nine lives & the lottery of dreams

#6

Time's festering tick
bleeds between seconds
and minutes not counted
by the tramp on the corner
of London Town, to whom
days pass in blurs anointed
by the clink of coins born
in gutters stamped with need
and not at all concerned
with the divinity of ants

I really like how it's one sentence and about time bleeding between seconds and minutes, but you breathed all that life into the minutes. That was great to go back and read over and realize. Thank you!

#6.1

A witch lives down
the road, off the path driven
by most across a creek
choked with weeds that can't
or won't grow alone, heedless
the words they stop are spoken
in a language older than stone
and witnessed by none other
than frogs grown wilful, sullen
in their contemplation of a toad's
baritone croak.

"sullen
in their contemplation of a toad's
baritone croak."

That was kind of awesome. Yep.

#6.2 An Ode To Hannah's Dream

i don't suppose you dream
quite like I do; in a world
grown quiet with hateful prayers
lining supermarkets in middle suburbia,
i found god hiding
in a freezer labelled 'not
in use' babbling threats collected
in trays, sloshed in drinks
by careless children

#6.3

N'yah, I'm too old to hear about fairies
okay? I left them behind
that old sock draw in the attic
lined with yesterday's dust
that seeps through wooden cracks
into the kitchen, and I'm eating
cereal filmed by the death of stories
so nourishing once
upon a time clocked by my father's
watch.

#6.4 Written with Hannah's aid :p

I used to run by summer
riverbeds not in season,
wrinkled and raw with a newborn's
promise, and think how much I'd love-a
tug
on a kite or boat borne by spider
strings sticky and sweet. Now
I drive with disinterested dates
to the edge
of swollen banks, gleaming
lines of broken steel
lie buried in embarrassed
silence cupped between
our hollow arms interlinked
and I hope for the transparency
of a mirror's edge for this delicate
surgery of dreams

#6.5

Murky clouds whisper conspiracies
founded in last year's christmas
party, that the weatherman
was blown under his desk
by an intern with skyblue eyes
but I keep worrying at the sun
because his mistress told me
to expect a storm.

6.5

I really enjoyed this, especially "skyblue eyes" and the last two lines. I'm unsure about "at the sun" - I think it's a little unclear. Maybe "to the sun"? That would suggest son more clearly if that's what you're trying to do, or with the sun.

#7

Grandma's a gypsy, they say
with funny toes gnarled
and hungry (they never
made me laugh though
i worried they would eat me)
but never fed. Her feet
are black, warped and twisted
into the ground digging
like the roots of a desiccated
tree starved in cement;
i wonder where they took her
that's left her so broken and
full of regret

Has it really only been 7 days? It feels like forever.

#7.1

I've tarried too long here
in the silken shadow of parting
words unsaid, but caught
in the freeze frame of last night's
movie; I forget the title. Have you
been numbering the days? Nights
are smothered in bedsheets
twisted by a beginning, absent;
I am too focused on not counting
the last pages before the end

#7.2

I store your stolen kisses
beneath my bed in an iron box
illicit with contraband; in rusted
dark, it withstood the storm
of childhood nightmares, but
how will it fare against
a summer's dream
brimming with adolescence?

Spoiler

If people are wondering, I recently became unemployed, so I really have too much time on my hands. I'm hoping if I produce enough crap here, I can jump start my creative engines into something remotely usable. Which isn't to say I disparage everything here, just that I'm trying to be prolific for a reason

#7.3

Don't tell me your secrets,
sing them.
truth is a minstrel's gift
too often ignored, misplaced
in radio static conversations
hopelessly out of tune. i can't
fix the air
on which these lies float
so seamless and ultimately
silent.

#7.4

My belly is bloated
with the words of dead poets
carried on the wings of mayflies
dizzied by rhyme, and I lie wasted
in this critical mausoleum
as above the clouds grow puffed
on protests, the swollen lips
of rouge-tipped gods long since
lost to petulance.

Keep going, mate, the improvement is perceptible.