[x]

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

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.

SehnsuchtOctober again;
and the curtains billow
with broken glass echoes and
Mendelssohn's bride waltzing
to better times

(ein
zwei
drei)

She becomes the rain,
and breaks her own heart as
the sound
drips
right through us.

FirefliesWe kept cicadas and caterpillars in mason jars, but never fireflies. My brother still has a cicada from three years ago, sleeping away under the lid. Grandpa says it'll stay that way for 17 years like all cicadas do, and it's okay to keep them safe.

But we don't catch fireflies; they don't live that long. They say light travels faster than anything, but our bugs are fat lazy things that travel nowhere in a big zigzag. The tall grass lights up with tiny little flashes every night all summer long and all is dark not two months later, but for the time being they don't even know they're dying.

forestfire exhalationher verses burn silent, in an existence lost in forestfire's exhales
a wildfire waltzing inexorably over her naked forests drowning in untouchable glass.
she crowns me queen in the city of desertfire,
they burn blackholes over scientific studies; (over the skin that wraps me,)
like an empty gift burning in the smoke that rises,
over star-reaching treetops:
wastefull consummation to the greatest.

[ her porcelain hipbone
is my perfect canvas
to ink all the beauty i know ]

we are the earth's nonbiblical scapegoats,
questionmarks tremble over our complexion—
asymmetry and contours of a shadow-city in the comas we l

they can't be takentheir 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

strangeryou came clinging to the grace of a summer storm's
underbreath, came cold hands and tired eyes
and a bruised lip i'd longed to kiss
when you stumbled on night listing
too far to the left
cross my thistledown garden by old dusks
that wilt between, i'll keep my door open:
your lady in sepia doesn't live here, only
the ghosts and i -- and Grandmother,
in the far-between wanders when she can
remember --

but i've a place where you can
lay your wayworn bones to dry, and
if morning should come calling, i'll not
tell her where you sleep. and stayed awhile.

Stepping StonesI rip pages
out of poetry books,
the titles of
Shakespeare
and Plath
and Dickinson
littering the floor
like trash,
and I wonder
if we don't all
wind up stepping stones
in the end.

InfernoSeptember is a sultry tangle
of curly hair and corduroy jackets stretched
over broad shoulders that I've been leaning on,
metaphorically.

He won't press for answers
and I won't trouble him with my problems.
So he complains about the weather –
he's never gotten used to these sticky, southern delta summers –
while I hold the door
and press the call button.

The half-lit elevator drops us off above Dante's first layer.
I feel sorry for anyone beneath,
but I've indulgences to buy
and my own hell to return to.

But there's a light in my pocket –
abandon not all hope,
and

smile.

Arsenic.i.

It's just like talking
to anyone else

ii.

I cried when you wrote
that, just like when
I took your letters
down, and when you
told me you didn't
love me, anymore

iii.

and, I cannot
find a method
to pretend that
you were just
some lover

iv.

there are people
who make me laugh
like you never did,
but

I do not feel safe
with any of them;

v.

and I thought
about falling into
your arms next
year, when you
come back,

imagined
remembering how
to feel at home
and then

remembered

vi.

in all senses
of the word,
you will not
come back
home

vii.

oh, you over think things

and maybe I do,
but the things
are you.

Atlanticyou were the ghost
who made the apple fall.

.

and no,
it's not you,

sometimes the seeds
turn into trees
or flowers, strange
incarnations of
the strangest force,
and, at other times,
the wind lifts them away
so they never
touch the ground.

there's nothing left but course.

.

of course you are, but i must know;

do you go door to door,
knocking on the stars?

reality: just
an architect's answer
to a philosopher's question.

.

over the atlantic you sing
like the end who just learned
he was a beginning.
over the atlantic you sing:

"god is an ocean,
and you can only pray
by kneeling on the ground."

Loving AustraliaYears like bilbies--
days like kangaroos.

Want lives in a pocket womb
(salt suckle; scrape
of your grey-brown curls.)

Heart-split
by hemispheres
(birdsong way
you shape your words.)

Sleep
dredged in red dust,
sprawled across half a world,
night-lit
by wrong stars.

leavetakingi.
the world is brighter where
dregs of strangers' revels remain --
i keep this half-light for my own.

ii.
i'll stay until the wind sighs a scotch-and-smoke
cliché, til the Muscadet's slipped from the lip
of my wayward
hello.(i know you're there before you do.)
iii.
your night is told in
patchouli-pulse wanders; mine,
in whorls of liqueur-breath. come
close and i'll find the warp
through the weft, the trails telling tales
in synaesthesia --
Platinum Blonde's been 'round and gone.

iv.
(-- closer, find syllables strewn
in an exhale's wake; stolen from my throat-
ful of careless farewells, spin and sway

ersatzyour wake is the warm
languid whorl of a sachet-latté
morning after,
gone when six a.m. rain swirls
pavement scents of whiskeysmoke
& a careless caress away
under cinnamon-sugar grace --
and it was only ever this:
you were lovely
by trembled halflight, when you almost had
my summer-boy's eyes.

Sky EyesDesert hands tell tales
of a hundred arid summers, but
you are no longer as cloudless as they

(there is a storm
creeping through blue, blue veins).

But tell the sky to keep her sorrow,
that grey cascade blurring against
eyelids and horizons;

and suppress her misbegotten
droplets, seeping into the sodden
ground underfoot—

for there is still sun in your sky eyes.

Browse More Like This

more ▶

More from ~angeljunkie

The Unremarkable Confessions of a Drunken LoverGive me another -
one part Jack, six parts truth.
Make mine a double,
'cause I'm still standing.
I measure my day in moments of you.
Clutching talismans of unacknowledged import.
My skin nags its ache for you -
nothing quite so sordid, I promise -
just your hand in mine.
Your Self occupying that
so conspicuously empty space
next to mine.
Oh, it's such a cliche...
I cast us as Romantic period lovers
forbidden ever to touch -
Romeo and Romeo,
sans suicide.
I'll use words to immortalise you-me-us
so Someday When
university students can pour over my lines
with apathetic glances
and giggle-whisper over hidden references
I never meant to put.
How many adjectives will it take to contain you
in rhyme and meter?
Vespertilian.
Ethereal.
Magnetic.
Addictive.
(My personal favourite.)
I'll pen epics in your honour.
Become that quintessential knight
questing for his lady's -
sorry. lord's
affection.
Will I ever win his han

19.07.12The summer moon kissed his sun-dark skin and the air lifted the scent of honeysuckle from the ground. He still smelled of fire and earth and last night’s rain and places men’s feet had never been.
He pressed his face against the cool glass and tiptoed his soot-smeared fingers across the surface. The room inside looked snug and inviting, but too clean, too constrained, too civilised for him.
The shape on the bed shifted under the tangled blankets and a slim, bare foot peeked out.
Just that single sheet of glass dividing them – no thicker than a flower stem but it might as well be thousands of miles with the latch firmly set.
What he wouldn’t give to be on the other side of that glass.
‘Think happy thoughts, Wendy-cat,’ he whispered to the window, ‘and I will leave pixie dust for you in your dreams.’
With one last parting look into the room, he let the night carry him away.

18.07.12Max had waited for this moment since the day he’d been first activated. So what if the Council had subsequently determined that his model was too unstable for actual combat and repurposed them as crossing guards. Max had been created to be a hero, and no amount of reprogramming was going to stand in his way.
Granted, his first two attempts hadn’t gone exactly as planned. There was no one to actually save in the first fire he set. He made sure there were at least five in the second, but some dumb X9 model had beaten him to it and got all the credit. Not this time, though. This time had been perfect. Plenty of heartstring-tugging potential victims, the nearest X9 units experiencing temporary technical difficulties, and a news crew with a perfectly timed tip.
And it’d worked. Exactly as planned. In the end, he’d only gotten out four of the twenty, but t

17.07.12Y’aalreetmarra? Wossacrack?
He knew, on some level, that they were speaking the same language, but he couldn’t quite work out exactly how. He was equally aware that an appropriate response was expected from him and hadn’t the vaguest idea what that might be.
Still. It wasn’t like he could just keep walking and pretend he hadn’t heard. Damn tiny sidewalks. Silence not an option, he took a deep breath and ventured, ‘Yes.’

15.07.12A burst of rainbows and unicorns shot at the spot where Lorenzo stood – or it would have if the impact of his laser hadn’t ruined her aim. As she fell to the ground, she watched the rainbows and unicorns dissolve into a useless mess against the far wall.
          ‘Celestina! Hurry! Please!’
          Pain ripped through her body. This was the 283rd time Layla had been kidnapped by Lorenzo in the last year. The 283rd time Celestina had been beaten, shot at, incinerated, nearly sliced in half and blown up.
          ‘You can do it, Celestina! I believe in you!’
          All in all, it was starting to get to be a bit much.
          Lorenzo cackled. ‘You’re too late, Celestina! You’ll never stop me now!&

10.07.12My first breath bound me into service.
          My feet carry the dust of every land beneath the sun, a few that have never seen the light of day, and more than I can count whose names are nothing but a whisper in the trees. It’s not my place to stay, to linger. To remind them of the service I perform when they are at their most vulnerable or the burden that grows heavier with every soul in need.
          But still for every soul in need, my body opens and welcomes home their wrongs. It’s not my place to complain, to refuse. To judge them for actions that are only in their nature.
          So I keep travelling, searching for those only I can absolve so just once in their brief existences they may know peace. I add to my burden. I gather dust and names and lives and years. I carry their stories in the pockets of my coat.

View Gallery · View Prints

Featured in Groups:

#The-Free-Pens
A Writer's Sanctuary

#EliteLiterature
Elite Literature Collective

#15-Minutes-of-Fame
World famous in 15 min or less

#Elocutionists
Artists of the Spoken Word

Details

Submitted: January 29, 2012
Submitted with: Sta.sh Writer

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 33
Favourites: 32 [who?]
Views: 615 (1 today)

[x]

lost kings

by ~angeljunkie, Jan 29, 2012, 2:00:04 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Traditional Fixed Forms

we were all lost kings of the electric
highwire act, tripping like ghosts through boarded
windows and vacant lots that never held
any secret we wouldn’t tear apart

cables stretched over the place we used to live
drooping tightropes for worn-weary dancers
that pirouetted from house to house while
we just paced the streets of glass and concrete

our mothers worried on their rosaries
and poured their fears into party-line chats
father just poured another scotch and said
boys will be boys so let them have their fun

and us out in the night between the tracks
and the towers willing our years into
smoke and bottles and dolled up girls that just
laughed like juice joint sirens calling us home

lost kingsby ~angeljunkie

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Traditional Fixed Forms

Assignment: write in iambic pentameter

I've spent most of the weekend beating my head against a wall over this one, and I'm still not entirely sure I got it right. In the end, I was just happy getting 10 syllables in each line. Started off using this prompt from Easy Street and then fell into just putting random words down so I can't say I'm entirely sure what it's actually about.

**Edit: I know what it's about now, but I'm not telling. Also, ~disrhythmic has done a reading of it for #Elocutionists which you can listen to here (strongly suggest you do).

~~love 0 0~~

joy 1 1

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~disrhythmic Nov 19, 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.

~angeljunkie Nov 20, 2012 Student Writer

That's perfectly all right with me.

It was interesting hearing someone else read it. You had a slightly different rhythm than I've used when reading it out loud, but I liked the tone you brought to it, and the change in rhythm added a slightly different slant to it. It's neat seeing something in a different way.

~disrhythmic Nov 20, 2012

It's posted! [link]

If you add that link to the description I can submit this to the #Elocutionists gallery.

~angeljunkie Nov 20, 2012 Student Writer

It's added. Thanks for letting me know

~disrhythmic Nov 20, 2012

=LadyofGaerdon Feb 22, 2012 Professional Writer

Hi! You have been featured by The Favorites Project! Please

the article to spread the word!

~angeljunkie Feb 22, 2012 Student Writer

Neat

=LadyofGaerdon Feb 22, 2012 Professional Writer

*brassteeth Feb 17, 2012

God I love this.

~angeljunkie Feb 17, 2012 Student Writer

Thanks

More from ~angeljunkie

Featured in Groups:

Details

Statistics

lost kings

lost kingsby ~angeljunkie

The Journal Portal

Polls

What is your preferred drawing software?

deviantART [dee·vee·un'nt·ART]

Keep in Touch!

Deviousness

Add Media

Style