"Aut virum aut murum oportet mulierem habere" (a woman ought to have either a husband or a wall)
So pull the pink and yellow tones from my blushing skin,
and with a brush, wed them to warm Barcelona walls;
I will be her bright bride
until the Spanish sun peels our paint, swallows our brick back
into the mountain,
and migrating swallows cool us with their passing blue shadows
as they remind us how everything grows
in shifts of breaking eggs and bleaching bones.
Turning, and turning, and turning,
together,
the seasons slice us into sand
and sigh us down to that Mediterranean coast,
where we glow white and wet with the same moonlit
A day like this cannot be
caged by barred calendar
squares. One cannot tally
and tick off the raindrops
as they are swallowed by
her pores. Her empty and
cold office chair sits rigidly
somewhere in the city; it
is waiting for her blood to
warm it again. She knows
she cannot escape forever,
but, for now, she can just
think of freer times as she
watches raindrops carve
wet trails like translucent
tiger stripes down her leg.
Her lipstick looked like wax, like crayons
had melted above her teeth in a gruesome
semblance of youth. Her skin was bronze,
and I wondered when she would become
one of those statues, oxidized and green.
Her hair was yellow, wheat-chaff dry
and styled like an aerosol spider queen
had spun a cobweb and a lie
(too much mascara is only what people want)
above her truest thoughts. I wanted
to know what she knew of the world, but
I asked her a leading question instead:
"Would you have, had you been born blind,
made up your face or made up your mind?"
I was like one of those music box ballerinas. I moved my limbs stiffly in practiced, predictable gestures along an imaginary track as I walked from the end of my register, behind the conveyer belt, and into my little cashier box walls made of grocery bags to the left, register keyboard in front, and computer screen and register drawer to the right. In the background, tired old nineties and eighties pop songs echoed over and over through the grocery store aisles.
My painted, plastic smile greeted a cu
the crocodile ridges of his spine
were vertebrae Braille that read:
if you
would
run
-
away
from
me
-
oh
love
-
I
-
could
not
run
-
after
you
-
otherwise,
one day
I
-
will
catch you
-
before you
can
escape.
and I, being blind, ran.
Sister sits rigid and dented
on top of white sheets.
She has been reinvented as a machine
of whirred breathing and latent electricity
while intravenous cords coerce
her fiber-optic synapses
to light up again.
One day, with a
snap
her retinas will glitter
with the vivid summers of swirling
matte-blue and raspy-green blurs
born of when we rolled down hills,
spitting out laughter and grass clippings;
the line of her lips will curl in imitation
of our legs bent in the air
when we laid heartbeat-down on the floor
and watched stippled rain-reflections
paint one another's face;
she will soften into the organic noise
of a vibr
"Aut virum aut murum oportet mulierem habere" (a woman ought to have either a husband or a wall)
So pull the pink and yellow tones from my blushing skin,
and with a brush, wed them to warm Barcelona walls;
I will be her bright bride
until the Spanish sun peels our paint, swallows our brick back
into the mountain,
and migrating swallows cool us with their passing blue shadows
as they remind us how everything grows
in shifts of breaking eggs and bleaching bones.
Turning, and turning, and turning,
together,
the seasons slice us into sand
and sigh us down to that Mediterranean coast,
where we glow white and wet with the same moonlit
a sea of houses comes rolling in
rusty roofs bending
breaking, crashing
shingles popping like fireworks
(expressing their independence, they die)
while you and I
(nothing more than genetic flotsam, now)
turn our eyes from a shattered-glass snowfall
and dream of the winters of our youth
this will be the end of days
...
this will be clouds folding into the earth
thunderstorms growling from foxholes
rain tumbling from rivers
as a clumsy conflagration stumbles into our skin
stealing our silhouettes
painting our ghosts on walls
(oh, had only we learned such passive resistance)
as you and I
(only numbers and figures, we know)
I have carved a route through
convoluted (be)causeways
(just)express(ing myself)ways
and subtle by(the)ways
stolen signposts
you let fall
from your soliloquies
yet I am not sure
whether I stumbled into this bare, undulating crossroad
one hundred
or one thousand miles ago
for you keep your scale hidden
beneath face-down photographs
within journal entries
and underneath loose floorboards
...
I wonder if I have traveled anywhere at all
dead cells flake away from my touch
your indulgent fingers twist into my hair
feeding me stories of Pessinus
and allowing me to believe
that I have transformed you
but you are ten
I was like one of those music box ballerinas. I moved my limbs stiffly in practiced, predictable gestures along an imaginary track as I walked from the end of my register, behind the conveyer belt, and into my little cashier box walls made of grocery bags to the left, register keyboard in front, and computer screen and register drawer to the right. In the background, tired old nineties and eighties pop songs echoed over and over through the grocery store aisles.
My painted, plastic smile greeted a cu
how are you today?
in between
red lasers and barcodes
we were waking on a Tuesday morning
or, rather
hurling our hands
to crash languidly against
distasteful reminders of closets, curling irons, and coffee
we stitched a selvage
counting threads and individual skin cells
leading the needles in our nerve endings
with smeary fingerprints and curling toes
as we invented words to drown out the morning
within a snapped-open canvas bag
and the clunk of cans in the bottom
we were slithering into nylon skins
temporarily joining two halves
with plastic and grinning teeth
mocking the thunder,
a disgruntled polyester
II.
six guitar strings that whirred
under your hands
like sweet mosquito wings
seeking my blood
and that heart that bore it
III.
one shoe swallowed somewhere
below the water-rafting bridge;
the movements traced
by our joyous limbs
stitched
into its flailing, free laces
IV.
eight cassettes that buzzed
through steel wool speakers
in their scratchy eighties' voices
as our car rolled down
puzzle-lines of scenic summer;
each mile allotted us
one thousand words
V.
not once
have we pretended
to have one another
completely deciphered
VI.
three loads of laundry
that flapped on humid cords of June
as we threaded our to
When I die, I want
my bones to burn
and dance with tar
in the funeral pyre
heart. I will crack
with laughter and
blacken like all of
those transient stars
we connected like hands.
With my glowing
marrow, pitch, tar
and other content
(like the first letters
you ever sent to me
and the screw in my
knee I earned when
we learned to dive from
those cliffs like sea falcons)
I will be reborn.
One day I will live
as the signature of
a letter, or the curl
of an eyelash in a
portrait drawn for
a lover, or a memo
spreading softly into
the lines of your skin.
I will live on forever.
when she
sighs
she tastes fire and
betelgeuse ribs creak with an overload of hydrogen, expanding
until she splinters
into scattered consonants and vowels
for a moment
she could overwhelm galaxies
if she would believe she is more
than degenerate matter
...
although she can be viewed by the naked I,
her core collapsed long ago
and it seems I am living on borrowed light
...
but when she
smiles
breathing in swirling infrared tendrils
of tarnished c
It's always my right boot that won't come off
I hold it in my left hand and it
jerks
like a worm dangling off the hook of a fish pole
about to plunge
indenting red claws across the peak of that majestic hill
my calf
like the American flag conquering the moon
and I beat the heel against the floor
and wonder if I'll break the man-made leather
and if man-made leather comes from
man-made cows
and my leg sits there
between the boot and the floor
like a dead thing in the road
making us feel guilty for running over something we couldn't possibly have done
ourselves
and my calf is free and the boot lies there against the other
When she was,
he was,
twenty, thirty
Leanin' on a pool table, a high cove hidden
at the back of the bar, cryin' Bobby Dylan
can't shriek like momma on Sunday but
he'll tell me right from wrong, he'll tell me
Drawin' in a ball of smoke, a genie's tail enticing--
her hips swayin' to the rhythm of an eternity
he'll pray to keep, he knows the words, and so he sings
forever, forever stay
She is,
he is,
forty, fifty
Creakin' bed as she stands buried alive by her weight
Sits at an edge, scrapin' loose flesh from her feet
And she is always singing old songs over and over
telling herself it's all right, all's right
Lightin' a match t
A Defense of Tired Words by Formlessforce, literature
Literature
A Defense of Tired Words
My love! Although a thousand miles
and all my wisdom speak against,
I'd spurn all of my common sense
and trudge that distance, for your smile.
Ha! Proud and scornful of such verse,
I'd thought myself above cliché,
an artist in a higher way,
yet here I pen that which I cursed.
But if so naturally come clichés
to mine and countless other tongues,
perhaps some thread between us runs
and similar blood runs in our veins;
from every mouth these same words call.
Cliché is not, then, lack of art:
the common patterns in each heart
make dreadful poets of us all.
The shock of solitude had finally begun to sink in. Earlier I had looked upon my furniture with no thoughts but "we often sat and talked at that table," or "that was her favorite chair," as though in some way she still lingered in this house, though she had taken her leave of it, and of me. For a time I could not even sleep in my bedroom, knowing my wife and I had lain there, full of joy, and what I'd thought was love. As my mind settled, I moved back in to my room, but a different thought plagued me- "this bed is unutterably empty." At first there was a feeling of haunting togetherness, now, an almost palpable separation. My house was a vac
How pure we were, when born from ore:
simple and untainted, a metal of one shade,
stainless and whole.
But now I am a makeshift alloy,
stronger perhaps for being made complex,
but having lost all shine.
And stronger only in some ways;
for my parts are of differing qualities.
I have been left in peace, and so I rust at varying speeds,
my heart tarnishing and arms thinning
while my legs march on unaware.
I have been too long undisturbed, and thus decay:
I am beyond upkeep by oil.
I creak with the desire for mallet and anvil,
for constructive demolition.
I implore the ancient Smith who set us forth from our molds-
bring coal and
The Sun is far away and looks at me coldly because I am not Close, I am not Warm. I can feel the molecules shivering on my surface, even though my heart is Warm, but The Sun cannot see my heart. The Sun loves all of her children, all of us whom she has curled up out of the empty.
I breathe out and the wave of my exhalation fans in all directions, and sometime it will reach The Sun, and she will know that I am here, and that I love her and that I follow her, fall around her, and my heart is Warm, like her.
My Close siblings exhale Warmth and it passes me by on its way Away. Away from The Sun, I do not know what is there, I do not care, The S
Oh, there's no question-she's the prettiest of us.
She has the kind of beauty that pulls-
that every cell in every human body knows
to love.
But no, I've never envied her. I've seen the way her
blueberry eyes watch, panicked,
as the landscape boils and sways
and leaves her behind. She listens,
but our exhalations do not speak to her,
our words are worm-eaten-I know,
she has a shard of ice in her eye
that turns the air to brick, and our voices
to brackish filth that flows past her ears and gets caught in her
spun-honey hair-oh, but it's dark now, with dye
or dirt; I'm not sure.
And that cherub with the pink mouth and the feath
There is a rush, a whirl, one in, one out...
I dream
Our noses are nearly touching an invisible pane of glass
Misting the ghosts of droplets and handprints back to aspect
Handprints of the millions who have been here before us.
We're not exclusive,
Just lucky.
I cannot tell whether I exist, or,
If I am only part of the colour you breathe.
As the longest, smoothest, most precious sigh
Echoes up from my heart to my head
I am only colour
Your face zooms out until you are only a star
A mere point of wondrous light
Hanging
Floating
In the dark.
Above my head, one
Streetlight shimmers with the rain.
More clouds are gathering now.
Not far to go, but
Better is that I know soon
I can be curled up with you.
Well, it's been awhile. I don't even know how to begin to explain who/where I've been for the year or so since I disappeared.
I've been writing and reading (and drawing a bit), but I really have missed having an online writing community. I'm not even sure what DA is like anymore--I'm sure it's gone through changes in my absence--so I'm going to feel things out and dip my toes in a bit.
Let's get re-acquainted. <3
(Hopefully I won't disappear this time.)
Oh dear, it's been awhile. :sheepish:
I've been mostly tied up with friend/family/college things. Mostly good/fun things (Even finals--and, yes, I just included finals in the good/fun category), but substantive things nonetheless. My sisters and brothers came home for the holidays, and it was great to see them and my home friends again. Hilarious people! :heart: I love them.
How have you all been? :) :heart:
New Year's Resolutions:
1) Do well in college.
2) Get on DA/write more.
3) Talk to interesting people (including SEMG) instead of ignoring them. (I'm one of those strange people who ignores the people she thinks are interesting out
I realize I haven't been on in a bit. Things have been crazy lately. I'm doing NaNo, and so I've had that and college and sleeping (sometimes) taking up my time. I haven't forgotten about you guys, I promise. :)
I fear I'm falling behind with personal thank-yous, so I'd like to thank everyone who's commented/faved/watched (!) me in the past week or so since my DD. You guys rock! :heart:
Well, not much else for now. Things will probably be busy for a little while longer, but I'll try to check in a bit more often.
Have a wonderful morning/afternoon/evening/night. :)
P.S. (House was absolutely wonderful tonight. Welcome back, Lucas~!)