[x]

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.

despondenti.

"are you sleepy today?"
"yes."
"but you were sleepy yesterday."
"i know."

ii.

she stirs her pomegranate green-tea until it turns from clear to purple
setting it on her bedside table and climbing back into bed again.
her fingers follow the bluer-than-usual constellation veins on her wrists and down
to the freckle on her forearm and then the scar on the inside of her elbow
crossing the tendon as if it were crux.
and then she remembered that God hasn't been with her lately.

iii.

today is long and sunny but when she steps outside the humidity creaks her bones
and her skin starts to inflame.
she assumes that if getting the mail

mutethings have been easier
without words &
we pretend neither of us care;

we stutter
splutter
laughing and choking
on puns &

when you bend me over nouns
i scream

louder
growl
more fluent.

the words are there waiting to be spoken

me . you . love

my dear, we've been mute
for so long

speak to me.

loose lips sink shipsan ocean has been thrown wide open over your head,
and remarkably you, too, are sinkable–

every verbal, every vocal, is dogged by the epiphany:
an ocean has been thrown wide open over your head

and all bodies wreck, ships and submarines.
and remarkably you, too, are sinkable.

on watching the night close its eyes on you1. I will not tell you
you are pretty.

How can the halls and angles of such honest humanity
be so pinched between sounds as elementary as these?

2. You need not be two stringent boughs of syllables
nor weave your viney bones abreast these five petty letters,
whirling in the fire of the river
Styx.
Do not attempt to peel yourself layer for layer,
leaving all the disgust behind.
Do not tally your body six &

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

The Cat on the PorchYou asked me why I do not believe in ghosts,
celestial at four in the morning.
It becomes the common hour,
not a biting static shock in the eye veins like I anticipated
but dangerously vogue and precious
like a real diamond ring or sapphires on your breast.
No wood pecking or oil teasing or misshapen duck bills bleating
just clay, but lighter, lightest
and bright
seductive and crestfallen.

They bled Peter and Pangloss over a river.
I was wearing white for the funeral
humming 'home', the matronly letters
soothe me
clotheshorses and moonlight,
Mayan jewellery in my cabinet
the mother tongue kissing my molars better

But then there

cliffcliff
e.bojnowski

on velvet roads,
I impale a belated dawn
with my incisors and
shiver with perfect leaves-

I have no qualms
with the dark hills
that slope
and stagger into
a bed of scorched fly husks:

where
the thrum of the ground
melds
with the rapids in
my clairvoyant ears.

sea featherin the breaking of the morning we tore apart our ivory shells
our blood-red hearts are saturated in spume & sea spells
with the ache from the brine gathering around you
your ankles slippery, your mouth
moving liquid through
mine
i had never seen a more beautiful shoreline

gunmetal breaths
on shivering, silver shores

you were ebbing to my flowing
you were coming; i was going

i wrote in the sand that i was yours

on the coast i could feel
salt on my tongue - dew from the
ocean in my lungs
& i was your pearl
latched from the inside to keep everyone out
speaking in rhymes, & cotton tides

this is when you pull my body fro

earth circuitAnd when the sun sinks, the earth's skin crawls:

I.
I wonder if this awkward creature would notice me the way I notice him.
He's so tragic at his throne
I stare after him longingly.
And yet,
He never realizes that I'm the one
Who forever basks in his brilliant beams.
If only he knew how much brighter he could burn
[with me]
He'd light up the universe.

II.
I heard him speak of thirst, once.
The quenching lust of the stars had run dry.
So that night, I brought along a jar of acid.
(And how it gleamed in his glow).
I handed it to him, wrapped in taffeta ribbons,
screaming
I wish curdling joy
On my gurgling boy

It starts with a flash-bang and a Majulahi.
June's hauled her here again and
she's tapping at my classroom window,
A gazillion tiny fingers rapping in succession
(When she said "invitation" I didn't realise she meant
soaking half the country, the spike in umbrella prices has
nothing to do with me)
What's worse than an impatient child
is one with the whole atmosphere as her battering ram
when she tries to say something the urgency brims over
and one million exclamation marks
is beginning to sound like static frazzling
out on the pavements

ii.
She is without choice: when Cloud mother tips her out
she must go, and go she will
caught in an obtuse cycle, fought over

Liquid Cityhere, at the bottom - lovers.
there are lovers disassembling
themselveslost in and to the
desperate motion in
of - waves.

- did you think the continents
moved themselves? see them slip,

in an open sleep. less go, come.
come and, and - again. trembling

here, at the bottom - their eyes
are lightless. hollow bodies left
restless,

the sea does not sleep.

preludesi.
blue rose into the city backdrop
like balloons, a million for the
morning sun prelude.

ii.
i've not slept a dream
but i have cried a salty face
and letters spilled like beans
into my moleskine,
almost as virgin as i once was
with few stories between my covers.

iii.
the kettle's belly boils
like my head upon a pillow.

iv.
i am guilty for rarely finishing my tea
even when i use the small mugs;
pour, rinse, repeat.

v.
perhaps today i will play dead.

vi.
perched behind my blinds
it dawns on me that i am surrounded
by walled neighbours, strangers,
they're just preludes to lovers
the way i am always
prelude to the one.

Davaothe equatorial sun
soft-etched on my skin,
there, del sur

islands away

the tan lines of shallow-bathing
in your eyes

there is so much time between

you
and
I

you spoil me, featherbreath
do i dare commit my memory
into dreams?

i laugh upon waking,
i did not realize--
i run when i go to you

WhitmanI am all that grows from me
and all that grows from me is sacred—
              my hair, dirty roots reaching towards sky,
fed by sky, shifted by its undulating currents
              my fingers, spiders, crescents, twigs,
gaunt, blunt, probing, inquisitive...prurient
              my ears, awkward conch shells jammed on as if by mistake,
rigid and ridged, elven,
innocent like unexplored caves for children to bound gaily into
resounding with echoed cheers of courage wanting
as if a dozen more children waited within, fearless guides;
              my nose, obdurate.
The reach of my eyes knows no bounds;
what walls are there to throw my body against?

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plasticthere is plastic turning over and over outside, and the leaves are turning tea colored and curling like potato paper-skins. you follow me around the block and we look a little more windy each time. we are fighting circles that tell us nothing ever changes - your legs and my curls would tell us different - but people are always surprised to see us walking the same way, or it seems the same to them, and we are like those slightly altered figurines that come to life when they thumb the pages

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[x]

the hungry look...

by ~RestlessSands, Feb 19, 2013, 7:40:35 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

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 ‘don’t mind me, i am just a deer come out to observe the world’

some strange magic, that once done, cannot let go