[x]

JuliaMetMichaelSamaraSawTheStarsGenevieveFoundFeari.

                               Tonight is different.
Genevieve pauses, staring as layers of fog encroach forward.  The ominous mist slinks onward only to settle against her taunt muscles.  Vapor coils along her skin like venom; tangible and prickling.
She allows her lungs timid inhales of February.  Every breath sparks artic shockwaves throughout her nervous system    Glacial streaks start to sprout within her tissues, ever-so-silent and sickening.  She slows, listening to iced-oxygen hardening between blood cells.

                     The cold feels like boulders in my lungs.
Genevieve feels so unexpectedly heavy in her skin.  Wadi

Harvest MoonThree a.m. moonlight
across lazy dust motes; a
tree scrapes the window.
Your arm weighs on my hip like
whispered promises of love.

Under DreadThe winter, the whole winter
is sitting on my head, nesting its fingers
in the little hairs over my ears.
Its friend, the great and unnamed doubt,
is leaning against my collarbone
in a most familiar fashion,
and I fall in and out of balance

irregularly irregularly.

I have a beauty waiting, warm, willing
on speed dial, but the phone--
where did I leave the phone again?
Beauty is as elusive as
the car keys, which, I swear,
were just in that pocket. I

had my hand on them. The whole winter
keeps coursing its little nails
up and down my neck and taking
all my breath away.
There was a dream I had that
I almost remember, almost r

Down By The SchoolyardThere is a rather cliched phrase that states that some people live double lives. I have always found that to be an intensely misleading statement and I guess you can call it a bit of a pet peeve of mine. No one leads "double lives", they just lead fucking lives. That those lives are more complex that the singular one-track existence of lesser creatures shouldn't be a matter of duplicity, but of common sense. No one is exactly who they seem to be.

Julio is one of those who they would later say lived a double life, but it is no more true for him than anyone else. The difference in this case is that there are two of him, rather than one.

Perha

Exhume and InhaleI have tasted God, he tasted of sweet wine
and sandalwood, the deep forest you lay down

in the moss and twigs, scattered like finger-bones,
your spine ripped out, curved like a bow.

I couldn't find your heart, trembling
against the opened cage of your ribs,

under the gently speaking rustle,
leaves unfurling, the dance of sunlight

slinking between your vertebrae:
piccolo skims and birchskin shaves.

I fled. Your right shoulder blade beckoned still,
unfolding like the slow feathers of a wing,

your wrist flung out, palm
up, gasped my name,

but I could not stay, only
strained your skin with oleander tea,

drifted, drifted with the t

Car tout finit un jour... - Because everything... (English version below)

Car tout finit un jour...

Dans tes yeux noirs où se perdent les ombres,
Immergés de spleen et d'ouragans sombres,
Assassine étoile en proie aux vingt ans,
N'oublie ta joie, ton courage d'antan.

Ah que le temps vienne où les fleurs s'égrainent !
Nos rires sous les toits bleus, nos fredaines
Oubliées, resteront à jamais les
Germes d'un été, mort abandonné.

Une lettre commencée, une plume
Egarée. Car dès lors de cette plume
Il faut tirer un trait, comme à l'enclume
Retirer l'épée. Des maux que j'exhume,

Aie confiance en eux

I Mean to Get You AloneYou have sharp
pulse-elevating teeth
the stuff I imagine heart attacks
are made of

I'm bent on selling you a handful of smiles
specifically crafted
to distract you from the fact that
I have almost nothing to say

and now you're steering this conversation
in a direction that suggests you've

forgotten that I
don't watch movies or do much of
anything but work which maybe

explains why one glass of wine gets me
wrapped around you
car to streetlight
crash style
mangled limbs
breeding curious onlookers and my insurance has
expired

you're leaning in and all I can think is
I don't have insurance

A Dancing GirlA girl stubs busted toes
across cigarette sidewalks
and rippled parking lots,
shatters her music box,
her mother's dying swan,
to dance with vagaries
for the dawn of her city.

She dances violently
for every chaired cripple
and the politically corrected,
handicapped by society.

She weeps in corners
with the coroners who
uncover bodies under bridges,
every vagrant of her city.

She sets fire to roof tops
where falling stars nestle,
runs rusted fire escapes
that lead to dead end allies,
and turns over dumpsters,
raging for a way out.

Va'eiraThis was a lesson in just how quiet it can be
when you don't make enough noise.

Me, holding a toy gun to a stranger's head
"Remember when things stopped being ridiculous?"

You, eating dandelions in a midnight field
"About the same time things stopped making sense."

A boy in church camp carved a small crucifix
for his arts and crafts project. He won the blue
ribbon and a brand new Bible. The next morning
I found it hanging over our cabin door.
A toad was nailed to the cross.
Still breathing.
Still breathing.

Sometimes we wake up early enough to hide the evil from our world.
Still breathing.

of the ground-

It was Sunday night when Geo climbed into my room from the fire escape. I was painting my toenails and listening to the sounds of the city: police sirens, pulsating bass, the kids in my tenement running guitar riffs back and forth with the street musicians on the sidewalk. That was the year I turned sixteen and took a two-month vow of silence to honor the death of autumn. A premature snow had robbed the season of its delicate warmth and color, forcing the maples to weep their leaves into the gutters. All that rainwater, all that decay. How could anyone create when October was dying outside their windows? Pete and Jake practiced acoustic th

Reversed Singularity? but of time, i do digress
& my intentions have been writ
in sumerian, and dreamt; but

here to live obsolete:
swift swing, precarious pang
with my heart's guiltless intention
--fingernails scratch & fit

your name; tasting still
succulence, feeling still
tyranny of will, being still
drowned cortex-deep, hearing still

--the wisp of a faltered laughter
sheltered & swaying & playing

amongst the dead, the horned
honoured and torn, formed
long and forlorn'd--

oh time, my bittersweet demise
dying is no longer a sacred art
and is sincerity in its purest form
cloaked with fault & artless bourne

How To Ask Someone To Let You Love ThemI think you keep secrets under your skin
like trees keep rings and do not know it,
like the sea teems,
like dark and quiet space
keeps every ray of light
the stars whispered to one another
when they were still young
and dying to make love.

I think you keep secrets in you
like the desert keeps sands,
like sleep keeps dreams,
like cities keep sleepless people
and people looking for sleepless people
to fall asleep with.

I think you keep secrets
like secrets like to be kept,
and I want to learn them all.

Noticed in CommittingI started committing suicides. They were small at first, but more grandiose as the months passed.
At first, I came up with basics: wrist slashing, hanging, overdose, jumping off a building, and stepping off in front of bus. They were all very mundane, really, and if not done properly you just end up living very, very painfully. It was after those routine ways to snuff oneself that I began to get creative.
There was going into a biker bar nude and starting fights with drunk bikers. And when I say "fights", I mean with a knife in my hand. That was a fun night. Everyone was freaked out and angry at the same time. They all wanted to kill me, but they didn't want to touch me either. Eventually, though, they did.
Oh, another good one was sneaking into one of those giant dump trucks at a quarry and letting them dump tons of excavated rocks on me. The driver of the loader always sees you just as it's too late and tries to stop the load.

Across the Sea and Around the KotatsuSpring

Taco Rice

Mom starts with rice. Japanese rice, one, two, three Japanese cup-fulls of rice grains into the cooker, because Sis eats a lot of this stuff. It's one of her favorite dishes, taco rice, and Mom's always happy to make it for her because it's the only way Sis will eat her tomatoes. But back to the rice. "You want to rinse at least three or four times, until the water's kind of clear," Mom says as she cups her hand under the cooker pot, letting the cloudy water wash over her hand.

Rice cooking's easy though – just fill enough water to the point the rice's covered, punch in a time (or set it to "Quick Cook," which with our cre

SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.

It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic ki

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just dessertsI want even your breadcrumbs,
a glutton whose sticky fingers
twitch at the thought of your
candid disclosure, a curtain cast
aside, the opportunity to match

smell to taste and if you can't
give a little, you won't get a
little and I yank my hair out by
the roots from craving your

origins (whether humble or
humiliating), but I understand
your stoic stance, I applaud

the discipline which restrains
your appetite for me and my
intrusive lanterns illuminating

the nooks where you squat, a hunched
gargoyle with your scoliosis spine
and your granite grimaces where you eat

alone because you have never met
a beggar as crooked as me

eulogy for a distant queeni.

you are going to die
in this country.

you are most beautiful
when you forget the
misery of sore feet and
the easy outs, the
quickest methods of
ignoring your stubborn
existence, trying to add
volume to the humidity

to drive away the pelicans
rising in stalks from the
murky swamps on the way
to New Orleans and you
paid ten dollars for a
fortune your intuition
had already divined, your

dignity written along
the sharp sickles of your
cheekbones, your chin
up in defiance,

a woman

ignoring jeers as she
walks from the carriage
to the guillotine.

ii.

you are going to die
in my country.

I have devoted years to

no such thingeverday is a struggle to be
right; I don't have much to
say about ethics or debates,
but I know about the seed
buried deep inside, the effort
it takes to welcome its bursting
like an aneurysm, the spasms

which remind me of how old
I am, brittle marrow and knees
which bow to thunderstorms,

and how young I am, the inexperience
which spreads after the prick of
the needle, washing my bloodstream

fetid, and you might suggest a
spoonful of sugar for the remedies
I down with the rise of Apollo,
the set of Selene, but the medication

just levels me, and it is protection
against hours and hours of manic
interstate navigation to p

cannibal on a stringI've made a liar of you,
hanging about your summer
periphery like a banana
spider on my knitted web,

switchblade slashes for
legs and a bouquet of ocelli
sizing up the breadth of
your concern, the width
of your promises and how they
compare to the measurements
of your actions, not for

sport (no one ever asks to
weave silken patterns through
hell, no one requests to
nest at the base of a burning
tree) and never in malice

as malice is often given
to hourglass bodied hunters
bearing venom, malice that
is snagged by the neat cutlery

click of pincers and preserved
instead of eaten and I track
your cautious approach, un

not so profoundI have traversed no mountains, I
have weathered no great sifting
sand storms or walked in a tiny
footstep spine amongst the howling
creatures of the sun, and I

wish sleep would stop grabbing me
up in its iridescent arms, so tireless, so
silent with its barking in my ear and I

wish you would wake up today from your
disgusting coma, from your separation of
all the things I mean to you, and I

wish you would take me somewhere
pretty.

meet me in the morningi gnash the crescents
of my palms in gravel
and i endure that grit to
scrape off at least a
layer or two to be able

to stand and enter the
war zone; i need to
reel myself in, i need
to smooth myself out,
the wrinkles and the
bile, and i wish i had

the beauty to ask you
to tell me it's alright,
that you're here and you
can withstand my scabs

and my quicksand's
suction at your ankles,
but i can't handle your

benevolent shoulder made
for hopeless leaning,
made for quieting my

racing thoughts, my
nomad's hearse, my
moonlit incantations

and

please
god
please

i want you to take
me as i am, i want
you to l

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comfort, crawfish boils, and port vincent

by *sleepysheepdog, May 19, 2012, 7:45:25 AM
Literature / Poetry / Family Life / Free Verse

and you and me, we got the whole of
Saturday, you and me, we got car grease
streaked straight up to our grins and

let's high five when you triumph over
mom's sneaky nose, her teasing and coy and
i wanna be that kind of wife to a man

like you. i wanna be the kind of woman worth
changing with, sacrificing for, going crazy
over as the years collect in bank rolls of nickels.

i've been called a menagerie of names by
the older, the wiser, the wrinkled; they
call me pretty girl, sweetheart, dollface,

sugarplum as i stir splenda into their
brewed coffees, but they ain't got nothin'

on your horse master hands, the ones that could
whip us all into shape (any shape; triangle,
square, parallelogram) if you were guided by

a cruel whimsy instead of a moral compass because
you know north and even though you live eye level
with the clouds, you always manage to look at

at me without condescending or stooping or crouching
down to my level. you know north because you are

north and i am true south, couldn't not be, i keep
company with steam and sticky soundwaves and the Sabine

and i am content

knowing i'll meet you mid-May at the apex of
the rose's needle.

comfort, crawfish boils, and port vincentby *sleepysheepdog

Literature / Poetry / Family Life / Free Verse

we're gonna have a ball

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Given 2012-10-05

comfort, crawfish boils, and port vincent by ~sleepysheepdog ( Suggested by `FuzzyHoser and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

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*BeyondJen Jan 10, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Oh gosh, this is nothing short of amazing and truly lovely.

I'm quite taken with the delicate rambling and all the compass imagery, right down to those perfect ending lines. This is definitely one of my favorite things I've read here.

Congrats on the very well deserved DD.

~arecio Dec 6, 2012

I love the relationship described in this, they seem to click really well. The first person character feels really strong to me. It's super beautiful. +fave

*mellowghost Oct 7, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Very sweet piece. It made me smile.

~Nnuit Oct 5, 2012 Student Writer

this is it

~EvranaWolfsong Oct 5, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Wow. Your cadence and voice is interestingly done, and it has an awesome feel to it. The words just feel right in my mouth, even without being spoken.

~KittyCyanide Oct 5, 2012 Student General Artist

This is perfectly fantastic. Wonderful, wonderful work.

*glossolalias Oct 5, 2012

perfect.

~EchoHasName Oct 5, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

i am true south, couldn't not be, i keep
company with steam and sticky soundwaves and the Sabine

and i am content

.... Although I keep company with Pontchartrain... I totally understand <3

=xxStolen-soulsxx Oct 5, 2012

wow, it makes perfect sense.

*xlntwtch Oct 5, 2012 Writer

...

... this one put a big smile on my face. Thank you.

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comfort, crawfish boils, and port vincent

comfort, crawfish boils, and port vincentby *sleepysheepdog

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