[x]

starspunobserving the romanticism
of hooded cemetery kids,
smoking cigarettes pretending
they are not dead.

you were always so sure
about my uncertainty,
you watched
all my pick up lines
drop things.

we built the heat
of the evening from the solidity
of starlight,

pretended
that two teens at the park
at midnight
is the stuff of teen novels
(cliches dim on
our leaf-gold horizon)

your eyes darted
from the gray expanse
of the churchyard & wandered
in thoughtful
paths.

i wanted to ask you
if i could follow. shove
the words aside &
remember that i came here alone.

i remember our innocence
in the static b e t w e e n
stars

the eyepatch and the handcuffs     his hands have promised
     to wipe off every fingerprint
     your last lover left on you

     he has sworn he will
     wear gloves, when he needs to,
     and pay attention to the instructions on the boxes

     "this side up"
     and "fragile"

     and you have sworn
     you will try to let him

     i hear your bodies whispering these things to each ot

crystallophonethere is a punchcard sin
like a queen of spades smoldering in an alley.

Engine,
you hear how the gears churn,
singing faster than we did before
back when black magic dropped like a
pair of socks from the sky with supplies
taped to a note that said
(oh, look at you now)
'U.S.A.,
freedom.'

such a beautiful brain:
what
what girl
runs on gasoline?

have a gallon
or we can call it a balloon,
and a new pair of glasses
for your tapered eyes
(you peel the bark back on the logs,
darling,
but you're not sure what you see),
and life says,
either nail jello to a tree,
successfully,

or keep your
icicles hanging from the eaves,
ca

for onceCold

blackempty

like the cavern where crimson vellum once resided

Drenched in reticence,
your empty blue eyes do nothing
but freeze the blood in these veins

surrounded by phantoms,
i lie in the dark next to your fading silhouette
between sheets that hold so many memories,
they are empty,

like the chestnut eyes that bore into yours

And as the rain falls harder
as it falls faster

washing down the streets
through deep alleys,
down endless roads,

for

once

just

once

i pray it takes me with

cliffcliff
e.bojnowski

on velvet roads,
I impale a belated dawn
with my incisors and
shiver with perfect leaves-

I have no qualms
with the dark hills
that slope
and stagger into
a bed of scorched fly husks:

where
the thrum of the ground
melds
with the rapids in
my clairvoyant ears.

The Cat on the PorchYou asked me why I do not believe in ghosts,
celestial at four in the morning.
It becomes the common hour,
not a biting static shock in the eye veins like I anticipated
but dangerously vogue and precious
like a real diamond ring or sapphires on your breast.
No wood pecking or oil teasing or misshapen duck bills bleating
just clay, but lighter, lightest
and bright
seductive and crestfallen.

They bled Peter and Pangloss over a river.
I was wearing white for the funeral
humming 'home', the matronly letters
soothe me
clotheshorses and moonlight,
Mayan jewellery in my cabinet
the mother tongue kissing my molars better

But then there

carouselwe laughed like children high on m&ms,
danced like we were carousel horses,
and jump-roped our way through obstacle courses.

I saved our footsteps in mason jars,
in case we ever needed to follow yellow brick roads
to get home.

home was an illusion:
honesty without truth,
apologies without forgiveness,
I kept home sandwiched between
"never" and "have to."

caroline, they'd say. caroline,
stop being such a dreamer. stop taking
us for granted.

I packed every apology possible
into my breath, left runaway plans lingering
in the silence between family.

when I found you dancing in the street,
I listened for merry-go-round music.

I

mutethings have been easier
without words &
we pretend neither of us care;

we stutter
splutter
laughing and choking
on puns &

when you bend me over nouns
i scream

louder
growl
more fluent.

the words are there waiting to be spoken

me . you . love

my dear, we've been mute
for so long

speak to me.

Liquid Cityhere, at the bottom - lovers.
there are lovers disassembling
themselveslost in and to the
desperate motion in
of - waves.

- did you think the continents
moved themselves? see them slip,

in an open sleep. less go, come.
come and, and - again. trembling

here, at the bottom - their eyes
are lightless. hollow bodies left
restless,

the sea does not sleep.

Little EggsOne green morning, our fat little faces
Look out the kitchen window and
Find a robin and her nest on our windowsill.

She carries baubles and trinkets—candy
Wrappers and foil—before her vivacious
Red breast and weaves them tenderly into her nest.

My mother, laughing, says
She’s dizzy with anticipation, painting ponies
And clouds on nursery walls.

Soon enough little blue eggs fill
The happy twigs and their gaudy trappings
And the robin settles—snug, waiting.

We, too, wait for spring miracles on the
Windowsill. Weeks pass—she sits faithful—but
Eggs remain eggs.

Mother gets an odd pallor and avoids the

tree, fiddler crabIt took days to hollow out the soft parts
of the trunk, dig out the tree-flesh and sap,
polish the raw wood so that when he sat,
there would be no splinters. He carved his name
into the side, like a blessing, a declaration
of good fortune, and stowed his forest inside.

on watching the night close its eyes on you1. I will not tell you
you are pretty.

How can the halls and angles of such honest humanity
be so pinched between sounds as elementary as these?

2. You need not be two stringent boughs of syllables
nor weave your viney bones abreast these five petty letters,
whirling in the fire of the river
Styx.
Do not attempt to peel yourself layer for layer,
leaving all the disgust behind.
Do not tally your body six &

plumbumshe has a heart of gold
and she, a heart of lead
and she, a heart of uranium.

and they go walking sometimes, the three of them.

gold is confident in her worth,
untarnishable
bought and sold and bought and sold
the virgin whore

and lead behind,
heart heavy in her chest
guilt from bullets
and pride from pipes
and anxiety from irreparable brain damage

and somewhere off to the side treads uranium,
tumors growing,
white skin glowing,
thin frame for a dense core.

the tease of Earl Greywhen leaves speak they rustle
but shan't talk of lost cattle

out of bags like cats lying
purring perhaps stirring

gainsaying the language
of pictures - much fewer
than one thousand words
whispered soft - softer

ours to read into
by catching a hint of
some spiciness brewed
a sugaring of love -

or upcoming danger
a giving or taking
from whom in this strange land
once was a stranger

by this chance assessed
through one's cup or glass
darkly lit yet it be
from wet leavings of tea

hopefully let it be
the sugaring of love -

llp - dA - jan2013
DD - feb1/2013

recappedbath robes and
mini bar vodka;
recapped full.
holds some pride in denial
til second guessings
bring it back.
knock it back.
hold the burn like a kiss.
let it tingle on the lips.

refill with water;
reset the cap.
return it.

no one will notice
one more

just
one
more.

just
one
more.

just
one
more.

just
one
more.

just
one
more.

just
one
more.

just
one
more.

just
one-

Browse More Like This

more ▶

More from *Shairese

Flintyou said

if I'm gonna let it hurt me,
don't ask.

but there is a difference between
need and crave, and my narrow ribs
are just over the line

contrary to apparent facts,
words are not
my strongest asset; they hinder my
ability to smolder in, whaddya call it,
a healthy way.

so I broke down and a question fell out
because I want that sort of faith,
but I got tangled in your trust
and the guilt of dissection
made me
turn around.
I am not a doctor,
and this is something better left

alone.

Skelethinlittle
whiskey and tea bones

that come in with the salty tide,
leave
like the sand and it's lover,
the rolling foam
that tastes like
watered-down soda

the invisible tablets
of almost-aspirin,
calories
they cover you with seaweed and
schools of fish that swim in between your
toes

until the lights flip on
and you are
exactly
90.2 pounds

barely drinking in
stale bathroom air.

Sun I want to walk across hot stones next to burning
chlorine ripples and feel like a goddess
or at least a tiny salamander (invincible)

3 Drinksi whisper crayon names into his pillows
give me bright, bright dreams to
shake me awake
and tell me I am
still alive

The Name Ishis simple eyes
shining out nicotine and poetry
make me want to know a god

View Gallery

Featured in Groups:

#HumanConditions

#Word-Smiths

#CRLiterature
CR hub for Literature Community!

#Word-Of-Art
Beauty is in the words...

#All-Art-Wanted
Every ART accepted

#DA-Poetics

#OurCrookedMinds

Details

Submitted: January 21
File Size: 1.8 KB

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 51
Favourites: 149 [who?]
Views: 4,455 (1 today)
Downloads: 127 (0 today)

License

Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

[x]

Mature Content Filter is On
(Contains: strong language)

Comma Splices

by *Shairese, Jan 21, 2013, 11:06:34 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

In the spaces between
your lashes I count your syllables,
tired and golden, like the scotch-and-peppermint
grandfather
sitting
alone in the kitchen who whispers, "I'm not as old
as I used to be."

I'd like to plant cherry trees in
the plains of your irises, give you
some character for all your flaws. Kiss
ruby grapefruit plot lines along your
cheeks, everything I do...
You tell me my binding's outdated. Screaming in
140 characters or less, typing
Helvetica tattoos across the bridge of your
perfect nose--God gave us either pretty or
ruined, but you chose both. Drain a glass
of Drano over that.

You know, I'm not a typeface slut, blowing
alliteration out of Boston poets
for a chance at a Newberry, but
honey I heard you like your girls
rough and rhyming, and my days
are spent turning syllables inside out.
Do I qualify to be better than you yet?

You write your dreams in pink frosting, smearing
your letter campaigns across
my dreaming eyes. I bow to your
syntax errors, fuck the arches of your
comma splices. I'm a leech for slam poets
that live in water damaged studio flats,
a moth that decides your ironic Appletini
is a good place to drown myself. Only after you
strip my wingdust.

You, who writes poetry that
makes any screaming anorexic cringe. You, who makes
your grandmother tighten her lips, spring-loaded
with 68 years of advice. You, who
creeps out early in the morning after a night
of screwing my stanzas dry. You
have not earned the right to call yourself
a broken poet.

But you all do anyway.

Comma Splicesby *Shairese

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Mature Content

This is a more bold piece. Not my usual style. I like it.

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-02-18

Comma Splices by ~Shairese ( Suggested by `vespera and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

love 7 7

~~joy 0 0~~

wow 1 1

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~Meggie272 Mar 11, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I love this so much.

=tonepainter Feb 24, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Fantastic. Congrats on the well-deserved DD.

*Darvia123 Feb 18, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

THIS IS EPIC...

~MizJayTee Feb 18, 2013 Student General Artist

Something about this. <3

Although most of the time, the majority of DD selections makes me cringe, I am continuously finding myself grateful for them because otherwise I would never see the brilliant pieces like this.