I’d rather my heart
Be repeatedly broken
Than allow my heart
To be turned into stone
I’d rather be alone
Than be with a liar
To be with a liar
Is to be truly alone
©2025 Kevin Trent Boswell
Tag: lies
Flypaper
You can’t write
Beautiful poems
About love, nature,
Or friendship
When you’re under
An endless barrage of
Of deceit, disaster, and
Disappointment
If you’re trying to
Sit quietly
Under a bridge
And, everyone up top
Is chucking rocks at your head,
Hurling insults at you, and
Some things that are even worse
It’s going to break your concentration
You’re going to get shit
All over the pages
Of your notebook
It just doesn’t work;
You can’t do it
You can’t do it,
Anymore than a painter
Can put the finishing touches
On a huge, oil-on-canvas piece,
While sitting beneath
A flock of seagulls
The dammed birds
Are just going to keep
Shitting
All over that artist’s head
Shitting
All over the painting,
All over the palette
It’s pretty goddamned difficult
To write sweet, starry-eyed,
Optimistic poetry
When gut-wrenching
Distress and betrayal
Keeps falling all over you,
Getting all stuck to the pages
Poetry is flypaper
Whether hits your life,
Whatever hits you
Right in your gut,
It stains the work
It’s probably more accurate
To say that
All the bullshit,
The lies and
The letdowns,
Really,
It stains
You
It’s all over your face,
The dust of it is
In your eyes
The hunger of all those
Empty calories
Is in your belly
The holes, from all the
Drudgery and false promises,
Have punctured your heart,
Your lungs, and your veins
The greasy, foul-smelling
Residue of
All of it
It’s all over your hands,
And so,
You can’t set pen to paper,
Or touch your keyboard
Not without
Getting that shit
All over your writing
©2023 Kevin Trent Boswell
Even In The Littlest Things
“Even In The Littlest Things”, from my book Dark Matter – Poems of Horror and Depravity
With Samhain/Halloween/All Hallow’s Eve and Day of the Dead fast approaching, I’m doing readings from my book of horror poetry, called Dark Matter. Most of them will have some type of music and/or sound effects that accompany them, to lend to the experience.
However, for most of these, I won’t be doing anything fancy with the visual aspects. There will be some that have interesting video or photos to look at but this will be more of an auditory experience than a visual one.
This particular piece is different from most of the book, as it’s not really horror. I included it because it’s quite dark, indeed. I wrote it because it was a personal demon that I had to exorcise, get the poison out of my system. I personally find myself both fascinated and revolted by this poem, even though I’m the one who penned it.
This is because it deals with a heavy, human problem… that of deception and who can we trust? We’ve all found out the hard way that someone we cared deeply for was deceiving us about something. If that person meant enough to you, then you most likely considered it not just inconvenient or frustrating but literally horrible.
Lies can be even more efficient weapons than guns or knives, given the right circumstances and for this reason, Even In The Littlest Things rightfully earns its place in the book and into this series of recordings.
Even In The Littlest Things
Even in the littlest things, you lie
Promises of civil courtesies so small,
To fulfill them, one barely need try
Even in the littlest things, you lie
So many pieces to your hate
Some are hidden, some stand tall
None create joy, only weight
So many pieces to your hate
Your darkness is beyond blinding
Wondering if there’s any light at all
Mislabeling what I was finding
Your darkness is beyond blinding
A forgery, nearly perfect, passing
Mask chipped, the disguise did fall
Recidivist, apology count surpassing
A forgery, nearly perfect, passing
But hey, at least you got to try it
Labeled thing, you renamed it all
No one ever insisted you buy it
But hey, at least you got to try it
And now, we all feel less than good
Endless, useless, talking, small
Nothing gained, nothing goes as it should,
And now, we all feel less than good
©2021 Kevin Trent Boswell
Dark Matter – Poems of Horror and Depravity
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