[x]

grassy field with rustgrassy field with rust
--------------------------

I'd heard about the old car, three miles out of town and all alone. I just had to see it. It was time. School was over for the summer, my friends were at camp, and I was bored. I set out Thursday morning for a hike, following directions that Uncle Will had given me. As the heat was still growing with the climb of the sun, I found the field and wandered around looking, and looking some more, trying not to be distracted by bees buzzing in the flowers, and butterflies and baby mice. Then it was there, just a bit upslope from the bottom of a natural swale, and just below the sky at th

earth circuitAnd when the sun sinks, the earth's skin crawls:

I.
I wonder if this awkward creature would notice me the way I notice him.
He's so tragic at his throne
I stare after him longingly.
And yet,
He never realizes that I'm the one
Who forever basks in his brilliant beams.
If only he knew how much brighter he could burn
[with me]
He'd light up the universe.

II.
I heard him speak of thirst, once.
The quenching lust of the stars had run dry.
So that night, I brought along a jar of acid.
(And how it gleamed in his glow).
I handed it to him, wrapped in taffeta ribbons,
screaming
I wish curdling joy
On my gurgling boy

Whiskey Laden DreamsBitter eyes and tears might taint a drink, but sitting in this bar alone with your stool pulled out next to me, and the Martini poured regardless of your presence still brings a smile to my face; despite the taste. I'm having a whiskey myself; dry. Yes, I know I don't drink, but every once in a while you need whiskey to solve an intricate problem, and mine is the distinct lack of alcohol in my life.

There are people everywhere and it amazes me how none of them are you, from the woman in the black dress coming down the stairs to the signing couple in the corner, laughing silently. They're not you at all, and that's what's amazing – in an

I Mean to Get You AloneYou have sharp
pulse-elevating teeth
the stuff I imagine heart attacks
are made of

I'm bent on selling you a handful of smiles
specifically crafted
to distract you from the fact that
I have almost nothing to say

and now you're steering this conversation
in a direction that suggests you've

forgotten that I
don't watch movies or do much of
anything but work which maybe

explains why one glass of wine gets me
wrapped around you
car to streetlight
crash style
mangled limbs
breeding curious onlookers and my insurance has
expired

you're leaning in and all I can think is
I don't have insurance

Down By The SchoolyardThere is a rather cliched phrase that states that some people live double lives. I have always found that to be an intensely misleading statement and I guess you can call it a bit of a pet peeve of mine. No one leads "double lives", they just lead fucking lives. That those lives are more complex that the singular one-track existence of lesser creatures shouldn't be a matter of duplicity, but of common sense. No one is exactly who they seem to be.

Julio is one of those who they would later say lived a double life, but it is no more true for him than anyone else. The difference in this case is that there are two of him, rather than one.

Perha

if she were any more tomato she'd be blueberryxvii.
i want to write about how this world of
absolute truth, knowledge, and solid food—

that which we hold high between two fingers is always
full of watery applesauce and little white half-truths.

and about how utterly strange
it is that all the simple things that people
write about on pages are, in reality,

very few and far between.

xvi.
and i want to write about how there is
peace and war and
poverty and treasure and
cruelty and sometimes,

sometimes,

small and
important
moments
of grace.

xv.
i want to write a poem about why the hell i'm wasting
my time writing poems when i could maybe
actually be doing something produ

Send Me the Raintoday, they're all talking about the fires.
the people on TV, the voices on the radio,
the mouths that open and whisper
and softly touch tongues. even the sky is

revealing black plumes of smoke,
flaunting shameless and seductive curves.
the rain's been too dry and the lightning
isn't wet enough, panic is
rising out of control in this
burning city. that's

not all;
we have a crisis on
our hands- the balloons are
running out of air and even

the experts don't really know why,
and on top of those sinking rubber toys

my soul is losing moisture
faster than the crackling grass under the duress of flame.
i'm sta

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

Pausing By The WineMarriage is
the frustration of reality

when the man who works the wine section
pauses in his tracks to make sure
you've found everything you "really need...are you sure?"

With a look that tells you
he finds you sort of beautiful

and you wonder how your life
might be different,

if any man other than this one
had ever looked at you like that.

bedIt's a stabbing sight
Letting in the morning with a crack of the shades
And you forget you could page-turn horizons
Waft through free territory
Where acres are just beds
Made of fresh land

Wrinkles in the river
Tell remembered times
About old languages that could make you cry
About soft beds that carve away canyons
A speaking voice lifted from the earth
Begging you to remember

What Soft DreamsWhat soft dreams we lay -
What soft dreams, like infants put to rest -
Frightfully bare, and compromised,
Our kisses on their breasts.

We close our eyes and trust them safe,
Kept 'til break of dawn -
Forgetting that the night is fickle,
And dutifully, as long -

It safeguards some,
Covets others,
Moved by neither coin nor threat
Nor anguished mother's cry.

Russian RouletteThey take her on her honeymoon.

The wedding was lovely, or as lovely as it could have been with a couple that were more polite acquaintances than anything else and two sets of in-laws as stuffy as a dusty pile of money. They grab her when she sneaks out for a walk one night, two men, beefy, not even bothered to arm themselves. Her last thought before the bag is shoved over her eyes is to wonder how much this would ruin her parents' plans.

She comes to in a small brick room on a sallow mattress, windowless and lit by a cool yellow lamp. There's a man there, standing just outside the barred door.

"Kelly Shale," he says, voice nasally, greasy

I Have No Names for all My Teacup BabesI feel always like I am starting over.

As a magpie I gather trinkets under my pillow,
bay leaves and bags of herbs to bring the next lover to me,
to call the next dream-face forward—a picture
painted in the tea leaves.

But truth be told the start-again
is never clean, is never gentle,
and the sweat of all that labour
is a fire on my skin, telling me
I will never resist its wind-cry.

The moon comes when I call, to help me;
midwife, she is, and she carries into being my new selves
like the babes they are, teaches them to
fill long footsteps like hers.

Truth be told, I tire of the destiny
I was given once—I am a teacup

Under DreadThe winter, the whole winter
is sitting on my head, nesting its fingers
in the little hairs over my ears.
Its friend, the great and unnamed doubt,
is leaning against my collarbone
in a most familiar fashion,
and I fall in and out of balance

irregularly irregularly.

I have a beauty waiting, warm, willing
on speed dial, but the phone--
where did I leave the phone again?
Beauty is as elusive as
the car keys, which, I swear,
were just in that pocket. I

had my hand on them. The whole winter
keeps coursing its little nails
up and down my neck and taking
all my breath away.
There was a dream I had that
I almost remember, almost r

mosaics.sometimes unique
is not loud;
or bright, alive and raging,
possessed of a hunger for the atypical,
up front and too close,
or thrice-pierced and drenched
in the rebellions
particular to the latest generation.

sometimes it is a girl with
mouse brown hair and eyes
the color of weak tea,
who stands with her schoolbooks clutched
to her chest, in uniform shades of grey-blue
like the midmorning autumn sky

who has a wide mouth prone to nervous smiles,

pale lips and pale cheeks
and words that don't always come out
the way she means

who holds the universe
in the intricacies of her fingerprints
and laughs in treble clef notes
and u

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Carnal HeartSlough the lost cells
from my naked arms
and hack these limbs
dead to the trunk
as my roots slumber
in the winter earth.
Use shards of poetry
to scrape this flesh
to the harrowed bone
and circumcise me.
Service this plasticity
of heart, pleasure dim
and wretched, led by
mudless, spitless eyes.
For I wail these streets,
rail my heels, scream
to see men as trees.

We, the ForsakenRed city traffic
lets panick trickle
its sewer grates
to subway trains,
the veins collapsing
under worn streets
where mannequins,
trend manic, chase
wall street falling
stock market rates,
shaking as they
scrape skies poor.

Give us your tired
no more. We are
the hungry, huddled
masses gasping air
from a mason jar.
We wear our sleeves
on arms, our hearts
in rib barred cages,
cross our fingertips
with nursurey phrases
and hope to die smart
before our art drips
with red, with dead
lyrics smoldering cold
like trash barrel coals
raked over homeless
souls under bridges
slow to sleep on slats
with newspaper s

SelflessA prophet stands cold
at the fringes of a sea
as it rages against his hair,
the silk of corn cobs.
He looses lucid blue eyes
out over the other side
where he sees a poet soul
pouring dead words of
science into technology.

Raising burlap sleeves
over that tsunami sea,
he gnashes his gums
as one in the wilderness
calling for the axis to tilt
in favor of the selfless
until the sea engulfs him.
Suddenly the poet percieves
a riping tide and a shift.

Suffer the ChildrenA child lets fall his last coin
down a waterless well
in a boarded up mining town
where his mother lies ill.

A little girl blows dandelion seeds
across moonless fields and dying fireflies
where farmers beat plowshares into swords
as corporate wars roar on their front porches.

Still the boys and girls speak no words
as they wait with butterfly nets
to catch the first light of the night's stars.
In the land where their fathers die
they turn fatherless from priests
in bottomless basilica basements
where skeletons hide from unwed sin,
but somewhere on a hill a seeing man weeps.

The Story Behind a CoatShe viewed steel doors
that remained closed cold
waiting for her number,
the ground floor.

Years shrunk under that coat,
hours sought for and perfect;
she wore that fed-ex feeling
like the golden jubilee
of a Londoner queen.

But the lobby didn't know
that her son ran back
into that building
and that for two years,
she ate cereal in pajamas.

Outside and frail
her white hair hailed a taxi
that braked for a great coat,
a coat she bought the day
she decided to live her life.

Coffee CupCoffee cup
Grounds ground,
Now I'm up
Let me down.

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A Dancing Girl

by ~thirdim3nsion, Aug 18, 2012, 8:34:52 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

A girl stubs busted toes
across cigarette sidewalks
and rippled parking lots,
shatters her music box,
her mother's dying swan,
to dance with vagaries
for the dawn of her city.

She dances violently
for every chaired cripple
and the politically corrected,
handicapped by society.

She weeps in corners
with the coroners who
uncover bodies under bridges,
every vagrant of her city.

She sets fire to roof tops
where falling stars nestle,
runs rusted fire escapes
that lead to dead end allies,
and turns over dumpsters,
raging for a way out.

A Dancing Girlby ~thirdim3nsion

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I had to wait for this one to materialize.

August 18, 2012

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-10-07

A Dancing Girl by ~thirdim3nsion ( Suggested by *UnspecifiedUnknown and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

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*TouchedBy-AnAngel Oct 31, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I really love this. My favorite part is this here:

"A girl stubs busted toes
across cigarette sidewalks..."

Very, very well done!

+ fave

~Sigma-Echo-Seven Oct 8, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

This is poetic perfection; the wait was worth it. Well done!

~Davidpoet30 Oct 7, 2012

awesome and beautiful

~VMenFangirl Oct 7, 2012

Beautiful and vivid

~Reycied Oct 7, 2012

I...really want to explain the myriad reasons I like this poem in a long, and well-thought-out critique...but I find I don't have the words.

It's beautiful. And thank you for writing it.

*UnspecifiedUnknown Oct 7, 2012 Writer

^{so deserved. congrats =]}

~ForMyLadyArtemis Oct 7, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Wow. Just, wow. I don't even know what to say, it's very powerful.

~nataroque Oct 7, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Wow, the first stanza is something else. Your words are so very... I don't know... crisp, delcious, rich, lonely. And the second stanze as well, nothing needing changing. It's so wonderful, definately something I'll keep coming back to

~nicholasGaunt Oct 7, 2012

that was excellent.

~Disgaeagirl565 Oct 7, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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