[x]

crystal catastrophies bottled upv
her shaky hands couldn't hold a pen
or a promise
"my fingers have broken
trying to rewrite clichés-
believe me when I say, I'm special"
hollow laughs glossed over her
tempered smile

as she waited for the day
when that might actually mean
something

i
there was an eve long before dawn
ever tainted the starry night sky and
inflicted vision on those who preferred
to stay in the dark, where a girl
crooned quietly to herself
"what if when we meet,
I've run out of I love you's?"

this was before the sun whispered in her ears
that they'd never mattered, anyway

iv
hopelessness descends
on wearied souls
who couldn't lear

admittance is defeatthey called you beautiful

with porcelain eyes about to crack
and cigarette skin crumbling
away, a knotted spine and
jagged smile:

you were never gracious.

you're slipping underneath, this
virulent smog masks a paper sky that
never allowed a dream and

you're afraid because it's soaking in
your pores again, unattainable and unoriginal;
the meaning of life never meant enough-

you were never hopeful.

there's a getaway map on the underside
of your pillow, and a lifetime of secrets
on the underside of your bones

you're a walking travesty:
your chest ticks, dull
your wrist beats, dying
time is keeping you but

you were never pa

Indefinite Tidesshe speaks in vinegar riddles
and bides her time in shipwrecked
smiles- she's
ticking off days for the boy
with stormy eyes who promised
he'd be back in a season or
two. he, who was

crafted from the leftover bits of the moon
and the meandering sky with runaway
stars lurking deep beneath his ribcage,
waiting to fall whenever he spoke
like a saint, whose divine sacraments
parted land and birthed lives; like a
sorcerer whose words launched a
thousand sunken ships but

now, she pops pills like reminders,
stabilizers that last 4-6 hours
depending on her ability to forget

and she's lost in herself
again, among faltering brainwa

Sorry Then Safei
we like to play with fire.
as it eats away at our
insipid nature, and licks the
desolate consistency of our bones,
our inner cold is warmed.

you say that it reminds you
of my fevered eyes.

ii.
we make scarecrows into humans
into saviors, then tear them down again
for not cleansing out our wounds.
we forget they were only born
to keep the birds from
devouring us further.

and they watch, feebly, as we
fall face-first into our fate

iii.
you looked me dead in the eye
"we are all walking ghosts
waiting to die so we can live"

and your whitened hands became
a symbol of achievement

iv
we write our epitaphs the day we're c

Nighttime Ramblings and InsufficiencyYou drop your jaw,
and you pull words out from
hiding, deep in your throat.
You wretch up a mass of
unfiltered, unedited, reality
because you believe that's what it is
to be understood.

You leave a trail of mutterings
wherever you go
no one will ever want me
it's not enough
and i'm sorry, i'm
so so sorry
Do you remember the difference between
a shadow and a ghost? (the world ends
the day the sun won't shine)

Instead of sleeping (maybe
tomorrow won't come if you
don't say goodnight) you wait;
you will not be remembered, and
that is the scariest part-
you were never loud enough.
i'm s

Fervid AwakeningThere's a fire beneath my feet,
but not the kind that burns
mountains and ruins girls
made of papier-mâché—no,

these are the sparks that
drive the insane to dance in
the rain; the flames that
gave birth to a million voices
itching to be heard, too.

It's spreading, settling, somewhere deep
beneath my sternum, like an anticipatory
story, waiting to be told, giving
my heart the ardor to beat.
-
No one ever says happiness
is like a butterfly: beautiful,
flighty, and fleeting.

If you let it slip through your
fingers—you are left
alone, palms full of feathery dust
which soon fades and leads to the scary

Nostalgiashe fell in love with the sound of
dying storms, and lost herself in
the blind spots accompanying her
every furtive glance

her downturned spine labeled her:
pitiful,
and her relentless divulging to
overcast skies defined her as
needy; but still she offered the
seeds of her pomegranate heart
to anyone willing to settle down
inside the breeze

and she was abandoned, long ago,
(once upon a time, no one cried)
by wolves with insipid fangs
and human eyes (her glittery irises
never quite belonged)
they discarded her when she asked if
self-delusions were a state of mind

and
she is poorly veiled, so see-through under
our cracke

Keepers of My Hearti.
you are in love with being in love
like you're caught on the train tracks,
tied down by want, waiting for that
insistent collision to
steal you away into the land
of concussions and self-medication
and hearts that barely heal

ii.
and stories confessing the notches
in your bedpost, the lines in
your smile. the sour note in your
liberally dissonant melody.

iii.
you did not want tangibility

cotton trees cascading and butterfly
innards, serenading clouds and
fluorescent lips
(until the sky came crashing down
and you reoriented the earth)

iv.
you did not want me

v.
I am solid and as notable as
the ghosts sleeping in y

Amnesiacsmaybe you forgot how to
wake up without screaming.

she smiles like a broken dawn
and the meek will inherit the
earth, if they don't drown,
first. she's barely breathing;
trying to grow gills because
it's only in the state of dying
that we adapt.

and you won't see the colors
pouring out of her chest, you
won't hear the ebbing swansong
she hums so quietly.

you didn't come to be reminded.

you inject a little further, a little
closer to the heart. numb.

(she died the day she
was given a name)

she made you promise never
to be a number, or a majority;
she made your heart beat in a way
that made you think you were alive,

Spotlessone day you'll fly a little too close to the sun
and you'll remember the boy who told you
gas station trinkets were worth more than
the heart you wore on your sleeve.

disillusionment will take you home, and
it will not leave your bed in the morning.
(you will remember he called you loose, too.)

you are the one who believes in smoke
smiles and candid cadavers. no ones'
nose grows, so everyone must be
undeniably true (except

you lie to yourself, too)

a few lifetimes ago you fell in love
with your own reflection, but as you
stripped away layers of common mis-
conceptions, you realized you are not

virtuous and radiant and hung o

diluted evanescencebreezes are fickle things, you said
when your eyes were somewhere far away

the wind danced in the narrow expanse
of all our waning hopes and desires,
and something about the way the air grew static
made me remember a time when
inexperience was still a virtue.

sparks go out, you said
as the discord dimmed
(glossy eyes weren't always
made of glass, but they became
along the line of desperation)

I truly believed the world pulsed somewhere
in the cadence of your voice,
because in your breath- earthquakes would
break and oceans would crash and I always
came up short.

we're living a borrowed life, you said
but no one ever taught u

Skeletal Foundationsit's the city that makes you,
she says when her industrialized eyes
start to flicker. her heart rushes
like a subway falling late and
the patterns in her skin remind you of
striated architecture (reminds you of how
everything's human in its own way)

we're precarious concrete skeletons
crafted by men praying we won't fall,
and we yearn- you know- we ache
for a sense of vitality and being to
enter us and make us more than a
pale ghost of an engineer's dreams and

maybe we have our own shadowy corners,
too.

commotion exists betwixt her ears and
she's a destination, a place to rest and
catch your breath but not to settle
down b

Idylliche always spoke of the romantic stance in a smoker
whose every gasp was like a suicidal swansong, he
wrapped himself up so tightly in unwarranted wishing, when
they stripped him free, he then stumbled into the sunlight
and burnt [out]

no one laced his pillows with lavender and moonbeams
and all the other things that call dreams out from
hiding; but he still prayed upside-down overdone
every evening for a falling star to find its way
back home.

instead, they surrounded him with [a grain of]
salt circles like curses to draw out the weaknesses
temptation had embedded in him, because
nothing beautiful was ever built atop a rotten

Staying for the Seasonyou were born
of a broken cradle
where no one taught you
how to breathe

you need the stars
like nourishment, but
they just don't feel
the same

you live like a heart attack,
an insufferable shuddering,
a socially aware illness without
the will to pull through

it's a sad truth when we
look up in the mirror, and
only see ourselves-

but it's okay.
write it on the walls, it's
okay, you just need a
little more sleep.

(wake up. it's nearly
December and you're
already dead.)

scraps and sacramentsyou,
beautiful siren girl with melodies
entangled in her hair: you are
shell-shocked and sea-struck
even though you cannot stand
the sensation of sand beneath
your toes.

you have fingers for prying, picking,
pulling at your skin and nesting
in that hollow space between
your bones. and if anyone asks,
you will swear there are monsters
sleeping in the concaves of your ribs;
there are ghosts beneath your tongue,
embittered, and you are not the words
you speak.

they say there is an answer, little girl
(sometimes you begin to believe you are
a scarecrow on the border of reality
begging people to turn the other way;
and the mirror will agree)

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Empty Nestand as your sepia-saturated voice fades into the night

you will remember all those dreams you woke from,
weeping, for the conversations you'd never
have and the people you'd never get back

you will remember the flock of birds that used to
reside in your chest, pounding against your
ribcage, crying to be free (and you will try
to remember the day their wings went silent)

as you hear the leaves hum and the sky pulse,
you will try to fall into cadence with the steady
music of nature, but instead begin to believe you're just

an outlier.

you will tell yourself, in your needly, narcissistic
way: you are a falling star, a withering cel

Expectantwe're waiting

emaciated souls fall among the
promises of a better day,
memories drape like skeletons,
and we sleep, hands together,
to try and be pious prior to death.

we forgot how long it takes to take
a life, as we write novels about heroes
and purity that we're too afraid to call
myths. the art of distraction is a
nasty one, at that.

the clouds are rending, it's always
hurricane season when the trees cry and
the oceans mourn. the heavens are
caving on top of us as the children
dance in the rain. purged clean,
washed out, they were expecting to be

free- but there are still spiders in their
throats, crawling through th

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Poets Always Lie

by *intricately-ordinary, Oct 11, 2012, 8:32:26 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

ambrosial fabrications are
easier to swallow down when
incandescence is a blessing bestowed
only upon those with silky tongues.

deceptions are beautiful
in the right words

because they are salvation, like a
rapture, they save the sickly,
self-indulgent souls from those
tragedies they used to write on the insides
of childhood notebooks about who
they could never be [themselves]

they rescue them from tremulous
corners and closets, hideaways
where they've grown too akin to
the demons they nurse; and drag
them into a land beautiful enough
to wear light as a second skin

(where lies are never discussed
but always shared)

clandestine deceits
are so much more comforting
than the absoluteness of reality

because self-resentment is as
natural as a heartbeat to those
who were born breathing and
abhorring and denying all from one
steady gasp of what the existent world
had to offer to them

back then their eyes opened, and
their fingers fumbled,_born, they realized
the world wasn't as pretty as promised.
they shut their hands and split their
tongues,_{born again,} to make up a place
where this all didn't exist, because
that is every poet's greatest wish

please, in prettier words,
in prayers on stars, in midnight
mumblings, and crossed hearts
forgotten (crossed fingers hidden)
please

let it be true