[x]

The Best is Yet to Comeif we grow old
there will be a sigh
an attention to the change
as your muscles slacken underneath
your faded, favorite shirt
the one that's threadbare, "holy"
in a sense less than divine
I'll have washed it for
the thousandth time
our eyes will crinkle, wrinkle
in ways that start to match
and we'll hold hands and ask:
when did the nerves and veins
begin to let our hands get cold?
-if we grow old

EurydiceHis voice enveloped me, and I became
Myself again--I heard it in the song:
A mordent on a note he held too long;
A stutter in his voice. I heard my name
In these and felt a happiness the same
As when I saw him first. Oh, I had longed
To hear him sing again, but this last song--
It was so beautiful. And it remains
The best of human works, though none shall hear
Its sorrowed notes; the lyre's meand'ring tune
Through vast arpeggios and Death's expanse
Except the dead. It will not disappear
'Till all the world's destroyed, and hell's exhumed--
Such music must be worth a backwards glance.

cliffcliff
e.bojnowski

on velvet roads,
I impale a belated dawn
with my incisors and
shiver with perfect leaves-

I have no qualms
with the dark hills
that slope
and stagger into
a bed of scorched fly husks:

where
the thrum of the ground
melds
with the rapids in
my clairvoyant ears.

The Hungry SeasonThe Hungry Season
“The next season will be the hungry season.”
Moses M. Kolinmore

A stem, a leaf, a stem,
a stem again,

and the army of our bodies
hanging from the branches
of the Dahoma trees.

We come to this as moths
on Saharan winds

with no malice but the wings’
direction, our caterpillar mouths,
our waiting numbers

cocooned in dirt. We are
aching and glutted

but hungry still, even as
we strip the canopy bare of leaves
and foul each river black

with waste below us –
our gruesome chatter asking,

as we fall into the dirt
to reshape what we are,
can you imagine the hunger?

But of course you can; of c

Ottumwa ShamanIn Iowa, weeping willows dream of
Tigers, born in pagan fog, their
Coat of stripes singing shaman
Songs; shrill symphonies of grief.
Heaven tilts, crashes, and we race
The dirt to get away. We drink the
Earth with bullets of air and grow
Dizzy, light-headed from breathing
Some far off flame. Perhaps a poet
Who braved the fog of Ottumwa, and
Caught fire. Every cowboy has his
Six chances before high noon, before
The fog forms wispy jackals to take
Them home again. Every son inherits
An empty gun, six voids to fill with
Answers, skimmed and guessed from the
Covers of books their fathers used
To read. There is no other way.
In s

the back of your head against my washed pillowcaseI find it
disconcerting
that
you are the King
of my own Head
& that I am
subjugated
by my own
temptation

My bones, your
welcome mats,
cushioned
to your insatiable
satisfaction

--

I find this
discomforting,
your constant
rebirths in my
libido, despite
three years of
silent therapy,
false recovery
& worshipping
the wrong gods

you are the best muse
for struggling artists
everywhere & worst
case of the bubonic plague
since the bubonic plague

--

I find you
disenchanted
in the middle
of any where,
peeling flesh,
lulling sullen
sirensongs at
3AM

I shot a flock
of phoenixes
& ate Adam's
poison apple

On the Unsuitability of Fairytales for ChildrenThe following essay will appear as an Appendix to the sequel of my fantasy novel, Her Unwelcome Inheritance, which is available for Nook and Kindle.

On the Supposed Unsuitability of Fairytales for Children

Shortly after supporting a local library event promoting fairytale literature, the folklore department at Lightfoot College received an animated communication from a very concerned mother regarding, in short, the "unsuitability of fairytales for children."

As this seems to be a rather widespread idea (I might mention the Daily Telegraph article of February 12, 2012) as well as an oddly long-lived one, I take the liberty of pu

preludesi.
blue rose into the city backdrop
like balloons, a million for the
morning sun prelude.

ii.
i've not slept a dream
but i have cried a salty face
and letters spilled like beans
into my moleskine,
almost as virgin as i once was
with few stories between my covers.

iii.
the kettle's belly boils
like my head upon a pillow.

iv.
i am guilty for rarely finishing my tea
even when i use the small mugs;
pour, rinse, repeat.

v.
perhaps today i will play dead.

vi.
perched behind my blinds
it dawns on me that i am surrounded
by walled neighbours, strangers,
they're just preludes to lovers
the way i am always
prelude to the one.

crystallophonethere is a punchcard sin
like a queen of spades smoldering in an alley.

Engine,
you hear how the gears churn,
singing faster than we did before
back when black magic dropped like a
pair of socks from the sky with supplies
taped to a note that said
(oh, look at you now)
'U.S.A.,
freedom.'

such a beautiful brain:
what
what girl
runs on gasoline?

have a gallon
or we can call it a balloon,
and a new pair of glasses
for your tapered eyes
(you peel the bark back on the logs,
darling,
but you're not sure what you see),
and life says,
either nail jello to a tree,
successfully,

or keep your
icicles hanging from the eaves,
ca

Nathan Turner Nathan Turner, aged thirty, was a modest earner, if nothing other. Son of no

father and a flighty mother, and raised in most part by troubled brothers, he was never

one to put his trust in those upon whom the dust of age had scarcely settled. For a time,

he had meddled, even peddled, looking for the light in his own eyes. But never enough was

it, just as well, in his own mind, for the brand of fire which he desired was the sort a

man might chase until he dies, and even at the gates of Hell, never find.

But one cool evening in July, he chanced to meet - just walking by - a woman with

an empty stroller. "Empty stroller?" he asked at on

The Nature of LungsThere's that
feeling
you get
when you
keep
breathing in and
are
so concerned with getting
air into
your lungs,
to fill them up
so fully
that
you'll never
need
to inhale again,
that you forget
about
breathing

out.

But when you do,
the emptiness feels
so
much better than all
the oxygen in the world
pressing out on that one
overcrowded lung.

la musica dulceheartbeats are psycho-
-somatic, dear;
the ocean has swallowed
me whole.

hay una guitarra bajo
mi almohada, y
sueño de música cuando
estoy solo.

you came here with
city smoke in your lungs,
and i
forgot to breathe.

The Last SongDo you think we'll get a last song?

I'm not sure.  This diary I'm writing in is full of holes.  It's sopping like a wet sponge.  It reeks, but what doesn't in the filth and the mess?

Storm's passing.  Not like I've ever seen here.  Even the explosive storms of my youth; running in the fields, the junkyards, the rust-ravaged train tracks of old wasn't quite like this.

Something's exploded against the skyline.  Orange is reflecting off the glass; the spider-striped, near shattered glass I kicked two weeks ago while mowing the grass.

It might be the gas works.  Or the chemical sheds.  Weyrdstorms do this, you know.  That's what the warning

001. beginnings.Beginnings are vague things. Quite often you can't pin them down to one event – you have to trawl back further and further through foggy past, peeling apart what ifs and untangling strands of memories.

Eventually one has to go all the way back to the start of the universe, and that's a question even the experts have to shrug their shoulders at. It's not like you can plug it into a calculator and come out with a balanced algorithm. At least, not yet.

But it is true that sometimes you can fasten down an occurrence or a moment or even just a single breath, like sticking a thumbtack through a dead butterfly, and label it as a 'beginning' i

Never Told He thinks it's odd, sometimes, though he's not certain why.

A sense of dislocation, perhaps. Like cutting yourself on an unsharpened blade. He walks the immense aisles of the cathedral, footsteps echoing hollowly into the blue shadows of high vaulted ceilings and arches, stone figures watching him from above as he, in turn, watches dawn play across their carved and weathered faces. The grandeur of this place is oddly soothing in the solitude it affords him. A holy place, just hushed, here suspended in the silence after Mattins when most have shuffled out. It's a favorite moment of his, a favorite service to attend, and today it gives him p

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City 7, T. G. I. F.The city is full of Fridays -

get the 9.30 out of town
and check out the losers

going home early.
They glance out the window.

(Buddhist acceptance
of a road frequently travelled,

and another week done
done done.)

One of them thinks of saying something,

but the bus is louder than usual
and people sit further apart.

Driver, turn off the lights;
we can sit in the dark

and you just keep on driving.
Can you feel the wind

shake this thing?

City 5, EntropyThe city is full
of memories,

it's full of girls!

Like – schoolgirls –
who you just know
are going to grow up
to be headwreckers.

And you'd feel sorry for the boys
who don't know any better,
only you see the youngfellas
they have these days

and fuck it,
they deserve each other.

City 1The city is full
of memories – in the cars,
on the busses,
walked into the footpaths,

exhaled by the smokers;
in some way all the same,
how they hold the cigarette and shudder.
How they talk to you

and cry.

You hold them awkwardly,
senselessly, accept
every shaking sob and
draw long, deep breaths.

The crazy thing is that
you actually understand,
pat I've-been-theres on shoulders and arms
in the smell of some stranger's hair

and agree
on the fundamental shitness
of everything.

Little old lightbulbLittle old lightbulb,
all burnt out?

A twist at the neck
eliminates doubt.

A twist at the neck
eliminates doubt -

little old lightbulb?
All burnt out.

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Wake

by ~oddlyaromatic, Jul 16, 2009, 12:17:53 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Wake

to gather friends, family, and spouses
around that humble opposite of the Christmas tree,
the embalmed corpse.

It's brilliant to be there
in the first place, to acknowledge
the importance of passing -

and better still to call the thing a wake,
as though there is hope in the hollow home
and shining windows,

in the trees and the wind and the roaring night,
that something may happen
to undo slow deaths

and restore old sight.

Wakeby ~oddlyaromatic

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

A condensed, old poem.

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-20

~oddlyaromatic demonstrates the power of brevity in Wake 2. ( Suggested by `zebrazebrazebra and Featured by ^neurotype )

~oviedomedina Jan 31, 2013

This is wonderful!
Good job!

`jade-pandora Jan 20, 2013

Lovely, dear! And just so you know, as long as the deviant is still active, it's not unheard of for a piece like this to wind up as a DD Feature even though it was posted three & a half years ago. Better late than never, and it just goes to show that cream rises to the top! (mixing metaphors this hour of the night!) <3