I hate NaPo (and NaNo). I hate the emphasis on quantity over quality. So as an act of subversion I am going to write thirty terrible love poems, all dedicated to Shnookums.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Ankle-deep in brine I realise why people love the ocean. Stark white against shale drift-wood stripped bare, an offering taken from the skeleton of the earth. The melody of the surf, dreamy, stalls against granite crenelations, but only temporarily: Neptune has learned patience. Secrets are hoarded beyond the break: the young and the foolish loved too hard.
Ankle-deep in brine I realise why people love the ocean; It teaches them to love with their eyes open.
Last edited by Karzkin on Tue Apr 02, 2013 4:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
^ Aiiiye, so lovely. I really feel the wave-effect in the repeated lines. The images are <3, but what gets me are the sounds. I can read this aloud any day, and over and over. I have no crits for this. :/ Uhm -- ditch your first semi-colon, those are fragments. Yeah, that's all I got.
I missed you last night. I found a blue marble on the street cracked and streaked and begging to be left alone. I flat-lined for a few moments when I realised it was colder inside. I still shiver when you say "good morning."
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Two o’clock in the morning, and you heard my ginger stubble rasp against the sheets. We’d been at the opera, and you laughed at the broad vibrato of the soprano; “Sounds like she’s checking to make sure we’re all still paying attention.” I hadn’t been then, but I sure am now, conscious of the way my exhalation sings the soundtrack of the days we spent together, of how quickly my heart beats when you say my name – as if each syllable filled half a page, still exactly like you did that first time, how my joints crack and bones ache from lack of movement, lack of reaching out for your touch, knowing you’re right here next to me still afraid I’ll say the wrong thing.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dear old friend, it’s been three seasons since you first invaded my eyes. The moon was a tulip that night; T. pulchella’s creamy iris and violet pupil pressed flat and preserved under your thumb.
The nights haven’t been like that for a while now. I’m doing away with my soft breaks and my beaming wide-eyed admiration, settling instead for purrs and sighs, breathing and eyelids made heavy by my favourite nyūkō incense and your words that exhale frankincense and honey.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
You say you love the dawn; soft-focus and still, with crisp sounds and a sharp intake of breath, your eyes sting and your throat is dry from staying up all night, leaning against my chest fingers in my hair and touching the space between here and homeward, back East where you pressed your fingertips to mine and said “I’ll come back, be good.” You say you love the dawn, but I hate it; you say goodbye at the same time every day.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
i. There is a station on the South Australian border to accommodate the break-of-gauge.
ii. Five feet, three inches and I found myself with fists curled around shards of basalt, grime-stained palms still tingling from when the bead came off your skirt and you pressed it into my hand, saying “you hold onto it, I don’t need it anymore.”
iii. A parting of ways at Albury railway station; the walk off that platform was one of the longest I’ve ever taken. Asphalt kisses are a cheap substitute.
iv. Four feet, eight-and-one-half inches and the bead is still in the pocket of my blazer. “Keep it, I still don’t need it.”
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
This is the history of water. Seeps through airtight fingers – recalls each touch of copper, lead, porcelain, the warmth of two naked bodies in a moonlit lake, the fury that only tear ducts know. Heart leaking something so strong it can be smelled from two blocks away, I found you standing in the street with missed opportunities pooling around your ankles - you were never content to just have an Autumn morning of cloud-breaks and pastel sunbeams kissing your cheekbones; you could never resist taking my hand and my head and filling them both with earth and rain. Torrential downpours tried to send us home, reminding us that we could only have one heart each; any more is fatal. I gave you mine, and filled the gap with bone, because I don’t think I’ll live long enough to prove what I predicted; diving deeper is the shortest way up.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
