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with thanks to salingerAudio version.
it's on those cold mornings
when you are nothing but indrawn breath
swirling and knitted up inside too-big
skin and weightless bones--
when the horizon arches up against
the half-thawed tendrils of sunrise
and smiles
with golden teeth,
and smiling, begs--
it's on those cold mornings
when leaving is easiest.
the car will be cold, and you will
shiver, and the engine,
much too loud,
will smack of blasphemy
but you will find peace in the steady roll
of tarmac and the yellowing light
spilling across it,
with dust motes kicked up and carried
like fish in the undertow.
when you come to that first
crossroads, it will shock you:
the way the decision hangs there
trembling and desperate--
but there are no right answers and you will not
hesitate. and each successive choice
will be made of its own accord,
and you will roll the windows down,
and draw down the scent of ear

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.

page onethe waves are calling.
watch--stormbound, the breakers
arch up to clutch at the unyielding stones
with a roar and a hiss and a sigh;
gather themselves back and
reach--and wait
and wait.
the sea is patient, and your limestone fear
will erode.
you will be
hollow.
a vessel.
you will be beautiful.
the waves are calling.
listen.

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

lovesong for sailorboyRead aloud and explained (somewhat) here.
i have always loved words as you love the sea
but i have grown to hate
prepositions
because i have always had words
about you
with you
to you--
but never for you.
words for everything
except you.
but i have words for this, so
i'll take them
one by one.
about.
the ocean was your first love and
i could always see it in your eyes.
most would call them blue--just
blue
like a swell over a sandbar
blue like the spring sky over a poppy field.
but i don't think anyone
got as close as i did and they're not blue
not shorebound and
safe--
they're gray like the steelbellied sea itself
like the horizon at dawn as it
encircles you
hems you into an impossibly vast canvas
like a demarcation line
or a promise.
one you always chased.
with.
maybe i had a streak of ocea

stolen dog-eared mapsAudio version.

we will run
directionless but on
until the sky recedes before us.
we will outlast the horizons
sink teeth into every sunset
until we chase
what chases us--
until the oceans below hold no demons
the galaxies above
no shadows.
we will lose ourselves
to frantic
fleeting space
until there is nothing left of us but
souls and
destinations.

lightsdon't be fooled--
the sky is not static.
there is an infinity between any
two points,
infinite hex codes
between the bounds of the spectrum--
infinite blues.
this is the great secret of the universe, this
cosmic light show
we can't detect--
the changes too small for our
wondering
wandering eyes.
perhaps there is someone out there--someone else
who notices
even if he cannot see.
and perhaps
his blue
is not my blue--perhaps it all comes down
to perception,
to the chemicals
electrical impulses
the spin of individual molecules that all add up to become
blue.
our own blue.
maybe it's all on us.
maybe
the cosmos isn't trying because, really--
if i were the cosmos
i would have better things to do.
maybe there is something
beautiful
in that.
in us.
in our ability to overanalyze
and oversimplify--our ability
to realize we know nothing
and forget
and try again, anyway.

belonging is such a tiresome endeavorin seeking fresh air and a forever
footsteps on cold floors only shuffle a single pair to the door
serendipity unfolding sounds creaky like home – a suppose
hones the tone of love left listening lonely in the corner coffee shops
people watching, a sighed longing off burned bitter buds

A(nother) letter to myself.You have grown.

You are not ten years
old and silent.

You've found the words
and you have made them
your sword and your shield,

your battering ram against
the walls you built when you
were too afraid to live.

And I know that some days
you feel like letting go,
like falling.

That you wonder if it might
feel like flying if you spread your arms
and close your eyes and pretend you
aren't doing this to die.

You have stood on the edges
of rooftops and bridges
(To follow her, I know,
but you were not born to go this way.)
and you have climbed back down.

You will make it, my girl,
by the skin of your teet

smoking meditationlight up
the nicotine hearth.
hold it like a prayer.
balanced between fingers, is
suicide burning
warms you deep,
the smoke jacket
covering once pink,
naïve lungs
from which now comes a cough
clawing up a blistered throat;
a deafening interruption
bursting black
inside a star numb night;
in a life wholly uneventful,
the tracing wisps captivate -
these soft, pale reminders
of a soul slipping out.

lovecraft's oceansometimes i drown in memories
of bathymetric echoes
and those mad gods
vomiting up litanies and minerals
to tremble
poised and lethal
in the deep.
and darling there are
s t a r s
down there in the dark
in the space stirred only by those pale ghosts
and spinning galaxies
and i need to be
home again.
i need the salt on my tongue
in my lungs
and the mortality snowing down
grey drifts of whalebone and squidflesh
f a l l i n g
to that last
enveloping
embrace.
and i will never stop loving the ocean
because our deepest love is reserved for our deepest fears.

justit started out as a message of honest to god tears
honest to god honesty
and she was saying she was saying she was
a mistake and we were we were mistaking
meaningless signs for road signs to somewhere where
the great elsewhere
and a qu-quiet whisper-per transformed
twisted twisted and bent and bled and
her voice her voice became this monster this monster of
feedback and static and feedback and feedback and heartache
(the sound of heartache rips
the space between your ears till you are nothing
left but lightness and heaviness all in one space all in one space
and you can't breathe you can't breathe you can't
fucking breathe or hear or see or taste a goddamn thing)
it was all noise noise noise noise no-oise-se
bouncing in the fissures of a love-torn mind
and it was it was the sensation of falling
away
then the greatness of the jumbled sound
dissipated like a f o g
and
you saw along the path
w

the beauty's in the leavingRead aloud here.
sweetheart, let's head out. let's
drink up the desert asphalt and that last bottle
of johnny walker blue--
one last toast to the copper sunsets,
to the good earth. a pair of
tailgate stargazers, you and i:
roaming curves across the glove compartment map, until
every foldline is worn flannel-soft
and it'd rather stay open
than closed.
let's forget route sixty-six. let's forget
the numbers
and pick up terra cotta dust--
breathe in the mojave. let's pretend
that the world's already ended
and it's just us.
let's leave the door unlocked
and go
west.

meditationthe blueblack sky yawns;
a many star-eyed angel
lit from the inside
bright white and waning
she closes her wide open mouth
swallowing the howl she closes
her moon mouth, her inner suns
are cold, still
the universe, full of emptiness,
lays her heaviness upon the world
in the darkness our heads turn upward
and there from the pearl roundness a whisper
"not tonight"
and someone enters Nirvana
along her quiet, hidden tongue.

Cochineal and Beetle WingsI don’t love you
anymore.

I was going to lead up to this. Maybe claim
there was something caught in my throat
about beetle wings, cochineal – you know,
they make that stuff out of flight. Lipstick, I mean.
I mean the truth is

I can only smile like an inferno because
something else isn’t going to be flying away.
And I was going to say I’m sorry but I’m not.

I was going to lie to you like you needed me to,
but pray tell me how to grace through three weeks I hoped
for some kind(ness) of hurricane, so we could recalculate
in the aftermath, and nobody would blame me then for judging
that we came up empty.

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nightmarethe foxes are at your bedside and singing--
feversongs,
songs of boiling thoughts
and broken muscles.
their lullabyes.
they sneak so quiet, and
somehow,
you can't quite
dream
anymore.

with thanks to frosttwo roads diverged in a soulless dawn
and you pull over,
idling on the shoulder of route 50.
it's a polaroid morning and
the world is as grainy
and sleep-heavy
as your eyes,
and one million miles
is not far enough.
it plays back, filmstrip,
blurred along the length of
optic nerves,
and here you are:
facing a choice between
on
and
out.
and this?
this loosejointed, hollowbodied
weightless ache--
this is what
gone
feels like.

rapid eye movementi am jealous
of my birdwinged half-sister.
later, birdwinged reapers--black,
looming quiet in every doorway. they
followed me from my hemmed-in waking terror
to the free reign of my subconscious.
far better suited to their purposes.
thunderstorms like supernovae out at sea, and
empty little boats tossed on emptier shores.
it rains, and the sea advances,
cresting the saguaros. someone is lost.
i don't know who. i don't know why i
care so much.
cliffs and skyscrapers. tightropes. sometimes
i am afraid of heights, and sometimes
afraid for those who are not.
the skinny girl
with the long dark hair is
always worth dying for.
sex. i am in turn
bemused, and indifferent, and bored, and
frustrated, more often than anything.
i like that i still remember how it felt to hug my dog,
right down to the cool wirecoat
and the warm fluff beneath,
and his immense
patience.
sometimes i wake up with misty
recollections and the overwhelming thought:
i wish it could be like this.
jungles with ancient

sun worshipand we, the broken-winged disciples
thrum closer, closer--
seeking warmth on our dust-drenched backs,
and reflections,
and a landmark in the wide and open
dark.
we breathe,
together
(closer)--
moths among the fireflies.

dance party of oneever the same, rob thomas
there's a bonfire in the drum
of a washing machine by the lake and
bottles tied to trees with sparks
glancing off like so many
fireflies.
the a la menthe, nikkfurie
most
get lost among the cobblestone
rabbit warrens or
take to the sea but our road
is lit by midnight cameraflash
and the neon,
with our tracks scuffed out among
the hush and rumble of
a city
where no one
knows our names.
travelin' on, norah jones
shoulders just broad enough
for six strings and a hollow body
and the weight of
all those words yet to be--down the
train tracks and through the
blue dawn, with that
crossroads rumble
in his bones.
don't let go, weezer
and the irony is
that they were always right
but we never cared.
are you happy now, by somebody whose name escapes me and i'm too lazy to look up (and covered by cassadee pope)
pretty little thing with a pretty little gun
and a smile like the devil on a
monday morning...
breathing, lifehouse<

three dogs in the churchyardThe chain link around the graveyard runs straight through an oak tree. The bark looks crippled where it passed through the wire--mutilated in a faint diamond pattern--but you can see around the edges where it's fusing together smooth again.
The kids with the distant eyes always come here to smoke. You've never seen eyes like that. Distant, but not glazed, like they're looking into eternity and watching the threads of livewire possibility arc and writhe before them. The embers at the ends of their smokes cast cherry-red reflections on their irises.
The top of the fence is buckling where it enters the tree. You wonder if they'll have to cut it loose if they ever take it down. You wonder how far the roots have crept.
You wonder why the kids with the forever eyes never stand, vulpine, by the churchyard with its stray dogs and subterranean hum of faith--of vulnerable hope. Maybe all the life drowns out the eternity.
On winter mornings, they exist only in the pinpricks of light from the ends

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Submitted: February 7
Submitted with: Sta.sh Writer

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travelers

by ~disrhythmic, Feb 7, 2013, 7:05:12 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

this silvertongued land

is fit for strange adventures

so we will roam as the city

sleeps, and the soft

hushclick

of the camera shutter will lull the crickets

to silence.

we will leave our trail

in incandescent flashes--

the negatives seared and crackling on

closed eyes--

and drag our hearts on

moonshine wisps behind us--

gathering fog and scents and

strains of music

carried in on night-thin air.

travelersby ~disrhythmic

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I got to daydreaming, which means more roadtrip poetry for/about the Badger, just because she's awesome.

Actually my second poem of today, trying to make up for the three straight days of empty space in my Glory Be notebook.

*archelyxs Mar 1, 2013

Lovely images.

~disrhythmic Mar 1, 2013

Thank you!

*0hgravity Feb 8, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

and drag our hearts on
moonshine wisps behind us
--I like this image very much.

a nice piece.

~disrhythmic Feb 9, 2013

~ColoringTheRain Feb 8, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

...it's like photography ninjas in my head right now

~disrhythmic Feb 8, 2013

Holy crap best comment ever. XD

~ColoringTheRain Feb 8, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Hehe sweet. Seriously though, the image I got in my head was a couple on ninjas going out and snapping pictures in the early morning XD I say best imagery ever.

~disrhythmic Feb 8, 2013

Tehehe, that is awesome. XD

~juniorel Feb 7, 2013 Writer

So "hushclick" is a word I'd like to dream about. I'm not sure why. Beautiful, as always.

~disrhythmic Feb 8, 2013

Ah, thank you!

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travelersby ~disrhythmic

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