[x]

ISLNDSyou like the way
the i slants,
an error's
guidance
in a sea
of hyphens.

sans-serif
in cropped crests
made to full-
stop breasts
beating;
an obsess-
ion breathing
in lost chests.

now a motive
is seething
with options;
play thief
and proceed greedily,
often.

dive deep
and drink
the leap's froth;
breath is only
as sweet as the
speech that breeds thought.

if only, if only.i.
we drove nowhere
and we spoke a language
that nobody understood
underneath a foreign sky
blanketed in the scent of pine.

ii.
you told me
my eyes were like envelopes—
because they were always
opening
closing
fluttering to the sound
of breaking seals
and ink stained fingertips.

iii.
i told you
we should run away
to a new land
with new faces
because
i was enamored
with people i had never encountered
and places i had never gone.

iv.
you laughed at me
and said that
if i didn't spend
so much time with my head
buried in world maps
i would realize
that i was living on one.

v.
i remember
it rained that day
and the tea went cold
but the

Va'eiraThis was a lesson in just how quiet it can be
when you don't make enough noise.

Me, holding a toy gun to a stranger's head
"Remember when things stopped being ridiculous?"

You, eating dandelions in a midnight field
"About the same time things stopped making sense."

A boy in church camp carved a small crucifix
for his arts and crafts project. He won the blue
ribbon and a brand new Bible. The next morning
I found it hanging over our cabin door.
A toad was nailed to the cross.
Still breathing.
Still breathing.

Sometimes we wake up early enough to hide the evil from our world.
Still breathing.

Bits of Nothing 61On paper you're perfect.

Isn't it a shame the world isn't made of origami?

Harvest MoonThree a.m. moonlight
across lazy dust motes; a
tree scrapes the window.
Your arm weighs on my hip like
whispered promises of love.

earth circuitAnd when the sun sinks, the earth's skin crawls:

I.
I wonder if this awkward creature would notice me the way I notice him.
He's so tragic at his throne
I stare after him longingly.
And yet,
He never realizes that I'm the one
Who forever basks in his brilliant beams.
If only he knew how much brighter he could burn
[with me]
He'd light up the universe.

II.
I heard him speak of thirst, once.
The quenching lust of the stars had run dry.
So that night, I brought along a jar of acid.
(And how it gleamed in his glow).
I handed it to him, wrapped in taffeta ribbons,
screaming
I wish curdling joy
On my gurgling boy

Like petals and leavesWhen she thinks of him, she thinks of tree branches:
spindly fingers spread out, stretching
in angles wide for handfuls of sky.

And she thinks of him.

She thinks of him digging his toes
into soft, damp sand,
wading in shallow depths before
being carried by crescents of the sea.

She thinks of him in a blur of curls, in the
warmth on her waist and the coolness on her lips,

pressing the memories and the maybes
like petals and leaves
to paper.

And she thinks of him.

mosaics.sometimes unique
is not loud;
or bright, alive and raging,
possessed of a hunger for the atypical,
up front and too close,
or thrice-pierced and drenched
in the rebellions
particular to the latest generation.

sometimes it is a girl with
mouse brown hair and eyes
the color of weak tea,
who stands with her schoolbooks clutched
to her chest, in uniform shades of grey-blue
like the midmorning autumn sky

who has a wide mouth prone to nervous smiles,

pale lips and pale cheeks
and words that don't always come out
the way she means

who holds the universe
in the intricacies of her fingerprints
and laughs in treble clef notes
and u

chromaWe were merely children when the stars came.

They rained down from the sky in a burst of light, like shards of glass pouring down from the heavens. Supernovas blooming in the night sky, petals raining down onto the barren earth - angels, falling with their wings sheathed, glowing, as they glided down. We watched, starstruck, as the glow overtook us - we were mesmerized. We waited with bated breath as the meteors landed, the celestial light subsiding as dark forms started to pick themselves up from the dust.

They moved towards us with an otherworldly grace, their steps leaving no marks on the earth as they descended upon us. Frozen to our sp

SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.

It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic ki

Come Home: A PantoumYou'll always come back to me
when the lights in the far hills
are done searching. For, new beds

entice adventurers. Too,
when the lights in the far hills
come home, the homespun dream they

entice adventurers too,
but they can't. (Dream we're neither.
Come home.) The homespun dream they

turn pioneers to homebodies,
but they can't dream we're neither,
our wanderlust fit to turn

pioneers to homebodies.
We've always made love free, so
our wanderlust fit. To

turn ourselves towards our home
we've always made love. Free. So
when the last adventurers

turn themselves toward their homes
in faraway lands, I know,
when the last adv

Lightning Bug CosmosI lace my skin up like a corset, peel back the blinds on my eyelids, and take a step forward, waking from the poppies to the
lightning bug glow of truth tapping on my eardrums.

In front of the mirror I stand, but what I notice is not the awkward crook of my nose or butterfly lashes. I look into the lighted mirror as if searching for answers hidden under
Ribbon-like sets of

bedIt's a stabbing sight
Letting in the morning with a crack of the shades
And you forget you could page-turn horizons
Waft through free territory
Where acres are just beds
Made of fresh land

Wrinkles in the river
Tell remembered times
About old languages that could make you cry
About soft beds that carve away canyons
A speaking voice lifted from the earth
Begging you to remember

for unseeing eyesladen with sky
we stumbled
and painted mockingbirds
on loveless branches
folding in our slender limbs
and ducking under our own
voices, fidgety and frail
against the wall of night.

between the dipping blades
and drawn shoulders
we learned to craft our words
steady-soft,
a drumming rain
that carved canyons
in open hearts and
drew the sunshine to
our supping lips.

keen-eyed, we watched
remembering the weight
of unseeing eyes
and scalding remarks
and we learned to slip
the noose-knots and slide
through the soul-cracks
and somehow
build kingdoms under
upturned noses.

with lyrical uncertainty
and tender determinat

free agentwell she
told me
that she'd vanish
into the forest
for four years
to be-
come some secret dream
a si-
lent specter who'd
someday
reappear

to collect
all conscious thought
wanted or not
in the solitude
that shadows
brought

but still
burned bright
this tiny light
who taught my
dark
about her
night

and so I
made her name
the only
whispered word
our time would hear
and I dis-
played
only privately
the images
between my ears

yet the moon
often makes possible
one who
breathes
for two

or

orphans
proper principle
the way
that
lovers sometimes do

and we do
and we do
(we doot-doot-do)

oh! and dreams
can

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SlaverThe body is a backbone,
temple to the toe.
The mind is a live zone,
geyser and the floe.

The primeval sludge mothered us.
We wonder where the meaning hides
in our muddy choices.
We are the land, the stone, the roaring sea.
Thoughts pyre and burn;
the smoke relaying only
how something joined the wild.
From the ashes, new generations
question their naked bodies,
they wonder if the coming tides
are of the cleansing kind.

The body is another clone
high to the low.
The mind is a chromoloan
impossible to know.

No tone clearMy eyes are ringing.
My ears spot black spots
in my auditory field,
enveloping my head
like hands calling home.
Bells are flowing,
the land is heard.
My fingers can taste
the autumn wind, and
my nose wraps around
the passage of time.
The fall is not a fall
but a necessary de-
construction of rotting
elements. The reason
the sky arches low
and the sweet fire flies.
Follow the snake
under the mossy stone,
his is a secret life
of diamond dark.
My thoughts are bulbous,
pickled and conserved.
Empty jars and sugar
echo with freezing noise;
crystalline palace.
An angular wind creeps
into every crevice;
it, too, has other

The illusion of elusionThere are tens of thousands of ways to be,
but only a single one to be yourself.
You know it deep inside.
The way your hearts jumps
at the mention of certain things.
Greta Garbo, wild horses, model airplanes,
misty meadows, a crying child, a hungry child,
a murder process, boiling water, a broken
stanza, pieces of art, fat money,
slender hips, sorrows untold.
The certain things are not always pleasant,
but they are who you are,
so stir them up and drink deep.
If you drown, at least you lived.

The moment you lose this certainty,
you are adrift.
At the mercy of killer waves
you raise your eyes, but the world
is all horizon.

No trace cipherHuman contact has grown beyond touch
into the digital buffer zone.
Our fingers reach around the world
tickling unseen faces
of anonymous avatars.

Every thought is now free
to travel at the speed of light.
This virtual sensation
makes it harder to be lonely
but so much easier to be lost.

Light is now "#FFFFFF";
darkness is "#000000".
The colour of the human heart
is "#FF0000".
Romance is firewalled
as a potential threat.

Denial of service, denial of trust.
We are requested to accept
the illusion that we are safe
behind our shining shields.
But our digital bloodlines
run across the new frontiers
into the marrow
of the glo

Road of originThe ashes lay thick on his mind as he descended,
his backbone the remains of fallen fortresses,
his arms extensions of the past,
his self guided by ghostly voices.

Built from our common legacy, vast legions of bricks
unite into the road of infinite ends and beginnings.
What we call it is of no importance,
only where it takes us by our feet and leads us.

His left foot touched down for the very first time,
resting on the bony shoulders of his forefathers.
His right foot followed, gingerly, settling softly
on the powerful wombs of our foremothers.

Every generation cuts its grooves into the road,
droughts of inspiration crack it, inv

CalorMissed the time code strict
on that one.
There is a crucial moment when her eyes blink
and she touches her hair,
and all you're supposed to do
is simply stare.

Yeah, it was a blood-vein night
and the wine was drowning us
instead of air.
And I danced, danced, danced,
I danced with her.
She smiled all the way around me,
white pearl flash embrace;
and every word she sang, bang, bang,
rang my skull, rattled my brain,
shook my body, shattered my frame
and took me there.

Where's the money in your heart, boy?
Cause you pay each time it beats,
and you look like you are
flat-flat-flat-out broke.

There's nothing to find
where you

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Submitted: July 26, 2012
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Pressure

by *neonxaos, Jul 26, 2012, 6:45:46 AM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

Something broke.

A hard CRACK while sitting in
a soft chair. No pain registered.
The absence of it
is like watching explosions in space.

You follow the curve of your skull. You remember
how skulls are formed like tectonic plates.
Your head wants to be a planet,
volcanic, living, in change.

You continue to your left shoulder,
the one with all the problems.
But today, it has nothing to say.

Your rib cage moves
like oceanic waves, expecting a storm
that hasn't come.

You stand up,
homo erectus,
you consider your legs,
homo sapiens,
nothing feels wrong,
homo stabilis.

But you can break
more than your body.

Pressureby *neonxaos

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

...

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-11-02

Pressure by *neonxaos Suggester Writes: The piece takes me on a journey with each reading, and I feel everything that the author describes, whether I know first hand or not. The last stanza is relatible to anyone who reads it. ( Suggested by `jade-pandora and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

Critique by ~BlackCatWhiteWolf Nov 2, 2012, 10:50:33 AM

I like how eerie this piece becomes, how you don't know what's going on, or anything?. I am curious as to what is actually going on.
The descriptions of various bones was interesting, ("You follow the curve of your skull. You remember how skulls are formed like tectonic plates. Your head wants to be a planet, volcanic, living, in change", "Your rib cage moves like oceanic waves, expecting a storm that hasn't come.") The similes are well thought out and well executed.
The style is quite nice, and I was drawn in fairly quickly. Good wording, good style, and I also like how you didn't overuse CAPITALIZATION, which can be a problem and is a large turnoff.

What do you think?

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Critique by ~pomohippie7 Jul 27, 2012, 12:13:44 PM

I think the best thing about this piece is how much you are being told about the affliction but are never really told what it actually is; it lends a deep quality of mystery to it but certainly escapes being frivolous or overly whimsical. The opening line grabbed my attention immediately and the capitalized CRACK was well placed and used, not only keeping my attention but lending a sense of immediacy to find out more. The only stumble I can find in this whole piece (and it is quite a little one) is in the fourth group of lines: 'the one with all the problems'. This seems almost a sub- caliber description as everything else here is described in such novel, raw ways. Comparing the skull plates to tectonic plates makes so much sense and is just brilliant. The second to last group of lines is also just amazing. This is a very exceptional piece all the way around.