Scramblings and Ramblings

1- Poems like the most recent one you posted usually (with a few exceptions, o'course) take me hours to write down. Days, even. And you did this in one day. And you'll probably do something amazing tomorrow, too. That's hard to ignore, thankya very much.

2- I agree with Nightshade.

3- I swear I'll get in at least one constructive review instead of gushing and what not.

Day V

"harvest" for Hannah and Pengu. c:


Even as we pluck deciduous and drupes
with those oustretched, cramping ligaments, bitter
sits in the back of our throats like the roars of a storm
waiting to pour down onto the soil and nourish the earth;
we can feel the heat touch the tips of our skin and it brushes
our eyes with the fingers of the branches, rising up from the bark
as they climb through time and clamber to the clouds.
(or is that the soil--is that Hell itself, overtaking us in a land of premature summer?)

This is where the harvest begins with our sore fingers, where the
scythe swings and the cicadas churn underground--
when the leaves finally flutter down, we know that
we must match each with a footstep to far away,
where our skin can still brown and freckle like a forgotten peach.
We itch for a place where the blooms are still curling out from their cocoons,
and we follow the memory of our muscles, hoping that the
water round our ankles will soon turn to almond trees.

*harvest high five*

it's so lovely.

"shatter"


you will taste my soul spread across your tongue
like a bruised strawberry, grainy and stringy
and fragile (don't bite down too hard, because I will break);

with glass spread cross my skin you
scratch your name into it, carve a heart
and initials that I don't recognize, and
I want to shatter, if only to break your stare.




_________________________________________

"way back when"



cemeteries torn into my hands like...
like cold grim smiles and walking for miles
and trying to remember what everything used to taste
like, back when I was alive.

There is the flesh of a king
and gold on your hands and you
have to wonder how holy
this can be when gore
hangs on the inside of your lips
and eclipses your throat and
you burn your love alive for riddling
away cloth;

vengeance lies in the spools of you hair,
in the scissors
that cut them and the bindings from before--
there it is, in the
fibers of linen and taste of honey,
suddenly gone bitter.

________________________________________
*edit*

REWRITE


When the flesh of a beast spills God on your hands, you
have to wonder how holy this can really be if
gore hangs on the inside of your lips
and clings to your throat like a battlecry swallowed
with a quiet whisper of Yahweh, a broken justicification.
(Is this regret for what you've done for your god?)

devotion lies in the spools of your hair,
in the knife that rent them from your religion and
the bindings from before-- there it is, cold in the
fibers of riddled linen and taste of honey,
suddenly gone bitter.

Spoiler

Pengu is a delightful person.

probably one of the odder things I've written.

(somehow inspired by the word "turnkey")



i can't even remember your name--
I'm sorry but my tongue is twisting on the way
your freckles sound in the sides of my cheeks
and all the letters have tumbled down my throat where I choke,
trying to keep on breathing all my
quanitifiable breaths in a bundle like a pulley on my lungs up and down
and in and out and here. . .

(keep right here, for a brief moment, and catch your breath
like that trout from last summer... nice and slow or it'll escape you again)

and then we can pull back into the moment of sweating hands
scrabbling and pushing at the insides
of your pockets while you search for
that mysterious word, that one, singular
guarantee that, "Yes, we can be friends and
join in like normal people, because wallflowers are
for books and we must live life to know what we have missed,"
even though our shoulders like the walls and our feet don't like
to walk; we can avoid each other's eyes for another moment, if you'd like.
I'll look this way, and you look; wait no, you're looking /that/ way, yes
that way, so I can look this way and try to remembe-- you're not very good at this,
are you?

that's all right, neither am I--
but I can look down for a moment and choke on your name
and feel the word nestling somewhere in my clavicals like they're
getting ready to roost; I really do hope that they take flight soon, because
I think even the wingtips brushing my larynx might make me
remember. I swear, it's just on the roof of my mouth, just right there, and
if I pull on it this way with my tongue... no. And I wouldn't want to crush it with my teeth.

I'll look up again, just a for a brief moment and maybe admire your
eyes if you still haven't learned how to be awkward;
with your name rustling right above my chest, I guess I had no voice, no choice
but to (wait, another breath and please remember the trout; breathe, breathe, breathe
and ignore the tickles of things to say at your throat because they aren't real, not
real at all)
and then my hands are out of my pockets and into your palms and it turns
out that you didn't remember me anyways, not the scar above my lip or the
green of my eyes and all the rustles burst from my mouth and I struggle
not to say your name at the same time as you, and you smile as I do.

And then, I forget to breathe.

When the flesh of a beast spills God on your hands, you
have to wonder how holy this can really be if
gore hangs on the inside of your lips
and clings to your throat like a battlecry swallowed
with a quiet whisper of Yahweh, a broken justicification.
(Is this regret for what you've done for your god?)

devotion lies in the spools of your hair,
in the knife that rent them from your religion and
the bindings from before-- there it is, cold in the
fibers of riddled linen and taste of honey,
suddenly gone bitter.

I swear to God, if there was a "love" button I would click it 1000 times. This is fantasmic.

I'm a sucker for short poems, and therefore adored this:

cemeteries torn into my hands like...
like cold grim smiles and walking for miles
and trying to remember what everything used to taste
like, back when I was alive.

So much power in so little space. Wonderful.

DAY VI

Big mess I wrote during a break at school.


Hear (are) the words: listen because I don't know if I'll be
able to say them again.
(I'll only be able to weather this kind of maelstrom once,
because I can already feel the skin peeling back from
my mouth and there are teeth beneath these lips,
snapping and hissing and itching to bite out screams and
I cannot quell the quiet closing them to anger--)

here is the peasantry for you royal folk, caught in hands
cupping soil and a spine warped and twisted from carrying
sunlight on a raw, freckled back--
here is hunger, screaming stomachs yearning for
flight and richness on the tongue like
a summer spent in love and knowing that none of this will last;

(and there's the taste of century-crushed grapes from a
dollar bottle wine on your lips and there's arsenic spun on your
finger tips, like medicine for all the broken neurons stuck
blurting out "joyjoyjoy, forget all the things
you have learned and find misery in the oxygen, embracing
your lungs in a fit of broken plows, like a stitch in your side.
Lift your arms to the heavens-- perhaps breath will find you once again.")

And breathe in the winter rain drowning all the leaves of
your work brought to fruition, let it gurgle in small pools like lake
of sweet and sour anticipation--
they are the night spent in lust fear with sweating palms, wondering
why your back is so small when it has so much to bear.

I cannot hold soil to my fingers when it corrodes through my
skin like the arsenic on your hands-- not when my body
has slipped to spare and my bones just like the wings I've always wanted;
alas, I still cannot fly, not even on my clouds of poverty.

Instead, I will hold this ink to a thoughtful lips, breathe
in the viscous fumes and soak it to my skin.
(Blacken my veins and pool into the fifth chamber of my heart--
teach these poor hands how to make letters, and maybe they will
find wealth in the words.)

I'll taste the arsenic and
wine on you and you'll
bite your lips and smile;
here is how much I love you:

(let me count the
bottles again with my
unsteady fingers, and I'll
tell you about how you
captured my eyes)

you clutch a loose cross to your breast,
soft and unsteady when it's left on its own, swaying
in heavy wind like the scarecrow creaking rust in our cornfield--
there's religion in the curve of blackbird beaks and they
peckpeckpeck at the lopsided head, and I can't imagine the headache
it must have; buttons fall like disciples to their knees and lay at potato sack feet,
waiting to be plucked from the soil with
our tired hands and we wonder where we'll get the thread to sew them back on,
and then we wonder if he ever needed eyes anyways.

But God will provide the thread; God will provide
(us with life, but what about the good crops and the good string
and the patches for our children's clothing?)
the rain and the sun to keep shoots shooting and weeds
veining through the radishes calcifying underground,
because weeds are alive too.

we walked through holy water seeping in the fields; and we drew crucifixes on us
across our shoulders with
the rain in the morning, whispering:
"bless us with crowns of glory and crosses to bear" and
we wore our crowns of summer sweat and we hefted
shovels on our backs with glory in our eyes,
splinters slicing blood to out backs
and we worked with the hum of bees to our sides,
hives in our hair, on our hands;
we bore the stings like we bore our sin; somewhere in the back of our minds we cried out
and lusted for something more,
wondering if there was actually a god to pray to at all.

Day VII


"Vet"



You are poured concrete, rough with coral skin,
dusty with duty like a library of tactics
and history-- with frail hands fluttering
in fulminations, you sing cigar smoke to the
air with a Tom Waits croak,
keeping cool with your gin and tonic. Memories of war are set
in your chin and the wrinkled frown unfolds like
the pages of a book I learned it from in school;

I soak in the smell of sharp smoke and alcohol
swirling round the slow cadence of your speech;
my eyes go wide with the stories of blood and missing limbs
and I feel your arm for emptiness--
with pale, flacid skin you continue, ignoring my prodding,
not noticing the way I shift uncomfortably as you close your
eyes like black out curtains, keeping out the war,
while it rattles like a recorder from your throat, hollow.

Spoiler

Pengu is a goddess. Again. As is Mesh.

Doing great for your first.

falling in and out of verses like a vowel,
overused and overdone-- my lips are wet
with words, fingers trembling on the pen like
murmurs of something caught in the back of my throat;
memories fray and disintegrate too quickly like a
sweet-tasting pill, and I try to scrabble down my sickness,
but I'm still too slow.

"Yearning to Purge"


Six month catharsis: you feel it tug right above your navel,
spare and white, and you pull back at the stars with greedy,
burnt fingers, wondering when your labyrinth will run free to string,
when the star you named Icarus will finally tumble to your
hands, wrapped up in ropes and tangled with the night,
eager to break the silence in which you pray.

With words muffled in light and sky, you push the sun to the cheek
like you were palming a pill-- you cut the magma with your teeth
like dandelions between your slim-tipped fingers, and you try to keep it
still, but it squirms like a child, petulant.

The moon lives on your lips, chapped, and you feed
yourself the dark and decade-old starlight, grasping your
pregnant, bloated stomach--
when you move, you can feel the remnants of earth in your veins
and the soil sifts through your organs like lead fingers, straining
to hold you to the earth, but you don't want to stay.