[x]

RegenesisI am wavering

between stick-thin
and fuck-it 125.

I am on the border
of a future in statistics,
facing north of a lifetime
in psychosis, and

I tell you, I'm getting better.

My days
are no longer measured in fake sugar
packets, eyes brimming with
caffeine and spite.

No, now I am
laundry baskets and
accordion files, my
ribs lined up neatly in place. you cannot
call me a skeleton now.

I am wavering

between two blurred out lines,
and I think

this is called love.

Achromatic Dreamstoday, god gave me present.

-
i.

stilted windows, white bones
decaying lungs and my mind races
at the rate of a lone moth's jaded wings

we taste better alone

ii.

clemency is earned
by the damned, by the damned
arbitrary sacrifices

we belong to nobody

iii.

and she bowed with artless grace
kissed the sky, shed stardust tears
choked on angelic moonshine

we draw our own constellations
-

today, i gave god presence.

losswhen i was born
i lost my subtlety.

my many shadows around a single fire
shrug.

with them go the metaphors,
the ambition of water,
the horse and dog
sounds.

i get warm
& find myself

saying things
i mean

like

"i just
don't know."

Body DysmorphicI am no artist,
floating
on ether and grey depressions.

I am broken nails, unfinished diaries,
disproportionate in my quest to be prettier than you.
I am writing nonsense on paper planes,
throwing them and hoping
they find somebody with better bone structure than me.

I am giving up
on fighting mirrors.

(That's all my words.)

orange peel sidethe music stops.
the motions of flowers
disappear.
on the windowsill a green bottle
holds one thin stem.

the sun comes in through the window
& whatever it is that lies
just behind everything
trembles, shimmers,
listens.

on one side of the room
lies
the silence of a stem taking water
though it has already died.

on the other side
lies
silence that is like
peel torn from an orange.

no sound--
the yellow light pours
in--

i sit on the orange peel
side
& it
welcomes me

i think.

shoelacesToday, I am the long-awaited
footsteps on weary stone. I am the hushhush of
sneakers trudging through the dirt. I am the return
of childhood upon grey slabs of cement.

I am done with being hungry.

Atlas ShruggedAtlas shrugged
and you caught the Earth.
In the pause between breaths,
labored and pained,
you tried explaining
concepts of strength
while your bones creaked
and betrayed your bravado.

I will shoulder the world,
with you,
if you'd let me.

I've borne smaller globes
and understand the ache;
it's not to be carried alone.

And if I carry this with you,
perhaps we'd fall in step,
and roll this planet from your back
into orbit.

Sexual SheepSexual sheep herding themselves
Into personal gates of pleasure.
Slaves to the euphoric
Bites from rabid
Sheepdogs.

Spreading the madness into their
Translucent brains. A lovely
Game they got use to
Playing. Loser takes
It all.

A sick demented show set up for
Deformed lust. What a sick
Fuck. Creating warped
Pictures of love
For us to gaze
With sheltered eyes.

Such translucent brains.

strawberryi need to get to that point where the paint is crawling in flecks up my arms and my hands are coated,
where tree branches scratching fade to antiseptic hum,
where you are nothing but a face in the background.

i need a smock i don't care about,
a trowel,
a clump of cold dirt,
a seed

christ,
i need a seed.

RiskyI'm being a good girl, siphoning
off my rotten limbs and
sanding down my edges.

I am taking a hiatus from
being the stolen lover
in millionaire backseats;
folding myself into neat little squares so
my harsh colors can't offend.

I am ambiguous--
arbitrary--
running in rivulets down scraps of paper, napkins,
ridged cardboard coffee-holders. I am turning inside out
so that by tomorrow, I will be clean and pink,
a newborn waiting for the right words.

I am taking bites of normalcy,
forcing my newly-found size zero to
transform into some godly representation of
what's right and real and safe.

I am walking, eating,
breathing in

ThousandOur silence lasts for miles,
tangled around my ankles and throat and
stretching down the highway to end at your
computer screen. I like the way it tastes,
like bitter chamomile and rust.

We crawl
from morning to dusk and drink too
much coffee and watch the Bruins pound
the Jets and forget that once upon a time,
we said we'd get married.
Sometimes our fingertips remember the tapping of keys
on late nights, our poetry and faith streaming between
our eyes in rivers of need, and we
cave inside. Just a little, though.

Mostly we sleep beneath the fluorescent lights
of God and sex and grocery shopping,
and we pretend we don't see
t

The Last Lie of SummerQuiet days, the overcast sky keeps
to itself, ignoring the living for weeks
at a time.

From half a state away-

you could hear trains roll through
towns like mine.

There is peace
and it can't be trusted

Undeserved suspicion
given to the first
fallen leaves.

This was the calm before the calm.
The man that is seen, but
nobody knows.

Promise yourself:
"Tomorrow I will say hello to him."

But we are all too busy dressing healed wounds.

Poem for a MotherWhen I was four
I'd follow you into the bathroom
on sticky feet,

press my little bird hands
into the back pockets of your jeans
while you were washing dishes
at the sink,

babbling on: Mommy, Mommy,
I love you.

Then there was the youth
who played Simon Says
to your aerobic routine.

I took jumps to your steps,
laughing as I tripped,
I wanted to go
where you went

I practiced to be
who you were.

The world split sideways
and I stumbled out
a teen traumatized
by the gory birth.

I'd've sworn you did it to me:
the red plague of my face,
the heartache,
the inexplicable serrating rage,

I beat at you as an extension
of self.

ChicagoA soul would need more stagnation to be one for the save

for I didn't know my words could hold a body over a city,
and I didn't know this disgusting and lovely city drew blood from strong veins

unstable city emerging from the underworld pink and primitive
in short gasps of promise and disappointment, I can promise you

that this was the saddest I've ever been:
your friends and me throwing magnolia petals into Lake Michigan not knowing
being afflicted with acute missing in New York still not knowing
having the most permeable love confluence not knowing

.

hanging a map with your city in the middle and stabbing it until the marker runs

BoundedUnfold the face to find the crushed
flower: The body lends the body, renders time
as time
to hold
his skin in place, the rind
that binds the nutrients. Unrolled
across the vacant why,
the sky begins to droop and fade: The skin: His face,
a circumstance of being near,
performs the grind of not here.

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crumbsquickly, now--
dash inside and squander away
your low-beam aspirations
(oh sickly beating vessel, rotten
ventricles aside)

shall I just write you off,
then?
not quite subtle hammering in my chest, bristled edges, sharp
rusted corners; split-tongued fiend
of pardous romance, I no longer heed your
warnings.

whatever I want
I am determined will be
mine.

4pmtired from counting all my stolen stars, tremble love, hard
to be branded skinny when your scale keeps jumpin' murder

thunder like sweet hot tea, raining down inside my ribs
beating like hard bass, vibrations through my sneakers,
tastes like Wednesday night full of pretend, treadmills until
I taste size zero, icing on top (buttercream)

pink lotion that smells like raspberry waste, soak into my skin
so I feel like pretty, enough to stand out in
the sugary sun and gleam like vintage fog, scarlet-letter phantom,
prozac tainted girl, baked with allspice and cloves
ginger-bread ideas

if we all shared my concept of beauty,
the streets w

French Vanillathe first of november sleeps inside our veins.

vultures and mothers
alike
know that the loneliest bones go best with
morning coffee.
wipe the crumbs from your lips; i hope i taste bitter.

Seraglioethereal, satin, vague as a soft
pulse
of settling dust,

brass-ringed phantom
of
Arabian morning-afters

touch, brackish, slipping
into
forbidden biological needs,

niche-stealing temptress
tasting
what was ours.

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[x]

Try to Remember

by ~Shairese, May 31, 2012, 10:30:59 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

and wouldn't it be lovely,
if we could breathe in the ocean,
harboring rolling foam in our aching souls, soothing
aspirin to our cracks and bones

I'm sure there's plenty of room in
your hollowed out heart for fish and
sand, salty lovers, a captain's dream
in a place I found no solace

you are loveless, prettier than
pearl and not worth as much. singing skeletons
to sleep every night must have made you
falter, because there is no such thing as giving up,
giving in,
only bowing down to let the whale
swallow you whole

and wouldn't it be lovely,
if we could remember, I don't know,
I don't know, I want to remember.

we used to be in love.

Try to Rememberby ~Shairese

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

*pazlowq Jun 13, 2012 Traditional Artist

I wanted to write on this one for while; personal circumstances hindered that though as well as trying to construct the narrative and deciphering what some imagery meant. I read it again today and was still at that impasse, this is a hard bit of writing to figure out.

Here's what I could figure, the whole thing is about 2 former lovers. The narrator is dictating a analysis on what their relationship was, could've been and where they are now being apart. The narrator is looking on her former lover with pity, his life now a far cry from where he was when they were together. Singing skeletons to sleep, maybe hints at his sexual activity now and that curious phrase in the third stanza no "giving up, no giving in" seems to be referring to romance [in that there is no way to really take oneself out of the romantic game, so its impossible to quit, you just move from different form to form of romance]. The most puzzling piece of imagery is in the first stanza, the idea of breathing in the ocean obviously refers to the future they could've had, but what that is I can only take a stab at.

Here's what I can figure, this guy was a total loser before he met her. He was worthless, and probably felt that way about himself too but she saw in him that with the empowerment that the love of a woman can provide he could have a great capacity to love. They got together but their relationship splintered, possibly because he loved her too much. You get the feeling that singing skeletons to sleep, and the whale he's bowed down to means he's turned to things like prostitution to satisfy his desires. But unlike his time with her its empty. He's looking for a companion, someone who he can cling to and will cling to him. She may be looking towards parenthood that he could be the guy she can have a family with [that's my guess on what breathing in the ocean is]; but he sees that as something he doesn't want. He just wants her, all the time with no distractions and added responsibilities, the kind that occur when you have kids and family.

So they break up, she moves on, but he is perhaps worse off. Probably struggling to find a woman who doesn't want kids and can appreciate his clingy nature he turns to hookers and the like. She can't help but pity and remember that he was capable of love, and that she loved him too. I think maybe she's a bit sorry that he can't find a person to share his life with in the way he wants to.

Good stuff as usual.

~Shairese Jun 14, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I love how you dissect these things. You read so much detail into them...it's quite refreshing. I'd rather have a hundred comments like these than any amount of favorites.

I'll admit, this is a pretty confusing one. I don't even think I truly understand what I meant. You're right though, it is about two former lovers, and where they are now. They could have been so much more, but he didn't know how to handle love properly. In a way, he broke it. He "gave up", but as it mentions, there is no such thing as giving up, not when it comes to love. It's not something you can intentionally forget about. It's the cowards way out, the way he took, and the line "...in a place I found no solace" shows that. There's potential for love, for greatness, for that happiness that should be above everything else...but that was all rejected. For no damn good reason either.

*pazlowq Jun 23, 2012 Traditional Artist

Well reading these and writing on them is a nice thing to do in between doing storyboards and looking for instructions on how to clean stuffed animals without sending them to the dry cleaners.

The perplexing thing was why they broke up. Ultimately it feels like the poem is just saying that they both wanted different things. So to say he took the easy way out, and he didn't handle love properly, that can be hard to see without the exact reason why he walked away. It seems like she thought they could handle greater responsibilities together so maybe she's thinking family etc., but he was maybe more carefree and wanted them to have a hedonistic type thing where they had few responsibilities and lived to make each other happy. But those are really sketches and not exact pictures...

~Shairese Jun 23, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

They broke it off because he was tired of the obstacles in their path. He hadn't the will to go on. He let go, instead of fighting for it. Just too tired, too beaten to continue.

*pazlowq Jun 28, 2012 Traditional Artist

we all reach that point with certain things don't we? not just relationships but work, career, projects... where it feels like your running against the current and not getting any ground and you wonder if its worth it. it comes down to hoe bad you want something, that you'll fight even when it seems insurmountable.

~Shairese Jun 29, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Very true.

`FuzzyHoser Jun 1, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Oohhh...you are back, Ms. Poet!
This is gorgeous, woman.

~Shairese Jun 1, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you!!

`FuzzyHoser Jun 1, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Yes'm.

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