[x]

a knot of cold desirei. acknowledgement -

i woke from the slumber of growth
when i was ninteen,
and realized i could not go back
to the beliefs of the child or
the fantasies of the dreamer,
or the hopes naivety persists with although
they're fruitless.

part of me wanted to take your hand
because i was afraid of the inevitable drift
which accompanies two bodies parting
physical ways and metaphorical hearts,
and perhaps if our fingers were intertwined
we'd stay that way, too.
but we've never been affectionate;
and although i can say what you're thinking before
you think it, you don't know me
half as well as i know you.

so we sat side by side
and

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

Halogen Hunger is the Only LightI lay awake late at night
counting suicides on my fingers,

marking them on the map
until all that's left
is an ocean of push-pins.

ink bloodi am a thing of words and ink blood

and you, the proverbial book thief
albeit with loving intentions.

you bend my spine and gently crack me open
to the sunlight without asking.

for who gave you permission
to walk your fingers along every tale interwoven
through my vertebrae?
to have your eyes
browse each piece of my nonfiction,
where the day and night have kissed my brow
and ran me through in equal measure,
as if i were truly an inanimate thing
of pages and dust?

under your scrutiny i am no longer a volume
left face-down and dusty beside the armchair
by the window,
unloved by hands and falling prey
to the patient gluttony

Remarksi. I like the way you call me
and always hang up on the second ring
because you know I get the shakes and the shivers
and sometimes, but not always, my knees fall off
and I have to crouch down to find them.

ii. I keep thinking about you.
You
and your ten-thousand tans
and your lack-luster smile
gaping open with colloquialisms.
You and the way you say
"you're pretty and thin"
as if one more label will be the gunshot
and I'll finally escape that dream
in which I'm running, but my feet are melting
through the sidewalk and my arms are
casting impossible shadows.

iii. It reminds me of how inarticulate words are sometimes;
how t

twelve fifty-nine pm
and it is an elegant dance
of destructive capabilities, this.
a warped and heady hide or seek
for one parts joy and three parts safety
all wrapped clumsily up
in a single word of slender irrelevance:
love.

there is no real pinning down
of the race towards the hardly known:
the way some sprint with
boundless energies and
hopeless desire, the way some
take ample moments to preserve
each footstep,
the ones who fall and pick themselves up
and fall and fall again -
there is no label honest enough
or thorough.

and still,
we deem four letters
as a standard.

Dead Bodies Don't Cryi.

You are born with twisted feet
and a pockmark on your chest.
Your poor mother is drenched in sweat,
straining to breathe,
thanking God it's over.

She cradles you in her arms
and kisses your forehead with curved lips.
Your father reaches out to hold you
but has to pause because
your mother will not release you yet.

The family pays a visit,
hovering in awe, praising, laughing.
You look around for someone to blame.

ii.

When you learn to write
you use all the wrong letters
because you feel sorry for the ones
that get left out, like X and Z.
And you wear mismatched clothes
because you don't like the idea that
only certain c

thisyou told me you didn't think
so many breaths had ever passed your lips,
that your lungs never ached like this,
and your heart pounded like hummingbirds
trapped in the cavity of your chest,
their little wings against your ribs,
your eyes in the reflection of mine—

and i told you, firstly, i don't believe in love
or superstition or happiness or anything besides
dimming lights, the color of your faded sheets,
and the sweat on my palms—

when we kiss, i name the chemicals
that make me press closer and think of my nerves
lighting up like christmas, and i take the pulse of my blood
to yours, and yours is faster because you're older

not

the underside of bones.i. what glow once kindled so astringent,
hot-coals beneath the feet
now pleads in the whispers
of a light desperate not to go out.
how quickly does the mind flip.
society's winds blow
and the blank stares and misconception blow
and she's stumbling around on bird legs
in the hurricane's aftermath,
keeping up a semblance of assurance
like she's expected to.

ii. and it's fine, she says,
it's fine, that light doesn't matter and
hasn't ever mattered, it wasn't
for the illumination but rather the knowledge
she was not alone in the dark.
but it's not fine
because somewhere in between
repressed thoughts and stifled sentiments
may

BotherIt's not a game.
She's gone away,
and no one even bothered to say,

"Will you ever return?"
When will they learn?
But no one bothered to say it to her.

I left on that day,
I went my own way,
but no one even bothered to say,

"I really love you."
I don't think it's true,
but I'd still say "I love you, too."

We all wonder why
she left us dry,
but we still didn't bother to say goodbye.

And neither did she,
not even to me.
At the very least, now, she's finally free.

I left them alone,
how can I atone?
Would I have stayed there, had I then known?

I can certainly tell
that all of us fell
when I didn't even bother to bid them farewell.

mosaics.sometimes unique
is not loud;
or bright, alive and raging,
possessed of a hunger for the atypical,
up front and too close,
or thrice-pierced and drenched
in the rebellions
particular to the latest generation.

sometimes it is a girl with
mouse brown hair and eyes
the color of weak tea,
who stands with her schoolbooks clutched
to her chest, in uniform shades of grey-blue
like the midmorning autumn sky

who has a wide mouth prone to nervous smiles,

pale lips and pale cheeks
and words that don't always come out
the way she means

who holds the universe
in the intricacies of her fingerprints
and laughs in treble clef notes
and u

Stares-as if the silence
lingered just beneath the grime;
palpable word breaks.

when you try your bestand I'm not really sure how to start a sentence anymore,
but I suppose I should dedicate the hemic red of my hipbone
to you.

After all, no one ever died from lattice-lines
etched into their pelvis, did they.
In fact, if I lay on the floor just right
at 2:53 am, the Venetian-moonlight-slivers filter down to cover me,
and you could almost imagine the hypertrophic gills in my wrist
as figments or misguided shadows -
gasping, just barely.

And I know it's something hard to believe,
but sometimes I sit on the ground with my arms around my knees
and my knees to my chest and my chest going thumpthumpthump,
and I just listen to the

untitled 01life writes stories on the skin;
told in blood and bone,
stamped across the body.

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More from ~sense-and-stupidity

AestivateI imagine the neighborhood laughs at me
- little scrawny me with trembling arms -
because I dance as I mow the lawn and
oh, look at the poor girl, she's gone loopy in the sun
but I'm so much stronger than everyone thinks,
and sweating reminds me that my body still remembers,
after all this time, how to work.
Yes, I may be lumbering along with one leg dragging behind,
right hand painted green as dandelion stems,
but oh well. At least my skin enjoys the taste of UV rays
that lap at the gustatory tang of my farmer's tan, peppered salty
with hay fever [creeping up my back.]

I lay with silent headphones in,
hidden amongst a bed of wee

Encephalo-Shadows cascade through the open window;
steely fingers of moonlight slipping across the floor,
reaching under furniture and stealing scraps
of daylight leftover from noon.
Dust covers everything like filter paper,
smelling stagnant and viscously-thick; hanging
like cobwebs in the air: a colloid suspended in water.
Every couple minutes,
the roof makes a noise like rain,
and the clouds snap apart like Lincoln-Logs.

I sit in bed, the blankets furled around me
like stalwart arms, and try to hold it all in.
Light is beckoning outside my door
and, somewhere, a cat is scratching and yowling
to be let in from the cold,
but I can't

from saltYou ask me sometimes why I can't seem to wake up
when it's cold; why, on occasion, I fall to my knees before
the coffee table and put my face in my hands, mutteringwhisperingscreamingcrying under my breath.
Or why, when the room suddenly fades to dark, I glance up from a book of poetry
- from my pencil, poised -
and allow my eyes to flicker over someone who isn't there, my muscles smiling.
It's all because I want to be alive, dear, but sometimes life consumes me.
It's because, some days, when I move, I can hear ice crystals
crunching between my joints like the synovic fluid when I pop my fingers,
and I know the only w

Nameless ThingI've sat at this café so long that the waitress is starting to wonder
who this strange person is at table six who puts creamer in her
coffee and then forgets to stir it every time.
[She knows when it's time for a refill because that last sip
comes with a wince and a snarking-back of cold coffee-grinds.]
The cook's been out twice to catch a glimpse of this mysterious customer
who only orders condiments and utensils, and writes
synonyms for "synonym" in the window haze,
watching the I's cry.

I lean my chin in my hand and watch the world;
listen to the click of heels on linoleum,
the slamming shut of windows and descending-swis

In a TriceMoments-
time: tick-tock, tick-tock;
windscreen wipers flick-click, flick-clicking
to the tempo of bouncing feet;
water-droplets running off sunroofs - seconds
lost, forsaken, sold for pennies and left on
street corners for bums and duffers to pluck
like dandelions. Scattered like wishes in a well;
one thousand tiny prayers (lips kissing copper, words whispered:
"please…just please") left to drown
and tarnish like so many other symbols of hope
- the Lady Liberty cries: long, dark rust-streams permeating
because of all of this hatred and nobody caring.
What about the people with nothing?!

Moments-
time: wasted because oh,

Word of MouthThat boy had a face like a bar fight;
purple and blue fist-depressions in his cheekbones,
slits in his lips like lines in a tree;
cuts like notches in a stick:
counting down time left, time wasted,
and all the times he's woken up with a murderous headache.
There's something sticky on his chin [probably gin]
where a beard should be,
but he's much too young, much too innocent
to have one,
even though he spends his nights "out-on-the-town",
pretending he's tough and mysterious and handsome,
buying lap dances with money reserved for booze.
You can see him begging on the street for a sip of something [anything]
at the first break of

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[x]

on watching the night close its eyes on you

by ~sense-and-stupidity, Nov 4, 2012, 11:12:03 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

1. 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 lines
too short, hemming the holes into
puckers red as those volcanoes of strength
bursting at the base of your hips.

3. Blood is not satisfaction.
Blood is not patience, waiting for the rooms to empty and the faucet
to coat and cover the silence.
Blood is red cells breathing and white soldiers fighting
and platelets healing,
tugging sleeves back to illuminate the signs.
It is not weakness nor relapse nor short-sightedness
beleaguered within a tarnished state of mind.
It is life peaking up through the concrete,
like a(n) (in)carnation breaching the vine.

4. Tell yourself recovery is more than a pipe dream.
Tell yourself ribs are the trophies of the emaciated masses
and the blatantly dying; collarbones the handles on reality
that will eventually snap.
Tell yourself you are separate;
you are alive.

You are not dying unless you relinquish your body to the jackals,
refusing freedom even as it is spooned before you,
not running but allowing yourself to be dragged, toe first,
straight into the fire. You are not burning unless you
forget how to feel the flame.

5. Fight back, even against me.
Fight for the choice.
Because you are not dying unless you lay your hands down,
and even then
I will lay my bones down beside yours,
whisper

Jess.

I have seen the things you have seen
and

6. I will not tell you
you are pretty.

7. I will tell you to fight your way back to just barely breathing
and then a little beyond sleepy and a fraction beneath sick. Linger
if you must, but fight for the centimeter
and the ounce
and the word(s).

I will take those words,
package them, send them, bless them with crooked handwriting.

I will remind you
8. "you are
pretty intelligent
pretty creative
pretty amazing"

But you will never be, merely,
pretty.

on watching the night close its eyes on youby ~sense-and-stupidity

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

For Jess (*AlloenDreams) and anyone else this disorder has ever, even once, touched.

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-03-11

on watching the night close its eyes on you by ~sense-and-stupidity inspires me again and again as both a writer and more importantly, a person says the suggester. Suggested by many others. ( Suggested by ~AlloenDreams and Featured by ^NicSwaner )

love 2 2

~~joy 0 0~~

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~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

*bloodawni Apr 30, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Hello, I wanted to let you know I've used your lovely title in my newest Title Poem, 'your teeth leave different scars'. If you wanted to read it, the link is [link] - but this comment is really just to let you know how I've made use of your gorgeous title.

~KaitlynnRenee Mar 16, 2013

Anyone who reads this will interpret it in a different way. It's the flow of the words, the vibe.
Thank you for posting, I love to play with my mood.

~Squagle Mar 12, 2013 Student Digital Artist

Congratulations on the well deserved DD!

*bloodawni Mar 11, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Congratulations on your DD, and just... yeah. Thank you. I wasn't even the one this is meant for and I just can't... yeah. Sometimes I am eloquent, but at the moment I am merely speechless.

~bRoKeNgRiN Mar 11, 2013 Hobbyist Photographer

Absolutely stunning. Fantastic piece of writing. I'm sure I'll be able to read this many times and always glean something new, find something I hadn't seen. Thank you very much for sharing.

~LostInTheMorning Mar 11, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

This is so moving. It gave me chills.

~Serena-666 Mar 11, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Oh my god. This is so amazing! ^_^ truly a well written piece.

~alabaster-Islie Mar 11, 2013

this sickness breathed out
life
and breathed in
death
it cast its cold shadow
across young (impressionable) minds
and it takes lives
in the thousands
~silent somebody~

~sense-and-stupidity Mar 16, 2013 Writer

that's beautiful.

~alabaster-Islie Mar 17, 2013

just breath in
and out
and all will be
fine
the world hasnt ended yet
we can still move on
~silent somebody~

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