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PluckingPluckingPlucking5 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
The table between us is a moon.
But the air is heavy. It lies
on us, muffled heat stilling
our breaths. You drop your fork,
but I still won't look at you. Even angels
would crawl if they were here.
"Why can't we be friends?"
I am thinking of a Flemish tapestry
I once saw in a white stone house,
walls dense and prickly with roses:
a line of stiff scarlet soldiers,
a rearing horse. The soldiers' thick fingers
grope at the blank cream cloth,
seeking purchase, gravity.
"What are you feeling?"
"I want to be a Flemish soldier,"
I tell you. Only my fingers
would constantly pluck at the expanse,
searching for the thread
that will unra
Rorschach's BlotRorschach's BlotRorschach's Blot4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
Spiders and bears and misshapen trees,
when the swollen fruit drops it bursts into wren wings,
salamander tails shivering, the color of bruised plums.
It tastes so sweet, the tip of a beak.
With a straight pin, I peck at my arms,
a Pollock of blood, swarms of carnelian bees.
Sweet sweet stings. The poison sings.
They say hallucinations, the saints said visions.
"Ollie ollie oxen free," they call running through orchards,
the evening air loosening, a grace note of despair.
There was once an apple and it was bitten,
poor thing, all hell broke loose.
"Tell me what you see," he asks.
"White," I say, hospital sheet
Euros' InfernoIn a smoke blanketEuros' Inferno4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
mistaken for overcast, he
wraps us –
the wind, undoing –
and the old gum tree writhes
against him, but
we sit inside
with our homes on fire.
A Romance NovelA Romance NovelA Romance Novel3 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
Underneath the whiskey bottle billboard,
my sister Ellen sells daisies, crocheted potholders
and chocolate stained, water raptured paperbacks.
"A buck a cover," she yells lining up the tabloid bright offerings,
a woman fleeing down a mountain path, a lighted window
the swamp blue of a TV screen. Ellen's trying to get money
so she can marry Rick. She culls the books
from neighbors' shelves, windfall apples.
Mama just shakes her head, fingers stained
with brown sugar and nicotine. "She isn't a little girl anymore."
At dusk when the air sweats, Ellen and I lay in the hammock,
strung between trees. "Lord Roger possessed
the dark
FallingFallingFalling4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
The body is weightless,
bones hollow as flutes.
They sing startled crescendos
beneath the world distant and harmless for once,
a map of what was.
"Here lie monsters," they warned.
Here lie creatures luminous, grotesque, incandescent
beyond anything you might know.
Potentialities.
SomaliaIf she could feed him her fleshSomalia1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
she would,
but the flies have
gotten to her first.
Sunken sockets
Brittle spine
too parched,
too starved,
much too tired to even try.
But she still does,
because he is
still here.
Hush.
She'd rather stay silent as
her guts become
self-cannibals.
Meanwhile,
her largest organ
raisins under the
scorching sun.
She's wandered,
much longer than what was
permissible.
And now,
she would give up her legs,
if only she
could lactate.
PranksterThe wind is a teenagerPrankster4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
with too much time on his hands
huffing and puffing
and shaking the trees
trying to whistle
but he don't got no tune
lifting a lady's skirt?!
I'm going to report the brat
"now see here boy,
stop trying to take my hat"
I hear the neighbor's rug is missing
and some of her clothes came off the line
I don't want to point fingers
but I think it was him
TattletaleTattletaleTattletale3 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
"Mad as a March Hare,"; they say of me.
But all I have is a rabbit, a white white rabbit,
hoppity rabbit, bloody little rabbit,
claret and garnet, I could eat him and wear him,
rings around my fingers and bloody rings around my mouth.
I could ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross.
But there are no paths in this mad forest
just a bloated cat whose face floats like a moon but sheds no light.
The only luminosity is the blood on my skin.
I was once so pale, virginal and void
until he touched me maddened by mercury,
silvery beads, pewter rain.
Is that why I am so confused, his grubby fingers and white white paws?
But I can't say anythi
Poem: Hold OnHold OnPoem: Hold On7 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
I heard you crying last night
Did you stop trying last night?
You scream there is nothing left
You say there is nothing inside
You used to fly up so high
But you fell to pieces in the sky
You let go of your faith
And threw away your dreams
Try and find something left for us
I'll turn the lights out
Sleep for tonight
I have to leave,
So goodbye
You have to face this alone
You need to build your strength
You lost faith in me
And gave up
You know there is nothing
Left of us
You say it's too late
And nothing hurts
The feelings will come
And some will burn
But some will heal
If you keep strong
You won't hurt anymo
MoonMoonMoon8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
You left the knife on the drainboard,
bits of lettuce scattered like green rice.
We should get married, you tell me,
this house tight as a ring around us.
In every room, sleep waits for me.
Sometimes I wake sprawled on the wooden floor
not remembering that I fell.
Things blur, the copper pans
hanging on the wall swell in tight glowing bellies
woven rugs flow like rivers.
At night, your face flowers into an open moon,
filling our bed with light
There is no place left to hide.
RieslingSparsely stardusted skies give way to another greycloud dayRiesling6 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
The color of sheetmetal, dishwater, old dreams dying
Thirty hours and fifty-three minutes away a woman bakes bread
I can feel the warmth of her kitchen, taste the Riesling
All the way here
Here in my small dusty apartment the lights are on
But I'm not home
She dances in a cageshe dances in her cageShe dances in a cage1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
trapped in this place
her destiny is spoiled
every night she reveals her body
in a stench of alcohol, and of nachos
she takes not
attention to customers
she makes the show on scene
as if the room was empty
as if she was alone in this world
every night she thinks
it's the last time
but the next day
she dances again and again
escape this reality
is a difficult thing
because dancing is her life
Life Is An Intravenous DripLife is an intravenous dripLife Is An Intravenous Drip4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
With no transfusion of blood
Instead it slowly relieves me
Of a mind that once was good
Administering paranoia
Directly from the drip chamber
Suffocating me with terror
When there is no imminent danger
Life is an intravenous drip
I am fascinated by my veins
And curious as to which one
Carries the blood to my brain
Which causes the unwanted impulse
For me to question every answer
Tourniquet that varicose vessel
Curiosity is my cancer
Life is an intravenous drip
Of that I am A positive
My blood remains optimistic
So why am I so negative
I see no saline solution
Just diminishing vital signs
As my sanity transfuse
Totems and Godhoodi. As a child, confronting giants.Totems and Godhood8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
I take the pine tree as my totem,
learn to love the nakedness of its nether-regions
and its northerly fibers stretched and waiting
for the weft to its warp.
Girlhood is still a part of me as the
learning what I am. In the end,
I haven't climbed a tree in a long time;
I am small, and scared, and ringed round with walls,
and I beg the moon to teach me
to use my pine trees as a ladder.
ii. In the way only young love can.
You, sir—
you are pine chips, and I carry you
like a fetish in my mind.
You are the first vampiric sweetness
to suck the breath from my body:
unknowing, the feeling of ye
Heading HomeBitter-boned, I break and crumble to dustHeading Home7 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
My pockets full of keys to places that no longer exist
An oystershell ashtray full of butts and ashes beside me
Testify to dreams of green hedges and white picket fences
A tapping on the door, a rapping on the wall
Ghosts always like this hour just before dawn
A bird screeches and I wake again to the stinging day
And shufflestep towards home from a thousand worlds away
ExhaustionExhaustionExhaustion9 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
I wake, swollen with noon heat.
Half dressed, I stumble,
elbows and toes catching
on the clawed feet of chairs,
the blunt holes of open cupboards.
I sometimes forget my name.
In the kitchen, I pepper the rice
instead of salt. Black flecks surface
in the boiling water,
sea turtles migrating.
If I knew where you went,
I would follow. But all you left behind
was an old sweater, an empty notebook,
an exhaustion,
complete and infinite
as the space around a closed fist.
Serendipity and SnowfallI am la vie en rose,Serendipity and Snowfall6 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
a newborn with as many mini bones in my body as possibilities.
Lovelily,
I am potential waiting to be tapped into.
I am a spectrum of light,
serenity in the symmetry of a snowflake.
I come veiled in lace from everlasting love's womb with my budding,
fresh,
goose-flesh tucked tenderly underneath.
I spread my spirit wide,
outstretching my feather-tips &,
supplicated by twizzles,
I catch my ballerina's foot & fly.
In these fleeting,
finite moments of ubermensch suspension in multiple salchows comes clairvoyance,
a kindness beyond the absolution of mundane minds.
With the key to perfection being repetition,
I pray you
AcquittalWon't you leave me? I will love youAcquittal8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
more than if you stay, transfixed
to the point of reference, our bodies
melding a sad, soft sublime, the back
spine of a little universe blown out
like a crafter's hot glass, the growing
moment, the wonder, the expansion
before a chill.
white noise.sometimes i turn off the greasy yellow lights and run the water lava hot.white noise.4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
the quiet porcelain is an untouched coffin
familiar as the look in your eyes.
i can hear my heart beat in my ears
and i stare at the ceiling until it darkens and blurs at the edges.
my body is heavy as lead
i cannot remember the weight of movement.
sometimes the closest i can get is the suicide between each breath
and the apology unspoken on the inhale.
my skin is a ladder i keep climbing,
i can see through the rungs to the fat cells that weigh down my bones.
sometimes,
my hand becomes his when it creeps uninvited over the landscape of my body
and across the staircase of my ribs.
i can't erase the feeling of his body pressed like a book
over my flower.
my head is white noise that bleeds red,
but i'm tired of all the blood.
tired of all the memories like channels
i keep flicking past.
sometimes i wonder if i cut enough slack in my skin,
&
TributeShe came back to me undone, brazen & alone & alive, awash in morning light, with mockingbirds braided ‘round her ankle, with her soul cradled in the arc of her foot, & took me outside. She came delicately, barefoot through the days I had sat alone, hush-hush through the grass & gold, came & laced fingers through my mind & called to me, down through the years & the hallways of my heart where the dust of you had long lain undisturbed: "He is no longer here, but I am.”Tribute2 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
I have found the voice that left with you.
The cabin with the mossy stumpThe cabin with the mossy stumpThe cabin with the mossy stump6 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
And wooden steps, outside
The one with the old cougar pelt
That terrified me as a child
As if it would someday come
Alive
long boring days there
With not a thing for a kid to do
Except pick buttercups, and play
Where the adults would be busy
Working, chopping wood and
Mowing grass, and me and
My brother had to amuse
Ourselves, while not getting
In the way
The place with the ski trips
And Easter holidays spent
Looking for candy in all the
Places, chocolate rabbits
And Easter baskets
And even occasionally
A toy bunny or book
Mostly it tastes like
Pepsi that has mostly
Gone flat in my mind
Perhaps because it was
The next victimshe is next on his listThe next victim7 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
he observes his prey since two months
this pretty blonde has become her phantasm
he imagines making love with her
she is for him an obssesion
he watches her angel thanks to cameras placed in his apartment
every morning, she rises
under the eyes of this man
every morning, she takes a shower
under the eyes of this pervert
he looks at his list
already 29 names have been deleted
the number 30 will soon disappear also
The Glade Between the FallsA breeze whispers through the trees;The Glade Between the Falls11 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
Leaves dance to the silent tune.
Tree limbs reach up, ever skyward,
To the serene face of the moon.
The night is quiet, though not still;
Many seek peace in the glade.
Soft eyes, glowing, start to appear;
The wolf nobly howls his serenade.
Leaves gently tell to one another
Secrets that will not be heard.
Even those who can listen quite well
May still not be able to learn.
The air is fresh; it smells of pine.
Mother Nature tranquilly calls.
Life abound is welcome here,
In the glade between the falls.
Sta.sh
