[x]

Spirit Willing?I saw you on the news last night
You were in your house, burning alive
The look in your eye said you’d rather be somewhere else

We all cheered when they pulled you from a window
And whisked you away in sirens and lights
We were so happy we almost got off the couch

Every one of us wanted to own the hands that pulled you free
We knew we could fix you
We knew we could make you whole again

But when we went for a walk
And saw your face at the window, wreathed in flames
We excused ourselves and carried on

Because saving people was for Jesus and firemen
And armchair heroes with yellow ribbons on their cars
And you suddenly weren&

poetry like teaI never want to know you.

I want to wonder, want to slide back-down and backwards across your glissandos,
linger over the breaths and pauses,
pour into the warm and dark hollows that you curve into your words,
nestle there like water or skin:

I want to sink into the cracks between consonants, smooth them over,
find the sighs folded into the velvet roundness of an O,
contemplate each brightly fractured e in your name, how it
is wrenched open to the world, wounded, and still
curled tight as a fist over the wound:

I want to drink poetry like tea,
in sips, with sugar,
and then in longer draughts until it washes down my throat like hea

you inspire mei’ve never met the optical illusionist that started me with
writing poems on my mirror
and my hand
and my jeans

but i think that if i did, we could be best friends.
except maybe we wouldn’t
because if she’s anything like her poetry
she would be so full of vivid-disturbing-wonderful images
so full of heart and thought and elegance
that i would be frightened of drowning
in the depths of her eyes

and i also might hate her just a tiny bit because i admire her so much.
because she can take thoughts
(even the difficult-to-see ones with the fuzzy outlines).
she can take them and spin them into
tapestries of woven words

When, WhenIt’s like when you ran over my cat last December and I said it was okay but it really wasn’t and you tighten your grip on my arm and I don’t care anymore because, fuck, it was just a cat right?
Or when we went bowling and I pulled sevens and nines all night and you bowled strike after strike after golden strike and I swear you were immaculate and floating when you jumped victorious and I sat by the score sheet and all the powers of man and nature and beast and god were barely able to keep my head up and my eyes focused on the ocular feast, the glory of you.
And when we were walking home after the movies and the wind blew acer

for kelseyi wish on stars too
i write poems boys will never read
i spill my heart onto paper
scraps from the bottom of my bag
then i put them back
back so far away
but i'm not brave
i wish
i wish
i wish i could mention names sometimes
i wish i could share everything
everything with everyone
i want to hold his hand
do you see
how i can't say it
how i hide it
maybe with your words
i'll open up
more than more
and let you see
let him see
i want him to see

even though i don't know you
i feel like i should
because you are "glorious"
you are "beautiful"
and everything they
those hearts you loved
have called you before
all things g

HeartlessWrite me an embrace.
Scribble a heart and make it beat under someone else’s skin
so that I can feel it.
Sketch hair like a river so I can smell it and rub it in my face and taste Her
again.
The last person I saw wearing paper was homeless,
and home is where the heart is,
so when I write myself a paper She,
does it make me as heartless as I feel?
Ink does not freeze in winter
and die of exposure so instead of Her warming me,
it becomes my blood
and beats, something there to
keep me alive.
Printer paper palpitates in the wind,
so if it is my staircase to heaven,
instead of Her,

I

trip

as

though

nothing

were

there

at

Get Beat Up I fucking love waking up with a broken nose, swollen eyes, hungover, cold, gutter-stench sallow in last night’s damp rags. The lace on my left shoe is missing for some reason. I’m covered head to toe in caked mud, or shit… it’s all over the floor, footprints stitching a path from the doorway to the bathroom to in front of the couch where I apparently fell and blacked out, leaving a sort of lurid black snow angel in my wake. Jake is still in the bathroom, face-down in the toilet where he passed out. He’s pissed his pants. Hope he’s not dead. Smells like it. Maybe it’s better if he is.

No, probably not.

T

UninvisibleI saw the light and
It illumed things I’d rather
not have seen so bright

ReptilianI fancy you, for
you are my alligator
please don't eat my heart

Seasons of Violet.We called her Violet, and she was.
We knew her when she was young and pale, during Fall
And when we'd climb old trees, their brittle branches
Like welcoming arms
Would snap in two
And we'd cascade to the earthy ground
Carpeted with golden and red and orange
And as we fell,
Secretly, she'd wish with all the goodness in her heart
That she were a leaf as well
That like a leaf, she could be swept away to some distant place
In arms that would not break
In arms that belonged to people who truly loved her.

We called her Violet, and she was.
And with the changing of the seasons,
Winter had taken away her smile and replaced it with t

Fifteen Things1.
I lied about never
getting in trouble in school;
once I was in a time
out in kindergarten--
I never said so,
but you already knew.

2.
I don't think I ever
lived my life without
the hidden motive
to hurt myself.

3.
Once and a while,
I pretend I'm still alive.

4.
I make myself talk
when he does
even though
my mouth feels glued
shut. It hurts to
let myself breathe
deep after the words take my air.

5.
I'd rather be hyper-aware than
unaware. That's why the
blood wins over drugs. The
endorphins work better than
hallucinogenics ever will.

6.
I don't think I know
what love means anymore.
Maybe I never really
did. I

kitestrings.you confessed that when you were little you would pull apart monarch butterflies because they were much too beautiful--
so beautiful that they made you feel uneasy.

(you always did call me the most beautiful thing you'd ever known.)

it's almost december now, and the only reason i wish you were here is so you could make snow angels and i could rip off their wings.

---

you wanted a kite for your birthday, so i got you one that was shaped like a bat and we took it to the beach, watched it crash into the surf over and over until it was bent and broken. i rescued it from the tide and surfaced dripping saltwater -- you told me i looked like t

they are but clichesthey are but clichés

love,
lover.
we are two of a kind,
halves of a whole,
faces in a crowd.

if we are coffee and cream,
let me be the coffee
since i am darker
and have a passion for café au lait and espresso.

let us not be two socks,
since mismatched things are more beautiful anyways
and socks are to be worn on feet and thrown in corners.

i don’t want to be the glove to your hand,
though i’ll gladly cover you.
i’d rather have your hand in mine
lace my fingers between yours and hold your warmth.

let’s run away,
i’ll wander
and together we can both be the lust –
sleeping under the

glittering, struggling.i.

"i am going to make every person
around me as happy as i can,"
i bravely declare.

"you should get a job," you offer,
and i draw a heart on a whiskey
bottle and say that making people
happy is my new job.

"you should get a paying job,"
you clarify, and i fill the whiskey
bottle with glitter and kiss you
until it doesn't matter anymore.

you don't need money if you're
dead.

iii.

i tell you that i'm going to leave
because even if it hurts now, it will
eventually make you happy, and
you refuse to speak to me for
the rest of the night.

and here i thought i had
all of the answers.

v.

you joke about going to med scho

the shutting of lids

I wore ribbons in my hair
for you today. But I needed to say something more like snow storms
and something louder than the six AM alarm clocks
that pull you back when you've only had a few hours sleep,
but you peel hair from those frown lines
like a sticky toffee cake from its tin. My eyes are just not blue enough
and my dirty pores are tiny peep holes, I drop out
when you look in.

I wore dark jeans and a white vest top today,
but I really wanted to slip under double sheets in pink pajamas
and pull heavy-like-love covers over me
while thousands of people celebrated the birth of somebody
they don't believe in or the start of

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Philosopher of the Tractatushe sits, and it's live!
        speak-thinking among us, to us, for us, trapped in his mouth
                skull bursting to be God,
                        cursing language without language – rendered mute,
                behind a glass wall of his Self
          &#

Organism of InkThis is my creation – an organism of a poem
A little creature – a little fox to read.
I want this comfort… this silky fur under my fingers, warm, delicate…
When I write, I can feel it under my skin
Each hair, each fiber of this poem organism, each letter of its being
Speaks and feels to me
And all I want to do is hold it to me
And stroke each of those fibers, those letters.
I want to feel its heartbeat and its smile
For swirling this creature into being;
I want something here to touch me and as its creator,
I think it should give me that.

Same with a woman or a man.
I would write their skin under my fingertips

To InhaleDrowning in air, fish out of water,
My scales clinking with the gold
Of the heart you won't let me have.
Armor me, amour – mi amour – with scales
To weigh the options of breathing through viscosity and
Dragging against your current love,

Or

Leaping free for a moment, choking to feel free,
Gasping as nothing stops me from moving on and up,
Except gravity and your torrential river.

I am armored to scale your banks and flop, awkward, on your shore,
As you chuckle, merrily bubbling laughter at my efforts
As I grasp and gasp, proud that my purchase
Has gotten your attention.

Open your mouth to the oceans
And sing,
Callin

StagedAt the end of worlds,
        You wonder,

"Is it really the end of worlds?
Or is this some melodrama?"

You search the stage for a moth-eaten curtain,
                Behind which you want to find hiding some seedy cameraman,
                With a scope gazing directly at you as you put on a show
And you hope to conclude the rest of the crew is all in the know,
As special effect fake fire pumps from plastic pistons that suddenly cease to

LineGive me my line.

I'm here, waiting and still visible only to you.

Still and frozen – but not to you. Paralyzed under your breath, until your pen

breathes

the inky fabric of me.

A living tattoo, each line threads my skin into being;

a pair of tiny claw marks give me a voice.

Your thoughts convey mine:

if I wax ecstatic, you smile;

if I seem disgruntled, your gaze grows distant and you scowl;

if I am in love, your eyes linger, limpid, on objects of your own affection.

Unexposed to others' eyes, I linger behind yours as my facets and flourishes of feeling fester in the furrows of your brain; I crawl

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Responding to Kitestrings

by ~SiberDrac, Nov 23, 2008, 4:10:21 PM
Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

Destroying Beauty

I told you it was because I was afraid of something so beautiful.
I told you you were beautiful.  It makes me think you weren't listening
when all you do is remind me of broken things.
Their wings are a product of something I can't understand, and
something I can't have.  I
take them away, so something will stand here with me
while I'm Earthbound.

-------

The kite was a kite
and breaking it was not a symbol.
I couldn't hold onto the strings right and
I didn't lie to you about looking like a goddess.  If
you had listened to me, maybe you would feel better now.
I got a new one,
bigger,
more able,
maybe easier to handle
even if it blocked out more of the sky.
You say you're ocean-bound and watching shipwrecks, but
a bird's eye view sees more.  And I tell myself
it's better for you to stay there, because if you're crying now
over what you can see there,
Even being where I want to be and flying cannot make up for
everything I cannot keep my eyes from.

-------

And I ask myself, "Why does she stay stuck in the sea
if she can't stand it,
And why is it my fault for wanting to soar?"

-------

I broke the sparrow's neck
and you were still weeping.
You tried to stop me, but you didn't listen to me when I told you truth
about flying, metaphorically
and for a bird.
I cannot make everything better.  I cannot bring back the dead.
I cannot watch beauty broken and limping because it scares me
so the sparrow is dead

and I am gone.

Responding to Kitestringsby ~SiberDrac

Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

This is a response to author estallidos's poem, "kitestrings." I took the poem out of context, and I don't know the author in any way whatsoever (except that she is a brilliant writer). This poem is a response to that poem by itself, and so is subject to my interpretations without the original author's history attached.
t3h p05t, 4 j00

~life-is-no-storybook Dec 17, 2008

wow i really liked this

~SiberDrac Dec 18, 2008

thanks!

~life-is-no-storybook Dec 19, 2008

no problem

~estallidos Dec 11, 2008 Professional Writer

ohhh, i wish you had told me of this earlier!
it's gorgeous.

no, really, it's the PERFECT response piece. you completely turned my pem on its head, in a good way, by making the "you" of my poem seem so human and worthwhile here.

it's gorgeous. i love it.
faveddd to the sky and back.

~SiberDrac Dec 12, 2008

wow, thanks! I'm so glad you like it. I've been reading your stuff for a while and it's all pretty much fantasmic, so thanks for giving me the opportunity to try this.

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