[x]

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

The Price of Dying“I want to be interred after I die,” Mr. Peters said. He made that clear to his family while he was still lucid, before old age and illness rendered him unintelligible. Seventy wasn’t that old, but he recognized the symptoms that were creeping up on his ailing body – the aches, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness and despair. Despite his daughter’s attempts to assuage his concerns, he sensed his own mortality.
The worst part about dying, Mr. Peters thought, was what happened afterwards. Even since he was a small boy, he had been afraid of fire. He could never forget the scorching heat of the orange flames searing his skin, the dark billowing smoke entering his nostrils. The time that his house burned down, the fire almost took him with it. How ironic then, to escape the fire only to be fed into it after death.
So one day, he sat his son and daughter down after dinner. “I want to be buried whole,” he said, emphasizing the

The Hungry SeasonThe Hungry Season
“The next season will be the hungry season.”
Moses M. Kolinmore

A stem, a leaf, a stem,
a stem again,

and the army of our bodies
hanging from the branches
of the Dahoma trees.

We come to this as moths
on Saharan winds

with no malice but the wings’
direction, our caterpillar mouths,
our waiting numbers

cocooned in dirt. We are
aching and glutted

but hungry still, even as
we strip the canopy bare of leaves
and foul each river black

with waste below us –
our gruesome chatter asking,

as we fall into the dirt
to reshape what we are,
can you imagine the hunger?

But of course you can; of c

6.12There are days when I recall the litany of your kisses over my shoulders and I wonder, numbly disconsolate, how I ever maintained my disbelief in god, when your movements over me were so profoundly biblical, when my name filtering between the fog of our joined breaths was so much like a prayer - when I would think, for those minutes or hours or days we spent locked in the grip of fever, unaware of the movement of those heavenly bodies outside the reach of our bed, that there was hope for me after all. That I could be saved.

I remember so clearly the feeling of loving you and I wonder at what point, when it was, the exact moment, when that lo

la musica dulceheartbeats are psycho-
-somatic, dear;
the ocean has swallowed
me whole.

hay una guitarra bajo
mi almohada, y
sueño de música cuando
estoy solo.

you came here with
city smoke in your lungs,
and i
forgot to breathe.

Like petals and leavesWhen 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.

The Best is Yet to Comeif we grow old
there will be a sigh
an attention to the change
as your muscles slacken underneath
your faded, favorite shirt
the one that's threadbare, "holy"
in a sense less than divine
I'll have washed it for
the thousandth time
our eyes will crinkle, wrinkle
in ways that start to match
and we'll hold hands and ask:
when did the nerves and veins
begin to let our hands get cold?
-if we grow old

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

All the Things You Never KnewIt was your favorite thing to say. “We know everything about each other. Not just the good things, but even the bad ones. We have no secrets.” And the way your eyes lit up when you said it, how your arm would curl around my shoulders and squeeze me against you… I couldn’t say anything. I promised myself that I would when we were alone, but the moment always seemed wrong and eventually the fact that I still had secrets became a secret itself.

It turns out I wasn’t the only one.

I never told you about the crying or the cutting or the nights I spent awake staring at the bottle of pills. I was terrified it would b

Nathan Turner Nathan Turner, aged thirty, was a modest earner, if nothing other. Son of no

father and a flighty mother, and raised in most part by troubled brothers, he was never

one to put his trust in those upon whom the dust of age had scarcely settled. For a time,

he had meddled, even peddled, looking for the light in his own eyes. But never enough was

it, just as well, in his own mind, for the brand of fire which he desired was the sort a

man might chase until he dies, and even at the gates of Hell, never find.

But one cool evening in July, he chanced to meet - just walking by - a woman with

an empty stroller. "Empty stroller?" he asked at on

the hungry look...the hungry look,

the wolves
weaving through
and around
the gully of your throat like wraiths,

we can feel you rusting, lost one;

i know that drainpipes and fenders
begin to crackle after winter wet

and that there’s a touch of snow
in all of us,

but no one,
no one could hold you as tightly as you do,
your whole body, bloodless in this arrest,

and if you will not let your fetters show
i will show you
there’s a place for going, and you haven’t gone there yet;

where quantum particles, once in contact, can retain a connection
even when separated

where you
wander up to a stranger
with your shirt inside-out
and say &lsq

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.

rootslike drowned men who have lost their
clothes and faces, they lay suspended
facing the sun and grinning without
eyes through the ripples of the water.

those passing by wonder how they got here,
these homeless men without fingers or toes
long spindly stumps twisting into lost roots:

reaching to the east, to the south,
to the homes they have forgotten.

harmonizei'm built on broken bones and metronomes
her alto trills, his hollow tones
a second verse she'll never know
so sweet and sweet and down we go

the cords stretch and scratch but never match
the off beat tears he'll surely catch
the droplets lead a song of their own
recorded on heartstrings, a song i know

his words they ring and the hurt they bring
it's been so long but i choose to sing
and maybe he'll hear the music we make
( it's been so long but i choose to break. )

lessYour phone bills are smaller now,
with no long distance calls to make,

and your car insurance reduced to reflect lower mileage
and all those journeys not made, those roads not taken,
those lanes that you know like the back of your hand -

Left, right, straight ahead, right, right -

are no longer driven. You did not see the bluebells wake
and spring burst forth in the countryside,
did not see the snow on the fields, cold horses in their
quilted coats pawing, nibbling, pawing.

Christmas stamps still tucked in your wallet,
unused,
and fountain pens dried up next to watermarked
John Lewis writing paper
with no letters left to wr

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IciclesThere is an icicle that hangs outside my window.

It bulges here,
and sags there;
its form is impure and the people below,
whose eyes seek beauty,
do not look at it.
The street lights cast their dim, orange light.
The strangely shaped icicle,
hanging outside my window,
is clearer than the others.
It catches the lamps and bends them,
A splendid, sparkling show
that only I can see.

I look out my window into the world but I see only a beautiful icicle.

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Fifty

by *zephyrtronium, Nov 17, 2012, 6:43:24 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Please understand: I do not want
to want this (you).

I realized at poem nineteen-of-fifty:
You (college-borne) are a new you,
I (weaponized) am a new me,
and the new me still wants the new you.

Fiftyby *zephyrtronium

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I'm sorry. I thought maybe, after enough time, I would learn to move on, but I guess I was wrong.

I read exactly fifty poems you wrote while I was gone. If I still have to capture a surge of jealousy each time I read the word sex, or kiss, or hold, then I can't read those words anymore. If I still wonder whether any of the stories I read were about me, then I can't read those stories. If I still wish I had a chance, then I can't take one.

I'm sorry.

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-08

Fifty by *zephyrtronium "portraits the inner struggle born from what you don't want to want, but still do in a very straight forwarded way," says the suggester. ( Suggested by `lintu47 and Featured by `thorns )

Critique by ~candyexorcist Jan 9, 2013, 11:48:56 AM

I've never seen anyone sum up that feeling (it really doesn't have a proper name, does it?) as succinctly, clearly and devastatingly as you have here. I hate saying something is fresh because it sounds so Hollywood, but this is: like a blast of cold wind, it wakes me up and shocks me back into feeling alive.

Scored you so high on vision because I know it's truthful (and on impact for obvious reasons); originality is hard to come by no matter what subject you take on, but you did a great job of keeping away from cliches, which also plays into the technique. The simplicity and brevity is just right: like you know it needs to be said, but it's too painful to linger on for long.

I'm sorry you have those feelings, but I'm also grateful that you've chosen to take them and turn them into a beautiful piece of literature that will remain in my mind for a long time. I'll be showing this piece to my friends, and I hope they're as struck and moved by it as I was.

What do you think?

Fair Unfair

The Artist thought this was FAIR

5 out of 5 deviants thought this was fair.

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