[x]

RiftTrains collide through a fist of hot snow. Her eyes
and mine. Soot against the thick storm skin,
flashing metal and scraping bones, the earth
screams something primal. She looks away
and through the peppered sparks of fire
a silence prevails.
Quiet lips say too much. I follow spotted horses
to the meadow, the waterfall is broken, and
I see her mouth make fog. Lumps of coal
are stacked in the distance, making a hut.
I do not enter, the windows are tied to the sky
with knots.
9am there was a rift in the evermore. They said
the sky belted open, stars wept plasma coffins,
and out of the dew she put one foot,
then the other. In her left hand there was a blue fig.
I could not see the other. The arctic sun set
and a desert sun rose.
Her hair was put back with paperclips, glimmering
in the cold light. I fell into a vat, watching
a thousand four hornets unnest from behind her. I felt high,
but sank deeper until I touched bottom. She pulled at me

you asked me to write your eulogybut darling, do not ask such things of a poet.
We live with death and feathers
in our bones, and you—

clouds have purpose, and one
is seldom alone in the sky. To
say, smart or handsome or
funny or caring, it is the lid
on the trash, never appreciated
till missing, and you—

undercover smell of well-water
and thick terra cotta clay,
a fallen angel left in smoke-screen
somewhere below the salt, the heart
still beats, and you—

a mythology come-to-life.
Hellion and savior, black-tipped
like raven wings, always more
in the right light
than

caring for p(o)etsscribbling down vicious verses on
tissue napkins while seated at
the corner of a sidewalk cafe is
about as romantic, raw and
honest a p(o)et
-outside of the four corners of your bedpost-
can get

if you've got that person dreading over
drafts and dreams on end
-of you, for you-
consider yourself a new owner
it is now time to
tame this p(o)et's perverse mane
you've got your hands on
a fragile purebred
which can be very tricky for
first timers

i'm falling away with youI am the wayward child.
Tacking on wings months too late; our legs didn't break -
Fate gave me a flower; snowflakes and granite
by any other name.
Oh, gravity,
I am home.

Your eyes of forests, branching away.
Defeathered, dust settling;
if you don't see it, you can never walk away.

Battle on the bridge, your skin under mine -
tunnel of feathers.
Wildflowers, imperfect birds, butterflies -
he will have cause to regret;
Icarus.

It wasn't a mistake,
plucking featherweight regret.
The hapless harpy curls,
learning to fall.

Who carries your weight?
Cleave, white coffin collar bone,
I see the light of home again; firefly skin.
The caged bird sc

The Bone CollectorSometimes my breath catches in my throat
and the very stillness of an earth going
a thousand and three miles per hour
gets lodged there.

Sometimes these simple exchanges
leave me breathless, croaking on dust:
the unfiltered pigments of other people's skin
and blood and ash

but with my tarred lungs and itchy eyes
I sit and sift through charcoaled remains,
alphabetising them from c to c. I am lost
in a world charred brazen.

Many things I have loved have turned to ash.
Many people. I was naive enough to think
that there was some perfect nutritional truth
that could outlast hell-fire.

I claw through a world turned ashen
and know those dead

(it is not a dream if it is everyday)i no longer have the gall
to write letters to my universe.
it’s stony quiet,
all around.
it’s possum eyes in headlights,
abandoned chandeliers
frozen
in Victrola dust.

some tireless pamphleteer
has wrecked this room
with motorized felicity!
there must be
at least
one bill for every breath,
paper
mountains
of indifference.

and now, i see
you are the same.
you’re no magic
planet. i will
get up,
some time tomorrow,
mid morning, when the bugs have died,
and drive to work
and i won’t think
there’s anything
that ever came
before that sun.

and there,
i’ll trade in shibboleths
and type in pointy let

Your Daughter has Sold Hundreds of Local PapersBut listen to me: I will tell you
how to love a bedspread;
a car seat; a sun dress
that you cleaned two months ago.

and should they find her
in the breast of a riverbank
or a cabinet,

I will tell you
facts about scavenger birds;
kettles, wakes and how to chair a committee
with a body on your desk,

as scavenger birds do.

I Took To Howling With YouI was shy at first, timid in my dealings,
I laced the trap against my throat,
sang sparing, tip-toed
around your poems.

The tone, the slow vibrating
from the shoots of my shoulders
to the gleam of polished talons,
it purred around inside me.

Oh the song, Coyote,
the same resigned call, it
paled before you, swallowed down its insides,
wept.

I took your little hand in my big hand,
flew out towards Crow, and for a while
My Love, there were poems
and the world was enough.

I took to howling with you,
down from the branches, safe
womb of the tree, I spread
dirt between my toes, sang happy,

sang the song of free,
your wild howl

Southern Belle - 4Ray of scattered light -
a flicker pearls
crests momentarily
hovers above the water
escaping - a flash of orange -
lands back into the mirage

OrigamiYou made me paper cranes,
gave me birds that couldn't fly.
I tried to teach you origami,
but your hands were clumsy
and you preferred to cut than fold.

You stapled together pieces
with glaring metal stitches;
it wasn't art, but surgery
on something we both knew was dead.

Your signature,
ligature marks
in bleeding ink
scratched in the corners,
nearly indecipherable;
the words "hate" and "love,"
they always read the same to me
(however it was written.)

I tried to teach you how to fold a heart
to place your love inside.
"I love you" (deep) inside...
But your hands were clumsy,
and they crumpled each attempt.

So you made me birds to se

tasseographyyou stain my organs like the blackest of tea poured over and out into bone-white china cups. i feel the weight of your aftertaste in every moment of solitude scraped from breaks made into restless messes by your memory.

you haunt me like a mad man's symphony, like a eulogy pre-written and dedicated to the residue of us.

porcelain dolls with faces as pallid as your affection and as alabaster as your skeleton watch us fall apart. our saccharine sub-terrains implode, chipping the edges of our finest china with their crystalline shards; we bleed out as quickly as torn tea-bags doused in scalding water.

you are the tiresome teardrops that fall

EnnuiHere's where things got hazy:
you talked about pulling the stars closer
because the bigger they got, the less insignificant you felt.
I presumed it was because I called you mine.
Bottle caps and paper punchers
were the things we made love on when you decided
to live life more dangerously.

Indentions were made on my skin and not by
your touch, but by distractions - carefully planted, unlike
the way you used to kiss me. Your lips
lost instinct, but still tasted as they always had; soft
and pure, in the way no one else before me understood.
Maybe simplicity pulled you from me.

Or maybe you felt like I was too easy,
too predictable, and my end

the leper and the lambbaby boy grew up and
the thorns left his crown;
his sides cry red,

it scares me to hear the
same stories in his sighs.

he is the kind of poetic violent whose
words are like calculated anvils; he
dissipates between my bones and

my heart will burst, I swear it. I am
afraid of balloons and the imminent
explosion of my delicate monstrosity
rising through my throat and suffocating--
but it’s really beautiful

when he turns over and rubs the galaxies
congested within his eyes. I believe in
shooting stars and intoxicated nights and the
prickled promises intertwined between our
fingers, as I miscalculate how fragile I really am

it&rsquo

expired warningsI hate to break it to you but we're all betting on the day when
your nightmares will swallow you whole and you won't
remember how to open your eyes. we forget your voice,
it broke and no one buried the pieces. we're giving you up:
secessions (your ribcage is a civil war, your heart is the victim.
there will be no memorial; there are only red flags)
obsessions pick your bones dry, vulture needs, vulgar
mortality argues at least you're not alive

at least you can't see us anymore, counting the knots
in your neck and catastrophes in your mouth. in
your summer cage you were a soggy butterfly bearing
a cumbersome cross. now, we leave yo

Phoenixshe was
crimson epiphanies, molten elegies
enveloped by dirges of the dead, chanting:

when in god's world, sweet child
pray at the altars of silence

oceans bowed before the grace
of earth-worn eyes, reminders:
serendipity's lost cause.

gravitas and
freedom-- absorbed

absolving rays of enlightenment
shedding stardust skin, peeling
layers of reminiscence from
immolated bones

self-sequestered
flames

she is
sanctified white flags-
divine serenades of rebirth.

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More from *Hfeather53

learning to breathecold air stings.
my breathing stops;
i am crippled before i take my first steps
of the day,
of my life.

this is the way it's always been.
shoulders slumped and a heart that
thumps, too heavily. everyone hears it.
everyone knows it's diseased.

your hope makes my heart sink
and my mind smile;
i want my innocence back.

what happened to the me
that believed she would, someday,
set the world on fire
with her passion,
with her love,
with her desire to mend broken-hearts
and nurse wounded souls?

what happens when you become
part of the problem
and the solution you've been searching for
eludes you,
yet again?

If a Tree Falls in a Forestconcave concrete confines me,
restricts me;
i have sullied my nails on these walls and like my
heart, i have resigned myself to
finding a way out - i too beat against a cage,
unrelenting.

bent-bellied breathing burdens me,
urges me;
my lungs are tamped down, chocked with
lichen. wraith fingers
claw, scrabble, slip - desperate for
freedom.

my nostrils fill with musty, coppered
air;
salt and dust dance within my cottoned
mouth - i lust for
salvation.

chalk etched bones quiver, throbbing
restlessly;
winter dances in my veins, storm-children
prance amid the tendrils of my
heart - alone,
they sing their swan song.

a dull pulse murmurs, whisper

saltwater lullabyi am beside myself
and you are inside me -
water boarding my heart
and seeping into my lungs.

exit, please, with haste
before i'm laid to waste.

i'm already nothing at all,
aren't i?
aren't we?

a melody comes choking out of my
salt ridden throat
invoking fear in each ear
it falls deafly on.
they never remember me,
until i'm gone,
and neither will you.

chew,
baby chew,
on these verses, these words,
these curses -
they vex me
and i have foretold them all.

perhaps, i am a fatalist
after all.

clutteri will cut my way through this forest of filth
to never return,
i tell myself.
i told myself -
never again.

i am the worst kind of liar.

the summer heat
feasts on heaps of decay
and fills my nostrils.

i would vomit -
if only,
i didn't cry every time.

so, like these memories,
these pains,
i'll stifle that too.

one day, soon maybe,
dreams won't be scary
and i'll stop lying to myself
along with everyone else.

i am not fine,
and i haven't been for quite some time.

i'm here.
and that's all i can be for you.

desire in minor keyif only i were strings on your guitar,
to be touched and teased
till tremendous tremolo echoed
in these hollowing bones

fretting for your affectionate fingers to thrum
percussion gently along this rough curvature
my unvarnished body, natural concavities
resonating the rhythm of your sweet phalangeal beats

the heat, in each of your lovely palms, washing over me -
bending me, until i sing into the void
an anthem only yours
give me a voice

pluck calloused, never callously,
the notes growing slowly outward
from this sonorous garden,
my musical soul
sighs a song for you

each note hung, neatly strung, and laced
through my being -
would you find

kaleidoscopic fearsThis is the way you're supposed to be -
breathless,
anxious,
a sandpaper throat
adorned with fingernails (you could never
choke down the truth
but, my dear,
you sure could choke).

This is the way we all fall
when we can't
seem to
move.
Our feet are stuck to yesteryear's
yesterfears
and the dour hours
continue to chisel
our lithesome frames.

This is the way we all get lost
even though
we were always
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Submitted: January 22
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[x]

she reminds me of myself

by *Hfeather53, Jan 22, 2013, 6:32:43 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I'm sorry, Alice, the looking glass lies.
Flowers don't sing
and hares don't keep time.
Your world of wonder
is all make believe -
Why else would your reflection
giggle and wink?

You aren't a child any longer, my dear.
Have a matchstick for your dreams
and a hammer for that mirror.
Our hands may be calloused
as we coddle our pasts
but delusions are enemies
and wistful muses pass.

I will wait for you, darling,
I will write for you, lass.
I will capture life's beauty
and contain it in glass.
Though, the singing that lingers
is the voice of my own.
The fragrant flowers are dying
even while their seed is sown.

she reminds me of myselfby *Hfeather53

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

edit - good lord guys, i'm glad you all enjoy this so much. thank you for all the faves and comments, i really don't deserve it.

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~Adonael Mar 15, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

What can we say?? We're suckers for Through the Looking Glass themes

Bravo...brilliant poem. I like how you characterised the reflection.

*Hfeather53 Mar 15, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you very much!

~Adonael Mar 19, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

No worries! -bows-

!travelgirlxx Feb 4, 2013

Love!

*Hfeather53 Feb 4, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

~RachelStrzelecki Jan 23, 2013 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

There's a nice rhythm in this - I like the rhyming too. The last stanza is my favourite. Might give you a critique on this when I have the time

*Hfeather53 Jan 23, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you so much! (=

*LightningIdle Jan 23, 2013 Student Traditional Artist

WELL. Just gonna go cry in the corner now.
This was really well-written, and it does a beautiful job of reflecting how debilitating the real world is. Amazing.

*Hfeather53 Jan 23, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

>.< thank you. I'm glad my message got through.

~LittleMissChess Jan 23, 2013 Student General Artist

I love the rhyme scheme of this poem and the overall message. This being Alice-themed only makes me love it more. Beautiful work! <3

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she reminds me of myself

she reminds me of myselfby *Hfeather53

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