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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.
SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and
DormantWinter is a blank slate,
but not like Rousseau's—
it cleanses
sucking out warmth like poison
leaving only windburnt frost
tacked to the window pane

all we remember
is the numbness
the shuddering
skittish steps across the ice
snowflakes pasted to our faces
smoke rising from our lips
dragged across bleak clouds

winter has us captured
bound by fur and walls
drifting in our eggshelled silence

bone cold until we birth ourselves by warmth
emerge from our shells wet and heaving
uncurl our fingers one by one
joints crackling like fire at our backs

until spring comes
drip by tender drip
old wounds thaw
we are found raw,
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.
I Have No Names for all My Teacup BabesI feel always like I am starting over.

As a magpie I gather trinkets under my pillow,
bay leaves and bags of herbs to bring the next lover to me,
to call the next dream-face forward—a picture
painted in the tea leaves.

But truth be told the start-again
is never clean, is never gentle,
and the sweat of all that labour
is a fire on my skin, telling me
I will never resist its wind-cry.

The moon comes when I call, to help me;
midwife, she is, and she carries into being my new selves
like the babes they are, teaches them to
fill long footsteps like hers.

Truth be told, I tire of the destiny
I was given once—I am a teacup
relearning          i. stardust scatters with the
direction of my pupils –
maybe secretly i am an
astrology teacher, waiting
for a sign to wink
happily at me.

         ii. excuse the rambling
nature of forgotten question
marks, but tell me:
would you like to be the
object of handwritten clichés
would you like to whisper
secrets in my palm
and would you
like to be the possibility

         iii. air brushes against my
skin like the torn petals
of a flower still standing.
[ hold your head up high, honey,
and tell tomorrow to wait just
a while,

         iv. so you can figure out
the difference between
patience and having all the
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

 
preludesi.
blue rose into the city backdrop
like balloons, a million for the
morning sun prelude.

ii.
i've not slept a dream
but i have cried a salty face
and letters spilled like beans
into my moleskine,
almost as virgin as i once was
with few stories between my covers.

iii.
the kettle's belly boils
like my head upon a pillow.

iv.
i am guilty for rarely finishing my tea
even when i use the small mugs;
pour, rinse, repeat.

v.
perhaps today i will play dead.

vi.
perched behind my blinds
it dawns on me that i am surrounded
by walled neighbours, strangers,
they're just preludes to lovers
the way i am always
prelude to the one.
6:30:09what i wouldn't give
to have my body sink down
into yours, cocooned
in the tumultuous quicksand
of human flesh.

i have never been so moved
as by your touch, the slinking seeping
brush. the universe dispels
and in the absence of everything,
i am less alone
than i have ever been.
tree, fiddler crabIt took days to hollow out the soft parts
of the trunk, dig out the tree-flesh and sap,
polish the raw wood so that when he sat,
there would be no splinters. He carved his name
into the side, like a blessing, a declaration
of good fortune, and stowed his forest inside.
apogee"if pluto disappeared
from its orbit,
would the sun notice?" you asked,
and i said that i did not know.

i remember calling
your name, battling with
the roar of the ocean trying
to get my voice to reach your ears.
know this: i went hoarse that day;
from the cold of the spray, from the
shouts torn out of my throat, from the
feeling of having my essense
irremediably ripped from my bones.
and know that that night i tried to soothe
the ache with tea that i could not taste.

"this is no tragedy," i said to myself,
even as i recalled that there was nothing
before you; even as i realize it's
entirely possible that there will be nothi
I Of YouI want you to break
and never bend for me,

see my history
spiderweb your brilliance
till you belong to me
(and I, to you)
utterly and forever

and know
you cannot stop this.
The Animal(Howl into my ear;
give me your claws.
I want the animal in you;

in you I shall nest.)

Take your clothes off, take them off for me.
Let me see the scars and the marks,
those dark moles and faint sun spots.

I want to memorize the way your fur grows.
I want to tickle my cheeks with your goose bumps.
Let me count the bruises and the cuts.

I'll bless them with names;
I'll lick away the blood stains.
We can lie skin to skin for days.

I have enough kisses for your brows and lashes,
for nails, teeth and toes, for thighs and knees;
in your curves and dents I'll nuzzle my nose.

Let me see your skin dance.
Through and around; your
When your hands can mimic birdsWhen your hands can mimic birds,
you lose the need for sound.
A flight of words that bear no chirp
are none the less profound.

They don't perch on a pitch.
They don't possess the need .
They fly until you've seen their song,
then silently recede.

No one could find more freedom than
the freedom granted flight.
No one can see more beauty than in
words passed left to right.
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
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More from ~ClearSound

New-blueTo:

The girl

The girl who taught him to seal his mouth in silence,
his eyes buried in the black of her hair (he's frightened of darkness but fond of the cold),

you are the reason he rests in frostbitten sleep,
in voices that croak, not sounding much like his own, as the old vibrations shake my drums instead of yours.

You were prose written for unsatisfactory, easy-breathing nights,
as his hand trembled under the light of a feeble lamp, composing quick sounds of the mouth and the pretty words that shape your lips.

To:

The girl

The girl who has stolen his sight so soon after he fell in love with the blue sky and blue fingertips and
How deep is the ocean?He thought,

if he could catch the wind in the palm of his hand,
he would press it to his lips and
gulp and

he'd be weightless in freedom
with billowed-out skin.

He thought,

if he were a wave in the ocean he would
crash at her feet, wash over her skin
for moments
as the next wave crashed too soon.

"How've you been?" she asked

as
he thought,
he floated 'til his buoyancy
failed him

"I'm sinking"
To marry a pianistIf I could choose, I would choose the boy

about sonata mornings, and
sitting me on his bench,
playing me something sweet like
hydrangeas on my pillows,
like daisy rings
and orchids in my hair;

with dances heard and
voices carried without throat.

If I could choose, I would choose

long fingers against black-and-white
connected to strings vibrating, humming,
urging kisses and
staccato breathing.

If I could choose, I would choose the boy

with songs that make me ache, and

I would feel him with sound
like
he feels me with word.
The girl with the cumulus eyesI love her:

The girl with the daisies tied around her pinky, the wooden pencils tucked behind her ear. I love her in her Saturday night, moon-lit dances and the shape of her lips when she sings. I adore her fiery hair and her dirty fingernails, never plagued with putrid polish but forever plunging into the earthy depths of a patch of soil. "Those are my babies," she'd say as you admired the blooming results of pain-staking labour. I could kiss her proud smile so much it'd spoil her, but girls like her never spoil.

I love her:

The girl who enjoys cumulus clouds while I prefer cirrus; the girl with eyes reflecting the azure of the sky, even
The Story of Could've-BeenI bore stains of blueberry jam
on the skirt of my best-and-only Sunday's dress.

We held hands under the morning table,
suffering spells of not-quite winter and
autumnal nostalgia,
you whispered like a true misanthrope-

I held on to your heart,

thinking that you hated that too.

--

I smiled at you with lips that learned
to swallow your words,

constructing hints of promises,
subtle exchanges of
well hidden passion-

you wouldn't believe
the poet in you.

--

Mon amour, vous étiez comme un fantôme,

the "could've-been"s that shook my dreams,

the wispy fragments of a love that pooled
in cupped hands, smelling sweet,
tast
The truth, and nothing butI knew a boy who loved a girl who walked with spring and Springtime in her step. He kissed this girl like her lips dripped vanilla extract and honey. He eyed her like stars were embedded into her skin and that he could find the perfect clouds in the deepness of her eyes. I knew a boy who loved a girl who was nothing like me.

I knew a boy who understood my need for the word "up". He knew "up" was the place I was always looking, but he never knew that I wanted him to look with me. Instead, he found his clouds and stars and sunsets in Springtime girls with honey lips.

Regardless, I looked "up" at him and thought that "up" was where one could f

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August 18, 2012
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[x]

Like petals and leaves

:iconclearsound:

When 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.
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Daily Deviation

Given 2012-12-04
Like petals and leaves by ~ClearSound ( Suggested by ~reveur-artiste and Featured by `thorns )
love 1 1 joy 0 0 wow 0 0 mad 0 0 sad 0 0 fear 0 0 neutral 0 0
:iconimaginative-lioness:
*imaginative-lioness Feb 22, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
I have featured this piece in my journal: [link]
Reply
:iconsmilewithlove:
~smilewithlove Dec 6, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
the imagery is beautiful and touching
Reply
:iconneurotype:
^neurotype Dec 4, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
I love how simply stated the images in this are.
Reply
:icontherussianburrito:
~TheRussianBurrito Dec 4, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
Reminds me of a girl I recently dated over the Summer... Kinda miss it, but oh well.

Good job, I really like the repetition, and I like how you practically paint a picture. It's beautiful. :)
Reply
:iconriparii:
*riparii Dec 4, 2012
Very sweet, pretty thing. I can taste salt in the air.
Reply
:iconwdnest:
=wdnest Dec 4, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Wonderful - congrats on DD. Lovely expressive poem
Reply
:icon0hgravity:
*0hgravity Dec 4, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
beautiful.

The repetition works very well.
Reply
:iconroadfullofpromise:
*roadfullofpromise Dec 4, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
I can relate! <3
Reply
:iconpikachai-tea:
=PikaChai-Tea Dec 4, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
This is great ;u; .May I ask what literature tag you used?
Reply
:iconwalkingindreamlight:
Mood: Love ~WalkinginDreamlight Dec 4, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
I love the way the imagery captures the reader in visualised verse that makes you want to come back and read the poem again and again.

I particularly liked:

"When she thinks of him, she thinks of tree branches:
spindly fingers spread out, stretching
in angles wide for handfuls of sky."

and

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

Quite a talent you have for visualised poetry.

Well done on the DD! :)
Reply
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