[x]

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

Bostoni.
we meet in a unremarkable
space, a breath of
caffeine-induced insomnia and winter
cyber-poetics

ii.
you cut away a chink of
argent armor, a piece of
normality, a slice of
Boston sky
and my heart decided I wasn't so smart anyway

iii.
I twirl around carousels with the closest
body, closest touch, a hybrid
of addiction and disgust while you
ride the bench behind me,
eyes glazed and paint
chipping

iv.
you watch through
dictionary lens, see me flying through blue
and grey, bones skimming ocean, poetry breathing
in place of collapsed lungs
I tie you into knots and hide so you can't be undone, can't
quite forgive, and I wa

hello
even from here
i can hear the crunch of your brittle
ribcages as your bones sunder.

they're all entranced by your lithe body,
dark beauty.

you haunt;
silhouette teetering on the blurred edges of our memories.
we see your phoenix eyes from behind ember hair.
perhaps you're a static soul,
with spirits resting on the trivial skyward curve of your lips,
but i know you make nightly trips down to hell.
has no one noticed:
you're not breathing?

you're afraid to lose your lows;
(life sprouts)
but there's a clinquant world out there.
believe:
the earth doesn't have to b

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

MagpieI am crazy jealous.
I am raining down inside a soft leather journal,
splashing gold-edged pages with weathered ideas from
farther places.

I am pretending to be porcelain,
smooth and fragile, eggshell strength.

Inside, my wings have yet to grow,
and I stare at all the beautiful things
and hope that my mirrors lie,
because nobody wants to be the bluebird left behind.

I knit patterns of glory and suspicion
around and around your wrists--
bound, you are mine, and
if I can't be that pretty thing with
feathered love, then
I'll be the ugly thing with stolen hearts
in a box.

admitif I can go the whole world
without melting down, turning inside out
over strawberry short-cake (you can't guess the craziness
of an anorexic walking down grocery aisles)

something stops me short of pulling
my wallet out, like metal bars swinging down
over my ribs. if I can't let me out,
nothing can get in

and then when I go home and crawl into bed, lips sealed
because if I lie one more time my stitches will rip,
I fall into love with a thousand boys
because I can't keep my heart to myself

and you still believe in me, truth buried beneath
shared poetry and bad lighting, whispered commands whenever
you decide you really need me

HeirloomI was born
beautiful as a potato.

Grandfather grew heirloom tomatoes
when he still had the energy
to love the arrival of earthworms in spring.
He sliced the juicy tomato insides open
and I ate them raw
with ground sea-salt.

Grandfather left one of his tomatoes in my hands,
one of his tomatoes like the saints he sought in church,
saints who stood over him when he became
naught but a candle
that Grandmother lit with the match bought
by the rattling of a quarter
at the bottom of a little tin box,
the rattling like the lid of a mason jar.

I hate the prickling fear-sound of my spinal chord
when I twist my neck too sharply—
t

Mirrorsartificial modesty, dusted up in powder blanche,
a skyward taste of infinity
anorexia breathing over tealight bones, turning them
into negative need

and all I ever wanted was a mirror to lie to me,
tell me I reflect a little je ne sais pas

so I steal your societal image
strip until all I'm wearing is pride and 5am workouts,
pretending I like the way fake sugar tastes
and the way needy eyes penetrate

taping stars beneath our eyelids to
replace dessert and coffee,
we slip heaven over our shoulders and march towards our
adoring fans (being pretty is killing us worth the effort)

you may have daddy issues, but I'm just vain.

SawdustI need purgatory, to send
scalpels and butterflies sliding down my spine.

I need a blanket so I can
crawl over my best friend's grave, keep us warm and
ward the ghosts away.

If you could taste mania, it'd be fresh strawberries
and cream, vanilla and
sawdust. The flavors of morning and newly-bought coffins,
the fresh-car scent included for only two-fifty.

I need to be sliced open, given new
veins and a new heart, because when I promised to eat
three square meals a day and never ever remember my dead best friend,
I forgot that I can't reset my eyes.

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

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.

postmarked:Dear God:
     Here is a picture of us conquering Rome.
     That's me in the white hat, I know you
     haven't seen me in about eight years
     since that time you got mad and didn't listen
     since that time that you showed me and my brothers
     your back

     I've aged and this smile you gave
     me and my knees (for bowing) are
     slinking toward the ground. Those

beautiful things never come easy.when i was young
i'd have this dream
where i'd wake up
a girl with normal traits
doing normal things
and being as normal
as could be.

i'd only wake again
and cry myself back to sleep,
a true poet that does not write
but keep all her words under
her tongue and her feelings in
lumps in the back of her throat,
choking on dusk, hands, the asinine voices
that tickle the back of her neck.

now sometimes, i choke on fire,
with nightmares of bony knuckles and lips.
there is a pink serpent tongue,
pink, cracked nails with mine,
and flowers for eyes,
and a book for a mouth.

and the pages are blank.
but with me, unlike they,
she

Hummingbirdsi took the whole whiskey bottle
and some dark-colored wine

then changed clothes &
put up the christmas lights
though it was almost spring.

i switched off the other lights
and looked at the color
between one room and the next
in those christmas lights.

i put some food in the microwave
as if nothing were happening.

i waited the way a piano waits
for its own hammers to fall.

i emptied that bottle,
i thought.

then, in the midst of a few thousand hummingbirds
i walked through the doorway
onto the linoleum.

something should happen now,
something final,
because it's this deep into the night,

when things are at their m

wokei woke
and ate fruit.

went down to the river,
watched things brighten.

spent the day.

woke
and woke and
woke.

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Precisedrop off the face of my planet.

I have no words,
no details,
only a finite spectrum of
egoism. you do not
embody self,

and altruism is most
unattractive.

falter;
we cannot break the binds
growing, slowly and tenderly,
around our veins. this is
my bucket list,
a worried tabloid of
shame and sugar. you,
the broader range of free and
plastic, mark down
in felted pen the encyclopedia
entry of Beautiful. I don't like
to think about the rules you created for
such a thing.

They do not define me.

LaundryI fold my shadows,
tucked in with neat seams and
presses. I lay them
down as I go on, shoelaces
dragging behind,
because

somebody else might need a dream.

I like to think I'm the
Fairy Godmother
of those less fortunate.

Skyscrapers and GodI guess I wouldn't mind
if you slipped past,
brushed fingertip to rib,
skimmed my lips with a parting shadow.

I would think, for once,
you had chosen God over me,
and I could imagine you were
Howard Roark or some such love,
and I'd be okay.

It would only hurt
down to a certain point.

Only

that you exist, somewhere,
as my savior or my taxi driver,
it doesn't matter.
That is my freedom,
my redemption in your eyes.

You told me to stop being afraid.

Linoleumwe are pondering
silence,
needle/thimble/tremble. i stitch
us a home in awkward conversations.

this is the great city,
dim lights to give us
sidewalk halos. we are inconvenience
stores, bubble gum kleptos,
and that's how we know
none of this is a dream.
it burns too real, leaves fingerprints
on our sight. this is dusty
and stale.

this is life,
magnified.

IsI have found that I am
anything but helpful in the most awful
of
situations.

I do not run, but rather stand
still, letting my shadows whisper
condolences I fail to give. My
god does not believe in prayer, and I can send
a wish to the cosmos, but a still frame
of grief is easier to paint.

I don't believe in meanings
and paths, and I haven't cried
since I realized religion is
not a drug. I am
stoic.
Bearing and
burying
these tragedies in my
rigid back. I am straight lines at funerals I
will never attend. I am
stony-eyed over lost lovers
that never meant a damn thing.
I am still,
because motion means

giving up.

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shoelaces

by *Shairese, Jan 15, 2012, 11:53:16 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Today, 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.

shoelacesby *Shairese

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

~musicXofaXdeadXopera Jan 17, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Ahhh. It does, it makes so much sense with the last line.

*Shairese Jan 17, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

(:

Thanks.

~musicXofaXdeadXopera Jan 19, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

You're very welcome!

`FuzzyHoser Jan 17, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Ah...I love the idea of this.
It just feels right.

*Shairese Jan 17, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

yay!

*toxic-nebulae Jan 15, 2012 Student Writer

the last line brings it all together perfectly

*Shairese Jan 15, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

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