[x]

Tyrian PurpleTyrian purple
lips match the blue
fingerprint bruises wrapped around
her throat like the latest fashion.
A thump
and a gulp of air
rushes into the silent stage
of a delectable crime scene.
They prod her body like sushi with chopsticks;
the air tastes stale, unused.
One uniform brushes fingertips
across her velvet skin while
another admires the glossy black hair
missing a single lock.

AmberAmber
had a golden waterfall of hair
and tawny eyes that glowed like lanterns
on the cusp of a quiet evening.
The wind rustled through pine needles
and dangling windchimes
in delicious counterpoint
to her honey-drip song and
vanilla-smooth voice
that went down like crushed velvet and feather dust,
uplifted away from my grasping fingers.

The Watchmaker's Lover - RevisionYour clockwork appendages
were cold to the touch.
The industrial complex of your mind
was grating gear against gear
where the unoiled works
kept clacking away; your atrium
was a tick-tocking machine
that counted the hours while the rust settled in.

The mainspring spiraled round
your mechanical heart tensed
so tightly it showed in your face,
in your quivering hands,
your troubled eyes.
The unlubricated escapement never
released, oxidized into place
from ages of neglect.

Your lonely footsteps echoed
under orange gaslamps submitting
to the glare of red lanterns.
Used parts are yours for the taking;
here, a hairspring; there, slender
legs unde

SeafoamSeafoam
is the hush of the ocean,
the glossy paint on your car,
the gleam in your eyes.
It's the ruffle of parchment in the glove compartment
of your susurrating '57 Thunderbird
as we leave the last rumble of brontide behind
on a salt-crushed highway.
Traces of powdered sugar noses
and mint milkshake lips
were cold reminders
of warm nostalgic days
when summer could melt the tarmac
like my bones under your gaze.

dimmers (collab)maybe i thought it would be grand
some avalanche, some whirlwind
because it was a sort of disaster, to me
the slow kind though
the forming of a ghost town
the sleepy climb of a foreign cell

but it was more of a cloud of dust
in the end
that rose up a few feet
and poured in around my hands,
ones that you used to press
absentmindedly to your lips
before

before, i did think about it,
the fuzzy outline
of a finish line
like fishing-line
strung up between our legs

and we would shuffle and trip, i knew
i just never though it would end in dust

-

maybe i thought it was brilliant,
a world wonder of flesh and soul
a volcanic erup

Achromatic Dreamstoday, god gave me present.

-
i.

stilted windows, white bones
decaying lungs and my mind races
at the rate of a lone moth's jaded wings

we taste better alone

ii.

clemency is earned
by the damned, by the damned
arbitrary sacrifices

we belong to nobody

iii.

and she bowed with artless grace
kissed the sky, shed stardust tears
choked on angelic moonshine

we draw our own constellations
-

today, i gave god presence.

InfernoSeptember is a sultry tangle
of curly hair and corduroy jackets stretched
over broad shoulders that I've been leaning on,
metaphorically.

He won't press for answers
and I won't trouble him with my problems.
So he complains about the weather –
he's never gotten used to these sticky, southern delta summers –
while I hold the door
and press the call button.

The half-lit elevator drops us off above Dante's first layer.
I feel sorry for anyone beneath,
but I've indulgences to buy
and my own hell to return to.

But there's a light in my pocket –
abandon not all hope,
and

smile.

HalfI learned about flowers
by splitting apart their stems
with precision and an Exacto knife;

but I learned about fractions
from the boy who kept one half of a red chrysanthemum
and gave me the other.

Digitigrade IIThe human foot contains twenty-six bones
for running and dancing and spinning
pirouettes in neat circles,
starved
for grace.

Grace
balanced on one foot before two,
starved for attention with every broken
bone.

"Ballet is more than dancing,
Grace," the en pointe trainer balanced
on one foot and named every bone
supporting her weight.

Grace spins one
perfect
circle on the hardwood floor:
her eyes land on the barre mirror.

She doesn't see the atrophied bone
ribs through pink gauze,
but only imagines herself as beautiful.

Weeks of anorexic binging display the remains
of weak structure.
One more skin-and-bone
cygnet r

In stillness1. My bones are rocks, curved and exfoliated and shaped
by the heavy ocean storms in my lungs,
like cyclones of dust and regurgitated diary entries
have been lifted by the trembling earth
and slammed into my spine, repeatedly, until I bow
before everything more powerful than I could ever be.
And they are yours.

2. I love you,
violently,
like my lips thirst for more than your mandarin gums,
so I can eat through the hurt, clogged in your throat.
"My heart is obviously incapable of holding love";
let me prove you wrong.

3. Our sex lies in the pain along my neck,
where my blood has pooled and frozen.
I can barely feel my fingers or my toes and

Three PercentI didn't learn percentages
from a chalk-finger-dust butcher
with delusions of tenure;

I learned them from a boy
who made my day three percent brighter,
just by smiling.

Pseudo-Taoistic Tendencieshere, to live in obsolete measurements of stasis
and find solace in the way time bends in sweet detriment of itself

to listen, enlivened
by the sound of ten thousand and one parched Persian tongues
rasping of emancipation
from the underbellies of our mirrored faunas

where the universe is felt
and God is swallowed:

on her salted fountains
on his derelict fingers tracing unadorned love
on another woman's hipbones

an elephant's dying breath, and
the smell of climax and unsettled wombs

felt, and tasted:

in hospital tubes
indignation, self-sufficiency
failure of recognition

the partisans of our cause and command

Dearly Deceased DameAnd I apologize for these neurotic abrasions,
this mercury printed skin. I digress:

I have kept your favorite black scarf
(of a thousand minute dying bells), squirreled
away from the face of these lingering years,
to live by and breathe your sweet scent: my ether.

And I apologize for such relapsed memories,
for neglecting to ingrain your tastes in my insipid psyche
apart from the shrill of your voice, apart from
your last, soul-piercing scream.

But every time I lose a tooth, trace
trailing fingers on live green vines, smooth
my voice to sing alongside divine, orphaned birds, lick
the remnants of a 2L box of vanilla ice-cream

SurrogateI stopped using his full title
because it started sounding too formal,
and it’s hard to be standoffish with someone
who swaps albums and memories so generously,
who loves German chocolate but hates the smell of oranges,
who knows me by my boneless,
drowsy form on the couch and by my words.

And maybe one day he’ll ask
me to drop the title altogether and call him Brad,
but I won’t.
Because it sounds too much like dad,
and I’m afraid of slipping up.

CeladonCeladon
glazed shards litter
the pale tiles like a million
green apple slices.
The crunch underfoot
is a gunshot;
the long exhale
is salted with tension.
The plum branch is buried
under spearmint pieces
of pottery, smooth,
cold jade on one side,
textured clay on the other.

The blossoms are already dying.

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FFM28 - MemoriumI remember all the events recorded into my rings, from the snow storms to the lightning strike; I remember the tickle of a knife in my bark and the sting of a lost branch, the concerto of songbirds and the rustle of leaves. I remember the wind and I remember the rain. I remember the warmth of summers past and the dead cold of the snow, but also the beauty of a blank canvas. I remember the world.

And I remember the boy.

I remember his golden hair tossed about by the wind and the strength in his slim arms, a thin, wiry strength that he used to pull himself up over my lower branches. He had sky eyes and a chirping voice, gentle hands and the l

FFM26 - Voicemaili.
Hey Shy, it's been a while. Call me when you can.

ii.
Shy? It Rick. You there? Hey listen, sorry about the candles. I'll get you some more, okay?

iii.
Heeey, Shy, wha- what's up? Girl, you are so hurrrrr – heeeey.
Girl, I'm so drun- drunnn – call me Shhhy.

iv.
Hey Shy. Remember me? It's Tory. I know I haven't called you since that night at the circus. Circumstances you know? Anyway, call me sometime. If you're still interested I mean.

v.
Shy, please take this hex off me. Thanks.

vi.
Yo Shy, your dress is ready. Sis made it look awesome. You're going to look great at the next coven meet.

vii.
Shhhy.... Shhhhhhhyyyyyy

FFM25 - Lazy DayThe second hand ticked into place, striking seven am sharp. The alarm clock on the in-table buzzed until a hand loosely grappled about for the off button and hit it on accident. Maurice Compton snuffled deeper into his blankets.

I do not want to work today.

He was not an especially lazy man, but neither was he all that committed to his cubicle duties.

I want to stay in bed until 1 pm and follow up with a long bath and go for a long drive and have an adventure down some lonely back road I've never had the time to explore before.

The alarm clock buzzed again. It continued buzzing on its long journey out the window.

FFM24 - Maillard ReactionAn army marches on its stomach – and you can always take a metaphor too far.

The armory of the city-state of Xianlich had neither forge nor anvils. The many ovens burned 24/7 and employed an army of bakers. They had traded their blacksmiths for culinary artists, and fate had been kind to them – the city-state thrived. Loaves of bread were processed by the thousands and left in the sun to harden into excellent clubs.

When the battles were over – instant meal for the soldiers.

FFM23 - Bathroom Stalls"Hello."

"Um, hi?"

"Doing okay?"

"Yeah, I guess so. You?"

"I'm good, I'm good. How's work going?"

"Busy mostly. Uh, how about yourself?"

"Oh you know how it is. They keep you working to the bone, you know?"

"Yeah. It's the same everywhere I guess."

"Did you ever find your glasses?"

"Uh, I don't wear glasses."

"Oh, I see. How do you like your new contacts?"

"Uh… I don't wear those either."

"Well of course it hurts. You're poking stuff into your eye. How did you think it would feel the first time you put them in?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Hang on a sec Steph, some chick thinks I'm talking to her. Hey, I'm on the

Ocean of GrassA lonely field
dappled in the gentle sunlight
of a fading day.

The grasshoppers jump
among the piles of cut grass
that undulate like ocean waves
against a backdrop of conifer trees.

A lonely field
on an old backroad
covered in an ocean of bronze grass.

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Suffocation

by =SilverInkblot, Jun 9, 2012, 9:13:12 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

_{I 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.}

Suffocationby =SilverInkblot

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I have more stanzas for this, but I decided I liked this one alone.

TWR Critique: [link]

Questions:

1. Too short? Just right? Would you like more story?

2. I broke this into two sentences; would it have been more effective as one? That is to say, should the period at the end of line four be a comma instead? How would that shiftthe balance of the piece?

Critique by *MattVoscinar Jun 26, 2012, 11:28:22 PM

Personally, I feel like this poem is the perfect length. The brevity lends each word a sense of urgency that would not be present otherwise. With what you’ve got, the story allows itself to organically grow in the reader’s mind rather than being drawn out and forced. The story is short, concise, and permeates emotion.

As far as the formatting of units is concerned, I think that taking out the period would be more effective. As it is, the period makes me stop and then continue the same thought which gets a little confusing. Another way you may be able to do break it this into smaller syntactic units or removing the word like and keeping the period. The elimination of the comparison makes the image more concrete.

This is a wonderful and heartfelt piece. Very well done.

What do you think?

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Critique by ~anderue Jun 24, 2012, 5:17:19 PM

I like it short. Like a little thought, but with a niggling feeling of nostalgia and something else.
Love the second sentence, it really brought the question into mind: 'Who kept coming up for the air? The mother, the father, or was it the narrator??'
It felt like there is a hint of regret in this poem. Like this mother or the narrator has been trying to bury the memories of the father and allowing it to be cut off from their lives: "bottom" and "burned edges".

Its great how you made it so lightly bitter-sweet, like how nostalgia would feel. Not only does the shortness add to the charm, but its tone just downright makes the reader love it.

If you want to focus on the balance shift thing, then I have to say it did kind of felt it lacked a little something-something, anything to separate the two sweet sentences more. It felt like it was too straightforward without one and my thought process just ends up fuzzled (maybe because I'm dopey)... BUT either way, I like it like this.

Short and sweet. Lovely.

What do you think?

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~PlayinTheDead Jul 22, 2012

Just right, by all means: I really like how tight and straight to the point this simple imagery is, the way it hints at the "more story" gently and leaving the rest to the reader's imagination. I feel like it makes every word matter more - found the jacket, so it must have been hidden away; black and white photos, old memories; the burned edges, ah well, it couldn't get any more evident, but once again, in a subtle and non-cheesy way; the full stop between the sentences, it just feels right to have a stark and strong pause there: it strikes me as pensive, if that makes any sense, that pause when you stop to look at what you've just found and the reader can follow the thought in the very moment it's formed.
The only extremely tiny nitpick I'd give is a little thing in the final verse: if you leave kept coming up for air without a pronoun, at first glance it might not clear whether the subject of the sentence is she, as it's supposed to be, or the memory. Then again, repeating the pronoun might be just as grating or I might just be missing the point of a deliberate ambiguity, so feel free to disregard this doubt entirely.

=SilverInkblot Jul 22, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

You hit on quite a lot, especially with the found - I don't think anyone else noticed that bit yet

I think the jacket ties into the memory that she's trying to suffocate; putting the jacket and photos at the back of the closet is easily read as a metaphor for putting something to the back of your mind (at least, it made sense to me

).

I personally like the ambiguity, but I can see why some might not

~PlayinTheDead Jul 22, 2012

That's very much what the metaphor made me think of, and now this is what I call high level show-don't-tell, for which I'm quite a big sucker ;D

Come think of it, it may be just that I'm not a native English speaker and, back in class, the teachers drummed into our brains that English sentences must always, always have a subject pronoun; of course, reading poetry wasn't exactly considered a valid tool for teaching grammar

=SilverInkblot Jul 22, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Well, to be fair I probably should have one in the name of making sense, but I like this far more

And adding in another "she" would sound wonky to my ears; one of the things I learned in my first poetry course was to try to avoid unnecessary repetition (unless you're using a form that requires it, or can somehow make it work for you).

~PlayinTheDead Jul 22, 2012

I see your point. In all honesty, if there's a thing that's been bothering me since I started taking writing in English with an ounce of seriousness, it's the ease with which you end up repeating pronoun over pronoun D: So yeah, if your inner ear prefers the verse to stay like this, by all means it'll be fine

~FightingIsolation Jun 28, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Even though you had more stanzas, I think that your simplicity in keeping it this short was perfect. I love it. Don't extend it. Secondly I think you placed the period appropriately, it does not need to be changed. It was nice to have a pause so that the sentence did not run on. I particularly enjoyed your third line, with the "black-and-white montage" I thought that was a genuine work of uniqueness. Very, very well done.

=SilverInkblot Jun 28, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you very much! I may upload the other stanzas in a new deviation sometime, if I ever discover which path I want this to take

~djibouti4 Jun 24, 2012 Student Writer

1. I like the length. It seems fitting that it's short because the poem is like a fleeting memory; as if it too is a one still-frame or photograph like those described in the poem. I'm not sure if that was intended, but from a reader's perspective it comes across subtly, but effectively. I also think that in keeping the poem short, the reader is drawn to re-read it. There's so much mystery in this poem that it drives the reader crazy because they cannot answer the questions it raises about the significance of her mother's belongings, or the relationship between her mother and her father etc. You've achieved a very delicate balance between having enough substance so that the reader has a starting point from which to think, and leaving enough unsaid so that the mystery of the poem consumes the reader - and all without causing the reader to be frustrated in the process.
2. I'm pretty torn about this question. The full-stop creates a separation in the poem, but arguably a necessary separation: lines 1-4 make use of aesthetics to create a kind of nostalgia, whereas lines 5-7 are somewhat darker and do not make use of physical descriptions. Perhaps the use of a comma would not have strongly divided the two very different parts of the poem, and so their significance may have been lost. However, the full stop does make a bit of a break, a stomp in the poem that arguably contradicts the connection I described in question 1 between the photographs in the poem and the idea that the poem is a quick, incomplete snapshot. The use of a comma would have prevented such a harsh break in the poem, on the other hand.
Overall, I did enjoy this poem - I still am no further forward in being able to truly understand it, but the delicate handling of such a mysterious piece keeps me guessing nonetheless.

=SilverInkblot Jun 24, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Whoa, block paragraph

I like your take on the length - in retrospect, it was more or less what I was trying to accomplish, even if I couldn't verbalize the intention

The more people comment, the more I lean towards keeping the full stop. Grammatically, I think it would flow better with something like a semi-colon, but aesthetically I think that separation between the first part of the scene and the second part needs to be there.

~djibouti4 Jul 5, 2012 Student Writer

Sorry, I got a little carried away haha!

I'm glad to hear, I love it when people who read my poems are able to describe exactly what I was thinking when I wrote it - it makes me feel like I truly conveyed a moment, which you have clearly done!

I think I agree with you here. I was more neutral on the matter when I wrote the comment, but now I think the separation is probably the key aspect. Hope this helped!

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