[x]

001 i am a whirlwind of
bruised knees
(purple)

an aching heart
(dark blue)

twisted guts
(red)

&
a regret that could
crumble mountains.
(green-green-green)

lovesong for sailorboyRead aloud and explained (somewhat) here.
i have always loved words as you love the sea
but i have grown to hate
prepositions
because i have always had words
about you
with you
to you--
but never for you.
words for everything
except you.
but i have words for this, so
i'll take them
one by one.
about.
the ocean was your first love and
i could always see it in your eyes.
most would call them blue--just
blue
like a swell over a sandbar
blue like the spring sky over a poppy field.
but i don't think anyone
got as close as i did and they're not blue
not shorebound and
safe--
they're gray like the steelbellied sea itself
like the horizon at dawn as it
encircles you
hems you into an impossibly vast canvas
like a demarcation line
or a promise.
one you always chased.
with.
maybe i had a streak of ocea

Eighteight.
i felt most violated
when you denied it—
evidence may have mounted
in the mouths of other victims
but i haven't spoken—
even in the wake of certainty,
family and loyalty
forked my liar's tongue—
maybe it's enough
that you know what you did—
because i can't bring myself
to hate you.

seven.
your son's beautiful—
you were my first
and i don't regret that—
in your arms,
i realized myself.

six.
it wasn't my fault—
i received the letter
years too late
and suicide
has never been sympathetic
in the eyes of those
who suffered to live—
yet, i write for you,
remember your face acutely,
long fo

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

Narcolepsylurid enigma, and
a stroke of starry night

vulnerable, you are
achilles heel and weep

the loss of venus and mars
and all her pitying apathy

of bittersweet occultation; but
for only a moment of silence

lonesome quarry of internalized wars
and striking, clement gems

just unfold:
sleep

The Jailori.

the room smelled of paint and chocolate;
a stain that won’t wash out no matter how vigorously you grate,
no matter how deeply you peel.

ii.

“Mothers never cry when their boys run towards large army tanks, and fishermen never weep when they return home with nothing.” These were my forced whispers in her ear.

iii.

ticking antiques and wooden furnishing,
a land flowing with silk and money.
it was no consolation.
pain still trickled through.

iv.

I told her that I don’t kiss women on the mouth, and by day I left her to her own thoughts. That’s when she finally listened and stopped her c

pacificher longbow mouth is un-
strung; loose bottom
lip with a cocked
jaw -
.
she
births into him like
a womb

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.

Misconceptionsthe extrovert isn't—
self-possessed shining,
sun in the sky of a million
blue silks sewn together:
that summer to come,
a laundered morning strewn
with white yearning—

no,
and the introvert isn't—
scraping coins in an alley,
smoggy eyes above a mouth like
lines: red-cracked but parting
when stars break gray clouds,
calling on their mica beds
to reflect off his face—

no,
the extrovert is—
the man sweet-talking the first ideas
of his tongue,
waiting for reception—

while the introvert
thinks.

dismantled pygmalionwhen the sun collapses unto itself
and empty wombs grace the palms of this earth
heavy with child, bearing the soft progeny of chance, abandoned
to cover the land-

you will teach me how to reverse this network
of clockwork dreams, how simple mathematics can be
when calculating the degree of loneliness in countered white
virgin affairs- crippled calligraphy. show me the distance within these

isolated cells, obsolete- reflect the solar ticks
of all that is and was you and me. oh stranger of these quiet tides,
project all that is within, and sear your star-death breath bright into these
tragic north pacific atmospheres: release. give

confessionalthey say sad girls change their hair color
and forgive their monsters.

i change my morals
and become one.

chicagoi could write the city
and i could map its bones:
tell of rotting meat and market,
growling jewels and veins,
synapses placing burnt bile
back onto asphaltian blame—

but i am not the glowing night
nor am i the city's name:
i do not carry its graceless hues
nor do i speak its windy lake—

i am empty of its disease,
of urban laziness and industry,
of greedy capsule and success,
of dirty hammocks and crying song,
of never silence and constant swaying,
of dizzy streets and crowd—

only its image rests upon me,
only its scars break my tongue,
and i think home, home—

is not where you grew up
but where you grew in.

a hospital bird with soot in her lungsshe slept through a car crash
that almost killed her,
through whitewhite walls
and dreams
where her lover dies
nobody thought she'd make it
but she woke up a few months later
with flowers in her hair
and ash in her airway
trying to remember how to start all over
but forgetting to remember how to live.
fall slipped from her open eyes
and winter crawled in for a long hibernation
of not-quite-cold-enough-for-snow
to her the clouds looked sick
and pale like they might
let everything inside them out,
but she opened up wide instead,
spilling blood where there was none to be spilled.
her heart slipped down the street
and with unsteady hands
she stitched in a bird and cut off its wings.

with thanks to salingerAudio version.
it's on those cold mornings
when you are nothing but indrawn breath
swirling and knitted up inside too-big
skin and weightless bones--
when the horizon arches up against
the half-thawed tendrils of sunrise
and smiles
with golden teeth,
and smiling, begs--
it's on those cold mornings
when leaving is easiest.
the car will be cold, and you will
shiver, and the engine,
much too loud,
will smack of blasphemy
but you will find peace in the steady roll
of tarmac and the yellowing light
spilling across it,
with dust motes kicked up and carried
like fish in the undertow.
when you come to that first
crossroads, it will shock you:
the way the decision hangs there
trembling and desperate--
but there are no right answers and you will not
hesitate. and each successive choice
will be made of its own accord,
and you will roll the windows down,
and draw down the scent of ear

a string drawn tautthere are so many new stars
in your skin that i can't believe
each neuron is its own world, alight
with spinning planets and gaunt aliens
breathing god

in the absence of your name from
a dull life: dim cars on the paved street
and the cat walks sideways here, beneath
a ladder that clatters and you shudder,
saying god

i just had a chill, and is this room cold
or are we in the gut of a giant who's strung out
seven days and lifeless, biting the apple and
a dragon, wishing for his mother to coo
mijo, dios

es magno: the earth is spinning in the eyes
of a turtle with a red shell who swims in
the flowers ophelia braided, who swall

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i wish you could understand
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this is the closest i come to admitting—

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sister yesterday

by *glossolalias, Jan 30, 2013, 3:14:03 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

even our plastic flowers had faded—
an overgrown garden of concrete and pottery,
wrought-iron furniture under the sunlight, paling—
a broken lawnmower in a rotting wood shed, a swingset
creaking with each gust of wind—

but she said—
let's gather up these old tin cans,
empty the pool of its stagnant memory,
relight the candles and mend this picnic table,
recall the laughter we shared here when
our summer was in bloom—

when mother wore that sky blue dress
and planted shiny pinwheels,
lazily spinning

sister yesterdayby *glossolalias

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

with permission, i stole an unused hook from *xlntwtch's story, which you can find here: [link]

#7

also inspired by: [link]

january 30th

*crossing-ariel Jun 9, 2013

Really beautiful and sad. I like how you took the line and ran with it. This feels like the sort of stuff I've been dreaming lately.

*glossolalias Jun 10, 2013

thank you so much!

*crossing-ariel 5 days ago

Very welcome.

*almcdermid Jun 8, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I really like the imagery, but I particularly the progression; the decay of the first stanza, the willingness to see things in a better light in second, leading to the brief memory in the third. Excellent work.

A couple editorial suggestions (which of course you're free to ignore): I think "THE rotting wood shed, THE swingset" would work better that "a" since you're obviously speaking of a specific place ("our plastic flowers," "the swimming pool"). And "the" is grammatically stronger in this case.

I think "stagnant memories" would be stronger than "stagnant memory".

Finally, I'd delete the "dizzy" and the comma after "spinning" and leave open-ended by having no punctuation.

Anyway, that's my take.

*glossolalias Jun 9, 2013

thank you for the suggestions! i agree with everything except changing the "a"s to "the"s b/c that was done intentionally to provide an emotionally detached tone w/ the original description of the area.

~violetense Feb 19, 2013 Student Writer

even our plastic flowers had faded
That could stand alone as a six-word story.

*glossolalias Feb 19, 2013

it was the prompt line x) i loved it.

*0hgravity Feb 7, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

ah, I really love the images and sentiment here.

*glossolalias Feb 8, 2013

thank you!

*xlntwtch Jan 30, 2013 Writer

Yes, permission is needed to use the prose prompts, please. (And I'm a "she"

)
If you put them in a journal, it'd have be after Jan. 31--probably about a week after.
That's when the prose prompt story was due, and there'll be only one reader deciding if a piece is good enough to accept at #ScreamPrompts. BUT if a poet asks for one "hook" and says where it's from, I'd consider it an honor.*glossolalias--you created a poem far better than I expected, but I should have known you would. Thank you.

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