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The Growing Seasoni.
we slipped between each other's flesh,
intoxicated on the nectar—
never careful enough
to avoid the bitter seeds
of a previous commitment.

ii.
each night the pregnant ache coaxes
wicked acts to replay
along my nerve endings and synapses;
each night, the gardener's
tending hands
rooting deep.

iii.
were I to untether myself,
to prune the growing stillborn
from my chest,
you'd have no secrets
conceived of sin;
no reason to carry my face,
my voice, my touch,
in a painful miscarriage
of our unprotected actions—

were I
less than a weed.

iv.
each morning my stomach rejects
the early hour
into my utilitarian b
Seventy-FiveWhen spring is impossible to recall
except in the eyes of fresh-hearted young
I will seek a new tale in the grey autumn woods.
(it is not a dream if it is everyday)i no longer have the gall
to write letters to my universe.  
it’s stony quiet,
all around.
it’s possum eyes in headlights,
abandoned chandeliers
frozen
in Victrola dust.

some tireless pamphleteer
has wrecked this room
with motorized felicity!
there must be
at least
one bill for every breath,
paper
mountains
of indifference.

and now, i see
you are the same.
you’re no magic
planet.  i will
get up,
some time tomorrow,
mid morning, when the bugs have died,
and drive to work
and i won’t think
there’s anything
that ever came
before that sun.

and  there,
i’ll trade in shibboleths
and type in pointy let
remember thisgemini, i've found it -
the missing weight from my every
valley, that was pulled from me while i was
unborn. "abducted," i'll say,
travelling back through spirit-lands
to watch our beginning, to witness
our once-upon-a-whole.

i've fallen into lightless quiet.
as i begin to breathe, i feel a pressure
released from my ears
and i can hear a cadence of
concurrent blooms. a gentle buzz
hums along, carried by the scent
of begging blossoms' celestial seed, and i
dare to look; removing one finger, then two,
then ten from my prying eyes
to see us there.

we are feathered and flowered.
our thorny bird-bones have no gaps
and our mahogany-skin is unblem
for nothing or nobodywiden your life.
       the organ fails.
       the monk lifts his fingers.
the water falls thru,
the light betrays.
but still.
       things get returned to:
       windows & dying plants,
the place of the buried animal,
       the couch of the magnified christmas.
       sometimes faithfully,
       sometimes in unexpected ways.
widen your circling
       flowered
       self.
light a candle,
       indicate your life
       by the act.
daybreak undresses
       in your room
       while you sleep.
the light waits
       for nothing
       or nobody,
like music of the hands,
of ocean currents.
the w
CavalierYou sat with one hand on the dashboard,
your other one shaking,
reluctantly dancing with a cheap cigarette,
that you were simply burning,
because something needed to die.
We didn't look each other in the eye,
except in the rear view mirror,
the irony not yet reflected.

I will never forget that six thousand mile stare,
many times your age shining from the endless deep,
the weight of everything you carry
written in ruptured veins.

"Old ghosts dancing again," I said.
"This is not very good," I whispered,
tightened throat and eyes aflame.
You echoed, and then you were gone.
I remained for a while, in that wreck of a Chevy,
maroon
ZebraHer dress flows like a lazy river
when the thaw is done with the complaints
and the woods shrug their heavy shoulders.
She got it at that antique mall by the sea,
I remember. We were talking
of ice cream and whale bones.
It looked like a skeleton on the rack
but it space queened her.

Five dollars
or something.
Nobody cares. I was
looking for video games
from the 80s.
Black caps going
"CK - Christ is King."
"A family that prays together
stays together."
She wore dirty trainers
and she could have worn
anything.

She is still standing on that lawn,
looking like a takeoff.
I am still in that chair
thinking I could fly.
Vietnam, PapaI think you must have
missed me, right as I was coming in.
The rest of your life spent
serving a sentence to a country you already
defended, cells multiplying as college kids
protested your thousand-yard eyes.

Politicians used great men to
play country chess over the Mekong, shoving
Saigon lovers and colors through the
barrels of your guns. You were one of the great,
lost in gold October, passing by moments before
I barreled through. It's not fair the only
name I could put to you is Swamp Rat,
not Grandpa. Secret agent orange destroyed
more than just your cells.

I'm still going to remember
hazy, azure moments I was too late
to see, but if I
ZemiThings having to be returned to their transparency:

       i.
       / green mist-earth / knit
        atmosphere / fathomless
        blue-lavender / lights
        spun out from light

        ii.
        are recalcitrance / and you
        are convergence

     & - a fingernail of summer
        - a melting of rain
        - a crown of flowers
        - a priest of sunsets

(beautiful? I love you, because. Zemi.
Zemi. are you beautiful because I love
you? Zemi?                                   )

       iii.
       I imagine this is what it's like to breathe sea foam
       over the Cliffs of Moher: hydration. absolution.
sadists are people, toothis sun has found its nihilists
on cold curbs,
on concrete roads.

everyday, one of them guards the subdivision.
i thought, “a sphinx, a totem piece, an angel of death.”
whatever, my sleepy projectionist.  

it’s on my way anywhere.
it’s on my way home.

silver-brown maw, it’s at its ugliest
shriveling inside of possum flesh
in a slow taut hug
of the last empty
promise.

i won't be caught up
listening
for
one.

just lay there
for me.
her depressions used to wrinkle the bedsheets.she lay around for hours, then called out,
"i don't know whether i'm too old or young for this,
but i'm just too tired to face today and tomorrow
might be the same. will you get your brother for me?
i left him at school this morning, and i'm not sure what time
he needs to be picked up. i've been forgetting so much lately,
so maybe i should work less, take a vacation somewhere warm,
or sleep until the year settles its dust. but we can't do that now,
can we? responsibility's a bitch, jorge. don't get married,
at least not to someone you'll divorce."

like a good son, i collected adrian from the pavement
where he'd been waiting too long,
a
JackIn my 57th year there was Jack
grey curls, leggy and long,
scratchy-chinned
and warm as August
from head to thigh.

"You're the best thing
and the worst thing
that ever happened to me,"
he whispered into the night
giving love in parentheses,
and I fit just under his arm.

"We should have met
when we were young,"
he said, my hands tracing
the broad spring of his chest.

"This is going to be hard."
Air dry as cotton.
Heart, too heavy to fly.
Stick-MenStick-men with blazing matchheads march across the table, single file, towards a glass of water. Latin incantations are said by a sole stick man by the water. It's a mass suicide. One by one they scramble up the slippery glass and jump in, their flames extinguished. This is the way of the world. Someone has placed lilacs on the table. I don't know why. This is the way of the world. I am their god, yet I only observe. It is not for me to determine their end, only to watch, and keep from getting splinters in my fingers. The lilacs smell good over the smoke. It smells like rain outside.
PositiveLeft to me, your worst historian,
to pick up, in a daze, some depth of diction
I never found while you had lived

and I can only now pretend that words are capsules
of sanguinity, that they’ll unmask the symbologies
of sound that bore your binaries to their realms
like sacred dreams of Hypnos.
                                                    Regret’s a simple word.

I always thought of "A Separate Peace", and in those scenes
you were this Mozart in the rough, a perfect chord, one
which I would meekly channel through cracks of light
shown through the fist of my own interference,
steady indifference.
                   
Cruithne
I hurtle through scattershot stars
secret unseen in a liquid night
silent and eternal cold
across seven centuries
my heart resounds in yours
silver-tipped fingers
like ten blind eyes
splay and seek
that core of warm
never found
past Mercury, past Mars
my orbit echoes yours
We never meet
but I return
again and again
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She and the musicDreams in low definition.
Deadeye night.
Red pulsar company, blink blink.
Left eye splinter, can't get it out.
Sharp bit compression breaths
and the cold, gut-wrenching beat.
I would reach out if I knew where my arms began,
I fear that all you get are hands
tipping the scales.

She ticks, she ticks, nebula pioneer
in her twin star kicks.
I sleep with pores open to exude
what soul belongs to her.
She is also inside me.
Spike digging deep, heart seeker.
Long way coming, long way gone.
Don't remember the sting,
can't get it out.
Such a beautiful way
to slowly, slowly, slowly die.

She walks on thought paths
and the wilderness
10:15 to EternityThese are the ways a year passes by:
1) Sand paper.
2) Your lover caressing your cheek, sucking your guts from your mouth by sheer force of departure.
3) A bullet train at 90 degrees.
4) Lightning!
5) .

These are the ways you remember it:
1) Like her, appearing.
2) Like him, fading.
3) Like them, mirrored, staring out of your mind.
4) Like pools of nobody special.
5) A Polaroid of all of it, gaining colour, losing focus.

These are the impressions you left:
1) Sandy hollows and missing air.
2) Footsteps, half-shading new and secret places.
3) Residual heat and moisture, raw lips.
4) Poison and fertilizer, bent grass.
5) Echoes
MouseMouse is in the wall.
He listens for your breathing.
Mouse is in the wall.
Whiskers on the outside of your inside,
he feels for signs of loss.
Homes in empty spaces,
halls between our thoughts.

Mouse is in the wall.
He listens for the cracks,
the notches and the secrets.
A tiny nose vibrates,
an eager tail explores.
Mouse is in the wall.
He writes his unseen stories,
surrounding you like dust.

The money breaks.
The high-rise falls.
The ground thunders.
The skies fault.
Mouse does not flinch.
This is meaningless to him.

Mouse is in the wall.
If you listen, you can see,
if you focus, you can hear.
The blank spaces crawl
Postcard from the daysideIt is silent in this night. Nothing comes
or goes. There is not a leaf in movement
and neither stars nor clouds.

Your words are on this picture's back.
They're everything you are. Your smile you wrote
with lines and dots, your bird song from afar.

But this all there is.
I fill the blanks with make-believe,
construct your face from thoughts.
I feel your fingers touching mine,
whenever you respond.
I walk the paths that you describe,
and lead you down my own.
Secret places, neverwhere,
hidden phrases codified,
the way we touch the sky -
unicorns and octopi,
only you and I.

Only you and I.

This is all there is.
But dreams are
SwitchbackPerhaps you have to lose a thing
to gain another.
But nobody said that the switch
must leave you poor.
The signs in your head pointing back
are there to highlight.
The holes in your head and your heart
are fading scars.
What you make of it
is entirely yours.

Perhaps you have to gain a thing
to lose another.
Defending your present mistakes
is a futile skill.
You map the roads, the pits, the goals,
you travel at will.
Pulsate, vibrate, feel every state,
don't stop to think
when tasting the dark
is the way to go.

So taste the wind.
Taste the dirt.
Taste the water.
Draw in the sky.

What you find in it
is entirely yours.
Where the sky meets the landI have burnt my faith in myself
at both ends.
And I am left with little but smoke
and the ashes of my intent.
This is the way that it goes
when you step on that ledge
pretending no fear
or wish to look down.
Sooner or later your eyes
will be weighed by the Sun
and your body fall from
the shine. Sooner or later you hit
the proverbial ground.

Good.
This is where you meet yourself
for the very first time.
A tinker, a tailor, a fighter,
or a self-pitying swine.
There is nothing to do but build
where you stand
from the sand and the bone.
Let the blood drench the arid places
that always were dry.
Take every hair and pull it

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December 18, 2012
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[x]

Thrown

:iconneonxaos:

Bones heaped
like uncaught bonfires.
Crash lander, skyborn,
splintered like frostbitten stones,
like trees fallen deep
from the snow line.

Eulogy of a man that was,
and the name of his lover written
in femurs, vertebrae and ribs,
waiting for the thaw,
the salmon and the sea.

All memories carried by wolves
to their starving cubs.
Open skull for the rainfall
and the birds.
The landscape of skin
imprinted on the ground.
A fading map
with footstep borders
disappearing fast
in the tide of time.
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:iconshehrozeameen:
Critique by ~shehrozeameen Dec 18, 2012, 11:53:33 PM
This is a good work. The blank nature gives it a significant twist and turn.

Although, I'll admit I didn't get it much, rereading it was assuring - its as if you don't need to understand this work to like it.

Its an abstraction of sorts; it reminds me of Dylan Thomas in the blank form per say. "And Death Shall Have no Dominion" or "A Winter Tale".

Its bittersweet, and it is as clear as the very ruminerations of what was taking place when this was written... It captures the beauty of a funeral, without being too out of place.
What do you think?
Fair Unfair
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:iconglossolalias:
*glossolalias Jan 1, 2013
beautiful, dramatic wording. bittersweet and almost apocalyptic in feel; captures the idea of death effortlessly.
Reply
:iconneonxaos:
*neonxaos Jan 2, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
Thank you, master breakdancer :)
Reply
:iconglossolalias:
*glossolalias Jan 2, 2013
haha, you're welcome.
Reply
:icondreamsinstatic:
`dreamsinstatic Dec 28, 2012  Professional Writer
Your fantastic work has been featured in Friday Night Features.
Reply
:iconneonxaos:
*neonxaos Dec 29, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Ohh, thanks a lot! :)
Reply
:icondreamsinstatic:
`dreamsinstatic Dec 30, 2012  Professional Writer
You're welcome.
Reply
:iconfuzzyhoser:
`FuzzyHoser Dec 28, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Oh, very nicely worded. Haunting!
That second section is amazing, by the by.
Reply
:iconneonxaos:
*neonxaos Dec 30, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Thank you, glad to hear it!
Reply
:iconfuzzyhoser:
`FuzzyHoser Dec 30, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
:heart:
Reply
:iconriparii:
*riparii Dec 24, 2012
the thaw, the salmon and the sea...
a lot to like here.
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