slow burn

And it's beautiful. Dark pools with brilliant sparkles, infinite soft darkness, milky pale silk and the gentle caress of non-lace resting on curved shadows highlighted with a warm red glow. Unnatural source, but natural effect. And the safety of curves finding their home in other curves. Of never wanting to part. Of slow burning coals in a fire, not the quick sharp snarl of a flame with empty passion. Of innocence and purity and repeated gentleness. Of feeling invincible, but not caring if you died that moment because of shared breath and words. Because the words were exchanged on the same breath so that it became something of both, not one thing said to another, but rather of a togetherness that seemed only appropriate. Of knowing change, and feeling different. Of believing. Hearing it and believing it.

beautiful words

i wrote you a letter once
and i never got around to sending it,
probably because i never liked it.

i could never get the words to say
quite exactly what i meant,
and i didnt want you to get the wrong impression.

i didnt want to say that anything was your fault
and i didnt want you to think
that i was trying to be someone i'm not.

i remember you once you needed me,
your hair was a mess
and you hadn't put any make up on.

i never got over the fact
that you had let me see you like that;
i even felt vulnerable for you.

i never loved you as much as i did then,
because frankly,
perfection is a relative term.*
-lauren

scarab man

i found this while looking for stuff on quaker parakeets. (?)

scarab man

more of a vent: smoke

Strongest person I know. Are you gonna put your emotions on the line of a piece of rolled up paper?

It’s not just a habit. Habits are biting your fingernails. Biting your fingernails doesn’t leave a 5 year old child in a Tinkerbell costume wondering why her pixie dust can make mommy smile through the tears, but still, more and more tears come. My grandma stopped smoking. Sucessfully. And it killed her anyway. Cancer, of course. Brain. It’s as if aunt char died. Do you want to explain why a habit killed zachary’s grandmother? 3 years old, the very first death I remember. I have two memories of her, and she’s a wisp. Literally. I do not remember what she looked like. My memories have a pasted picture from pictures I’ve seen of her. She is this body of space in my mind. A body of space on a hospital bed. A body of space in a chair with her children surrounding her. A body of space that only sometimes forms into human features, features of mixed people, jumbled memories. I don’t know how my relationship with my grandma was. I loved her. I know that. But I lost her so young that I don’t remember any memory of our relationship, except for a light flickering across space where a smile bloomed..not even bloomed, but dimmed lightly for me. Things have consequences. And whether it could come back to you 5, 20, or 60 years from now, there’s no way of knowing.

something i found while cleaning

Left right left right my left shoelace is coming undone a little bit. Eh, it won’t come fully undone for a while. I’ll leave it alone. For thine eyes alone shall bring the darkness unto my bright world. Did we have English homework? I think we were supposed to read something. I’m getting sort of behind, I really should work on that. Hammock. Can’t wait to be outside in my hammock. Feeling of weightlessness, even though I know it’s not. Why’s the light flashing? I wish I was insane. Tie the ribbon in a different way. When all I want is to walk past my seat, drop my backpack in the middle of the floor, climb up over Kevin’s desk, open that huge window and step outside it. Stand on that ledge, that ledge that’s not even a foot wide. Feel my heart in my throat, feel my heart doing backflips and my stomach clenching sickeningly. Open my mouth and gulp in fresh air, close my eyes and let the sun burn into my eyelids. Spots in the darkness. Spots of green and blue and orange where the sun is tearing at my eyes. It’s ok though. Let go, let go, let go, let go, let go, let go, let go, let go. And let go. Reach out towards that tree regardless of your heartache, regardless of how much hurt you have inside of you, that tree will still bloom like it does every year, summer’s gonna come anyway, the flowers are gonna blossom. Nothing can stop that reaching for the white buds jumping to them, knowing I’m not going to make it. Even if I died right now-the blood froze in my veins, or the air hung static in my lungs, that tree would still blossom. That’s a good feeling to have, knowing it’s going to blossom anyway. I’m shaking pretty hard right now and I don’t even know why. I’m shaking quite hard. I hate that feeling. I don’t have control over my body. Maybe that’s why I hate it so much. I’ve spent 17 years learning to have control of my body, and 14 of those years mastering that art, yet when I start shaking I lose that control. God dammit stop shaking. I hate when I can’t get my mind to work right, like its slopping through some thick heavy fog, a fog that’s physically dragging me down. And I never feel strong enough. I just sit. Just sit down right here, a puddle of skirts in the middle of the floor. Curl my head down to my knees hands working through my tangles. So many curls today, I don’t even know why it’s so curly but I just need to-feel-some-thing-somethinganythingatallthatdoesn’ttakemethreehourstofigureouti’mnumb,butnotnumb,justunabletoreactnocontrolovermymind. Catch up because I’m leaving without you, I’m leaving without you, grab at my neck. Clutching the hollow of my neck, across which my collarbones exchange loving looks. Scratching at it I really should cut my nails to get at the charm that hangs from the ribbon tie the ribbon in a different way around my neck. Satiny smooth stroke it desperately, soothe my nerves but I can’t. Tug at the charm, feel it pull the ribbon behind my neck. Tighten the ribbon, feel my throat constrict, how can it feel so full of emptiness, yet I have a sensation of tightening constriction can’t breathe don’t want to. Not today, no, no I’m just going to take today off, I need a break, just leave me here get your fucking hands off me, don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me just leave me alone stop looking at me I don’t want your attention, I just want to make myself happy, don’t compliment me, I’m not beautiful I just want to be what I want to be and I don’t feel any obligation to specify what that is for you. I’m not sepia toned today, but I’m not enough contrast for black and white. Maybe I’m black and white with a low exposure. Click, a moment in time, watch it slowly develop, it’s just like a memory, only a piece, don’t remember the before and after, only the moment completely out of context, could be a smile in the middle of a fight, but you aren’t going to remember that are you-god it hurt so much. You can’t even know. I don’t even know. You hurt me, you know that? You hurt me? You betrayed my trust, you betrayed my love. You don’t know how that feels, to find yourself like what’s that from. Finding out that a loved one has died is like when you get to the top of a staircase and you think there’s one more step, and there’s that moment while your foot falls through the empty air and you don’t know what to do. It’s exactly the opposite. It’s going downstairs, and there’s one extra step. You are safely stepping out and your foot sinks through the air, so you brace yourself for the fall, only to be jolted and thrown off by the solid under your foot, and as soon as you process that you’re no longer falling, your foot has slipped, and your whole weight crashes down and your heart is beating faster than it ever has before and you wait at the bottom silent, letting your heart beat, assessing the pain, not making any noise, just sitting there terrified. That’s what it’s like to be betrayed. That’s what it’s like to trust someone, to have a naïve sense of safety. That’s what it’s like when you expect the best in someone, see the worst, and look back, knowing that you had invented the best, and they were telling you their faults, but you didn’t see them, maybe even didn’t want to see them, more than likely didn’t expect to see them, so didn’t look for them. It’s becoming public knowledge which I hate, and I’m too shy even now to say why, because I can’t voice an emotion that deep. I’ve never said it outloud, I’ve never said it on paper, because I know that if I should, I wouldn’t be able to share it. And if I did, I don’t know if I could be that vulnerable. My heart was glass, and you cradled it lovingly, caressed it gently, and then whispered make a wish sweet nothings as you hurled it against the wall and down I came, splinters and all, slumped against a blank wall. And you never knew because I never told you. I don’t know if I ever will. A scary thought entered my mind as I was thinking in English. She’s always said of characters in literature People like that do not have the ability to love. They cannot deeply love. But you all can, and because of that you will experience more pain, but also more love. Some of you will harden, some of you will find yourselves more sensitive and I’m afraid I loved you more than you loved me, because we loved each other as much as we could. And I’m afraid that you couldn’t match my love. Which gives me hope that my next will does? Could? But I appreciate your love anyway. We were in love. And that was pretty kickass. But maybe you saw that I loved you more than you did. In which case, it’s only fair, and I thank you for that. This is the first time in a very very very long time that I have deeply thought about you. How often do you think about me? He asks. The silence he hears over the phone is not what he probably expected. She’s running her finger along the seam of her pants. I think about you all the time. All the time. And she gets a mental image. She doesn’t think about him as often, she guesses. Maybe once…maybe twice a week? Games are for children. And we aren’t children anymore. You took mine as you ruined yours. Cruel. You didn’t mean to, I know that. And you didn’t want to, and you still don’t know. I don’t know if anyone knows. Knows. It’s a difficult subject still, the betrayal of a heart.




i need a hug, it says on her shirt, on her soul.

poetry i like

Hey you, dragging the halo-

How about a little holiday in the islands of grief?

Tongue is the word I wish to have with you.

Your eyes are so blue they leak.

Your legs are longer than a prisoner's last night on death row.

You're a dirty little windshield

I'm standing behind you on the subway

Hard as calculus.

My breath sticks to your neck like graffiti.

I'm sitting opposite you in the bar waiting for you to uncross your boundaries.

I want to rip off your logic and make passionate sense to you.

I want to ride in the swing of your hips

My fingers will dig into you like question marks blazing your limbs into parts of speech

But with me for a lover, you won't need catastrophes.

What attracted me in the first place will ultimately make me resent you.

I'll start telling you lies, and my lies will sparkle become the bas stars you chart your life by.

I'll stare at other women so blatantly you'll hear my eyes peeling

Because sex with you is like Great Britain:

Cold, groggy, and a little uptight.

Your bed is a big calculator

Where my problems multiply

You're not my new girlfriend, just another flop sequel of the first one,

Who was based on the true story of my mother.

You're so ugly I forgot how to spell!

I'll cheat on you like a ninth grade math test.

Break your heart just for the sound it makes.

You're the this we need to put an end to.

The more you apologize, the less I forgive you.

So how about it?

-jeffery mcdaniel
---------------------------------

When they taught me that what mattered most
was not the strict iambic line goose-stepping
over the page but the variations
in that line and the tension produced
on the ear by the surprise of difference,
I understood yet didn't understand
exactly, until just now, years later
in spring, with the trees already lacy
and camellias blowsy with middle age,
I looked out and saw what a cold front had done
to the garden, sweeping in like common language,
unexpected in the sensuous
extravagance of a Maryland spring.
There was a dark edge around each flower
as if it had been outlined in ink
instead of frost, and the tension I felt
between the expected and actual
was like that time I came to you, ready
to say goodbye for good, for you had been
a cold front yourself lately, and as I walked in
you laughed and lifted me up in your arms
as if I too were lacy with spring
instead of middle aged like the camellias,
and I thought: so this is Poetry!

-prosody 101, linda pastan

love

moonlight is sweet fairy dust on her tongue and eyelids
and between the soft sheets of innocent cotton,
she cradles herself.
an oxymoron altogether.
sports bra, emphasizing the power in her arms and the ripples in her shoulders
pulled tight across her top two abs
that clench deliciously in the dark.
pink checkered pants
slung low on her hips
and caught against her bone with a red string.
tiny hands skim her smooth skin
skating, sliding, cradling the curve of her belly.
hard muscle, softened
woman is curve, man is line
and as her fingers curl around her hips
thighs
ribs
stroke the tender ravine of her spine
then once again return the embrace of her hands flat
sliding toward each other
across her tummy
embracing

part one

random musings:

rain beads against my throat
a necklace of silver
heavy
slick fingers combs rain-daisy chains through my hair
an ornate crown
nestled atop my proud pose
thick rings slip down my fingers
too big for my modest hands
they join the growing
(i’ve been known to make molehills out of mountains)
glittering diamonds at my feet
(hard edged yet ephemeral pain)
staccato accents with the pearls where the moonlight
nestles comfortably into drops
and they tumble down the tops of my feet.
i am rich with
potential

------------------------------------------------------

powerful
delivering you from your everyday evil
the influence can be seen anywhere
two words, one sound, two meanings, the same
except for how different they are.
heroin. heroine.