[x]

U TurnU Turn
by kenny

                           be?
                   who i used to
              even be recognized by
         so ugly to you that I cannot
     now when did I become a person

Three WindowpanesI.
The city smokes in mirrors on an autumn day,
sewing sky patches. A dying leaf baking veins on
fire blocks and chimneys hashing wire over
the river. Old dyer staining all her clothes;
sunset braids and rust on roofs. The day
packs itself up, like powder.

II.
Midnight knows itself deeply, an abstraction
by the streetlights sketching out people and a bridge
holding them, or a cloud? They are split by squares,
and words and the shadow on the river-skin a rippling
flag. Scaffolds knot necks between the stars and
they are bare, for only the moon to comfort.

III.
Morning shadows the streets inverted, or perhaps
it was like th

Vishnu Dreams of Marilyn MonroeIn cities of ashen shine you pucker lips
too lush to be anything but bridges.

Winding through windows
the wind chimes slowly,
mingles the threads of your brown hair
with the voice of horses wild, unseen,

brought from the steppes of common place heaven
to the machination of light that surrounds you,
city dwelling fox of the fiery tome
of unreason.

In this catastrophic miracle that is my dream,
in this cosmic clutter of symbols
and names

where the histories are meaningless
and bones turn to stone
and stones fly,
launched from the small hands of children;
in this reckless melody first heard
so many dreams ago, this compositi

Poem and PomumFrom the forest of the mind
the dwellers dangle their feet in the future.
The water climbs, just a little bit,
up their ankles. (The aquatic life
flutters away from the strange flesh.)

Their eyes too are wet
with wanting. They see the struggle
of becoming and let the sun lash them
until their skin is tough.

Stand up, soldiers. Too long meaning
has mouldered in the slums
of memory and silence
has rotted the old riddles.

Stand up, soldiers. The air is loose
with laughter, but still the body
binds the gaze. Freedom barely
flickers. We must scrape the sky
and fly at our enemies
with the moon in our teeth.

RiverdrumMany things have been handed to me over years:
a drum full of water, once. I threw it away,
of course, but it returned, again, again,
until I took it under my arms
and called it mine.

My riverdrum is full of water that is full of light,
but it cannot scoop up a brook of stars.

I have two children. They have made
a game of watching the cows below that
walk towards me and never reach me. The first
one to spot the cow closest to me calls out 'Cowherd!'

I have a wife. I lose her like one loses grey hairs –
achingly, and with sadness. Perhaps these hairs
float over the river of oil and water that keeps us
away. Perhaps she l

The Long Forgotten CountryAll forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me
Now, here on this spot, I stand with my robust soul.
                         Whitman

A Light in the Darkness
In the morning, as she cast her net for
      Great handfuls of mud to build an island,
      They say she smiled, and that
      Her hair twisted itself into a forest.
And as she carved our bodies from the trees,
She christened this halcyon world w

mountain-womanmountain woman, mountain woman,
won't you come down to the river?

where bears sing falsetto groans and wolves stripe their fur in cranberry;
you are bare-footed climbing the grandfather trees, wild-bird paint in your
eyes, prickles under your toenails, and thunder drowns in water below.

raccoon-children with their mischief-hands sleep in your hair and crawl
down your slate-rock nose; skeleton-men along your gorge beneath your
upper lip where sirens would ride their horses along your jawline,

and grey is your wisdom with empty caverns. mountain-man paws his
gravels, sits against the lightning where war-husbands eagle themselves.

yo

Some Lovers III died on a cold
day, numbed fingers flexing,
grasping at the last traces of embers
withering in the grate.

I died holding your hand,
the hand I accidentally fractured
when I pushed you  too
harshly near an edge
and you flailed to find
a more elegant way
to fall and then
I heard the scaphoid crack –
but I didn't. I heard the cry
first and the pain came later
but you held my
hand anyway.

I died with my arms
held over my head,
pinned down to the sheets by your solid
mass, fingers entwined
with yours until I
could no longer tell which bones
were my own. I baked
in the aftermath of the dying
heat and fe

Summer LullabyDo not be afraid of slumber
Warm and kind as summer
Lasting like the day-light
Overwhelming like the thunder

Soft as lamb's-ear in the grasses
Or like apple branches
White and green and growing--
Lively as the clover dances

With the careful sun-spray flowers
Counting waning hours
Waiting for the night-time
When the cricket-chirp sounds louder

And the hazy air is cooler,
As the fading color
Leeches shades to greyish
Tones of dreary, rainy weather--

Soon the dark will be ascending
Day and day-light ended
Moons and starry smudges
Lofted high, aglow and shining.

Do not be afraid of slumber
Nor of gentle thunder;
You are some

PyrePyre

If our luck holds,
we will find ourselves
spread across three county lines,
charred knucklebones among corn,
in the whistle of swamp reeds, your hip
planted in loam and awaiting its flesh
of April snow, my skull home
to the golden Orb Weaver, asleep.
There are cinders in your witchlike eyes,
there are Lyre snakes in the crook
of your arms, and I would name your heart
Strawberry Leaves.

I raise the window,
shout the silent goddamns of our distance

The SiegeThe first mile is always the easiest.
—Kyle Lynn to me, circa 2006

Tell that to the ghosts,
men soaked in sand and blood spray,
storming the shores of Normandy.

First Infantry's sprint through coastal
trenches, up bluffs, under ruptured drays.
Tell that to the ghosts

huddled in half-channeled holes,
a captain's dash through shrapnel, gray
storm on the shores of Normandy.

A German boy adrift in the compost
of his legs, his elbows' grand flail.
Tell that to the ghosts

ripped in four by mortars posted
over Omaha. Dawn's evenly keeled decay
storming the shores of Normandy

LightlostHardheaded autothought
puddles the nighttime sky
though bright Arcturus sinks
to meet Capella in the east.

The moon will be new,
wreaking disorder;
all indignant ballast
as you bend compromise
around its weakest point.

Stubborn Sagittarius
pours his final summer
from a steeply tilted spout.

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."

Romancing CottonSomeone told me that the balled-up almost was growing inside her like
a sapling, that soon the girl would be all swell and wet. What she said
was, "don't leave". Her ego was a white sheet caught on a branch, the
type of fabric my mother treated with contempt. Frippery, beautiful
but impractical: keeping it alive was like trying to catch a bubble with
dry hands.

The wind carried the sickly smell of opium and morning sickness,
signals of a spring in which fingers like white spiders cradled
the beginning of bloom. Hope seemed at once skin-near and star-far.

What I offered her was not a marriage proposal, it was a murder
o

Bad TickerThe heart can only take so much radio talk
before a life explodes into static
and the Voltzwagon lurches through a store front.
Where were you when this or that basilica fell
under these or those imperial boots?
I was at the hair salon or the butcher's shop
when my cell phone rang like the evening gong.
I was getting a massage when the newscaster
bit off his tongue and the senator from Wyoming
went into a slack-jawed reverie.
Madam Barbarossa's thumbs froze up
on my buttocks and the butcher quartered himself.
God forbid that your infant daughter's hands
are on the steering wheel when it happens
or that your granddad is

Browse More Like This

Download File
HTML, 1.4 KB more ▶

More from ~PrettyThings9

Metaphorics and Over DramaticsBeen lying here for so long, on this bed
All I’ve got left to show for it
is a pounding, aching head
And the shadows climb the walls
Just like they used to
And the cobwebs lace across me like a veil

Been watching the setting sun
Up on the window
It’s not ceased it’s leaden crawl
But I’ve been lying like one forgotten
Will it never set?
And the dying day streaks like blood

Been thinking about how I used to be
And what I wished to do
And the things that I could see
But now, what I wouldn’t give
For the quiet life
And the chance to rest my eyes

Been wishing for a blindfold
No-one else seems to see
Th

To Say Goodbye

     This journey has taken so long. I can feel it, the falling of the sun, it has finished, it is set. The journey has been long, but it will be longer for you.

     Lay me down here, I cannot go any further, I am sorry to be such a weight, such a burden, please, set me down, you cannot carry me any longer, my only brother, my twin. Here, let me rest a while, let me shed my dying skin.

     The ground is cold, can you feel it? Of course not, you’re so young, so strong, god knows, you have carried me

View Gallery

Featured in Groups:

#theWrittenRevolution
The words are the spark.

Details

Submitted: August 15, 2011
File Size: 1.4 KB

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 39
Favourites: 30 [who?]
Views: 718 (0 today)
Downloads: 5 (0 today)

[x]

The Mermen

by ~PrettyThings9, Aug 15, 2011, 3:37:01 PM
Literature / Poetry / Transgressive / Free Verse

At night we go down to the sea,
And drown ourselves.
Peel away our skins to reveal the
Wet, gelatinous mess of our muscle and fat and fin.

At night we go down, down to the ocean,
At night we shed our flesh,
And wear the shards of
Moonlight, sand and spray like shivering, nascent scales.

At night we go down, inexorably to the ocean,
Fold and hide our skins
In the rockpools, in the cold
Salt-water steppe. We play at being, just for a while.

At night we go down to the sea bed,
Curl up on the patterned
Sand, the ridges of our bodies,
Entwine and lose ourselves, in doing so find each other.

At night we go down to the ocean,
And drown ourselves.
In the morning we stitch each other
Back into our malformed flesh.
Rub the sand from our eyes,
Brush the salt out of our hair
And wash it from our lips.
Remove the scent of brine from our
Minds, the feel of
Muscle, fat and fin.
And we play at being human.

Keep my face from the sea, and
Turn my face from you.
If, when we play at being human, we glimpse it, we
Shudder. Like drowning fish.
If I catch your eye, we
Shiver. Like the sea.

Still, we pretend to be human
For a while.

The Mermenby ~PrettyThings9

Literature / Poetry / Transgressive / Free Verse

_{so...i'm actually working on an anthology called 'the drowning pages' atm...all about drowning, as you may have guessed...

critique: [link]
well, what do you think this is about? in terms of metaphor and shizzle like that?

does the repetition work nicely? or is it irritating?

does it transcend the visual; can you smell the salt, feel the sand?

and do you feel it's a beautiful poem, or an ugly one? if so, why so?

please feed my comment monster. it's already eaten my right leg out of boredom. seriously. send help}

love 1 1

joy 1 1

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

=AzizrianDaoXrak Nov 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Just wanted to let you know this wonderful piece has been featured!: [link]

Keep up the beautiful work!

~PrettyThings9 Nov 2, 2012

thank you! i'll be sure to have a look

hahah i'll try

=AzizrianDaoXrak Nov 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

=DailyLitDeviations Oct 11, 2011

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.

Keep writing and keep creating.

~PrettyThings9 Oct 16, 2011

oh how wonderful! thank you!!

=DailyLitDeviations Oct 17, 2011

You are very welcome!

*Vigilo Sep 28, 2011 Student Writer

I love this! I saw this in =bowie-loon123's Daily-Deviant article, and it's a beautiful piece. I love - "we/Shiver. Like the sea." and your ending, and a lot of other things. I'll write you a critique - properly - later, but this is gorgeous.

~PrettyThings9 Oct 9, 2011

hahaha thank you! aw, only if you have the time

*Vigilo Oct 10, 2011 Student Writer

Already done! - it's below my comment, see?

~PrettyThings9 Oct 16, 2011

hahah, so it is

More from ~PrettyThings9

Featured in Groups:

Details

Statistics

The Mermen

The Mermenby ~PrettyThings9

The Journal Portal

Polls

What is your preferred drawing software?

deviantART [dee·vee·un'nt·ART]

Keep in Touch!

Deviousness

Add Media

Style