[x]

cadaver she was born with arctic lips
and overcast skin.
her hair fell like fresh snow
and she was far too thin.
her bones in locked closets,
joints creaked and shrieked
like a rotten floorboard
under gossamer feet.

The hollowi.

He says, you can tell an honest man
by the run of his walk, the stalk of his step.
Laugh, then, no, no, it's not for women.
The honest woman is walking towards you
even when she walks away, he says.
Nothing can be as deep as woman
or as hollow. I cannot be woman:
I am a tangle of shallows
destined to fall the willowish
drowning men until they free.
I am the highway the honest men
use and in being used, I gain permanence.
You, you sloppy cadences and twists,
I strangle. God, you got me heady still.
But my cankerous heart pulses on
and spills lethe on grassy steppes.

ii.

His sister's tone is mechanic
and breathy. She tal

a drug or choosingYour oily prints upon my eyes
Blessed art thou
You bleed through the cracks in my walls
Eyes, pores in every centimeter of wallpaper
Watching me sleep, watching my night-mare
The horse running from the fire-like river
Pouring down the mountain to the plains below
Engulfing my atmosphere in golden red smoke
I am not addicted

Four Things She Thought About Before She Jumped1.
She thought about her sister and how the shape of her face
became foreign in certain light, as if carved by the hands of a man
who had spent too much time on oil and canvas
to remember his own skin. Her eyes began to resemble chips of ice
as they filled with rainwater; the world like a river
that runs over them and
through them
without touching.

She thought about her sister
trying to talk in her sleep—
the way her tongue flapped uselessly
about her mouth, a coil of smooth muscle pinning itself
to her teeth. It spat syllables
like broken stones. She thought about her sister spread across
the bed sheets, palms turned upw

OhFingers in front of
your eyes,
laced in light.

The arid, shifting
desert of your palms.

Sand in the beachgrass,
dancing.

Listen to the shell:
it will teach
what is alive.

Tell your children it was the ocean.

The whole world
can hear you breathe.

Are you innocent yet?

Fishnet stockings
and long, dark hair.

That empty
moment.

May she never hear the name
that you whisper through the dark.

the cannibaleyes bright for wildflowers
I swear they leaned toward her as she passed
with her boyish gait, a confident stride
she caught me with the absence of her smile
and she thought I was a wildfire
set to burn her worries away
but I was tame
tame tame tame
and she was burning up
she laughed when she realized my still temperament
bewildering the sound, a pretty Sunday laugh
light of heart, balancing honesty's edge
hiding between this duality of personality
her fabricated safe haven
but in the night she asked me to keep her
and for a long time I held her soft body, full of insecurity
to mine securely but her anxiety was an earthquake
I could feel inside her, I could feel the tectonic
plates shifting in her mind and once she'd chiseled her nails
to bare skin she moved on to mine
she held my hands like a wounded bird in hers and she
whispered to them "when you fly, I will too"
yet all the while she kept clipping their wings
with her ner

cobblestones.

i pulled a napkin from the silver tin,
wiped the table clear, drops of ketchup staining the center.
i crushed the paper in my palm, felt the dampness reach the edges.

hurt cloud, she said as i let it roll across the table.

.

shooting baskets as the day ended,
the ball went over the backboard, disappeared into the dark.
she shrugged, then bent low, picked up pebbles.
aimed
and threw.

.

your poor hands, she said. you have so many scars,
and you're still so young. (she, younger than i, saying this)

she touched one hand, then after a pause she took the other
without looking at me.

some things take so much

ich liebe dichdaylight wakes me up and i turn into the green moth on the windshield.
a few months ago i would have died to be someone with the same kind of pulse
as you. i wanted to know what it felt like to breathe your same
air and listen to the fabrication of your words, your lies like lists of things
you wanted me to hear, essays crafted to the palaces of my mind.
you knew what i wanted because you know the architecture of so many women—
not seeing my poisonous nature, the blisteringly sweet aftertaste that crumples
you into me again, again, again, each hit better than the last. together
we chase the dragon, needing more and more of each o

SuffocationI found a vintage denim jacket
in the bottom of my mother's closet,
underneath a black-and-white montage
of shoebox photographs with burned edges.
Like she had been trying to asphyxiate
the memory of my father
but kept coming up for air.

undergrowni.
last spring i got too drunk
the night before i was supposed
to bloom, and missed it hung-
over, i
had to wait
an entire year folded
beneath the ground.

ii.
a single glass of rum
to break the ice, the sun is high
and i'm immune to,
i'm a moon to
its light.

iii.
i don't exist without it.

iv.
with white picket teeth
my mouth should be a garden
but only weeds spring up like bile
and i'm choking on the dust.

v.
i think their roots
become my veins
and if i pulled
my heart would be unearthed,
a large rotten berry
a wasted bear wouldn't eat.

vi.
i had four spare seasons
to mother my petals,
and i'm too sober to th

palpitationsMy veins,
blue born licorice whips,
weaving webs for blood spiders on my thighs,
thin cerulean shoelaces tying knots around my wrists,
hold fast, heartbeats pumping like gasoline,
I am living, but I am not alive.

her god reeks of whiskey and stale tobaccoshe speaks in monochrome
stringing together words in every shade of blue
so blue
she choked on the sea.
syllables crashed against her teeth
wearing away the enamel
and carving out monuments in honor of all the things
she never meant to say.

tiny birds with oil-slick wings
and salt-stripped throats drowned in her esophagus.

she prays to a god that reeks of whiskey
and stale tobacco;
his eyes are as barren as an arctic tundra
but he loves her
like he loves the lichens growing on his spinal cord.
compared to the vastness of his embrace
her pollution is nothing more
than a prism of color after the rain.

her veins took root when

unzippedi.
it was all skinned knees
and stop signs between us.
we pushed too hard
or not hard enough.

ii.
the last star i wished upon
turned out to be a satellite,
and the last time i kissed you
really wasn't the last time.

the scent of romance- pine needles
and sawdust clung to my shoulders
where your fingers left goose flesh
when i least expected it.

iii.
i'd be tangled up in you and bed sheets
if i didn't know you better than that,
[sweetheart,] you're thunderstorms on
Saturday nights and "Why don't you stay
for awhile"'s and the infidelities
that line my cheeks.

slip-The memories of her come in portraits:
heavily scented with her cigarette scent,
dusty autumn coats on the faded ink.

--

"He dreamt of a woman who moved like the sea,
perpetually flooding the alcove of his mind,
bearing eyes as blue, with hints of green,

like water in cupped hands,
slippery-
slip-
slipping through thin fingers to pour
past the shoreline,
falling deeply in love with the ocean tide."

--

The memories of her come in poems:
brief as her kisses and
lonesome as the night.

end life, end.when i was almost god,
and my fingers were honeycombs
woven into embroidered dreams,

is when my breath danced
in your hair,
(never to be tamed)
your lashes weighing down your eyelids,
joining fingers with the ones below.

a wish escapes from between your teeth
(a cavity in the brain,
it's acid, it's acid. it's acid.
pleasant thoughts poison the mind)
end, life. end.

(wade into the ocean,
salt fills your lungs that shrivel up
like slugs in the desert sun)

sleep.

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a snap of bellsa.
i have never brushed the soft skin of Genesis
i have not.

but i know that wild horses roam the space
between extremities, that is why i sleep with eyes
closed, so i am not without
oh, i am not within.

b.
does summer wonder the touch of frost,
does it feel the flake of blossoms as springtime peels away
or do my eyes deceive
do you think its smile is as soft as its skies

x.
she does not step she does not see
i do not taste
the silver synapse clapsed between

daedalusi. we are like birds,
birds without the wings
but with the song.

(icarus did not want for wings)
We did not want for chains we did not
want to flee
We did
(he did not want to fall
he did)
we did.

I am without fear, and you are without blood,
and we could never hope to scratch the sun,
but perhaps we might endeaver to suspend it.

it's the hollow beat of bones on drums
it's a steady throb of pins on thumbs
it's a simple truth that

nobody wants to fly

ii. but they do.

paraphraseraindops smack the cement like typwriter keys; the storm is pounding out a story of me and you and the heavens above and maybe the devils below.
every snap of thunder crunches through the crackling air
every lash of lightning lays bare the skeletal sky -
for there is a bone structure to the clouds, like crisscrosed veins snaking through spiderwebs. like a spool of golden thread tumbling loosely through a maze.
people will come and they will stumble and they will fall with bent and broken ankles to kiss the battered manacles of the ever-crownless king.

danteI think when Somebody was making me he mistook my breath for smoke and now

every word I speak is laced with fire and

when I sigh, the air filters out of me in a whirl of flames and ash.

and when I smile the sparks dance along my lips as if

perhaps my promises lead straight to hell;

oh, you will be the undeath of me.

perhaps a shellthe truth is a ruthless enemy. it settles itself in the back of your brain and taptaptaps at your skull until it's all you can hear, all you can see, all you can feel. and yet the bittersweet taste of a tall tale still swells across the canvas of your tongue as another lie bursts between your lips.

"i am a soldier and my heart is the war."

i am i am i am

an empty uniform at best.

phosphorus sonnetrain is firing down.
it's cool and clear and delicately acid. you feel your fragile bones turning to dust under the storm. your skin is bright and bare.
there is no calendar for you, no countdown. there is no time. there's only the sound of breath on air, finely tuned and deliciously pruned, flowering out around you like a song.

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how to pay the plumber

by ~IOwnSarcasm, Jun 18, 2012, 12:51:34 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

the sun is born of ink that leaks from dog-eared galaxies

and the night is made of copper eyes that pipe the constellations
but we are too polite to stare.
any hand that may brush my back must bleed the alphabet
from wearied fingertips, and this is why:
happiness is ice and crinkled bones all wrapped up warm in the
childless rings of saturn
and your smiling face-of-a-cliff that scorches pretty spring skin dry.

we will never say we will never love so

i will die beside,
you die below.

how to pay the plumberby ~IOwnSarcasm

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2012-2013 ~IOwnSarcasm

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`dreamsinstatic Aug 10, 2012 Professional Writer

Your amazing work has been featured in Friday Night Features.

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~IOwnSarcasm Aug 12, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

aaah thank you!

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Mood: Wow!

~FiyeroTigelaar Aug 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

There is something very beautiful about this

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~IOwnSarcasm Aug 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

thank you

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~FiyeroTigelaar Aug 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

You're welcome

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~winterkate Jun 18, 2012 Student Writer

This is lovely.

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~IOwnSarcasm Jun 18, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

thank you

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~winterkate Jun 18, 2012 Student Writer

Welcome

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