[x]

Even ThoughThere will be no caged fingers,
no tendons finely tuned to A from tension.

There will be no clenched teeth, gritting rosin,
to make the final singing note growl.

There will be unwinding bed-sheets,
hands slowly releasing the tuning pegs.

There will be slowly sliding scales
as the four limbs loosen past playing.

There will be a simple, quiet exit,
not to ovation, but to a hushed audience
who anticipate an encore,
even though it is uncertain.

for exit 165.in the outstretched wingspan of
tuesday night you'll find them:
the foothills slumbering jagged under
sixteen inches of loose sand and
the city hushed and glowing, lines
of porchlights strung together in suburban rows like
beads on a chain

your house was cavernous hollow like a lung
the colors were dim and
jaundiced, a quiet rush of tepid water
bent the silence while thirty years of
smoking hung ownerless
in the air like the cling of a dead moths to a wall

you tell me of a dream that's vague like
clouds in the sky like
clouds in the sink with
your body limp and damp like
hot tea bags and
your face like spilled milk
a

The Thin HoursI.

Those of us here in this skeleton time,
this time of the year when the nights are thin
and dark, and dark with anxiety, peeling
as layers of an oyster shell, brittle and effaced
and somehow iridescent.
When the bell tolls out the time the sound is thin
and reaches into fractured air and softly
seeks the spaces between the atoms and
misses the vital Os and CO2s in a lasting,
failed pinball. The bell sound dies in
some space between midnight and thereafter,
and each tock tock of slipping cogs is
a repeat and not a moving on.
The air is filled with each dull sound,
each tock a repeat and a repeat again. And the
slip betwee

petrichorNiobe weeps.

gold scattered rough across
cracked earth and the last
remains of summer - they fell
like leaves in the arms of the wind.

some scents cannot be captured.
the gods bleed onto rock,
and the stone sends her prayers
in return: petrichor.

listen - the heavy thud of
rain on parched ground;
the monsoon sealing life back in;
the sky bows and kisses earth.

Niobe weeps.

No oceanNo one sleeps the night the army comes home,
and memory storms the shore, bipolar and sexy.
You always knew where to go and what to drink,
where to find the crows that stalked the summers
left lying wrinkled on shorn boardwalks,
Augusts headless and Julys scuttling over hills.
When you were gone I fucked Arthur Rimbaud
in a Parisian basement. He hooked his eyelashes
under mine and made waves on my skin.
Tolle, lege, like the parable tells me.

Our Meaning and PurposeI

All of death is death. Life,
too, is like death.
The way it erupts over you
laughing and spinning.

II

I was confused
so I asked God: What should I do?

Move your body and have emotions. The birds were dancing.

Could you be more specific?

But now God was busy arguing with Moses.

III

All of life is life. Death,
too, is like life.
The way it erupts over you
laughing and spinning.

IV

Tomorrow is the sound
of a question falling
on a bed of questions.

Today I hold out
your name, God,
in the public square.

Yesterday reason, the slayer
of song, wended its way
into our will.

V

All of light is linking. Dreams,
too, would se

Raw           Hailed as the weeper
                    that cries in your stead
  Those Albatross claws ruptured my redd
              Gone is my hollow
                            of prickly twine

a hat made of bricksLet me plot it out for you

in the moment that I will wipe off this cake smear from my eyebrow, pull the warm cookie dough out of my nostrils I will

I mean

I will change something!

in the moment that I blow the feathery feathers from the pillow I like to chew on for days and nights

and nights that are in fact only

transvestites of pure sharp daylight bodies in dark glittery flowing gowns

as soon as I

get all these feathers down and out and down

I will change something!

I have already planned a certain number of possible attempts and

would be quite pleased if you could

stand next to me and

cross them off the list

with this

pen th

From Whence She CameBack down to the sea-floor she goes
back to the coracle-clusters and starfish that
clamour, cling to her heart too tight,
walking barefoot towards where she
came from. It is too hard walking on
earth, the way she wears pain like a wedding ring
frightens people.
Back down, down, crawling on her belly
on the forest-floor, alive with the buzz and crawl
of worms and bird-prey. Back where she belongs with her
crazy palpitating wolf-heart, her bloody
deer-throat leaking in the snow, her yellow
eyes in the dark.
Back down, beyond subway trains, piano lessons,
falling rain, from whence she came, to the snow-covered womb
where she fir

A woman is missing.A woman is missing.
My sweater is knit too loose and the wind blows through.
The leaves are done changing and are waiting to fall.
I think of them collaged against my morning-damp windshield;
they will mostly be red. My wipers will push them off;
I will forget about them. But inbetween these thoughts
my brain hums. A woman is missing and I cannot forget.

Two weeks ago the leaves were mostly green and yellow.
Two weeks ago a woman went missing.
I didn't know her but she went missing and today
I am standing at a wall covered with candles and
I am rolling her name over my tongue and I am thinking.
I am thinking and praying, bu

surface tensionshe strides like a sea walker,
each step rippling outwards
in search of a kindred being.

this echolocation finds nothing-
angry waves crash her delicate signals
now as confused as her footsteps
balanced upon the water's skin.

she falters and begins to sink-
a dangerous game to play Jesus
and not know how to swim.

soft hands slap against the cold hard surface
as she flounders for a grasp on reality.
her belief keeps her afloat
for now.

the water stings her face,
evidence of struggle and suffering.
her figure frames a distorted self portrait
as she crawls back to her feet-

on the other side of sane.

OrientalismIn the day, yellow sand
from the Taklamakan
coats the motorbikes
of your overlords

At night, this city's towers
gleam, a Chinatown of lights
(dragon gold, lantern red)

Here, you can eat
a Philadelphia roll
or a fortune cookie
with fictional
Confucian quotes
on the side

Or you can dive
into a Pacific of
specific patterns,
woven with
living threads
in wire cocoons

Don't get distracted
by the innumerable
neon kanji; trace
the tiny green
lights to the
computer shop
at the end of
the way.

unlearn the constellationsI may carry my voice
on white-crested wingtips
but I refuse to take the names of birds.
My throat is not a desert
with smoldered star limbs
in place of sand, not a stone
for you to overturn and mark
with gentle cloud prints
or leave in the mud
to be perforated by bright moss.

My song is not made
to be thundered like a body
on the wind, to be bellowed
by the jagged mouths
of some distant, forgotten jungle.
It is made to slide along the edges
of twenty burning suns and rise
like a halo of newfound breath
from the crevice which splits
earth and sea. To break open
like the young, wet-winged dove
born of a glorious mud
which cracks mountains wi

BrackishAfter the wet season, before
the midsummer night's drought,
I flight for the floodplains, where
the northern downpour bleeds out
and sweeps its love to the mouth
of my lungs. I sleep in the crux
of an oxbow, let my dreams flux
and flow fractured, deltaic. For this
is the way I piece myself apart,
a resolution, my absolution
in a new avulsion.

During the day, I move south
towards the river mouth, picking
pebbles, coral fangs from the riverbed.
A loose tooth is a common truth
in these parts. Bones are febrile,
eyelashes are made of chalk, salt.
Tears turn brackish. They cake
and crack on the flats of my hands.

This is my Pang

When God Sleeps.I. So it comes to this: pangea tearing itself raw
from our throats to pour into squares of newly open sky
where the stars grew aches and darkened lakewater
once bloomed into bruised winters. Somewhere
beyond the thick of snow, prayers are strung
on moon-rattled winds
and birds' teeth tear apart the poetry
of our hands. They will raise something beautiful
from these ruined words.

Continents shift slowly. They are
dirt-bound titans, these beasts;
rootless giants that mold themselves
to fit the vision we hold inside our heads. Oceans sigh
and their tides crawl ever upward.

II. Our shadows become umbilical
in certain light. Unknown children cas

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conclusionsi wake up to the sound of january 3rd and you
remind me of how litchi juice tastes like an
open wound in my mouth. i remember how
we were blackcurrant on each others' tongues
in july
but only sound like static now

like tuning the radio out
after your favourite song has
ended.

[violins. singing bowls.]

december ended and i started to meditate
again. i tuned out of gigahertz and

.waiting.

for your reflection to find my eyes again
and now i am at the lakeside, the jetty,
the quay. i am meditating and the water's
edge is waiting for you to exist again

[touching his fingertips
to his lips]

somehow in

perpetual decemberwould you give me your december?
i am holding out my frail plywood wrists
and begging you for something
too heavy for either of us to hold

[though you are somehow cradling it
in your fractured celestial mind].

would you sing december to me?
would you play it in thirds
and mold it into something i can see?
i would give the dying bamboo
on my window sill to feel you again

[like when you cut your hands on raw selenite
but they don't bleed].

december is slipping out of our reach.
she is slipping quietly out the door
and i have my hands held high
like sentinels of the sky
and my eyes closed in patient rapture.

but you

crystalline opiatesometimes your face is so clearly engraved
in my memory that i can almost feel
the butterflies make their way to my eyes
as you look at me through yours.

in an out-of-focus world i could not
ask for a view more crisp than this - standing
at the chandellier peak of the new ground
we have softly broken.

your coldplay-lyric tongue sillhouetted
against my fingertips of charcoal blurs
and smudges and creases and scratches on
the curves in your name,

i can't remember when last i craved to
etch a word so deeply on my lips - do
you recall the last time blood tasted like
something surreal?

it's in the glow of the surface of the
wate

unfinished thoughtsi.

wake up. i can't stay long.

we are a series of fleeting moments that spell out "bad timing" and "tragic romance". you are broken machinery and i am still trying to decipher the binary code for love. ones and zeros collide into a lump in my throat and suddenly, the idea of saying goodbye makes my fingertips ache and my wrists burn.

ii.

do you remember when we kissed? it was a messy pile of metaphors and we were scared that somebody would see us and try to clean us up. i still ghost the back of my hand over my lips and imagine that it's yours, but then i remember that "yours" and "mine" are not words that apply to you and me anymore.

ii

the small thingsit's a funny thing how you can
make me forget how to speak when
you streak your golden lines
across my pastel skies.

i've got to find a way
to keep my head up through the grey's.
would it be alright
if i used your diamond eyes?

i would like to blur the lines a little more with you
and tell you that i'm nowhere on the map without you,
not a castle in the sky without you,
not a single reason why you and i should not go.

i'd like to see your hands up here with mine
so that i can learn to play in time
with your heartbeat and how you shut me up
with your lips.

i can't seem to find a way
to make a dent on how you play.
i couldn't

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immolate

by ~Vlavisfaults, Sep 20, 2011, 2:12:57 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

the first step
to sadness is to
have.

[3]

poseidon
punctuates the bruised
shorelines with broken hearts and
shattered abelone
shell fragments.
sometimes the
shore creeps up, kisses
my feet. sometimes he rips through
the distance between
us, taking
what's his.

[5]

the air here
vibrates to a fire,
sparrow's heart humming in c
major. it does scare
me sometimes,
how i might love you
more than ibuprofen, or
the way the light might
oscillate
through an ether storm.

the person i am now is
not compatible
with who i
was before you. but
how do i scrape myself out
from under my own
fingernails?

[7]

we caught the
moon between our feet,
heads falling behind us.

[5]

things i will
remember about
you: how you can't stop wearing
lemongrass and how
the smell hides
away under your
collarbone; the way you wear
saturn on your ring
finger and
keep neptune's rings as
keepsakes when you come back from
the sky [to remind
yourself that
my favorite colour
is you.]

[3]

[the structure of anger spins out in chaos]

my mind is a constant repetition of the logarithm of 2am to base silence.
the answer is always, "gone".

we become like each other,
me and resentment,

and we do it so easily.

[your hair, spun sugar.]

immolateby ~Vlavisfaults

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

poetry was born in hell.

Daily Deviation

Given 2011-11-03

immolate by ~Vlavisfaults ( Suggested by !silverfleckedlullaby and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

~~love 0 0~~

~~joy 0 0~~

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

fear 1 1

~~neutral 0 0~~

!skipperofotters Jan 25, 2012

the "things i will remember about you" bit was......... wow.

~Vlavisfaults Jan 30, 2012 Student Writer

thank you!

!skipperofotters Jan 30, 2012

i'm not trying to be patronizing or overtly flattering but this is one of the best poems i've ever read, seriously. this is like the only poem in my favorites, and i saved to my desktop cause it's just fucking human and beautiful and stuff... haha. it's so weird and vivid

~Vlavisfaults Jan 31, 2012 Student Writer

not patronizing or overly flattering at all

the kind words are very welcome and very deeply appreciated. i am so happy that you connected with this piece so strongly

!skipperofotters Feb 20, 2012

it's amazing!

you're a great writer

!pixieplay Nov 5, 2011

"the air here
vibrates to a fire,
sparrow's heart humming in c
major"

"my favourite colour is you"

"my mind is a constant repetition of the logarithm of 2am to base silence."

"your hair, spun sugar."

My favourite parts. But all of it is lovely.

~Vlavisfaults Nov 7, 2011 Student Writer

mine too. thank you

~Pr0metheusUnb0und Nov 4, 2011

I just made a sound ''BO'' in my own language. If I try to translate the meaning of ''BO'' it would be ''HOLY FUCK''

. Gratz on the recognition!

~Vlavisfaults Nov 7, 2011 Student Writer

thank you

always awesome when someone invents words to describe your work

thank you, i really appreciate it

~animalker Nov 3, 2011

This is just stunningly gorgeous work. I can't stop reading it.

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