the Literary Museum of Myriad Silvre

She travels
like cinnamon on spiced breath
following filigree roadways
and lacy dirt paths

a runner in the sun
feet caking in mud
hair a tangle, all tumbleweed and rust

She's spring, and summer
but mostly fall.
Blooming and radiant and falling into hibernation

Smells like warm lavender
and smoldering wood
or a wiccan roast of potpourri

When she speaks, and it's not often
but when she speaks --
the afterthought of imagination
when you're waking from a dream
and grasping for that final kiss
or last embrace.

She's not foreign, but she's exotic.
Unusual colors, her own culture.
What I wanted to be;
she's me, but more.

Author's Note: Explanation here: my dA

breather
trip through
lace kites
and delicate stars
and grin,
teeth like bubbles
eggs bursting with creation

birth
with a birther
and an infatuation
with the infinite
sometimes a sucker
tripping along keys
making notes with your feet
and pausing with eyes

fireflies in winter
frozen embers of amber
and teardrop earrings

pearls on silver strands of saline
just the necklace for this kelly
the accessory ... the fashion

a sigh turns into a battle
a clamor of coughing to remember
before, when breathing was easier
and a gentler sail on the smoothest sea

draped in silk
a cresendo of waves
tumbling through her lungs
until she’s all bubbles and foam
and the new creation.
Pecular.
And breathing.

In these days

--and you’ll never believe me--

in these days,
someone took my words
and spoke them from her mouth
and wrote them with her hands

even before I was born,
they were my words.

I already knew them,
planned them out
sketched X’s where they should land.

My words. Mine.

Author's Note: A frustration at figuring out the difference between amazing poetry and dime-a-dozen emo poetry -- no matter how sincere, some poems will be cast aside as bad, and some will be good. Just thinking, sometimes a really good poem I never knew existed says what I've thought, but worded it better. And I'm gonna do that, someday. :)

Note: Titled after the music I'm listening to. Never heard this genre before. Has little to do with the writing of the poem, though. I feel like crap and needed to express it somehow.

I'd also like to point out that I haven't used curse words in my poetry in a very long time, and tend not to curse. I dunno why it felt needed in this poem.

i was gorgeous once.

i'd forgotten, in the tatters.

i was pretty, dark with a sparkle
a glitternight -- a pseudoenigma

i had a quiet confidence,
knew i could be beautiful
knew i would be important

and the world has translated into cells
all surrounding me.
i could see them as an orbit
and i'd love to shove them away
but they're so casual now, so easy

**** me, i was gorgeous once.

When I become the sharper static
shattering individuals into fragments of the picture
and I whisper mosaics into their ears--into their minds

Like rain, snaking through memories and clocks
creaking joints and gears and all my thoughts
are tumbled in the soil

I will grow new again and clean
venturing out, flowering forth
growing confident and fast until the world stops turning

breaks off.

Cliffs are craters in the sand
and glaciers the ice cubes in the ocean
Steeping all the trees of the world
like a tea, like a drink, like a sip of something fluid

I forgot we still exist
woke up in a haze; woke up from a nightmare
Could the science behind it all be exact and still our species live?

I am all cracked lips and lies
and fornications discovered and void.
A five cent divination
and an alibi for hire.

[May 22, 2010]

The fish mouth around the words
I turn to bubbles, I turn to air
and speak in mono, through my left mouth
words are food and ears are hungry

A kind of shiver, and a stuttering groan -- a sigh
and I'm happy.

Looping through repeat and weaving chords on
a five-line loom
When I am straggling, and when I am enamored
I come to your color and breathe.

Through your songs, I drip.
I drip fantastic,
pull me down and drink me through fantastic.
Like vibrant and violent feathers
slicing with a tickle and a giggle
and it's so very good to see you smile again.

I got stuck on the outside peering in at my home,
where I was eccentric, and abstract, and it wasn't a bad thing.
Where I remembered being sincere, and it wasn't a bad thing.
I got scratched up with time and it was apparent...
but that doesn't matter now.

I remember the scent of this time in my life
and how alive the aroma was.
I think I can smell that way again.

[May 15, 2010]

Could you turn inside out for me?

I'd feel a little less shameful if you weren't looking
while I strip away feelings like skin
and air vulnerable like vapors.

It's the way you turn your head and stare
eyes glistening with solid knowledge
and I'm a liquid on uneasy footing.

Those others, blabbering, making me afraid
and you, some sudden anchor in the best,
most unconventional of times. Always surprising.

I feel a bit like the desert some days,
with nothing to give, and everything gone,
and here you move, gliding over the mountains,
a monsoon. A hydrating healing halo hovering,
hugging.
Reassuring.

Your rains whisper Shhh as they hush down into
my cracked earth of doubt and fear,
and I lull into bliss, safely ignorant.

You don't have to turn inside out,
just turn me right side in.

I could see through.

I could see through and feel intensely.
I could.

Without warning, without error--
I could see through.

Maybe that's not enough-
maybe that's not what they wanted,
but I could see through.

With screams and shouts
of praise and betrayal,
and with him-haws and huffy labored breaths
they could not see.

But I could see through.

I appreciated the taste
and the afterburn
and the triumph.

I felt a miscreant
and a vagrant
and an immigrant,
with my vision
and what I could see.

Folded in time
without spaces or dashes
without punctuation
or pronunciation,
I could see through.

Regarding loss,
or tears,
or the shredding of family and feeling
I could see through it
and understand it,
but I couldn't justify it

and that became my crutch.
That became my downfall.
I could see through,
but could do nothing at all.

Wrote this a couple years ago, but finally found it again and want to put it somewhere more permanent.

Caught with his wife’s sister’s daughter
while playing sensuous games,
they pulled him from the bedside
and sentenced him to be hanged.

Upon a cliff and seashore
they raised his gallows high,
then allowed him a bit of dignity
for he was naked to his thigh.

They screamed “Adulterous mister!”
while reading off his crimes,
and the man who fathered children
was sentenced there to die.

“Have you any last words?” they asked
while fitting on his rope.
“I have,” he answered somberly,
for he saw this was his last hope.

“Oh what’s a man to do?” he cried,
“When the wife is ne’er around,
and a man has got his urges.”
And the men made agreeing sounds.

“Oh what should I be punished for,
but fulfilling nature’s law?”
The women of town glared him down
and one slapped him in the jaw.

“You filthy vulgar heathen!”
the females chanted then.
And their husbands followed suit because
it was what’s expected of them.

“A man is to be loyal,
and keep his wife at peace.
Not run around behind her back
with her pretty little niece!”

At that the men were horrified--
they knew not the young girl’s age.
But that she was young was proof enough
for the older man to be hanged.

So the Lord’s Prayer was read off to him
and nary a tear was shed,
as they stared hard at the vile man
who seduced a child to bed.

It was right then that Fate happened,
a stroke of luck for him,
for the gallows he was standing on
gave way in front of them.

The man’s noose had yet to be tightened,
and somehow he wiggled free,
but scaffold and rope fell o’er the cliff
and down the cliff fell he.

Now the bottom of the bluff was watery
for it met with the sea line.
But sticking up from the base of the bluff
were stones as sharp as knives.

As he held on to gallows’ rope
he felt his happy heart fall.
For what he first thought was salvation
was not actually such at all.

If he climbed up the noose to the plateau,
he’d be hanged for sure, he knew.
But if he fell, he’d die as well…
Oh what’s a man to do?

Oft I take in a breath at night
and breathe out my mind's ash,
trying to remember the existence of skin,
the serrated meaning it held over men.
I rake back tears, daring to dream
why one would ever start the dance.

I never understood their bigot-only dance,
but grasp that knowledge can be shrouded by night.
Thus without care for the Politian's dream,
I look to the fire and dust which became my ash,
despite the scorching tongues of ignorant men
who have the hindrance of prejudiced skin.

I find memories an ancestor planted in my skin.
Suddenly music draws friends & strangers to dance
as they pulse in a club; its jazzy veins thrive like men.
My soul ventured back through decades’ night
to a smell strong of cigars and their ash.
I’ve become a dark-eyed velvet-voiced dream.

I see a friend emerge through my soul’s dream.
We pout our lips, ignoring those just skin
and bones, glowing with pride and forgotten ash.
This girlfriend and I, we croon and dance,
as lightning bugs in Summer's night,
pretending our beauty and song can delight men.

In our souls, we stand equal women and men,
but out there a man who has a Dream
is barraged by evil day and night.
He prays for all different spectrums of skin,
hoping to lead friends to freedom’s dance,
yet is refused by those who hate colored ‘ash’.

He says, “Never mind what some deem ash,
for these people are not the important men.”
Others join him, and the ever expanding dance
soon allows children of the future to dream
of a world which sees deeper than just our skin;
a dawn which breaks through a hate-filled night.

We can’t decide the dance or design the dream
to censure good men with flesh like night,
or refuse girls with skin like ash.

~1.29.09