[x]

all that hasn't happenedPretty please listen to the audio.
i want to remember
the rumbling piano baritones
high notes like hailstones--your hands
running soundless scales.
i want the summer seas
november tides
the vineyard overlook, the olive
trees and sunwarmed coasts.
remember
we filled the empty pages
with whole notes and halftones,
oceans and lovesongs.
we lived, we live
inkstained and drowning
through nights thick with words
and days shot with sound.

summergirlNow read aloud over here. Do give it a listen, won't you?
i. summergirl,
you are crowthroated and tumbling
through the aspen grove
hair on fire with sunrise, lungs
full of sky.
eyelashes like wildflowers
and every morning brings
a new spray of freckles
and a sharper curve to your collarbones.
the cornfields hold no shadows
for your lighthouse eyes
and there are no endings in that
surefooted smile.
ii. you have grown
so fast.
autumn finds you with broken ankles
leaning on an oak branch
and watching the skies.
crow to sparrow--you are quiet.
summergirl, there is peace in silence,
perched treetop,
fallen antlers in your hands.
you will come to mourn your deer.
keep them close.
iii. by winter you have paled,
and like the streams
your eyes have frosted over.
you feel the chill--
there is no need for sight.
summergirl, th

syracuseListen to the audio version for the full effect, pretty please.
cloudshot sky like an oil painting and i am watching the
seagulls. i--
darling, i will swim for you
and swallow every whitecap.
i will pluck myself a coat of pelican wings,
sew them up with salt and spray--
become icarus for you.
you are calling me across the waves, love--
but you pull against the ache
in my bones, the hollow--
the clawing out for unseen sunsets and unturned tides.
i hear you, love
give me time.
i will always listen.

I am the wayward childI wish I had something more to offer
when your joints ached and your bones creaked
and you wept dust; (the cobwebs around
your tongue were a comfort once)

but I am three times screwed
over backwards and turned right around,
breathing in gravel and praying on
the only consistencies I know like
on Sun-day we are in the house of God
and it won’t rain and dad won’t speak
and mom will sit with pursed lips counting
all the times we didn’t kiss her goodbye
and everyone will call it normal,

everyone will look at the way I write words
on cracked pavement and get glassy-eyed
when they speak softly and forget the sound
of my own vo

Let the Sparrows InI.

Blackbirds are resting on the power lines,
Their silhouettes form the notation to
A dawn song set on the sheet music of
Telephone poles contrasted by the sun.

Curled leaves are land mines littered
On the lawn where imprints of twigs
And a nurturing robin's tracks collect.

Branchlets and leaflets stem from
Porch step railings and mailboxes;
The numbers read even on the
East side of the asphalt:

Seven-seven-thirty-six.
The engraved letters on
The siding reads, "Davis."
This house is home to family

So let the sparrows in.

The house,
With its branching hallways
And
Overhanging décor
And
Furniture rooted to the floor

dead1.

i hear these words
and something happens
in the yard;

it doesn't fit
a poem
or planet.

i see it squeeze
into the slits
beneath your shirt.

i feel it fly the smooth
of you
from off your back. it turns

and hides behind the acres,
stock frontiers
of jagged rooftops,

kept far and safe
and free
of me.

2.

the squirrel
has left the limb
as light would leave
a photograph.

i’m staring into its absence
and some new kind of animal is made;
one where
only
its reversal is alive.

it doesn't move or breathe.

the park is wintered over, and i don’t go.
the poppies
are all gone.
and when they do come back, they never chan

arcticwhalesong.
the abyss begins at the surface
dropping straight black
down,
and only the whales sound the depths,
crooning their gospels,
their basso profundo
elegies.
the whales face the dense,
enveloping chill--the darkness--
unhurried
and assured.
they know the
secret--the dark
is the true giver.
only the light takes
away.

PluckingPlucking

The table between us is a moon.
But the air is heavy. It lies
on us, muffled heat stilling
our breaths. You drop your fork,
but I still won't look at you. Even angels
would crawl if they were here.

"Why can't we be friends?"

I am thinking of a Flemish tapestry
I once saw in a white stone house,
walls dense and prickly with roses:
a line of stiff scarlet soldiers,
a rearing horse. The soldiers' thick fingers
grope at the blank cream cloth,
seeking purchase, gravity.

"What are you feeling?"

"I want to be a Flemish soldier,"
I tell you. Only my fingers
would constantly pluck at the expanse,
searching for the thread
that will unra

remember thisgemini, i've found it -
the missing weight from my every
valley, that was pulled from me while i was
unborn. "abducted," i'll say,
travelling back through spirit-lands
to watch our beginning, to witness
our once-upon-a-whole.

i've fallen into lightless quiet.
as i begin to breathe, i feel a pressure
released from my ears
and i can hear a cadence of
concurrent blooms. a gentle buzz
hums along, carried by the scent
of begging blossoms' celestial seed, and i
dare to look; removing one finger, then two,
then ten from my prying eyes
to see us there.

we are feathered and flowered.
our thorny bird-bones have no gaps
and our mahogany-skin is unblem

systemhe said that one day I,
who have grown accustomed
to accumulating moons,
drawn like moths
to my Venus-brightness,
would meet my match.

he told me I would be
captured by the brilliance
of a star,
a Betelgeuse, a behemoth:
supergiant turned supernova turned
supermassive black hole.

he informed me, peeking out
from under my gravity,
his erratic elliptical orbit,
that one day I would be
swallowed up

and that it would be poetic justice.

Almost-Buoyant Credence Dear ocean child

born from the escape of drowning suns,

I have longed

for your halcyon-woven hair

and lucid, lyrical gaze

for the longest while

Let me trace resting eights, lemniscates

along each inch of your holy-grail spine

swimming toward the sea snakes

embedded in your sacrum

Harbinger of kismet,

they can't be takentheir bleach skin caught my eye
albino white against the wild
hair like bright sky electric in the briars

haloed sister gods shot down like fawn

The Book of Longing and ForgivenessI.

I welcome
the grief of elephants
and the shards of slowness
in time.

The last breathing tombs
in this earth are eternal
constructs

they
manifest the degree
of my sorrow and forgetfulness.

I embrace the natural laws
of regret.

but of love,

I'm sorry.

I avoid the sound of leaving.

II.

The oceans heave.

The sky, breath heavy
for a single drop--

two bodies of water
colliding.

The earth thirsts.

You don't know,
the half-life of all
my longing leads to you.

I wait for the sound
of forgiveness everyday

a knock on the door, a phone call,
your voice shifting the air
under this vast sky

my heart wanders to this
perfect shade of blue

north pacificAudio version thisaway.
icewater and tumblestone beaches, and i wonder, clifftop,
if the fog tastes like forest.
the ocean carves its histories
in the driftwood--creation stories and
lullabyes worn smooth,
bleached to a polish.
it might be sand shifting but maybe--
maybe i can feel the whalesong,
low and deep
thrumming in the hollow spaces of my bones.
i envy the seabirds
who have more room to feel.

desert soulsociety sweetheart, you come
with broom and holy water in hand
intent upon exorcising the contents of my closets
and sweeping out the dust of
accumulated years.
my soul's a desert, darling,
and the sandstorms are unforgiving,
so spare your quiet cavalry.
some walls are best left standing, some graves
best left untilled.

Browse More Like This

more ▶

More from *disrhythmic

field notesi read some poetry
just for the sound--for the words lilting up and down
and the thick, honeysepia
polaroids unmisting in my head.
those are the poems i never understand
and the only conclusion i can draw is:
there is apparently
some supernova poetic awakening that comes
with the loss of virginity
and basically i need to get laid.

the happy mediait's a rabid world, sweetheart,
and the pedestal's not high enough until
you're breathing vertigo.
telephoto lenses
are not microscopes, for all they claim
to comprehend the chemistry
of your synapses, and the crowd
critiques your garters but hell--
why not some
intellectual upskirts, for once?
breathe me
your darkest existentialisms.

shakespeare said it betterour mouths gape too wide--primed for
primacy; vocal chords
wobbling tenuous,
spewing gray matter
only to
slip
on the rotting afterbirth
of this syn-
tactical
assault.

feast, feistwe, the scavengers--
the foxthroats on the fringes.
we do not
sing
for you.

inktrust me enough
to let me carve my love into the
quiet slope of your back.
let me feel each bone,
feel your spinal cord humming
beneath my fingertips.
let me feel
unsettled.

waking upand imagine my surprise
when my insides bloomed
into so many dandelions,
and in a single breath
i became
hollow.

View Gallery

Featured in Groups:

#WritersInk
What's your story?

#EliteLiterature
Elite Literature Collective

Details

Submitted: January 14
Submitted with: Sta.sh Writer

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 23
Favourites: 16 [who?]
Views: 180 (0 today)

[x]

suffocation keep

by *disrhythmic, Jan 14, 2013, 4:01:51 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

this city suffocates so we don't
speak.
no, at best
we sing in sign language:
the hushed glances, the solidity
of shoulder blades
and judgments--
the smothered
eyes.

hey.

listener--
let's go.

let's leave the choking crowds
and chase out somewhere
where the wind blows
wide and rich--
where the knotted songs in your
throat
unravel.

somewhere
to take these beartrap ribs
and let us
breathe.

suffocation keepby *disrhythmic

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

For *0hgravity and written to Suffocation Keep (fabulous song, by the way).

=Laitma Jan 24, 2013 General Artist

Mmmmmmmmmm, the pacing of this, the way you let us pause and pick back up, is really gorgeous.

*disrhythmic Jan 25, 2013

Thank you so much, love.

*RiseandBe Jan 18, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

"where the knotted songs in your
throat
unravel.

somewhere
to take these beartrap ribs
and let us
breathe."

That's it. I'm in love with you.

*disrhythmic Jan 19, 2013

Oh gosh.

I'm glad you like it!

*RiseandBe Jan 19, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

*nawkaman Jan 16, 2013

wonderful, as usual.

"let's leave the choking crowds
and chase out somewhere
where the wind blows
wide and rich--
where the knotted songs in your
throat
unravel."

yep. particularly fond of that right there.

*disrhythmic Jan 16, 2013

Thanks so much!

For the fave, too.

~Meggie272 Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

The second last stanza is lovely.

*disrhythmic Jan 16, 2013

*intricately-ordinary Jan 15, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I simply adore that concept: singing in sign language. Beautifully executed!

More from *disrhythmic

Featured in Groups:

Details

Statistics

suffocation keep

suffocation keepby *disrhythmic

The Journal Portal

Polls

What is your preferred drawing software?

deviantART [dee·vee·un'nt·ART]

Keep in Touch!

Deviousness

Add Media

Style