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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)
WelcomeI'm ready for a romance to ravage my heart and tear apart my
dusty limbs, I'm waiting for someone to take my breath and
never give it back; I'm prepared to sell all I was for a trip
somewhere new - beyond the paper mistakes I sailed away
down the river long ago. (even rocks and leaden thoughts
won't let the truth sink.)

I left my being somewhere under a waning summer sun
when the trees hummed melodies of moving on;
my soul still stays there, porous and pining and
lost. Dying stars don't lead home.

I suppose
it's more than just losing
your words, it's losing
you

too.

I am someone who mourns Sunday morning for another lost
w
Almost Perfectthe sun is melting away,
we call it romantic when
all good things die quietly;

I feel like I’m always transitioning
through different levels of sobriety:
spent up on the people in my life
like the girl who doesn’t remember
my name and the boy who thought
I was joking.

(I will care for myself, and
then the world will stop and
spin in the right direction;
the mirror will blur and
I will finally see me,
unfiltered and beautiful)

I just want to believe
that somewhere there’s a boy
ready to sing my bleeding ears
to sleep

with a cinnamon voice, he
will tell me I couldn’t
possibly be human:  something
otherworldly,
embeddeda sunset blister[pops] overhead, dripping
security. she kisses her lover and leaves
with splinters in lips. there are moments
when she swears she can hear a breath
rattling somewhere within his
reciprocating chest
she swears in vain

and sometimes it's like they recycled
an old day, it fits the same and that
is an alarming halt to progression-
she says, we have to move on

but she doesn't ever leave, feet buried
under years of promises and plans and
anxieties. she's had a bird cage by her bed
since she was a little girl (begging wounded
blue jays to escape)

the day won't break, he watches
her sleep uneasily, respiring
like
expired warningsI hate to break it to you but we're all betting on the day when
your nightmares will swallow you whole and you won't
remember how to open your eyes. we forget your voice,
it broke and no one buried the pieces. we're giving you up:
secessions (your ribcage is a civil war, your heart is the victim.
there will be no memorial; there are only red flags)
obsessions pick your bones dry, vulture needs, vulgar
mortality argues at least you're not alive

at least you can't see us anymore, counting the knots
in your neck and catastrophes in your mouth. in
your summer cage you were a soggy butterfly bearing
a cumbersome cross. now, we leave yo
Storybook AddictionsI want you to love me as much as you do
the thorns in your side; seeds planted and
forgotten and bleeding cyclically.
when the swallowed night drowns and
drains darkness like a trickled lullaby, I want
to be the last thing in your dreams.

I want to be your mistake East of Eden, your lack
of redemption; when they tear apart your paper
flesh with metal claws, I want to be the one you
come crawling back to with bloodied knees.

[right now I am an empty vessel, unfulfilled
and metaphorically obsolete. I want to clear
my throat for once, without seeing the ashes
of my disease.]

I want to love you like a swansong;
breezes make your bones ach
zeroi swore
i would never number the poems
i wrote about myself because that
would be like ticking off the days
until my breakdown;

i was a moth, unapologetically throwing myself
at any gleam of hope; wasting my wings
on industrial promises

colors always felt much more
appropriate for the purple boiling
beneath my heart and the pallid
purposelessness of my head,

but i was born into a colorless world--

no one sees me behind the metallic scars
of my skin and iron grating of my voice against
the grain; no one sees me as more than
gray regret or monochrome mistakes,
no one sees me but

all i ever wanted was for a
fallen god with feathered he
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,
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
RestlessI’ve been living in the same breathy dream
for too many days now; I’m bed-ridden and
stale and I reek of those moments that come
full throttle like a car crash on a winter night

     this is evolution where weak hearts
     are afraid of the shadows and where
     everything changes,
     an apologetic wind births no remorse;
     he will move on—anchored ship
     set sail, I am the sunken wreckage
     that never learned how to swim.
     he will move on, Darwin says
     I never had a chance

I wish I were the textbook sadness,
symptom and solution and endurance
but I’ve spent too long sleeping on the
Lovebirds' Sorrowshe was the girl with cat
eyes: broad and judging and
carnal; he was the doe
with a broken collarbone,
yet she found herself lost in
the warmth of his sighs and
asked simply for a set
of sweeter lies

[because it's only after you
sell yourself to the earth that
you learn love is not a
chemical reaction anticipating
every ignited glance and soured
word; no, it is a thing
of obligation that sleeps upon
your doorstep, knowing you
will always come back,
knowing you could never forget
its name]

he called to her on hollow
nights, and she found his
voice when she had nowhere
left to go

he was the cereal box savior;
she only needed a place
to bur
Winter Nightsthe dawn dies quietly--
fall has lost another child,
the trees mourn and
night passes

and winter quakes,
the chill is in my bones. my
fingers shake. the fire in my
lungs burns me through

       I dream of you,
      every night when
     I close my eyes it's
        like falling into
      memories, I always
      wake up screaming

I'm sinking lower than all
good intentions and human
discretions because I am
the toxic underbelly,
underwhelmingly docile
until provoked (poked up
the side to see if I'm alive)

for twelve months I lived
underneath the end of the world,
counting up prophecies. it feels
empty on th
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
ghostwriterhere, everyone’s pupils are dilated
and skin is stretched too tight
to expose the wind-swept spider webs
writhing beneath their porcelain composure

here, the shadows are afraid of us.

(and it is our desire
to finally come down to that place
of completion
where we
are
simple skeletons
with bleached
bones and
detached jaws)

at night, the rigid ghosts rock me to
sleep.  their cardboard  hearts and
inky eyes just begging to be seen

(it is only in the
darkness that I am
perceived to be more
than I am; holy
nightlight, exalted
star to guide them
all home

sleepily but
steadily blinking
out.)

the current carries my name,
I have spent
Vexed Affectionssecrets entwined,
sugared kisses lie (dormant)
her starry smile twinkles,
linen skin, fresh, unwrinkled,
"wear me"

bodies out back in rows,
stowed, head to toe, measured
by stature, counted by
statistic.
you are a number.

hearts quiver, splayed
openly beating
bleeding defeating
purpose and point, pain
holds no meaning,
crudely careening

you are a number

and sailor boy swoons, caught
in the tides of her moon.
quaky sea feet hold no
ground

he's drowning on land
breathing in sand
falling

she's already gone,
grave gusts at dawn
whisper

you knew it all along,
she's gone

you are only a number.
Browse More Like This

More from *intricately-ordinary

Sleeping Beautyshe’s in love with a character who
never existed but in the labyrinth of her head:
a patchwork composition of beautiful, lengthy words
she’d heard in her catatonic state; coma living
day in and day out, reliant on the salvation
of a man made of foreign wishing
and imperfection and necessity – an ignorance
of the less than ideal perception of self she’d
come to fear, absention stained romantic to the point
where daydreams were a standard for survival

(real living is for the purposeful of heart,
he loves her in her sleep)
Dandelion QueenI dream of the ocean;
that paper-thin line where
the current swallows the stars
and the water churns violet

(you tell me to be
quiet,

dandelion queen, we've
heard all these words before)

tonight
I will sleep heavy
and wake a few hours before dawn,
only to forget my name

my wave-weathered heart will cry,
I will cry (my biggest fear
is drowning in too many
of my own weighted words

you tell me to be
quiet
so I can hear the world breathe)

I want to go home
regret in seven stagesi. attraction
when my negativity finally
found something beautiful,
charged up like a bipolar
thunderstorm waiting to come
crashing down

(you were everything
i ever wanted and i
was entirely selfish) then

ii. simplicity
like the way our smiles blended
perfectly together and how we’d sway
to rhythms that never existed;

your eyes were a springtime day
decades before we were born and
happiness became an instinct
instead of a defense [until]

iii. commitment
like a jail sentence worn
around the neck. spine
contorted and screaming

bound too quickly by the uns
and nots and fear you never
quite kept at bay, we were
guilty of so much

Featured in Groups

:iconlooselacespoetry: :iconpenandpaperpoets: :iconpoeticalcondition: :iconhumanconditions: :iconwritersink: :iconpoetry-screams:
×

tense intentions

:iconintricately-ordinary:

iv.
you lurk behind my sternum and
lace my uneasy breaths with
doubt and self-deprecation, I

can't breathe. I
guess I didn't need to sleep.

ii.
I am smudged in between the lies,
an asymmetric astrology chart
mapping misguided dreams

when you make a wish on me,
I sell away another piece

(I wish I were my own)

v.
it was always me, it was always
the blood clotting in my heart
and words coagulating on my
tongue – I swallow cyanide to
vomit up my narcissistic tendencies

iii.
it was nothing that ever mattered
when the dust settled and you
could finally remember my name

(and you settled down into my bones
deciding I was hollow enough for a stay)

vi.
I will never leave

i.
but I warned you my poetic dedications
were never pretty

389

42 49 3
:iconintricately-ordinary:

tense intentionsby *intricately-ordinary

DescriptionDetailsShare
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and my decorated past won't look proper anymore when I tear all the lessons that bound them together, to keep them from swarming and devouring my moldy heart.

titles are hard
©2013 *intricately-ordinary
Category: Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

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January 7
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:iconbeyondjen:
*BeyondJen Jan 16, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
This is lovely. I'm quite taken with part v. and this:
(and you settled down into my bones
deciding I was hollow enough for a stay)
Reply
:iconintricately-ordinary:
*intricately-ordinary Jan 16, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
I'm so honored to hear that, thank you!
Reply
:iconbeyondjen:
*BeyondJen Jan 16, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
Of course :heart:
Reply
:iconvoltairemarx:
~voltairemarx Jan 13, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
Breath taking
Reply
:iconintricately-ordinary:
*intricately-ordinary Jan 13, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
thank you :heart:
Reply
:iconriseandbe:
*RiseandBe Jan 13, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
Beautiful! I love the way you ordered it. Ending with the beginning, so to speak, worked perfectly.
Reply
:iconintricately-ordinary:
*intricately-ordinary Jan 13, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
I'm so happy to hear that! Thank you! :heart:
Reply
:iconriseandbe:
*RiseandBe Jan 13, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
My pleasure!
Reply
:iconflummoxative:
~Flummoxative Jan 9, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
"(and you settled down into my bones
deciding I was hollow enough for a stay)"

Oh, that. It went right through me.

And in poetry, stories, anything, I almost always need the endings to clinch the whole thing for me. You do it flawlessly.

"but I warned you my poetic dedications
were never pretty"
Reply
:iconintricately-ordinary:
*intricately-ordinary Jan 9, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
You are so lovely :heart: I appreciate your words so much, thank you :tighthug:
Reply
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