried beneath your passages? May we chug along murdered by your ethos?
Melmont as vagary. As vague visages. As the turmoil of leaf prick and the brush of the poisonous greenery.
Melmont as waves upon waves of airborne stillness, and the shudder of wings upon the tips of knowing.
Melmont as spliced shade and trickle of timbre. The rest of us are done for. We have been sent along for the calmest desecration is before us.
Melmont as wraith song and a still collapse between breaths, mud flogging soles and branches clawing us open.
Greg Bem lives in Seattle and enjoys visiting Washington Ghost Towns. He has visited Lester, Monte Cristo, and Melmont so far. The poetry in this post was directly inspired by the music of Mono and Holly Herndon. Visit gregbem.com for more of Greg’s travel images.