[x]

the price of escape-

mental mud and dog days:

yesterday mister
wanted three cents
to buy a rose. what color she asked him and he

said pink like a newborn rat small
enough to flush between your palms
like moon through mulberry glass.

-

he is the undulations of a city breathing boat rides.
how can she turn away when

a boy makes her think of building as the
birds do— herself a marvel of nesting to be
undone. travel is a painful expansion

and pink roses are

the hard of a new city against cold cheeks.

-

a flower is always more than a flower it
is a passage or street.

her mother is afraid of the condensation of
his condescension; afraid he'

hypochrondriacknocked over the dried hydrangeas today

your muscles were dimpling like sunspots
her pain was private my paranoia was cellophane

and i was wondering how atheists can
convert in the black oblong face of Crisis.

fear wrenched wrists with blood-bloom,
cellulite sloped into the pores of denial

before the rose-mole stippled doctor i said:

stake me from knowing.

the flying heartit came shrunk-wrapped
with an expiration date, and
a throat full of swallows:

woke up threw up flock,

whet beaks until moon
asking for an ocean

it was first due three weeks ago, when
we thought of feathered rooms

the birds inside out when they were
outside in

and the down that fell.

Cliff at Fecamp, 1881

Pluto is my sister.
We are what is not.

I know you can(not) hear her, but
she is creeping away
[at the speed of sound.]
Unnecessary, always.
She&I will find a space in space where there is space
for [ ].

My pallor is carcinogenic, and
her purples are slightly contagious, but
I suggest you keep your pupils constricted
Because:
Holding on to nothing is stupid,
but it's better than not holding onto anything.
at all,
after all.

For
Give
Us.
......overandoverandover......

She&I:
the perfect kind of
strangers
you won't even miss us,
unless you've met us.
In which ca

Sundreamsi.

stillborn,
she had to be taught to
breathe.

she hasn't forgotten (any
thing) since,
though she wishes

she would.

ii.

train track forearms,
sickly eyes of a
run-a-way.

fourty-watt smile
just enough to flood his
corner of

this room.

iii.

his naked
palms on her sapling
b o n e s.

swollen
stomach:
she's

an-o-rex-ic.

Tired of Wakingshe scrawled heaviness
onto slices of the moon
so she could feel light.

that one-way journey
made all of her bones dry up;
she stopped using them.

she became a leech,
feasting on prehistories
of those she still loves.

blood-letting used to
be the cure for everything.
now she is just a...

premeditated,
flashy, honeyed, ironic,
pretty way to die.

stars come to mindi am young and wish to be
younger, old and wish to be senile. i have
blond hair and wish it auburn. i have company
and wish to be alone.

there are things that gallop all over my
neurons and leave muddy footprints
in my thoughts. unholy things that should
be stricken, and i encourage them.
i shudder when i leave the shower
because other people have stepped on the mat.
my hair is usually dirty.

i throw pennies into the fountain
and think oh if i had no money,
if i had some. i wish for an envelope
to mail me somewhere in northwestern
greenland, lay on the ice and
stare into the brilliance of death.

vendemiaire-

mother's off-white
eyesockets like laundry hung out to
dry. the outside

sky: blunt want and
overdue.

-

loss is goldfish on hot cement
letting go is the first snow of the season

fall reminds me of the funeral and
dirt and
dirt.

she slapped you hard and shrill that
last godless evening but

right now there are acorns under her
flat gold shoes; the draw of her smile is
quick

not at all like fall and its
blown-glass halfness.

-

the funeral was a slow nubby
shuttering. white

and white,
and lace. she never
did like

that kind of thing.

-

letting go is when she
spins again on those flat gold
shoes. pale and young and

Roasted Sapphiresripening poems like sink-your-teeth-in peach flesh
so willing&ready she ignores the yellow lights
[dripping from the corners of his down-turned lips,]
like thirsty fangs.

she paints the seven seas onto her nails
to drown-out&cover-over the nectar-like
blood she chipped away from his
oh-so-frosty lips.

Lovers&Liars know best
when it comes to burning down buildings
because they're used to holding fires in their lungs,
and smoke in their crooked throats.

it takes one to know one,
so she pressed a smile through her teeth
and gave him exactly what he wanted.
[her s p i n e - l e s s - n e s s ]

metamorphic melting potshe told me tales in black and white,
and i swear i never saw so much colour
splayed throughout history.

so much baring beauty,
bold in its step, thumping and heaving itself
upon the flesh of our ancestors.

We are a product of what We decimate,
she told me, proving it
with a series of equations
and a hard stare.

you and i and We are no longer colour.

We have become a conglomerate
so dense
that the fragments
are now enclosed in the cell
of the matrix
and you and i and We
are really

just a rock.

drink up, baby At times, the only
Response to reality
Is insanity

all together, now--i.
Like hands outstretched, like jutted shoulder blades, like a dandelion swept away by the wind.
She is sure she, too, is gone.

ii.
You are beautiful, he whispers, as if it is supposed to be some sort of consolation that he is exhaling promises and empty compliments, things reminiscent of what left long ago.

iii.
The battered Converse by the door. She slips them on and leaves at sunrise, in the wake of his snoring that she is trying not to hear. She's not away for long, he's not even awake when she returns, and yet she gets the feeling this is the furthest she's ever been.

iv.
I'm not here right now, she says quietly against the

Elizai.

your mother swallowed acid
fireflies
extacy-

these locked your stubborn fetal jaw,
lit you up from behind lidless eyes.

[ ], stoke that fire,
spoon-feed those flames 'til they rise:
to warm and loosen your vocal chords,
to melt your heart.

ii.

Paul could not
cannot
read

ghost letters in
grey ink

iii.

shake the son but
shun the daughter.
what madness,

what madness is this?

iv.

something of a beautiful deceit,
she was.
not that she's not now, i just
wouldn't.

know.

strawberry lipsi tell him
that if you could find
an ocean large enough
Saturn would float

he calls me strange,
i prefer memorable

we stand and sway together
smoking strawberry cigars
letting the pale ghost ships
slip out of our mouths
and make their way, evanescent,
on the stammering breeze
dispersing among the leaves

i tell him
pay attention to the
inbetween of my words

he says he can't read my mind,
i think louder.

my dazzled, half-sleepy eyes
look up to the dynamo of stars
and i see Saturn soaking in the
upside down ocean of the universe
an unspoken imaginer's manifesto,
now i am sure that i was blind before we met

i

Those Winglessgolden daughter - shrew girl
collects bitty mouse heads
gnaws their teeny mouse ears
before they are quite dead

guilty daughter - shrew girl
swings predatory hips,
remembers to wear a smirk
on flushed forgiving lips

shrew girl - (the heart eater)
prefers monsters of a different kind
scarred, not scaled
(the left behind)

golden daughter - shrew girl
never quite loved onething.

Browse More Like This

Download File
HTML, 672 bytes more ▶

More from ~sliverofciel

chiaroscuro+

your dreams are coded in
algebraic sequences and
the elettaria of your smile
is a zipper lined with grosgrain
and lavender, sewn into
the waxing moon.

(even chang'e has secrets, you know)

my abstract thoughts clash
with the metronome of your
pulse; read the calluses
inscribed on each inch
of mosaic skin and
know that i am
unworthy

of your tapering fingers

quick and darting like koi fish with
their citrus brocade and pearl-lashed
eyelids.

+

we are eggshell children born of
shatter,
not meant to fit
never meant to fit

but your hands soothe like aloe
and peppermint promises suckled
in dusk-tinged mouths;

forget is

hollow websi.        he said, "it won't hurt"
and tied my hands up with
a length of rope, wound
three times.

his smile was like a melon rind.

ii.       cold lips left a trail of lemon zest
down my spine; nightshade
kisses that felt like

belladonna flooding my eyelids,
making pupils lustrous. i thought:
i'll be a beautiful corpse.

iii.       i was french resin yellowing
against his tarmac heat,

a dying elephant with tusks
whittled down to broken ivory,

an electric bass rendered useless
by a boy whose heart is out of tune.

i was a thir

electricityi like to draw pictures
of broken things.

self-portraits, mostly.

we met in cyberspace—
talked with mouths
stitched shut,
earthworm fingers
spread open w i d e
as our lacquered
thighs.

tapped out LCD
conversations that
shimmied across networks
and j i t t e r b u g g e d into
glowworm hearts
leaking loneliness—
lit up nerves
frayed like
live wires.

whatever about

us

that has both my
screen and pulse
delirious is certainly
more than a
computer virus;

i do not know what love is but
if i did

[this
could
be
it.]

i once told you:

bionic heart+

y o u k n o w, birds are fickle creatures. long ago, they were the first to christen wind with song and promised to be the last to lullaby his evenfall. thankful, he allows them to hold air captive between the august weave of their sky-soaked feathers. unbound by ropes and nets— the gusts of gravity that hold us humans captive to the unwilling earth— they spend their days laughing at the clouds, teasing them until darling tears drop from dimpled cheeks.

i loved their beaks and claws and plumage: the delicate anatomy of these children born to fly. but birds, see, unburdened by the weight we call a soul, have no room in

sweet home-

on venus

hearts would cluster in
ladybug swarms— pulsing
anxiety, wings courting light—
to seek the advice of this
rosette-clad oracle.

i'd reply with a
delphic smile,

tenderly pronounce love as
a tea leaf only the holder
can divine and

send them on their way,
infatuation crowning their
arteries like a dandelion-seed
halo; besotted bewilderment
diffusing in the cosmic
kaleidoscope of
cupid's psyche.

-

on mars

l

already gone-

the girl had airplane eyes.

she sat solemnly in the abandoned church, long legs splayed across a piano bench with torn-up upholstery. her lithe fingers skimmed across the instrument's tarnished keyboard. restlessly twitching, they never once made contact as she mimed trills and glissandos and chromatic scales, utterly unaware of her spectator.

bemused, devin watched the flurried movements of her hands. he'd always thought everyone else had forgotten about this empty place, left behind long ago to time and decay. it had become a comforting hideaway for him; an utterly silent building made sacred by the wooden cross. eerie, mayb

View Gallery

Featured in Groups:

#theWrittenRevolution
The words are the spark.

#write-to-live
Literature is Emotions

#PoetsandWriters
Authors of all things Lit.

#LooseLacesPoetry
Poetry Feeds Our Souls

#VIVAPoets

Details

Submitted: November 18, 2010
File Size: 672 bytes

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 19
Favourites: 27 [who?]
Views: 566 (0 today)
Downloads: 4 (0 today)

[x]

we end

by ~sliverofciel, Nov 18, 2010, 9:31:23 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

_{your eyes, limbal rings that overwrite
the blue the brown

they are silvered
as angelfish secreting blackshine and

it's the snow, narcissist.

we are thin thin winter feeling bloat
like some blusterglass sea

your stomach hurts, a

primal thing.

(it's been a wonderful week— the roof
collapsed, i thought of you.)

dollybird sing those perfect untruths

more real than i who became yours
under a fat moon
on a sober street.}