[x]

The Man and the MoonHer mouth corners hung themselves
and I began to wonder if that was the death of them.
A simple, quiet death;
without broken fingernails lining the walls
with the stripes of a despairing end.
I began to ache with the questioning in my heart
with the echoes reverberating in my capillaries
of her face scorching sunshine in her smile
right before it crumpled
and nothing was left but a frowning moon
set firm in its resignation to an upcoming eclipse.

the scars on your shouldersthe scars on your shoulders
are braille to me, so that i
can read your skin, so that i
can know you better.

i like to listen to your heartbeat
and how it resounds differently
from mine, just so beautifully
like two songs played in tandem
to harmonise in rounds;

i like to hold your hands
and rub your back
so that maybe my love
can find its way through your pores
and seep into your blood
(never can i find the right words
to tell you just the way you feel to me)

and to think that and how i nearly missed you
makes me miss you more
every minute and mile we spend
elsewhere.
i can't sleep with another body
in my bed,
but sleeping without you
leav

He doesn't write poetry anymore.He doesn’t write poetry anymore,
even if he still collects it, reads it, saves it, treasures
faded verses from his wife the way connoisseurs
savor vinyl over metallic rainbows on disc.
I don’t mind not knowing, but I can’t stand not asking.

The record needle hits the groove wrong;
he stumbles over words that aren’t there,
rummaging for an answer he doesn’t really have.
He doesn’t write poetry anymore
and his confusion is strangely endearing.

But there’s a lyricism to his words that I love,
poetic lines inserted between the daily grind
of character names and who said what;
voiceless boys in white a

Overgrown ColorsRed like blood on a rose.
White like bone and stars.
Black like reclusiveness.
Green like dead air.
Orange like the savage instinct.
Purity like a god's heart.
Red like thawing hatred.
White like a frozen, severe cry.
Black like the night's deprived shadows.
Green like the wind in the grass.
Orange like the light in the shadows.
Purity like the sun rising.
So discharging through the moon in a wheeze is like luminous white, dispersed red.

PocketLeftover religion in the pocket
Of my trenchcoat
A key that unlocks nothing
A penny, a scrap of paper
With half of your name
Written in black ink

A song that is usually in my head
In the shriveled carcass
Of a long-dead dream
In the pocket
Of my trenchcoat
With the lint

with thanks to frosttwo roads diverged in a soulless dawn
and you pull over,
idling on the shoulder of route 50.
it's a polaroid morning and
the world is as grainy
and sleep-heavy
as your eyes,
and one million miles
is not far enough.
it plays back, filmstrip,
blurred along the length of
optic nerves,
and here you are:
facing a choice between
on
and
out.
and this?
this loosejointed, hollowbodied
weightless ache--
this is what
gone
feels like.

Condemnedbeneath the beaten earth they lay,
their dreams condemned to ashes,
and our restless bodies stretch,
for forgiveness, for direction –

survivors of the abyss,
amidst wide-eye, silent soldiers –
so many dead, so many maimed,

how many graves are we standing on, today?

SisterSister

A sister is like a soul mate;
Someone who is always there
to guide me through fate.

A sister is,
a part of childhood that I cannot erase;
A sister like you,
is one that I would never replace
because you always know how to
put a smile on my face.

I know I can depend on you
to always be there for me;
This is one hundred percent guaranteed!

I've had great memories with you
in the past;
and I hope there are many more
to come,
in the future.

SurelyIt was raining
when we kissed for the first time,
for the last time.

Thin rivulets
sunk into the shrunken space
between our bodies
and divided us
like nothing could before,
like everything will
from now
until that never again
when we will
see each other once more,
no more.

Your eyes were
that bewitching shade
of dull brown blue
with all of the light darkness
whirling
in a placid pond
around a pupil
overflowing with vacancy,
and me
and my frowning smile.

The winter heat
fell like a rising tide
and,
for our every breath
was another death
so black and full of life --
embracing our boiled ice skin
as we drew apart,
came together and broke free

Life, Death And A Pork Chop SandwichAll tangled up, hard to breathe
This steel cloud day that swirls
With heat and pounding hammers
I shake in my boots and cough up
Blood, rust and damaged flesh
Waiting for the second coming
Maybe next time around there'll be
Some chance for more than this

A twisted barbed wire halo
Wrapped tight around my skull
Blinding white light aura
Swarming with flies I'm flying
To pieces, thousands of shards
Cannot be brought back together
But I will remember the summer
Of my first Chevrolet in each bit

Gleaming bits of glass in the desert
Each reflecting a different moment
Still, now, enduring until the waves
Of a new ocean sweep them away
No pain

Pretty little things called words and dustif you weren't a hypocrite,
you'd be wrapped in the sweetest
perfumes
(learning
how to engulf the ocean
with your lungs
and think of how to cup it
in your hands
despite
your broken prayers and
still be beautiful)

dance with the gypsies
'till noon
(a quake in
your hips like the thrust
of continents
and the faultlines
emanating from
your spine,
but still
so, so graceful)

sing with the nymphs
in tune
(your voice,
it's growing old,
raspy even.
your throat's burning dry
like a monsoon
faltering in a desert,

and tones
still octaves
powerful)

be nestled in a king's arms
soon
(oh, you precious
little thing.
how

Riddle My tears fall,

like invisible

diamonds.

My heart beats,

like soundless

drums.

Unwanted,

because of the

strings attached.

What am I?

A Night By the FireNo light,
The light sired by the night
All above whilst the day's delights
Now disappears from mortal sight.

Faded away is the sun's power,
Taking the stage now is night's sallow flower;
Now mortals may behold the stars and falling shower.

Set in a pit Nature's skyscraper ablaze
And revel in the emanating heat as you gaze,
Looking down on occasion when you hear a crack from the fire
And witness "fireflies" flying away from mother's blaze;
Dying shortly after but not lacking burning beauty do they desire!

I look out towards the teasing shore
And meditate as we sit upon her door,
Thinking on what my future has in store;
Who I am now and even

Why meI wanted sleep very badly
I tried my hardest to rest
I closed my eyes and laid there
But sleep didn’t come easy
I would doze off
And wake back up
Again
Why me? When I know I have to be up at 3 AM.

Seaside HolidayI am content
to stay
a caterpillar

Who says
you have
to change?

What's so great
about being
a butterfly?

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More from =Aconitum-Napellus

First Steps to Descale a FishI thought of you as I descaled the fish
(nebulous, a plural you)
I thought of each scale that flicked from the knife edge
and of how you clung to me,
(how you clung to the sleek sides of the salmon)
and of how I thought you helped me swim
how I thought you drifted me through life
and how you protected me, my chainmail,
my links of armour.
And I thought of how you dragged me down
to the safe river bed
to the soft, soft mud,
the enveloping mud
the mud that filled my mouth and filled my eyes
to the mud that slowly stole my breath.
And I began a slow descaling of my own.

(elucidation attached in artist's comments... sigh...)

On Listening to Dawkins...You sleep.

(we call it a sickness
      Encephalitis lethargica
      Narcolepsy
      Stupidity
      Blindness)

You fumble through life,
reaching out and touching familiarities.
Reaching out and grasping the expected smoothness of an egg
and cracking it into a bowl –
    a convenient meal
    not a slow and delicate perfection of life held in your hands,
    not a perfect mathematical curve evolved to protect its contents,

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On Passing Her In The Street

by =Aconitum-Napellus, Jun 15, 2012, 6:23:14 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Today we almost met.
You with your walnut heart,
your hatchet-blade face sharp-edged
straight on.
Today I realised how deep and wide
is the void between atoms.
How each of us is an emptiness,
each a spinning solar system,
more vacuum than dust.
Today I saw how even if I shouted
loud across that crackling void,
my words would slip between electrons
and fall, useless and unheard.
We none of us are really here,
and if I prised – or prized? –
your walnut heart there would,
there would, be substance there –
but nothing to my taste. Nothing
but gall to my tongue.
I think, instead, I will hold facts close.
That each cell has its nucleus.
That each atom holds hands only with its kin.
That sometimes we can only speak
to those who speak back
in our own tongue.

On Passing Her In The Streetby =Aconitum-Napellus

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Neighbour cold war continues... Funny how thin a line there is between hate poems and love poems.

Critique by ~winterkate Jun 17, 2012, 6:08:55 PM

I love the fact that this isn't a stereotypical love poem. When I read the first line, I'll confess I thought it was going to be. The description of her face, though - that clued me in to the fact that there was something more going on here. I love the ambivalence and slow sadness of this piece, the conclusion of the speaker that they will never get along, and the still-presented possibility that they might, if they would try. Quick problems: there are some places where the lines could be broken better. I think "I think" should be placed at the end of "but gall to my tongue"; it's current positioning creates a bit of a weird disconnect between lines. That or the work should be broken into stanzas. Also, the phrase 'we none of us' sounds odd, off. Perhaps just 'none of us', or 'we'. I advocate for 'none of us' as it would mostly preserve the length of the line, but it is your work, and a good one at that!

What do you think?

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On Passing Her In The Streetby =Aconitum-Napellus

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