[x]

The Death of VenusIf there lived in the world a man
as rugged and as strong as I,
who could forbear with me yet go against,
who took to the black woods and the silver hills
mostly unafraid--
who savored salt and the lay of fur
with fingertips of dirt and weather,
whose lips rolled words like smoke, like fog-
I would creep into his arms in the prologue of the night,
air sweet with the scent of new-cut hay,
alive with the nightjar's call.

SleepPerhaps it's the pressing consciousness
that across the world
people are at work and school
and walking sad with worry
Did people sleep
before they had to think of that?

Or perhaps it's the dreams
the ones you hate or hate to wake from
that don't offer their portents
as long as you are staring at the screen
or the printed page
or the windshield.

Or maybe there's a part that thinks
if you can just push the night clock round
Dare yourself not to close your eyes
like the everyday sun-wakers
To walk yourself through morning and beyond
the world will have to change somehow.

And the next time you give in
you will wake to someth

The Thin HoursI.

Those of us here in this skeleton time,
this time of the year when the nights are thin
and dark, and dark with anxiety, peeling
as layers of an oyster shell, brittle and effaced
and somehow iridescent.
When the bell tolls out the time the sound is thin
and reaches into fractured air and softly
seeks the spaces between the atoms and
misses the vital Os and CO2s in a lasting,
failed pinball. The bell sound dies in
some space between midnight and thereafter,
and each tock tock of slipping cogs is
a repeat and not a moving on.
The air is filled with each dull sound,
each tock a repeat and a repeat again. And the
slip betwee

Words, Words, WordsIt was the end of the last normal day for Jonathan Fields. He had finished work at five and had come back to his modest apartment without a sense of accomplishment. Having fixed himself a hearty dinner of microwave soup and wrinkly carrot sticks, he sat down on his grey couch and turned on the TV. There wasn't anything on that really interested him, but he got some sparse enjoyment from complaining about the lack of content. He had almost reached that blessed hypnotic state the television could sometimes induce, when his cell phone bleeped and buzzed a tired tune that he had long since ceased to hea

A Textual AnnealingA thousand thousand generations
misinterpreting the lightning,

A tumult of attempts, many
mumblings while we burn - each time
most is lost, some survives.

At the whistle of illusion that awakens,
day drops dream on me. I am
thick with swerve: If there are giants
there is a world they walk on.

And for the final faith
to be an inversion: We are
the electricity lunging toward the sky.

orthography and the right to remain silenti know just how i left you,
and i pray to god,
the same one you do each day,
that you're still as
sore,
stubborn,
and stuck
as you were
when you fled
like floodwater
to georgia.

the pile of unread books
still sit on the righthand side
of the coffee table.

i think,
but i can't be sure.

maybe they're on the left;
or even worse,
maybe they're on the shelf
over your television.

i don't know how fast
you've been sitting here
or how long you've been moving,
but i have places to go
and people to be,
warming the ache
like ringworm
in my stomach.

it's times like these
i pray to the god,
the same one you do each day,
th

Convenience Ducky Short usually avoided using 'convenience' stores. The floors were always grimy, the lighting was too dim for his tired veiny eyes, and the cashiers never spoke more than five words of English. But the thing that irked him most was how every one of them put the Ho-Hos on the very bottom shelf, and every time he would have to find a way to maneuver his long body and old rusty joints into a crouch just so he could reach them.

He had been struck with a Ho-Ho craving as he was walking by, and since the only store nearby was a tiny convience store, he had no choice but to go in and claim his cakes. There was no contro

You Slept Through The Alarm Again - Little AubadeIf, perhaps, you had turned at that moment
and your hair had caught in your fingers,
the straw being fed into the spindle, struck
by the high, thin light of first waking, the whorl
of a single line descendent from the sun, born
watery from the gap below one velveteen curtain,
all of it staining over gold and dusty and slow,
the edge of your mouth might have met the edge
of my mouth, narrow gaps both without attention
opening—if, perhaps you had turned again,
your hand could have met the curve of my neck,
your canvas rough fingers tying knots of my hair
and I would have sighed, thick spreading in your ear
like the light it

I Guess We'll Live To See ItYou should start looking
for a place we can make our last stand.
The dawn is breaking:
Every morning, a little less light,
and the end
is not as close as you think.
Love is not enough,

and wanting

is not enough.

The desert is coming.
The sea is coming.
God forbid
they find us holding our thirst
in both hands.

Instead,
instead;

No,

There is no
rescue.
You should start looking for a place
we can make our last
stand.
Take my frenzy for resignation, put your boots
on. I have a lantern. I have a little
knife. We have so much still
to survive. Open

your hands

and let the thirst out.

Build. We will stand
until t

how lilies weepobstacles
are a kind of faith,
bleeding through
intention
as if through some
amorphous skin,
red silk,
a bruised clock
covered in
veins and cloaked
with skin,
timed to burst.

i am nothing
if i am not a dream
of yours, waking
from the geometric light
of my window
into a shimmering cup,
poured full of your words
my hips dripping
their tiny mechanisms,
whirring impatiently
my mouth
made raw,
swirling in incense,
growing new teeth,
finding ulcers
to bleed through.
i drip and cough
and sleep and bleed
and hope
that i am strong enough
for someone like you.

i am taped
and bandaged
and covered up

Desolateif you are parched tonight,
the pale of your lips cracked
with thirst for that which
will not claim you;

if you hunger -
the deep and shallow collapsing
into slivered vibrations;

if blindness rejects you, says
no, watch now.
this is the way of it;

if you are breathing the world
into cinders, inhaling each poison
on purpose, striving
toward an apocalypse
because that is chaos
we can categorize,

then you may understand.

ApparitionsI was nervous when I arrived. Had my information been right? Was she used to trans patients? Would she be supportive and helpful or weirded out? Would this be a waste of time or the freeing experience I hoped it would be?

I looked around the lobby. It was small and well furnished. A large coffee table occupied the center of the room, surrounded on two sides by a small sofa and an armchair, which for some reason made me think of my grandfather. On the opposite side of the room, there was a water cooler and several large unopened refill containers. On a table near the door was the item I was looking

Of Half-Filled WordsShe is not a flutterbird.
Her fingers are skittish,
her smile is not.
Do not fear that you will
drive it away.

Sadness is her fumbling limb.
It is unwanted, yet
necessary.

When it is January
she will tell you,
"I am still struggling.
And I am becoming so many people
all at once.

A conglomeration of beauty that
I have managed to mangle.
Please, do not be sad for me."

Sometimes her sorrow is
meant for you. But mostly her.

Those specks and spots
of ocean storm lulls
reveal her truths:
ones she does not want
to extract from herself.

Her heart is not a rabbit.

When it beats
faster, faster, faster,
you need not
run harder

The Courier Eirik surveyed the impressive façade of the Temple of Myralo with concern, brow furrowed, fingers worrying the loose leather strap that kept his dagger in its sheath. It was certainly a pretty building. Everywhere he looked there was beauty to behold – from the intricately detailed vine-and-leaf patterns carved into the cloud-white exterior, to the elaborate mosaic of Prismeryl, Twin Deity of Beauty dominating the archway above the temple’s entrance.
Hanging next to the ornately wrought gate into the temple’s courtyard was a “Help Wanted” sign. It, too, was beautiful, written in a light script by a steady hand, and assuring any applicants that the pay would be more than sufficient. Eirik didn’t doubt it. If there was one thing the Prismeryllian priests and priestesses were known for (and there were many things they were known for) it was being as free with their pocketbo

LossIt is more than death: a loved one
vanishes into a gathering of ashes,
and still they are not immortalized
by that lump in the throat, that sense
of wrong, that homesickness, that love-
sickness--the unnameable, named. Baudelaire,

I am an unhealthy man now--
this is past forgetting, past frailty.
Age has whitened the crass lines
of my hair; apathy has sewn through
my thinning lips, has stilled each finger
from touching keys, or ink to paper.

Although I've shown the eye of each grape,
how they watch from a neighbor's unkept yard--
I care no longer about the sweetness
of their juice, or the miracle of finding
sense and hope in l

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of Frost (and fences)The old rail fence is falling.
Frost is right
nature does not love them.
The wire binding, red
against the grey wood
that patched it years ago,
no longer holds.
So it stands there,
and falls there.
It divides me from myself
I don't need it.
I like the way it looks
against the dogwood tree
dressed in its spring whites.
But,
if good fences
make good neighbors,
this one hasn't helped.

ChurchDirty windows
covering stained glass eyes
in ancient brick walls,
old men in dark suits
driving fancy cars stop outside
and wonder; "where is God?"

Inside the organ
grinds its dirge and
folks bounce up and down
like monkeys in the candlelight,
singing halfheartedly
and wonder; "where is God?"

The speaking man
drones on and on
and no one listens,
especially the brothers of Eutychus
with their eyes closed,
he wonders; "where is God?"

The sun rises
over the mountains.
It dyes the washboard clouds pink;
floods the earth with color
winking through the steeple,
and I know.

MoonlightWhat is it about moonlight?
Is it not shadows
telling lies to foolish hearts
blinded by loves intent,
but it seems all hearts are foolish?

What is it about moonlight?
Cowardly eight legged enchantress
hiding by day
while humans wrestle helpless
hopelessly trapped in your web.

What is it about moonlight?
Stealer of wills
binding even the strong to serve another
without thought of self or pay
as long as they both shall live
and sometimes longer

What is it about moonlight?
I do not know,
but I feel it
when I look into your eyes

The blade smiths magic(intro)
The smith by elemental magic
water fire earth and air,
mixed in forge and joined with hammer
forms a sword beyond compare.

(incantation)
By my arm and by my magic
carefully lay the kindling true.
Place the coal and pour the water.
Pump the bellows flames race through.

Earth, air, fire and water
by the hands of god and fate,
not all hellfire will be hotter
than the flames upon my grate

Heart of iron cold and lifeless
soaking in the glories heat
by the rhythm of my hammer
you will take a steady beat.

Air, water, earth and fire
anvil rings the hammer's song.
White hot steel now twisting wreathing
moving tryin

the puzzleShould I
make knowing self
a goal or selfless acts?
When wings are spread
and minds have flown
what will remain?
Should I by note
keep sentry's watch
in books of lore?
Or better yet
by loving hand
do gentle deeds,
and be kinder thoughts
when soul is fled
and flesh is gone.

need help with a nameI like to talk to you
Your sweet voice
with its country twang
and gentle wisdom.
It is kisses for my mind.

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for a friend

by ~135711cal, Feb 21, 2012, 3:12:40 PM
Literature / Poetry / Narrative / Free Verse

The sky is captured in his eyes, clear and blue.
The weather etched smile is honest.
The slender face says sixty; it lies.
It is that and half again.

Knobby hands sun baked and brown
peek out from ragged gloves.
They seem part of the old split locust post
where they are resting;
one of the row of soldiers
that keep watch on their field and its occupants.

The smile broadens as I approach.
I help stretch the wire.
His archaic dialect fills the road
with cows and snow and the yankees
that his grandparents saw marching.
The hours pass pulled by the mule
he plowed with as a boy.

He mentions his wife
they'd been married almost 60 years.
She "took sick" and died (at her own hand)
some 15 years ago.
(it is sad what people must do to escape pain)
But he only remembers the little things
she did so often to help him
they are bittersweet candy.
I know he misses her.

I smile as we finish.
He offers to pay me,
but I refuse it.