For Summer
Do you remember the night you dreamt
you wore a wooden dress?
You thrashed against the splintered hem,
waking me, coverless, just after dawn.
That is how we are love:
confined
in the grain of an imagined garment.
We wake each morning,
eat, laugh, and make love,
all in an endless storm-wash of days.
The silt-bound Sabine eddies and stirs
near us, the riverbed clouded by bog-water,
but mud hides few mysteries,
and young nations hold no annals.
If only we would be drawn
to the new lights of an ancient city,
a place so weaved of the ethereal
that the sea moves
in a slow wash of increments
to reclaim it.
I know wa
Audubon, Great White Heron by DarlingDante, literature
Literature
Audubon, Great White Heron
Bachman's cat would appear to be merely resting
in the evening sun
if it weren't for the bill speared through its heart.
The Heron is tall as a woman, twice as cruel,
and at least as beautiful.
I brought the bird all the way from Florida
as a gift for my friend,
a pillar of living ivory
to walk among his Magnolias.
But already it's swallowed a dozen ducks,
bitten several children, and now
(the most dire offense) slain poor Francis.
It will be shot and stuffed within the week,
but beasts can't be blamed
for their wickedness.
When it flew along the banks of the Keys,
it snapped up fish with the grace of sharpened wind.
My deck
Audubon on the Purple Grakle by DarlingDante, literature
Literature
Audubon on the Purple Grakle
The corn rows are ripe
with ochre and ashes.
Countless crows shake the field
with their calls while laying waste
to the crop in a sharp-billed early harvest.
Months before they saved farmers the labor
of plucking grubs from the new growth,
but country men are quick to forget favors,
so Elijah, the planter's youngest son,
stands beside me, the both of us armed
for our own harvest.
We have different aims:
Elijah wants to plump pot pies with gristle,
and I wish to pin wings
forever on the page.
I know the art isn't the animal,
and their shapes will come out crooked
and nefarious, their feathers robbed
of the coppery hue of su
Held among the Harvest by DarlingDante, literature
Literature
Held among the Harvest
In the faint light of a roadside fruit stand
two old men talk of weather while smoking,
plums stacked behind them like sweet gobs of night.
Beside the taller of the two,
on the stump of a bolt-struck pine,
a crow twitches its feathers
in a makeshift cage of rope and twigs.
The tall man's eyes are the feral blue
of someone who's trapped the sky.
The bird has a song like shook gravel.
I half-heartedly palm peaches,
hoping for the story of its capture,
but the smoke-stilled conversation
never drifts from summer rain.
I fumble through the pears and berries,
what soft collision of color,
the taut and the pocked heaped togeth
Three days of Texas rain swelled
in the soil of the front lawn.
My father, digging a drainage ditch, held
a rust-rimed shovel. The day was mostly gone.
He struck deep into the rock-lined
border of our rose garden,
raking the earth, as if the drops could be mined
and the mud forced to harden.
A stroke nicked the hole-riddled stone
and, like a surge of new roots,
a knot of small snakes burst from the bone-
colored mound, pouring out in chutes
of emerald sinew. He cursed and swung
at the fresh flood, severing heads, spilling
the blood and poison of the panicked young.
The grass quickly filled with killing,
but as I, a small boy,
The brambled weeds that line my patch of lawn
are full of wasps. My knuckles ache for blooms,
but deep in brush a stinging sweetness looms.
Though when plucked the petaled stem is gone,
in verse its backyard brilliance could go on
to root below an ever-rising moon.
But flowers cannot grow in stanzas' closed rooms
where leaves are only ink and no shade can be drawn.
It's better then for beauty to be barbed
than snapped by fumbling hands that seek to clutch
a thing or fill a watered vase. No pen
or fingers still the steady ebb of hard-
won grace or ever halt the falling hush
of absence, forcing spring to come again.
In the Soil, a Stir of Night by DarlingDante, literature
Literature
In the Soil, a Stir of Night
The gardeners stood slack-jawed
at the sight of so many crates
heaped in the hot grass
then bent back the boards
and saw the huddle of veined wings:
dozens of bats, shipped from the east,
were to be scattered in the southern garden
like so many leaves on the night air.
But the gardenhands
mistook their daylight sleep for death
and spread the Texas soil
to make coffins of the crates.
They heard no shrieks or beats of wings
when shoveled earth piled
on planks, and it took years
for the men to learn that burial was a mistake.
Mosquitoes still gather there
in a thick, humming mist
above the hollow ground
but part when dark ai
Autumn had set fire to the leaves,
and I too was burning with the shadow-heat
of forgotten summers and the prickly sleeves
of desperate memory while sighing in the sweet
ennui of a southern town. To a young man,
this is an early death. Counting feathers
on a wind-weary heron or draining a can
of beer in solitude quickly weathers
wild passions. But, without the ivory
stillness of resting under Magnolia trees,
I would have never seen the hazy
sunset shining on the river's boundaries,
the sky drifting on to dusty distance,
the far starlight's silver brilliance.
It's a wonder what can fit in a box:
portraits, china, wall clocks,
all sagging inside the wrapping
with the sound of tape's snapping.
Heavier are the things that can't:
the first freeze and the tomato plant
covered in knives of ice but tasting sweet
when the blades dropped and you ate its meat;
the old house your mother left
where the child-you, lost, bereft,
wandered through an empty room
full of dust and fresh perfume.
I can't carry those things for you.
No matter the pay, and I need it too,
I can't hoist the heavy load of living
and have it to you by Thanksgiving.
But I take my share with the rest:
a forgotten cup, a
For Summer
Do you remember the night you dreamt
you wore a wooden dress?
You thrashed against the splintered hem,
waking me, coverless, just after dawn.
That is how we are love:
confined
in the grain of an imagined garment.
We wake each morning,
eat, laugh, and make love,
all in an endless storm-wash of days.
The silt-bound Sabine eddies and stirs
near us, the riverbed clouded by bog-water,
but mud hides few mysteries,
and young nations hold no annals.
If only we would be drawn
to the new lights of an ancient city,
a place so weaved of the ethereal
that the sea moves
in a slow wash of increments
to reclaim it.
I know wa
Audubon, Great White Heron by DarlingDante, literature
Literature
Audubon, Great White Heron
Bachman's cat would appear to be merely resting
in the evening sun
if it weren't for the bill speared through its heart.
The Heron is tall as a woman, twice as cruel,
and at least as beautiful.
I brought the bird all the way from Florida
as a gift for my friend,
a pillar of living ivory
to walk among his Magnolias.
But already it's swallowed a dozen ducks,
bitten several children, and now
(the most dire offense) slain poor Francis.
It will be shot and stuffed within the week,
but beasts can't be blamed
for their wickedness.
When it flew along the banks of the Keys,
it snapped up fish with the grace of sharpened wind.
My deck
Audubon on the Purple Grakle by DarlingDante, literature
Literature
Audubon on the Purple Grakle
The corn rows are ripe
with ochre and ashes.
Countless crows shake the field
with their calls while laying waste
to the crop in a sharp-billed early harvest.
Months before they saved farmers the labor
of plucking grubs from the new growth,
but country men are quick to forget favors,
so Elijah, the planter's youngest son,
stands beside me, the both of us armed
for our own harvest.
We have different aims:
Elijah wants to plump pot pies with gristle,
and I wish to pin wings
forever on the page.
I know the art isn't the animal,
and their shapes will come out crooked
and nefarious, their feathers robbed
of the coppery hue of su
Held among the Harvest by DarlingDante, literature
Literature
Held among the Harvest
In the faint light of a roadside fruit stand
two old men talk of weather while smoking,
plums stacked behind them like sweet gobs of night.
Beside the taller of the two,
on the stump of a bolt-struck pine,
a crow twitches its feathers
in a makeshift cage of rope and twigs.
The tall man's eyes are the feral blue
of someone who's trapped the sky.
The bird has a song like shook gravel.
I half-heartedly palm peaches,
hoping for the story of its capture,
but the smoke-stilled conversation
never drifts from summer rain.
I fumble through the pears and berries,
what soft collision of color,
the taut and the pocked heaped togeth
Three days of Texas rain swelled
in the soil of the front lawn.
My father, digging a drainage ditch, held
a rust-rimed shovel. The day was mostly gone.
He struck deep into the rock-lined
border of our rose garden,
raking the earth, as if the drops could be mined
and the mud forced to harden.
A stroke nicked the hole-riddled stone
and, like a surge of new roots,
a knot of small snakes burst from the bone-
colored mound, pouring out in chutes
of emerald sinew. He cursed and swung
at the fresh flood, severing heads, spilling
the blood and poison of the panicked young.
The grass quickly filled with killing,
but as I, a small boy,
The brambled weeds that line my patch of lawn
are full of wasps. My knuckles ache for blooms,
but deep in brush a stinging sweetness looms.
Though when plucked the petaled stem is gone,
in verse its backyard brilliance could go on
to root below an ever-rising moon.
But flowers cannot grow in stanzas' closed rooms
where leaves are only ink and no shade can be drawn.
It's better then for beauty to be barbed
than snapped by fumbling hands that seek to clutch
a thing or fill a watered vase. No pen
or fingers still the steady ebb of hard-
won grace or ever halt the falling hush
of absence, forcing spring to come again.
In the Soil, a Stir of Night by DarlingDante, literature
Literature
In the Soil, a Stir of Night
The gardeners stood slack-jawed
at the sight of so many crates
heaped in the hot grass
then bent back the boards
and saw the huddle of veined wings:
dozens of bats, shipped from the east,
were to be scattered in the southern garden
like so many leaves on the night air.
But the gardenhands
mistook their daylight sleep for death
and spread the Texas soil
to make coffins of the crates.
They heard no shrieks or beats of wings
when shoveled earth piled
on planks, and it took years
for the men to learn that burial was a mistake.
Mosquitoes still gather there
in a thick, humming mist
above the hollow ground
but part when dark ai
Autumn had set fire to the leaves,
and I too was burning with the shadow-heat
of forgotten summers and the prickly sleeves
of desperate memory while sighing in the sweet
ennui of a southern town. To a young man,
this is an early death. Counting feathers
on a wind-weary heron or draining a can
of beer in solitude quickly weathers
wild passions. But, without the ivory
stillness of resting under Magnolia trees,
I would have never seen the hazy
sunset shining on the river's boundaries,
the sky drifting on to dusty distance,
the far starlight's silver brilliance.
It's a wonder what can fit in a box:
portraits, china, wall clocks,
all sagging inside the wrapping
with the sound of tape's snapping.
Heavier are the things that can't:
the first freeze and the tomato plant
covered in knives of ice but tasting sweet
when the blades dropped and you ate its meat;
the old house your mother left
where the child-you, lost, bereft,
wandered through an empty room
full of dust and fresh perfume.
I can't carry those things for you.
No matter the pay, and I need it too,
I can't hoist the heavy load of living
and have it to you by Thanksgiving.
But I take my share with the rest:
a forgotten cup, a
Upside-down Streams v.2 by Ninjastar13, literature
Literature
Upside-down Streams v.2
It's subtle,
Inflections carried on crafted vocal waves.
First you think you've been selected,
Then you find you've been rejected,
Come back once you've been corrected,
Then you will be reinspected,
If approved you'll get injected,
Once we see you've been affected
And your thoughts being directed,
You are ready to be infected,
Other people will be effected,
If they beg they'll be dejected,
Cuz their pleas will be rejected,
Massive death tolls are expected,
But as the dying are neglected,
Race of man being perfected,
We will never be suspected,
Total power is projected,
Once their souls have been collected.
If the dots have
It has been a very long time since I've gotten on DeviantArt, but I plan to pop in more regularly now. I've gotten some things published, won some prizes, and started contemplating my graduate degree.
Oh, and I have a new blog http://stanzapoetry.blogspot.com/
Feel free to take a gander at it. It will hopefully manifest into a useful resource for aspiring poets, but at present it's in its infancy with only a couple of (hopefully helpful) posts.
Yeah, I'm sick of seeing the whole "it's not my birthday" thing. So, how about a real update?
I just graduated with my BA in English as a McNair Scholar, and I am now preparing for a PhD in Creative Writing. I've been working as a writing/English tutor for about two years now at the university that I attended, and I am still doing that until I move off. I'm also taking a poetry seminar for free from a good friend who is a professional poet, so there will likely be a lot of new updates.
Thanks for the welcome backs and such, and I hope you're all doing well.