despondenti.

"are you sleepy today?"
"yes."
"but you were sleepy yesterday."
"i know."

ii.

she stirs her pomegranate green-tea until it turns from clear to purple
setting it on her bedside table and climbing back into bed again.
her fingers follow the bluer-than-usual constellation veins on her wrists and down
to the freckle on her forearm and then the scar on the inside of her elbow
crossing the tendon as if it were crux.
and then she remembered that God hasn't been with her lately.

iii.

today is long and sunny but when she steps outside the humidity creaks her bones
and her skin starts to inflame.
she assumes that if getting the mail

sea featherin the breaking of the morning we tore apart our ivory shells
our blood-red hearts are saturated in spume & sea spells
with the ache from the brine gathering around you
your ankles slippery, your mouth
moving liquid through
mine
i had never seen a more beautiful shoreline

gunmetal breaths
on shivering, silver shores

you were ebbing to my flowing
you were coming; i was going

i wrote in the sand that i was yours

on the coast i could feel
salt on my tongue - dew from the
ocean in my lungs
& i was your pearl
latched from the inside to keep everyone out
speaking in rhymes, & cotton tides

this is when you pull my body fro

on watching the night close its eyes on you1. I will not tell you
you are pretty.

How can the halls and angles of such honest humanity
be so pinched between sounds as elementary as these?

2. You need not be two stringent boughs of syllables
nor weave your viney bones abreast these five petty letters,
whirling in the fire of the river
Styx.
Do not attempt to peel yourself layer for layer,
leaving all the disgust behind.
Do not tally your body six &

The Cat on the PorchYou asked me why I do not believe in ghosts,
celestial at four in the morning.
It becomes the common hour,
not a biting static shock in the eye veins like I anticipated
but dangerously vogue and precious
like a real diamond ring or sapphires on your breast.
No wood pecking or oil teasing or misshapen duck bills bleating
just clay, but lighter, lightest
and bright
seductive and crestfallen.

They bled Peter and Pangloss over a river.
I was wearing white for the funeral
humming 'home', the matronly letters
soothe me
clotheshorses and moonlight,
Mayan jewellery in my cabinet
the mother tongue kissing my molars better

But then there

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.

Star SwallowerShe's
an enigma.
her head, a stadium drowning with applause.
yet its seats are empty like the notebooks
where armies of words should be marching.
instead she dismantles clocks
thinking she can play with time.
behind the mountains lurks a darker reasoning
a twisted labyrinth of rationalizations
hidden from the suns brilliance.

Years alone beneath the bleached fluorescent
reading those already dancing in the moonlight.
she is living a literary half-life through them
hiding from the symmetry of the writer.
licking salty rocks of excuses.
saving her secrets for posthumous excavation.
decades of productivity left for moths to chew.
you're throw

Davaothe equatorial sun
soft-etched on my skin,
there, del sur

islands away

the tan lines of shallow-bathing
in your eyes

there is so much time between

you
and
I

you spoil me, featherbreath
do i dare commit my memory
into dreams?

i laugh upon waking,
i did not realize--
i run when i go to you

the eyepatch and the handcuffs     his hands have promised
     to wipe off every fingerprint
     your last lover left on you

     he has sworn he will
     wear gloves, when he needs to,
     and pay attention to the instructions on the boxes

     "this side up"
     and "fragile"

     and you have sworn
     you will try to let him

     i hear your bodies whispering these things to each ot

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

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.

Why I Don'tWe are too permanent
for the transience of poetry,
each brief line speeding on toward
the next at breakneck speed.
And I have never been one for writing
epics, you know that.

plumbumshe has a heart of gold
and she, a heart of lead
and she, a heart of uranium.

and they go walking sometimes, the three of them.

gold is confident in her worth,
untarnishable
bought and sold and bought and sold
the virgin whore

and lead behind,
heart heavy in her chest
guilt from bullets
and pride from pipes
and anxiety from irreparable brain damage

and somewhere off to the side treads uranium,
tumors growing,
white skin glowing,
thin frame for a dense core.

for onceCold

blackempty

like the cavern where crimson vellum once resided

Drenched in reticence,
your empty blue eyes do nothing
but freeze the blood in these veins

surrounded by phantoms,
i lie in the dark next to your fading silhouette
between sheets that hold so many memories,
they are empty,

like the chestnut eyes that bore into yours

And as the rain falls harder
as it falls faster

washing down the streets
through deep alleys,
down endless roads,

for

once

just

once

i pray it takes me with

a ribcage drenched in dust i have your ribcage, you said.
what should i put in it?

i told you i'd always wanted a fire,
the kind that would fill my eyes with starlight
and pump my blood full of passion, but

you're made of wildflowers, you said.
a fire would burn you to ash.

you wanted to fill my chest with
the sound of a train, whistling
far away in the night;
with the sound of rain smacking leaves;
with the sound the wind makes
when it seems like it's trying to speak

and you wanted to throw in the
smell of midnight in august
and the feeling of sand being
sucked out from under your feet
when the ocean inhales,
and the strange little moment of
bitter

my soul is leakingthe steady drip drip of it in the kitchen
sink has me grinding my teeth

what a waste you said, and in vain
tried to tighten the taps as I laughed—
a waste!—indeed I am.

you told me, pride is a virtue you seem to be lacking
and I said pride leaves the blinds open and you laughed
and left the the blinds open.

Shiny black patent shoes, I watched as you were
lowered into the ground and wondered if that's where life got you,
if that's where life always got you,

then,
what good is pride anyway?

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starspun

by ~BittersweetObsession, Sep 29, 2012, 1:25:34 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

observing the romanticism
of hooded cemetery kids,
smoking cigarettes pretending
they are not dead.

you were always so sure
about my uncertainty,
you watched
all my pick up lines
drop things.

we built the heat
of the evening from the solidity
of starlight,

pretended
that two teens at the park
at midnight
is the stuff of teen novels
(cliches dim on
our leaf-gold horizon)

your eyes darted
from the gray expanse
of the churchyard & wandered
in thoughtful
paths.

i wanted to ask you
if i could follow. shove
the words aside &
remember that i came here alone.

i remember our innocence
in the static b e t w e e n
stars, think
about how youth without you is th-
awing out the lines in my whittled-out eyes.

look to the hooded
cemetery kids,

wonder what we'd have been like
if we grew up as nothings,
like them. teenage
nothings with chiseled
marble in our
voices, carved
out of our parents' adulterated
lies and the excitement of alcohol.

i settle for a star.
it's almost as luminous
as the afterglow of us,
almost as eerie as the cookie cutter continent
we pledged allegiance to
just because we were raised that way.

i wanna know
what it's like to break the rules,
to be embodied by rebellion and (t)reason.
voice trembles,

asks the hooded
cemetery kids
how.

glances aside, grins
with every intention to show me.
limbs contract in protest &
leaves crunch beneath
two bodies.

wakes up with hand
between legs beneath
a tearless sky. catch
sight of a star,

wonder what that star would have been like
if it had been a planet
with technicolor
comets in its orbit.

instead i wander from the leaf-strewn churchyard,
walk in the direction of you,
and think
maybe it's better for stars
to stay as they are.

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starspunby ~BittersweetObsession

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_{Edit-- February 23rd, 2013: I wish I could say something that sounds more appreciative than "thank you", but please know that embedded in those words is an unspeakable gratitude. I adore you all.}

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Submitted on: September 29, 2012
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Views: 3,144 (1 today)
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Daily Deviation

Given 2013-02-23

The suggester praises, clever wordplay and formatting compliment clear yet dizzying images sprinkled with the intangible essence of searching. starspun is by ~BittersweetObsession ( Suggested by =LadyofGaerdon and Featured by ^NicSwaner )

love 3 3

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~~neutral 0 0~~

~ellathepirate Apr 20, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

_{"wonder what that star would have been like
if it had been a planet
with technicolor
comets in its orbit."
beautiful}

~BittersweetObsession Apr 20, 2013 General Artist

thank you<3

~FAIRYTAIL1O1 Apr 19, 2013 Hobbyist Filmographer

*speechlessness* wow so good wait no i take that back it's great. u have a great way with words! (*O*)

~BittersweetObsession Apr 20, 2013 General Artist

thank you, lovely!<3

~HiddenShadowSpirit Apr 14, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Wow. Speechless.

~BittersweetObsession Apr 19, 2013 General Artist

This is so kind! I appreciate your comments so much, dearie, you are so sweet<33 Thank you!

~HiddenShadowSpirit Apr 20, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

You're welcome.

~Adonael Mar 5, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I like the way you double reason with treason and the soft, gentle way this poem delivers its story. It's like a microscopic lens, zooming down to the finest details, each and every cell. That might sound like artistic bullshit, but that's how I saw the images as I read it.

Overall, thank you for reminding me that 'me' is enough. I have some work I have to do now.

~thirdim3nsion Feb 27, 2013

this piece creates a mood that I can't quite put a finger on, something of longing, something of nostalgia, something as cool as the admiration of hooded cemetery kids.

it left me wanting to know more about this relationship that has seemingly passed. instead i wander, walk in the direction of this poem.

~RushAndRuleIt Feb 26, 2013

I just want to let you know I linked you in my latest work, Frozen Starlight, which was inspired by a line in in this poem. Again, great work!

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