[x]

Foam OverI know her secret:
she has no bile
or sweat or blood.
She's just cloth draped over
soft cloth, it is what
the edges of my hands remember,
recanting dreamily to each other.

I have made her dirty with affection.
We both are waiting for sunshine
to foam over the hills.

If you lay down in the park long enough,
someone will pick you up. Even without hope,
someone will pick you up. Even without hope,
someone will not let you lie there and burn.

Lean Over The RailA wood and steel bench on a pier
where the tourists have no reason
to go (that makes it home, that
makes it mine). It is chained to
the boards with seafoam rust
as if someone expects it to collapse
in the wind-
or to somehow preserve
all those pale carved hearts.

Like the one on the underside
of its leg, kept out of
sight (someone bent over
for this, someone wanted
this secret and forever).

(A tattoo, kept
from the family).

I can't read it anymore,
I can only touch it with
the top of my hand
and wonder if the ocean I'm
watching extends past
my eyes.

I Woke Up Like HeliumI woke up like helium,
all teeth and nails
and sunshine. Breath
that could move the waves, eyes
all over the crowd
looking for one to
latch onto.
Searching for that person who
is an island-
skin like sand
fists like rocks
palms like palms,
brushing against
the light
catching air.
Maybe they will get good, maybe
they will get
far away.
You need a place to stand
that will move the earth.
You need to
lay down like an animal,
and like
the other pretty things on the shores,
I say,
wait until you are pretty too.

The Petals OnlyAnother late night
sober, without conviction.
Not loveless, not
a cat in the road,
not even moss on the doorstep.
The heat shimmer is bawdy
and the kids go to sleep
early for a reason.

It's just like
when you find out
you weren't born special.

When you find out
the pretty ones do
have petals on their beds.
Stepping on the sheets.

It's the pin-prick stars
that are sick of waiting
for us.
It's telling the clouds
what they look like.

Grab a handful of a dirt
with your back to the grass,
and choose which finger
to point at the sky.

BoxcutterWe are
in her hardwood apartment,
that we bought
because of the neighbors
and the windows
that light up
the dust on the floor.

She is kneeling
in front of
cardboard boxes,
sliding the knife
down the sides
with a paper sound.

And I am staring
into the empty rooms.

If she pushed
that boxcutter
into my lungs
the air would rush out
and say:

When you look at me
and bite your lip,
I see brown hair
and darker eyes.

And I would let her too
if it didn't
make such a mess
for the dust
and the neighbors
and the hardwood floor.

Paperback SpineIn stories,
the lucky ones
have their lives changed
by one little moment-
one dandelion puff
between your palms.

And the author stresses
this moment, how tiny,
that seemingly unimportant
sentence, breaking
into a novel.

You have to be
always ready.

My eyes have gone dry
and my lungs are about to pop,
and my tongue is oversaturated-
and burning.

Butterfly/RavenSo we are sitting on one of those
uncomfortably tight bus stop benches
and we've just met,
but she's rather pretty
with her artificially dark hair
and naturally dark eyes.
I tell her a story about my past
and a joke about drugs
and she's laughing-
she says: you sound like you want
a girlfriend,
my boyfriend says he would never
leave me;
wouldn't you want a girlfriend
like me?
And I say no, I would rather
have a butterfly's proboscus
that I could unravel and slide down your throat
in order to better taste your nectar.
The little bench is suddenly too uncomfortable
for her and my laughing
probably doesn't help either.

He Tripped Out The Front DoorWrite a happy story
for once. She tells me.

Okay,
he tripped out the
front door of his
broken home
for the last time.

That isn't happy,
it's cathartic
at best.

But it certainly
isn't sad.
So what could it
be?

There was red on the trees
in early winter,
and you could hear laughter
if you thought it was there.

Now what
happens next.
She tells me.

I could taste it
in my throat.

AgingWhen I walk on the curbs
of downtown, I can turn my head
and see my reflection
in the glass.
In the windows that stand guard
against the smoke
and the rain
and the winds.
I can see myself,
flickering between panes
as I move down the streets.
I can see myself,
wrinkling
wisening
waiting to grow old
and learning how to remember.

CaleaShe's brewing that tea
from the island
that grabs your hair
and pulls you into
the street. I'd drink
it to get rid of
my wild dogs; all that
lonely guilt and
happy memories,
with more in my year
before the steam catches
our senses. Time is less
of a straight line
and more of a blowtorch.
It seals us up before
we can flaunt our disease.
A paranoid schizophrenic
doesn't know he's sick; the junkie
believes what he says.
We nakedly trust our eyes
we nakedly trust our bodies.
It's all enough to kill a storm
and make a coat
from its hair.
My blue-green iris
grows with my mouth
on tiny strings
and tiny thoughts
as my body drinks,
and drinks,
and dri

Drink DeepWe are not yet
dead, but the
scientists and
philosophers would
have you believe
that we are dying.
We have rehearsed
the methods of our
creation.
We make muses
from nature and
from each other.
We assume, like the
canyon's high-water mark,
that the floods
will not come.

Who am I
to say that
this is false,
that we have
little particles
that hold us apart-
(we are ever so slightly
levitating off the ground
and from each other.)

And the streets protest
by rehearsing the methods
of our end.

When our blood
turns to alcohol
and the first thing
they see of us
is the white
of our bones.

(nothing)Sitting on this bus,
I know that I am distinctly
separate.
I am the absence of this bus,
and the other passengers
as well.
There is some sort
of truth to this;
some sort of credence
that I can't
place my hands on.

(I am not the paper, only the folds
made by my fingers.
I am not the blankets,
only the indent left behind.
I am not the rain,
only the dry spots
marking the pavement.)

Even when I'm standing still,
I am not the air.

(I can only hold it in.)

HeldWhen you took me from my petal
and cupped my frailty
between your hands,
it was like my chrysalis was back
and I am changing again.

It was just as warm as I
paintbrushed your palms
with my monarch wings.
You opened up your smallest fingers,
and I saw five hundred facets
of your child's eye.

I saw every angle of your innocence,
I saw the sheen on your corneas
when you flitted those threadbare wings.
I saw the shoebox with corners
like a prism.

And your call was so loud
when you carried me home.
And I witnessed
your five hundred pins,
and five hundred books.

With five hundred fingers you
pinched me out,
and held me to bru

PeakShirtless in bed,
on a lonely
saturday night.

An impatient man
writes impatient
poetry.

We Can Make Reams From The TreesIt is
waiting
for newspaper

to turn
crisp,
and yellow

then red.

Autumn
novelized,
no more

stories
of winter
and

dying.

How about
we
circle our

favorite
words,

I chose

blush and
brunette
and
roof,

goodnight,
twice

just to
make

sure.

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Six Feet Of WinterWe left Autumn buried under snow.

Spring Is In The..."Spring is in the air",
she sighed, as
snowflakes fell
under a frosted
glass sky.
The window
smoldered into mist
from her monotone
whisper. "Watch",
her finger traced
something on the pane,
but the breath had
disappeared.

All I saw were
snow white flakes
and Spring; falling
through her hair.

Dirty IvoryStrolling out from a
stranger's apartment,
I remembered yesterday's
morning; I
remember the sunrise.

I remember
walking behind the
alleyway in the
mud
rain
sun.
With the gravel beneath
my feet making a
crunching sound, but
not actually
getting crushed.
More like,
getting pushed around like
too many faces in a
crowd.

I remember
warm
orange clouds.

I
remember a
man with a trenchcoat
under one arm.
Lighting a new
cigarette with the ash
of his spent one.
-And the word "silk"
tatooed on his wrinkled
knuckles.

I
remember his
wings, most of
all, his ivory
wings.

ShhhhThey hold hands
from two
single
beds,
a mile apart.

Isn't this
just a
sad story?

I'm not
so sure
about that.

In Congress These DaysIn Congress
these days,
they now have to
tie down
the statues so
they won't
try
to escape and
stomp their way
to the ocean.

RxI would prescribe for each
and every one of you to
spend an uncomfortable amount of time
with someone more medicated than yourself.

It doesn't matter if they see things,
or refuse to feed their guts,
or happen to be so anxious that they
can't
stop
shaking.

Just lounge around and pretend to drink
untouched coffee. Smoke unlit
cigarettes. Let them choose the
conversation topic; it will be interesting-

It will be about
demons.
It will be about
fireflies.
It will be about the kinds of things that
stand over your bed and burrow deep into your
chest with their lighted eyes.

He or she will make the case
that every medicine shar

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Submitted: January 25
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Wild

by *FallingAsleepTonight, Jan 25, 2013, 12:26:05 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

You could never be strangers again
in that void of charged space
between the eyes and the air.
And the other people, who are
less than faces in the crowd.

Maybe it was a true dream of
dark times, always walking,
you are thief protected by gloss
that they could break
if only they knew how.

The lion at the zoo could
jump the fence, the wolves
could dig beneath the glass.

Safety is a mutual ignorance,
and it is something to be reminded
through wilds of the woods,
that she has fangs
and so do you.

Wildby *FallingAsleepTonight

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

*Me2Smart4U 1 day ago Student Digital Artist

WOW...There is a lot of powerful emotions within this poem...
The contrast of this piece is expressed very strongly....
I've enjoyed the creative flow