Personal

I spent the first few hours of my new year with literature and Pokemon X. We'll get to the literature later. Right now, I've been enjoying the latest entry in the Pokemon franchise. I don't know if I've gotten better, or the games have gotten easier, but I'm not having as much trouble catching the stupid things as I used to. Then again, it sure is nice of the developers to put someone near the beginning that gives you False Swipe

I've heard from Doc that he has to wear a brace on his arm for another month before he can start therapy. He is getting better, but it's slow going. Nothing I can do about it, though I'd least like to help keep him entertained while he's incapacitated. Hence a basket full of movies and stuff.

Last time we talked, I spent most of the conversation explaining dA to him Among some other Internet stuff. I'll probably end up linking this feature to him; I told him what I was working on and he was interested and that conversation snowballed from there. It's easier to explain with visual examples. In return, he gave me a website to check out and I ended up buying the book it was selling because holy crap look at their website! I'm on chapter five or six, and it's really good. I don't truly savor many books, but this one is fantastic.

I guess I should recap the year, but I don't have a lot of patience for excessive sentiment and I prefer my cheese on my nachos. So here's a bulleted list of stuff I did this year:

• Started a new group based on a poetry form I invented: TheTitlePage.

• Listened to way too much Springsteen.

• Wrote a bunch of scripts.
• Edited a book.
• Wrote a book.
• Ate an entire half of a cake. Will aim for the whole thing next year.
  
• Awarded two Daily Deviations
• Achieved Seniority (I realize this all over again every few weeks and have a minor brain freeze).
• Briefly lost my writing notebook.
• Solved a murder mystery.
• Graduated.

Around dA

toxic--sunrise is this week's Spotlight interviewee!
WorldWar-Tori is hosting a title poetry contest
imaginative-lioness is holding another Literature Roadtrip.
Multhaiku is looking for deviants to write articles for February's HaikuWriMo.
It's CRITmas!
TwilightPoetess is hosting a DLD suggestion contest!
Fill in the Blanks Contest
The Souljournalists challenge has begun.
The Glory-Be-Project begins a new year.

2013 Features

I said we'd come back to literature and I meant it. I've picked out 100 pieces I enjoyed over the course of the year, thirty of which are from new deviants (new being defined as "their time here is measured in months instead of years").

New Talents:

<da:thumb id="388977254"/> <da:thumb id="402599566"/> <da:thumb id="391030272"/>  <da:thumb id="411443173"/> <da:thumb id="396239629"/>  wishes like constellationsI hope the stars kiss your dreams
goodnight.
I hope the moon snugly tucks you in,
while the Ursa Major reads to you
a bedtime story.
I hope you realize that the universe
is in your palms,
and that galaxies dance like lovers
on your fingertips. <da:thumb id="349253500"/> <da:thumb id="407025754"/> <da:thumb id="422936744"/>  and then it was overyour hair is cascaded around your head and your eyes are fluttering like car blinkers on a monday traffic morning, and you have emerald eyes that i swear were once used as jewels sold in a merchant's corner shop a few centuries back.
---
i wrote you a letter, one you can never answer because i figured you wouldn't listen anyway.
the truth is i never saw your face in swimming pools of strangers' faces, i never thought about what it was like to trace the crinkles along your eyes or the lines on your hands, because astrology would've muttered in my ear that the stars were aligned and weary because i didn't love you back.  the nevergirlyou didn't believe in growing
up or growing old with someone
because you always confessed it
would be so much more magical
to stay young with them forever
you had the map of neverland
branded in your bones and
sometimes i swear i could hear
those little lost boys howling
and running through your spine
i cried the day you realized
peter wasn't coming and that
you would never learn how to
fly but let's face it, staying
young was never apart of the plan
but you found a way to not
grow up and i wish you hadn't
because now you are a shadow,
never growing and leaving every
night just because something else
wasn't bright enough for you  symptoms of red               a materialist
               inside of you
               unknitting your sweater
               & in your dream
               you are a wolf eating
               a flower in an orange field. the world
               is ending. an unnamed girl stains you
               as if she were tea
               giving up to a
               foaming ocean.
               she writes a story: the unrequited
               blurry visions of two visionaries
                  i saw stars in your eyesi saw stars in your eyes:
and on your lips i found
the heavens, the
infinite expansion of
a cosmos in your lungs,
lush on your breath as it
trembled.
my blood in a spiral,
the grand clockwork of
the milky way -- alive
at your touch, at the
taste of your fingertips.
moving in rythym as  
the tide shaking an ocean of stars:
a wave crashing down on
the sands of neptune's far shore,
a comet aflame streaks across
the night sky -- sighing softly,
our arms entwined in wonder,
a salty sea on our tongues.
we held each other,
we felt a planet in
revolution around us:
a sun in supernova,
blazing, burning from a
million light-years
away. Burialif you find this
                                                               
                  please
cremate my feelings
                                   put my thoughts in a mausoleum
                bury my heart in a wooden coffin
         
                                                              dump my soul into the sea
           
                           
     but
                             
just leave my body here. To My Biology TextbookOn page 159 of my biology textbook, it reads,
“...cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells”
as though that could explain everything,
and I thought it did for a time.
But my textbook never warned me
that his skin would pale
to a point where I could see
the blue freight trains
carrying eighteen pills
throughout his frail body.
My textbook never warned me
that his watery irises would freeze over,
that he would hurl insults like knives,
and that he would clench his jaw
as tightly as his fist clenched his wine glass
because the only person to blame is himself,
and he can’t swallow that as easily
as he can the olives in his martinis.
And my textbook never warned me
that it would be this difficult to breathe
because of my acute awareness
that his breaths are limited,
and that there would be nothing I could do
but soldier on searching for that silver lining
clinging to these foreboding thunderheads. fouryou told me that
there was nothing beautiful
in sadness –
but i need to believe
that someone is going to see beauty
in the way the broken shards
of my heart
fall like loose teeth
from my sleeve.
and that maybe someone could love me
despite the albatross
around my neck
tightening like a noose
every time i think of the things
i've done wrong.
and i'm trying not to become
my sadness
but it slides down my throat
like my bottle of writer's tears
filling up the cracks
in my bones.
you told me that
there was nothing beautiful
in sadness –
and i tried not to cry,
because i think
that's the only beautiful thing
about me. Breaking Up with Writer's BlockDear Writer’s Block,
it’s not you, it’s me. I know we’ve known each other since the beginning. Since I’ve started writing actually, and looking at everything that’ve we’ve gone through together, I can clearly see we cannot work together any longer.
You have given me the advantage of using you as an excuse. But you are stopping me, holding me back, from being the best I can be. From finding the inspiration around me, everywhere. That I am missing opportunities in writing. It’s very important to me, you know. You’re coming in between my passions, and I just can’t make space for you anymore.
I’m not saying I hate you, because I really don’t. I’ve found comfort being with you in the past. You’ve been so loyal around me, I am so pleased with your persistent you are. You’ve hung around me everywhere. I’ve been selfish, ignorant, trying to work around you as if you were not even there! Do yo

Mature Content

:thumb409155402: Dear carpet,I apologize for not cleaning you sooner.
The demands of everyday press on me too
(although not quite like a footprint).
Besides, I like the smell of roses in my bedroom --
her shirt lay there for a week, but you knew that.
Wafting cheap vodka is rather unpleasant ,
especially in the lounge, but it reminds me to stay sober.
Of course, these are just the obvious things --
I haven't mentioned the urine in the bathroom
or the very faint spill in the guest room.
Do you even notice small accidents, or does it take
an earthquake to wake you?
Next time I whip out the steamer,
what should I hit first?
Which memories do you want erased?
Has the pet odor begun to irritate you?
The truth is, and I'm being honest,
that we are too alike (suede & velvet).
I rather enjoy the mixing scents,
and you look fabulous with multi-colored spots.
So, actually, I take back my apology.
Thank you for your aromatherapy.
                          :thumb417412669: Glass Half FullWe have a new cat now.
She streaks through the house
and sleeps in your old beds,
watching me from the rocking chair
as I habitually seek you out.
She's sweeter than you--
she sits in my lap
and plays with my fingers,
doll-faced and docile
against your angular independence.
I still search for you
amongst the cracks in my heart
as you slip like sand
deeper into the dark recesses
of my faulty memories.
I am always afraid
that my tears will ruin the circuitry
through which I access
our sunny afternoons and quiet nights,
and you will slip beyond me.
I did not hope for an afterlife
until I ran my fingers through your cold fur,
and understood why people find solace
in broken hymnals and new beginnings;
I miss my pessimism. :thumb388825586: Clichedoes your poetry consist of
feelings nestled in ribcages
silent cries inside of a marrow
and the dull thunk of your heart
against my barely beating bones?
or is your poetry nestled in galaxies
shooting across well-kept fingertips
like comets lighting a dull sky
stardust of my hip bone wishes
literature universe coming to an end?
can your poetry play imagination
like a clever twist in a dream
where you kiss my shadows away
and teach me how to caress you
with love that burns passion away?
oh dear
are you smitten enough to
run away with me
or are you yet to be blanketed
by these heavy arms of mine?
do my words weigh you down?
i havent met one so easily drowned
by the vast sea of my sunkissed letters
but as your velvet lips whispered,
always is there a first. <da:thumb id="410973041"/> k.n., ii7 9 13                       he took a bow overlooking interstate 680:
                                           car-comets in full spin,
                                                          orbital lights
                                                  his dreams planetary, saturnian -
                                          he almost sprouted wings that night and
                                   i cannot say it would not be beautiful;
                             the palpations of downtown pumping
                             luminous cells, coursing
                                       through highway veins
                       
                    and he, standing in the heart of his world
             visions galactic
                             mind ecstatic -
                                                                his feet began
                                                                to lift just a little.
9 20 13
a few phone calls
and a pair of Beautyhe held a mirror
up to her face, and
whispered
‘you are beautiful’.
‘looks don’t
interest
me’ she
stated;
and he,
removing the
mask of happiness
he wore,
whispered in
return:
‘that’s because you’ve
never
been ugly.’ :thumb404311390: :thumb366192181:

And  some old favorites:

DollBarbie’s thighs were not meant to touch;
her hair is devoid of split ends
and there's this deadness in her eyes,
impossible to mimic—a quiet crawlspace without light.
There's a pastel pale to her skin,
hairless and unblemished,
a blank un-crevice between her legs
and her rouge-stained lips are ever smiling.
She is nothing like you, child.
But do not forget
                                  that she borrows your voice. OrigamiYou made me paper cranes,
gave me birds that couldn't fly.
I tried to teach you origami,
but your hands were clumsy
and you preferred to cut than fold.
You stapled together pieces
with glaring metal stitches;
it wasn't art, but surgery
on something we both knew was dead.
Your signature,
ligature marks
in bleeding ink
scratched in the corners,
nearly indecipherable;
the words "hate" and "love,"
they always read the same to me
(however it was written.)
I tried to teach you how to fold a heart
to place your love inside.
"I love you" (deep) inside...
But your hands were clumsy,
and they crumpled each attempt.
So you made me birds to set me free,
but they couldnt fly.
They relied upon your love,
and like origami,
it was a sense, a skill,
an art you never learned - -
but not for lack of trying.
That flock I never dared to count,
oh, you would have made me more,
(one for every day we were together)
but I was running out of sky.
They were ugly and unlucky,
misshapen, crooked, broken,
bu CryptographyI cannot talk to you right now.
I can't part my lips
and spill conversations out:
the sentences grow barbs,
my mouth doesn't work,
my tongue seizes up,
and the words catch.
I am choking on them
and I can't spit them out.
The only way I can speak
to you is in code.
I have to tell you
that I am growing moth wings,
that the deep blue Atlantic
is writhing under my ribs,
that the butterflies in my stomach
are trying to bite their way out
and I am swallowing bottlefuls
of hornets to sting them quiet.
That I have stopped being a man
and have started being a pillar of salt
trying to learn how to rain dance.
That I am eating smoke.
I am trying to tell you something
but I think the cipher is written
on the marrow of my bones
and I don't want to know
what you'll need to do
to crack me. Seam StressThe heaviness settled in like an anvil being dropped on me. I couldn't take the fog inside my head and the lead inside my heart anymore, so I sat in the sun to melt it away. I wanted to sear every surface until I couldn't feel anymore. What kind of life is that, though, to never feel anything? To never feel the joy of love; the way it wraps its arms around your heart and traces its fingertips along your veins? Even the pain of looking back at love's scattered memories is necessary to understand how beautiful the feeling once was; how lucky you were to have ever felt its lips press to your cheek, its breath collect in the hollow of your neck. Love does these things, sews itself right up inside you to close the holes within.
You'll be told you'll find another. You'll be told to go, go and find happiness because all this is, is hurt, and nothing else. The problem is, your heart doesn't understand the complexities of bad timing or fear or settling for another because of low self-worth. You Cinder-eyed CinderellaI saw her ignite at the masquerade.
At the foot where sprung a spiral stair,
I was kerosene drenched and unafraid.
Her delicate descent was a cascade—
Waterfall of ashen dress and auburn hair.
I saw her ignite at the masquerade.
Strawberry-speckled skin as she swayed
Lit the room. While she was burning through air,
I was kerosene drenched and unafraid.
Scent of cinnamon hovered like a handmaid.
My mirrored self encapsulated in her glare,
I saw her ignite at the masquerade.
Her approach and volcano-heated hush that laid
Behind her breath carried me to place where
I was kerosene drenched and unafraid.
Lured by lucid lips, I tiptoed past brocade
Curtains with her. We were not flicker but flare.
I saw her ignite at the masquerade:
I was kerosene drenched in unafraid. You Left Me Nine Weeks DueDear Heart,
You linger on the Mediterranean
like only the stars are watching,
with three Hail Marys left,
a waiting girl,
and those he left behind.
To be thankful is unforgiving.
My mouth is a grave yard
with tips on avoiding word confusion
between poetry and addiction.
You (the messenger)
linger on the Mediterranean:
gone. :thumb410132056: The holeI was walking, and then I Caramel cloudsBrittle caramel clouds lit their way
With shards of broken sugar
Melted by the sun and spread thick
Like honey syrup seas
I used to talk like that. i just really don't care about climate changei am fourteen.
i am fourteen years old and they tell me
to take on the world, to hold the globe
like a precious creature in my palms 
and to balance the continents 
between my fingers.
i don't want to suck the toxins from
the atmosphere and pollute young
lungs, the exposition of explicit 
curriculum drives me crazy.
it may be compulsory but having 
it drummed into your ears and weaved
into your innards is not the way that
(i want to live).
i am fourteen years old,
and they tell us that kids are growing up way too fast
in a world that's self destructing by the second, 
but ignorance is bliss - weren't they the ones
who taught us so? GOD DELIVERS PIZZAToday God is a pizza delivery boy,
You call him to place an order,
You want this but not that,
And expect it to be hand delivered.
Today God is a hired assassin,
You live in fear of his wrath,
But quick to call upon his services,
To strike down your enemies.
Today God is a street hooker,
You want all your desires fulfilled,
And in the moment of passion you love,
But then you turn away in disgust.
Today God is a servant boy,
Like a slave at your command,
You want everything done for you,
But will do nothing for him.
Today God is a cleaner,
He scrubs your polluted home,
But you smear dirt on the walls,
And place the blame on him.
Today God is God,
You could ask for truth and love,
But instead you want pizza,
And definitely no olives. :thumb417756168: :thumb407420131: :thumb419740640: concrete in your bonesYou're no less than a story grown up by the roots
From dirty city sidewalks,
Breathing with lungs that taste of cigar smoke.
You spend all your lives to take on the world
Until you come falling from the skyscrapers you've come to know -
No streets nor dreams here are made of gold, love,
And you only learned that the hard way.
When the night rolls around you sing with the guitars
That play on street corners for coins, bent and broken;
Raspy voices and over-tuned strings
Were the only lullaby you ever had
When traffic rocked you to sleep beneath the bar lights. :thumb415352292: :thumb423056965: :thumb414882345: CassiopeiaThe sickle moon
falls, and I blossom
henna red. Ghosts of Walmart.I hate going to Walmart at night.
There are ghosts there.
The wind propelled a cart
behind the dust covered truck
and as I watched it sail
across the smooth concrete sea,
I was brought back to this place
in a different time.
I remember warm embraces
that seemed to last for hours
but were never enough.
I remember guitar strings being
plucked lightly as I resisted
the urge to ask you to dance.
I remember shopping cart barricades
and laughter and the complete
absence of the now constant worry.
(This was before I discovered
the constellations of freckles
that are splattered across your skin.)
I remember holding it together
during your salt-watery farewell
only to weep on the side of the interstate.
I remember when you offered
to walk with me to my hail-dented car
and joked about the mess within.
(Although you did not know it then,
I treasured every moment with you.
I loved you quietly and without question.)
Thinking back to that mess,
I think that I had more to offer you then
than I could Winter's Words"Be my autumn,"
she was whispering
when her eyes found you
tracing in the dust
of ethereal dreams.
If only she knew... star sandwe are not built of bone, muscle and flesh-
but words, actions and feelings. that is 'us'
infinite to the last drop of our morning
coffee while we read someone else's thoughts
written out on paper and try to decide if
fiction is really fiction or just fact, cut up and
breaded and baked for thirty minutes to a
golden brown only to be broken down
again and again and again each and every morning
from now until ever as a new stranger ponders page
after page of someone else's actions- be it with
a pen or a camera, it's still debatable, tangible magic
and sometimes that's what we are in the end-
magic with a side of not quite believable
and maybe we didn't start out this way but
it's the final product- the finished creation
that's what gets remembered, what catches
someone's eye, and not always the steps between.

Mature Content

Day 12: PoetryYou mustn't forget that poetry
is not obscure words
and fancified circumstances
thinly married and filthy
with pretension--
it is familiar words and
those moments we've all lived
bonded and twisted together--
the strands of a bracelet
(or the plait of your hair),
bled into a cohesive whole
following the curve of your veins. Give You PoemsI want to give you poems
like jewels and candied peaches,
call you Hans, Darling,
Husband – plant poems
that push, cry, smile
in the dirt of our home.
I want to give you poems
to put a storm in your mouth,
ones that are savage
and golden and cry
like gods on train platforms,
their eyes wet with silence.
I want to give you poems
that can breathe into
yours, the slow green
kisses; our wild palms
touching, smoking,
crushing
at damp silk.
Poems that can make
faces in the bath,
cook your eggs,
be your ruby,
be your dark star,
feathered bellies and
black spots. I want to
write a poem
that can stand before you
proud and bright, make swells
in your throat and heart,
take slow and final steps –
that can ache with poetry,
with freckles, with teeth,
that turn smiling
to bite, wear the words
like a bride. Why I Hate Romantic Comedies1.
Because they say that for every single boy who counts the stars, there is a little girl who is wishing upon one. (And they never mention what happens after the stars fade into morning and the other falls into oblivion)
2.
Because they say that people fall in love when the time is right, they are true to each other and are ready to be together. (But no one ever mentions how she is so damaged she can barely think, and he is so cynical that he may never be ready.)
3.
Because they insist that your soulmate is going to be a good, kind, caring human being who will love you from the bottom of their hearts. (This is due to the fact that even if there is someone for everyone, bad people are immune to the soulmate theory.)
4.
Because they always have a happy ending (And real life begins after the sun has set and she has realized that he may not be everything she hoped for and he begins to have second thoughts about commitment.)
5.
Because everything is assured in i slowly, and then all at onceand for once, he slips on his wedding ring, to cure the monotony.  it slides over his knuckle, a perfect fit, and in the morning release of sunlight the silver gleams at him.  it glares, calling him a liar: she is not a whorehouse and you are too broke to own her, you harlot, you.  he buttons up, tucks in his shirt tail, and buckles his belt.  the clinking of metal parts is the only sound in the room besides the dusting of her breathing beside him.  and when he's gone, the only thing he leaves behind are the bruises on her collarbone.
-
you find him because you're lonely, (well, it's actually the opposite.)  he finds you because his wardrobe is black and his shoes are scuffed and he asks you where your castle is.  you're the only princess he sees 'round here.  the rain soaks into his shirt and he curses it, grinning.  and damn girl, you follow him, because you think you see some kinda warmth in his ice blue eyes.
-
it takes you days t :thumb394513713: :thumb378054556: Ice CreamEveryone writes poems about emotions and fears
And one day I said, "I want to write a poem about
Ice cream."
About Dilly Bars on the drive from Tucson to Phoenix
The Dairy Queen across the highway from the ostrich farm
With the dust devil's raging by
About soft serve cones at the Desert Museum
Always Twist. Never Vanilla.
On all those hot Saturday afternoons
Watching mountain goats sleep in the shade
A poem about Friday nights after pizza
A different flavor every time
And eating straight from the carton at Dad's
While netflix plays on the wii
And sitting on the rooftop watching the stars
Ice cream bar in hand
About the store by Big Lake
Where I always got the cookie ice cream smash
Ate it on the way back to camp
Every single time.
Gelato at the Stanley Hotel
The worst I've ever had
Talking in hushed voices about ghosts and bravery and
"Oh that's so bogus"
And then there was the Gelato at Parisi's
Caramel
Sea salt
After a wonderful, stuffing dinner
The mini Ben & Jerry's at Fry's
"Pleas RenovationsThey will come again, and when they do, the others will hide.
Mr. Brown will curl up in his hole in the eaves. The Wife in the crawlspace, and I'll be here, clutching my dear ones close. I'm wrapping my legs around them, and I can hear them fidget against the soft sac, their little tremors not unlike the desperate throes of flies, but warm, beautiful. It won't be long now. Now is the tender time. Soon I'll wear them on my back, and we can leave this place. But not yet. Not yet. Now is the time when a swift strike would kill them, and me with them. I will not leave.
I can't leave. I've hidden as well as I can. A small shadow between the braces under the mantel, where their lights don't penetrate. At least not yet.
Too much light. Too many sounds. They come with their sounds, with their fangs at the ends of their legs, shooting explosions into the walls, toppling everything. They are giants. They grumble at each other, tear up the floors, rip down the lights. Destroy everything that has Into The MarshesMama once sayed not to go down to the marshes because the snakes and monsters and creeping crawlies live there. They gone eat you up, she says, gone eat you up like a sundae on Saturday morning.
What you think Donny Two Cents and I gone do on a boring afternoon?
We gone down to the marshes.
“You don’t think this real bad, do you, Squeaky?” Donny Two Cents asked me. Boy is scareder than a fish in a crocodile pond. Makes me scared too, but I ain’t never telling him that.
“Course I don’t think that, why you ask?” I snapped back. “We gone to the marshes to look for the Oogey Boogey Man.” I raised my arms real high and grinned like one a them crazies you see down by St. Ann’s. They just walk around in circles all day in St. Ann’s fenced in yard and sometimes stare at the sun.
“Oogey Boogey Man?” repeated Donny Two Cents. He already trembling, that shakey boy. If we filled him with pecans he’d be a walking ma

Mature Content

:thumb404271981: :thumb359954727: steps.humans were made to run barefoot.
we were made to climb mountains, fighting gravity
and to fly across stony deserts and dangerous forests.
we were not made for these,
these bastardizations of heels and soles and
    skin.
humans were made to run barefoot,
because
we were always meant to leave traces of ourselves
on everything we touched, every inch
of the world that we would walk.
we were always meant to take with us
the scars left by the walls we would climb,
the bruises left by the falls we would take,
the hard skin and the instant familiarity left
    by the paths we would forge
    alone.
so worry not.
you were never meant to feel the skin of this earth
through designer heels and combat boots.
you were only ever meant to feel the weight of yourself,
a breathing, bleeding, human
charged with electric emotions and spinning
out of control
    upon the ground,
meant to break yourself on the roads you paved
and the dreams you wrought in sto the boy with twelve braceletsthe cobwebs of your past cling
to the inside of your ribcage
and gently strangle your heart.
when i saw you for the first time
i had already known you for weeks,
taken part in your gorgeous
conversations and watched you spread
laughter like a perfect virus
among all the people you met.
you wore twelve bracelets,
six on each wrist;
once upon a time they served
to cover a mistake you made
when you were thirteen,
but it wasn’t a mistake now
so much as a story
about a boy who was brave enough to keep breathing,
and you kept the bracelets just because their memory annoyed you
when you took them off.
that was what you said, anyway.
then i learned how sure you were
that you were only pretending
to be brave.
you wore a mirror as a face,
silver and starlike,
molded to your features and well-rehearsed
in reflecting just what you
knew people wanted to see
and one night,
terrified of seeing nothing but myself
in you
[and greedy to see your face]
i smashed the mirror.
i expected you to scramb

Mature Content

Don't be boringA
good poem
makes you wish
you had written it.
A bad
one
restores your faith
in television. ...your struggles have made you wisewhen the counsellor tells you your struggles have made you wise...
ask her how useful the knowledge of how many punches it takes to lay you cold on the floor will be in future. ask her if the endless frost that shivers under your fragile skin is going to turn out handy, a free cooling agent in the heated heights of summer. ask her where she was every morning when you took the pills and crumpled the plastic cup pathetic in your fist. ask her about the taste of toothpaste and bile, how she felt when the dentist marked the progression of decay and solemnly warned you to cut down on sweets. ask her how it feels to keep all those suicides filed away in her desk drawer knowing that they were never ‘wise’ enough to see another way out and through. ask her about the first time she drank until she threw up for hours after she’d become sober again because a boy wouldn’t touch her, or a girl wouldn’t give her a second glance. question everything because there& :thumb351412645: scheherazadeon
my
wedding
night
(or
whatever
comes
before):
i
plan
to
joke,
to
blunder,
to
laughably
trip
on
my
beautiful
slip,
to
slap
him
in
the
lips
with
wit
to
tell
one-thousand-and-one
stories
so
that
maybe,
in
my
gooseflesh-
pricked
skin
and
shying
thighs
he
might
take
my
shivering
heart
in
hands
and
say,
'it's all right.
not tonight.' Black CatDainty little feet
softly trod across the floor
black as their bad luck.
© 2012 confessionalthey say sad girls change their hair color
and forgive their monsters.
i change my morals
and become one. lit to parking metersteaching literature to parking meters
is a selfless art.
for parking meters merely take,
and are silent. I thought I knew my death.I thought I knew my death. He grabbed my heart one day and squeezed tightly, banded fear wrapping its way around my body and terrorizing the air from my lungs. "Not..Like..This.." I would gasp, thinking that there must be some better way out. I would start to beg but it would soon be over. He'd release me and my body would give up. There would be nothing left to say.
I thought I knew my death. She would slip into the shadows some months before I thought my time was up. She would slowly take my memories for my own, replacing them with child's talk and nonsensical things. "Oh please, won't somebody help me." It would be a rhetoric, although I wouldn't know that then.
I thought I knew my death. He would seep into my skin and beneath my bones. Disease would spread through my veins, shutting me down. My very soul would ache, because cancerous ways could do cancerous things. He would wrap himself around my very voice, my heart, my tissue and my being. "Take me home." I w

Mature Content

ForesightDebra Mae was an astonishingly good programmer.  
Her code always worked correctly the first time, and she never missed a deadline.  Her workspace was immaculate, but curiously devoid of personal effects.  No framed pictures, no toys, just her small collection of pens lined up according to color and an inbox for the occasional old-school paper input.
Her computer was equally immaculate.  Nothing extra on her desktop, no stray icons.  If one peeked at her browser history there’d be nothing there but work-related google searches and company stuff.
She dressed neatly but very plainly.  I suspected she had four dresses in her wardrobe and rotated them daily.  On casual Fridays she wore jeans and a plain white top, unlike her shaggy coworkers who went in for clever t-shirts or flannel.
Her space was so depersonalized that visiting salespeople often mistook her desk as vacant, setting up shop for the day.  The first time that happened Debra Mae simply drifted to an absent co-worker Meet The Parentsyour fathers ashes
i say 'hello' Shallow WaterIt was just a little kiddie pool in the backyard, unlovely pink-and-yellow plastic under the hot summer sun. But on those nights when Mom came home from the swing shift tired and met Daddy sitting in the kitchen angry, it was Amy’s only sanctuary.
She wasn’t a sound sleeper. Her parents still talked about how it had taken her infant self six months to sleep more than two or three hours at a time. During the school year, when her life was full of classes and friends and sports, it was easier to drop off, but summer nights were always more difficult. They were hotter, for one thing, and the long, indolent, inactive days often left her feeling too tired to sleep.
But mostly, it was because her parents had their arguments at night, right when Mom got back from the station. Daddy would send Amy to bed -- or at least her room, to pretend to sleep -- hours before. Then he would wait, sitting at the kitchen table and facing the door like a judge, hands folded in front of him DivorceA 
            pawn.

            
              Betwixt
          N                     D                        E
         
          I       G         N        Q        E       N
        
          K            A   

Mature Content

ffm 14 - His Adoring Fans“It really is a curse being this beautiful,” Aiden said as he waved to the crowd.
That was my brother, Mr. Humble.  He hummed a few bars of “I'm too sexy”. The crowd groaned and moaned, straining to reach him.
If the hundred of adoring “fans” hadn't been hundreds of undead monsters hoping to eat his beautiful face I might have felt the need to knock him down a peg. Before the apocalypse, that had been our thing. He'd wax poetic about his good genes, and I'd tell him he was right, if those genes were taken from a baboon's ass.
The sea of dead ringed our haven. It blocked the only road to the highway. It flooded the streets. It clogged the alleyways. If we hadn't managed to stock the store in the early days of the disaster, would would have been in the middle of a slow, horrible death by starvation. We weren't getting out any time soon.
Aiden preened. He ran his fingers through his long, greasy hair and pretended to blow a kiss to dead Mrs. MacAvo The ruleShe wouldn't let him make love to her on the bed. Beds are for sleeping she told him adamantly, when he tried to lead her there. Caught in the grip of a feverish, school-boy lust, Mekhi didn't care. It was enough that she wanted to have sex with him at all. He'd do it on a mound of shit if that's what she wanted. Inside a meat locker. Any damn where.
When it was over and they lay on the rug in post coitus languor, he found himself curious about her no bed rule. "So you've never done it on a bed?" he asked, voice hushed at 2AM.
She was a long time in answering. Her voice was soft, on the edge of sleep as she confided, "Not since I was ten years old." :thumb373479050:

Mature Content

Animal Religion 101 - IntroAn aging bull, bespectacled and leaning on a gnarled fencepost, begins his lecture before all attentive animals in the farmyard of Cup'o'tea.
'Lo,' he begins.
'Lo Teebone,' his audience replies.
Clearing his throat of a stray piece of grass, the wizened bull continues.
'Hear now the tale of the origins of nobility and religion among animals, for our history is ancient and storied.  To tell this story we must go back to the very beginning, the primordial sludge, from which we all arose, as worshiped till this day by the bovine caste through the act of wallowing.'
'I like dirt baths!' cried Drumstick the chicken, the other fowls clucking in agreement.
(Chickens always cluck in agreement.  These creatures know the true meaning of solidarity.  Well of course, except for the dearly departed - ala leftovers from Sunday's roast chicken.  
It is not that they endorse cannibalism per se, it is just that chicken tastes so good and given that any unidentifiable white meat tastes like chicken t SwellI am in a hospital, having a baby. I suppose I love children, but shit, I’m having a fuckin’ baby, after being pregnant for a year and a day or maybe longer. I’d expected my belly to be bigger, I think, more than just a shallow rise against the sheets. I anticipated a full swell, high tide. Real pregnancy, not just the suggestion of it.
There is something wrong. With either me or the child (my little womb mate, I say with affection), no one knows. Doctors have hooked me up to monitors, stuck needles into my gangly child’s limbs, taped sensors to my sunken chest. At night, I tear them off in my sleep. The machines beep angrily, jerk me awake. I call for my mother then, but have only the cold hands of faceless (faithless) nurses to soothe me. They tell me I do not have a mother, that Sarah, dear, it’s time to grow up. After all, you’re having a baby.
I spend forever in the hospital and still the baby does not come. I ask a nurse for the date. She tells Appear OfflineIt’s easy to miss you in the 21st century
with a little green dot next to your name
with a myriad of ways to grasp across the distance
but my phone has broken
your internet’s terrible
and facebook chat never works
so I’m left to miss you by candlelight
watching a lonely sea
debating a letter
wondering how anyone ever coped
before skype. If You're Going to Write a PoemIf you're going to write a poem,
stop hiding behind words like mine and personal.
Give it to the world, open ended-
tell them, "I made this for you,"
because you did, even if
you won't admit it.

And here's eight pieces from my year that I'm proud of for good measure

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. Stories of feelings with no names - Revision   i.
   The feeling you get the day after sending a letter, and you know there is no possible way that the recipient has received your message, let alone formulated time to write a reply. You still get just a little hopeful when you hear the mailman drive by. You rush out to the postbox a little too quickly and are disappointed by the pile of free coupons, bills, charity flyers, and a late Christmas card from your late Grandma Moses.
    ii.
    You lost your voice one day. You woke up to a hollow echo in the base your throat and knew you’d lost something special before you’d ever had a chance to say anything worthwhile. You checked under the bed and tried the lost and found, but couldn’t even ask if anyone had heard it lately.
   iii.
   A sudden awareness that occurs during funerals that you are going to die. You are dying right now – your cells are shedding like snakeskin and your hair is turning silver and every moment is one less than 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 and draymen carting the dead to saltwater lakes,
elegiac undertones that haunt historians and forlorn painters.
He doesn’t write poetry anymore –
except when he does. Autumn was my first love.October, I follow you -
from the magic lights of New York
to moonshines in Georgia,
until the colors dissolve.
The anxious poetry of autumn
made a memory of me.
Here’s to things I take for granted:
September blues,
chasing airplanes,
country road thunderstorms.
Unspoken words, unwritten ideas.
October, I follow you;
I thought I saw you on the shore
where the river runs through gold
on the last boat leaving the city of a hundred spires -
or perhaps Pittsburgh
(it was the lights I guess).
Here’s to the things we leave behind:
sunbeams in November,
letters addressed to no one,
poems, wounds, dead birds.
I’ve got that summertime sadness.
Maybe you’re gonna come back;
we’re changing our ways, taking different roads
and loneliness knows me by name
but October, I follow you;
without you I’m a winter heart,
a love story you don’t want,
a November shade of grey hunting ghosts
in cities that sleep inside our heads.
You told me you lied the night you kiss This must be how Gatsby felt.The dock slats of my Facebook
chat list have a green light
at the end, flickering on
and off
and on again.
That’s Internet in small
town Virginia. So close.
So far from your Midwest
hometown, the one you left
me in, stretching my arms out.
And then one fine morning – EulogiesHe was always checking his broken pocketwatch – like, maybe one day he would click the case open and it would be working again, like magic. I don’t think I would have been surprised. He brought such a sense of life with him wherever he went. And maybe that’s why it was a shock when he died.
Their tabby cat – I wonder what’s going to happen to him. It was his wife’s cat really, but, he couldn’t get rid of it – couldn’t deal with being entirely alone – after she died, even if he was always more of a dog person. That cat would sit at my feet whenever I was over for dinner and he always gave me hell for encouraging it with scraps but it made his wife laugh.
It’s odd really. I lived in the same complex, the same floor, for two years before ever meeting him. He showed me how to fix the brass plate that fell off every time I shut the door too hard.
I always liked him really, even before I got to know him all that well. He had t God is a hipster.God went to Starbucks
because the Wi-Fi signal in
heaven is crap. He pulls
an HP out of the laptop bag and
rolls His eyes at the kid lugging
in a typewriter. He clicks on Word
because He never really stopped
creating – He has more furniture
than He knows what to do with
and no wall space left for His canvases.
He likes Word – His Word – because
it reminds Him of another beginning,
before time, before space, before everything. ApplicationI have good reading comprehension skills, am a fast
typist, can do the entire project in ten minutes under
the right pressure (that is, the last eleven minutes).
Familiar with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and the
basics of CSS code. Adaptable and quick to learn.
I’m good at editing fiction, critically but kindly
(thorns are dulled among good company).
I can blow up a balloon, but can’t tie it off.
I have a hat for every occasion, and a few
just for smiles. I can make forty-eight
cookies from a bag of mix meant to make only
twenty-four (math was never my best subject).
Your tea will be too sweet, but never too strong.
I will be too sweet, but never too strong.
I fold into a suitcase for easy storage among
guests, packed neatly away into a little corner
of your choosing. I’m a poor conversationalist,
but a good listener; you can outsource all your
worries to me, along with the bad days, terrible
meetings, mediocre superiors, and empty coffeepots
(I’ll never trivial