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Isaiahdid you hope with me, Isaiah?
or did I merely dream the days of our stand;
of red strings, of stardust,
of too-small hands & too-long hair,

& of the words, the words, the words

(the ones you had me
believe you were worth)

for it was you who said,
"go big or go home.
I will give you the world,
or nothing at all.

this, I promise to you."

so dear to me, the vowels & the verbs,
the air hissing through
your teeth: gateways
to a barren land

words

like wind through the trees,
like ghosts through the tombstones.

have you left me, Isaiah?
I travel north & farther north, still,
for humans do, subconsciously,
gravitate homeward.
b

lukewarmshe had the kind of voice
that seemed to be stuck
in the hour of four o'clock
in the morning - soft
and tired and luring,
mumbling her way through
subways and tunnel lights
all pale yellow with noise.

there was tea and long baths
and longer absences,
hiccups of breath
the best
she could do.
long springs and
longer falls,
one equinox to the next
and still the bad
was never that bad
and the good
was never that
good,
and she continues to hum
the birds continue to sing
the apples continue to
grow and
sour and
fall,

and bury themselves
again.

summergirlNow read aloud over here. Do give it a listen, won't you?
i. summergirl,
you are crowthroated and tumbling
through the aspen grove
hair on fire with sunrise, lungs
full of sky.
eyelashes like wildflowers
and every morning brings
a new spray of freckles
and a sharper curve to your collarbones.
the cornfields hold no shadows
for your lighthouse eyes
and there are no endings in that
surefooted smile.
ii. you have grown
so fast.
autumn finds you with broken ankles
leaning on an oak branch
and watching the skies.
crow to sparrow--you are quiet.
summergirl, there is peace in silence,
perched treetop,
fallen antlers in your hands.
you will come to mourn your deer.
keep them close.
iii. by winter you have paled,
and like the streams
your eyes have frosted over.
you feel the chill--
there is no need for sight.
summergirl, th

In Riposte, Jswallow god's sense of humor, and tell me how it feels
to send gravity crawling on all fours- stir the remnants
of this violet collapse; ardent attachment:
muscular dystrophy.

play the accretion of your dilatory heartstrings for our silent mute
who raise a glass in toast to coalesce our beloved earth,
who study hagiography as a means of beautiful suicide
on lingering, listless oceans emptying unto itself.

and maybe your ascension was predetermined, perhaps
drawn in apologetic ink on the eyelids of our graceful blind,
who invented the word ugly to describe the fallacy of lost smiles
painted in shadow on your claustrophobic sighs.

astronomerswhen we're together
dusk is containable; the moon in my palms
and the stars on your ceiling.

we lull the city to sleep
with our theories of life; my tongue curling
into speech.

do you remember,
when Jupiter was a silver wick, lighting its countless moons?

that night,
you balanced a cigarette off your lips,
and I watched the vermillion flame burn life
as a newborn sun;

stars forming,
planets moulding and constellations snaked
above our eyes.

i imagined
what it would be like to be curled
inside the embers – creator and destroyer
of worlds,
so close to your lips.

re-interpretation of maniamaybe you are not
studying to be a doctor.
you might instead

be standing on
the guardrail of a major highway,
rearranging the lyre-strings

that will play
over the wreckage shifting in your skin
until they break.

will you still come home
flustered and rosy
in a whirlwind of slammed doors?

forever the violent & reflecting city sunset
who breathes me
against the wall saying
i want to love everyone
in the whole world

Ingenueshe lives off petrichor.

sometimes she'll spend her lonesome days watching the soft spell of rain
reach the depths of cyclic whispers and paradoxical breaths, lost behind her sleepless eyes.

she laughs at gravity.

sometimes she'll notice how the broken inertia of her body is nothing but a reflection of
the chemistry given between her grief and the afterglow of beautified language.

she smiles.

sometimes she'll break the bullets caught in her teeth and mould the tired fragments into something worth loving.

starspunobserving the romanticism
of hooded cemetery kids,
smoking cigarettes pretending
they are not dead.

you were always so sure
about my uncertainty,
you watched
all my pick up lines
drop things.

we built the heat
of the evening from the solidity
of starlight,

pretended
that two teens at the park
at midnight
is the stuff of teen novels
(cliches dim on
our leaf-gold horizon)

your eyes darted
from the gray expanse
of the churchyard & wandered
in thoughtful
paths.

i wanted to ask you
if i could follow. shove
the words aside &
remember that i came here alone.

i remember our innocence
in the static b e t w e e n
stars

Cookerymy blender does not understand
smoothies
"Accept My Gift of Pineapple
Thou Foul Beast!"
this is a blood sacrifice
and she is sadly unreceptive

I begin the main course
I have cupboards full of words
See-Jane-Runs
quick brown foxes
I have half a mind (no, three-fourths of a mind)
to sauté them
into
the golden eggs
more difficult to crack
than I had thought they would be
(forge? My stove doesn't get
hot enough,
I think)

I will spice the adjectives with
madness
I will verb these nouns
throw in a voodoo doll or
tulips! Two! Lips!
Crack open a maraca
and sell you some rhythm

Oh you will love this
you will devour th

Serendipity and SnowfallI am la vie en rose,
a newborn with as many mini bones in my body as possibilities.
Lovelily,
I am potential waiting to be tapped into.
I am a spectrum of light,
serenity in the symmetry of a snowflake.

I come veiled in lace from everlasting love's womb with my budding,
fresh,
goose-flesh tucked tenderly underneath.
I spread my spirit wide,
outstretching my feather-tips &,
supplicated by twizzles,
I catch my ballerina's foot & fly.
In these fleeting,
finite moments of ubermensch suspension in multiple salchows comes clairvoyance,
a kindness beyond the absolution of mundane minds.

With the key to perfection being repetition,
I pray you

The swerveI tore my flesh on the corner of the lake & bled in cubes

and my best friend knew the weight of my green eyes and tried to sell them
and the spring left me heavy in my skin and the air she breathed me
tasted of umami and B12 and water. I drank it all in just like water

and began the aviary process of collecting budding groves and early springs.
you came to me with eyes like empty jars begging for sparks

and the hundred scraps of paper of pretty lies in pretty cursives,
the firefly wings and peonies and ocean salts and river rocks
and you were the first one capable of rustling the dead leaves
at the creek floor, so those went in, too.

Primevaland I don't smoke, but all my poems talk
of cigarettes and ashes because my father smoked
for forty years and now he can't breathe

and I can't breathe.

the chill from the rain seeps through the glass panes
and feels swollen in the loneliness of a crowded train;
the air is pregnant with an umbilical thread
connecting us to something intangible,
something necessary to our being

yet we don't exist at all.

smoke and vapor crawling out our mouths;
we talk because the silence is sometimes frightening,
and because we're searching the dust visible only
in the places where light bends for words that won't disappear

outgrowing gillssea-cradled urchin
child has a salty heart yearnin'
for a glimpse of mother moon
tiny spiked wunderkind
punk, studded belt
you know life's answers well
shuffling through the seaweed-less halls
missing the ocean swell
tidal waves foaming at the mouth
everyone is laughing now
at the boy born on a boat one sunny afternoon
cause mama loved the sea like lovers love the sheets
landlocked kid is homesick and
sea sure, he's searching for the sea shore
life's a blur for Davy Jones at his locker
capsized by sea-legs on solid ground, he finds his seizures
and he hates his earth mother
he hates her
for falling for the ocean and
how he's rocked by the moon
how he's mesmerized by her glow
her pull on his sea-conceived cells
no
he hates her too
for the puking in the stalls
for the ridicule

bedIt's a stabbing sight
Letting in the morning with a crack of the shades
And you forget you could page-turn horizons
Waft through free territory
Where acres are just beds
Made of fresh land

Wrinkles in the river
Tell remembered times
About old languages that could make you cry
About soft beds that carve away canyons
A speaking voice lifted from the earth
Begging you to remember

Let the Sparrows InI.

Blackbirds are resting on the power lines,
Their silhouettes form the notation to
A dawn song set on the sheet music of
Telephone poles contrasted by the sun.

Curled leaves are land mines littered
On the lawn where imprints of twigs
And a nurturing robin's tracks collect.

Branchlets and leaflets stem from
Porch step railings and mailboxes;
The numbers read even on the
East side of the asphalt:

Seven-seven-thirty-six.
The engraved letters on
The siding reads, "Davis."
This house is home to family

So let the sparrows in.

The house,
With its branching hallways
And
Overhanging décor
And
Furniture rooted to the floor

Browse More Like This

More from ~anotherforestfire

cavernousCarving a hole in his chest
The house he'll hold his hibernation
Thick clouds pillar his vision
And he sleeps

I can harmThe beast in the forest
Touched his teeth to my skin
And I ran from the swing set
My cousin and I were playing on
We were too loud
And he watched us
Until my eyes fell upon him
He was at me
And I knew it was over

I remember finding slugs under stones and wood
I remember plants curling at my young touch
Do I make your skin crawl, too?
I am someone else's mistake
Don't let me be yours
We were tied by our fingers
But I couldn't reach you

When I hid and my words fled
I thought you would find me
Buried in my colorblind fear
My lost reasons
My cliff dive
Into black waters, I hope are sharp
With grey hands
To catch me with a c

will not wakeMy sad, tired eyes
And lips ran dry
Like failed thunderstorms

Static on my fingertips
And so much fear
The shock will not wake me up

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they can't be taken

by ~anotherforestfire, Jun 4, 2012, 11:53:12 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

_{their bleach skin caught my eye
albino white against the wild
hair like bright sky electric in the briars

haloed sister gods shot down like fawn}

535

33 11 10

they can't be takenby ~anotherforestfire

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Submitted on: June 4, 2012
File Size: 282 bytes

Views: 535 (2 today)
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*UnspecifiedUnknown Mar 25, 2013 Writer

^{holy shit.}

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~anotherforestfire Mar 29, 2013

haha thank you

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~Meggie272 Dec 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

The use of language is very effective in this - it almost crackles!

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~anotherforestfire Dec 17, 2012

thank you, I think I can hear it too

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~disrhythmic Nov 27, 2012

Hi.

I'm a reader for #Elocutionists and I read this out loud. I'd love to put it up on our blog ([link]), if that's alright with you. You can listen to my reading here: [link]

Let me know if you like it. <3 I loved reading it.

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=Sammur-amat Nov 5, 2012 General Artist

Congratulations on the well-deserved DLD, lovely!

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~anotherforestfire Nov 5, 2012

thank you :] I was very surprised

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=Sammur-amat Nov 6, 2012 General Artist

Well like I said, it is well-deserved

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=DailyLitDeviations Nov 3, 2012

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here [link]
Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by

ing the News Article.

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*0hgravity Jun 10, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

oooh I like the concept.
great imagery. eerie.
with the sparseness and the wilderness
it brought to mind bon iver

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