[x]

CheatsThe light makes cheats
of us both,
so we change clothes
in the greedy dark
without looking
or thinking twice.
We do not touch,
our skin afraid to lose
or breathe too close.

We pass in the street
but do not acknowledge
each other
in buildings'reflections,
in the glare of taxi cabs
or the stiff pull of elevators.
We do not rub elbows
or let our shoulder blades
press together.

But I would know you
anywhere - any place
the sun is uneasy
and the skin of us
wears thin
or strangers are told
to breathe
in another direction.

Why Poets DrinkChrist,
there is a reason poets drink.
Abstention feels bad -
infertile and stuffed, swollen.
It does not sell books
or win those brass
angels on ribbons.
Tonight my lover is bourbon,
distilled in some soul
south of Carolina.
It plays tricks with colors
and the sounds on my tongue.
It grows words where
none have loitered for weeks
and handfasts me to
the rest of the world.
It is ransom -
a jest of seasons
and my bone idle brain

awakes.

prey.i'm a collection of curves in your cycle:
a single revolution of your rhythm,
my taste a mile marker.
my hunger is satisfied by your rapture,
and devoured by your voracity.
starving to be grasped, claimed,
and consumed, I feed death— give in,
swallow black relief —your belly round
and warm with the scrapings of my bones.
bury my leavings and tell me reincarnation
is a lie.

--
1/16/2013

Copyright © 2013 Jen Fowler
All Rights Reserved

War PaintA bonfire burns winter;
the man standing
and stoking the flames
drinks tea from a thermos.

The smoke is sweet
and toxic in equal amounts.
A woman watches
from her kitchen window,
naming the shapes she sees.

In the morning
the lost boys
paint their faces
with the fire pit
and battle
the men who burnt
their lost homes down.

Red Eye

The woman to my right is silent.
We are at cruising altitude.
and my eyes burn with weeping.
I want a cigarette.

The gods are indifferent tonight.
They disdain to know whether seat belts
are fastened or if seatbacks are locked
in full upright and locked position.

Backward time travel
lulls me with its lies.
Yes, you can get there in a day.
If you ignore the clock.
But fly into the sun?
You must reverse the logic.

You could have read it in my eyes.

Bad Mouth Habitsi.
I carry God around in my lip like he's chew,
spitting his name out in poems like potholes,
I make everything a simile
for the hold he has on me.

ii.
When it comes to men,
I've the appetite of a Roman housewife,
I take, I taste, I tear,
swallow and then then toss up
for the next course.

iii.
I don't kiss anyone so dearly
as the glass pipe bridged between lips
and fist.

iv.
Jameson, you're an Irish Lad,
a young ram of bucking proportions,
I let you rattle around my mouth
til I herd you in
and down.

v.
Sometimes there's nothing so sweet
as the jack-hammer of angry words
or the steel trap clamp of silence.

I exercise m

flameslost loves
we call them flames because we burned
we were oxygen
we were fuel
and when the fuel was gone
we were ashes floating

rain took us down to earth
mushed remains together
and when the sun returned
the dry remains
piled into something that had never been
alone as something new

Questions over breakfast

it is possible you were never here

it is possible you were

it is possible

it is

Last Spring FlowerLast Spring Flower

Take a pack of cigarettes
Consume the two remains,
Leave beneath a tarnished sky,
The suns light betrayed,
One beam I walk towards
The only end I see,
To unfold and bloom
Like a fresh born flower
Full of feeble power.

If I said my shadow was a friend
I'd be lying through my teeth
But there is no one else
Except a hollow me
Spilling from feet
Lengthening the sun
And every second passed,
Measured by the kissing gates
And shoulder high stiles.

With ground the colour of tobacco
My feet make cigar shapes,
In a coat more like a cape
My whole life kept inside,
Pockets deep with nothingness
Left as lint and

S.O.S.Sometimes I feel heavy
Not adrift,
No, I could never float with all this pressure

Sometimes my shoulders ache
from trying to keep my head above
the constant swell of waves

Sometimes I grit my teeth
when I feel myself careening toward that edge I didn't see
or anticipate

Sometimes I look into that dark hole
and wonder what it would be like-
to let myself sink down deep
and not even try to swim.
Is it dark and quiet,
like a peacefull, dreamless sleep?

But I don’t dwell on that,
because how would I carry you out-
if you needed me to?
How could I embrace such darkness,
and ignore our beautiful Lilli lighthouse?

Sometimes I have to remi

SuspendedDistorted images, faces,
in despair, and I grow used to it,
habituated to the pain.

But will we bow to what should not be,
what cannot be?

This question hovers, unanswered,
while history bleeds out;

it soaks the sacred earth.

ToxicCheap piece of gold;
I haven't taken it off since you put it there.
It's amazing how much weight it carries;

warped and bent after years of forming to this finger.
You'd think my heart would be broken,
but you managed that years ago.
Any lingering stubborn love
just grew toxic and thinned out.

This cup is full, no more room for error.

Now we just crash
burning the roads in front;
so many casualties I can't even keep count,
but the kids break my heart.

Through glossy eyes and slurred speech,
you don't even consider them anymore.

As bad as we had it, as hard of an upbringing
one would think we might have spared them,

Save it for your PriestForget the fall
It's the landing that hurts
I should've started fresh at thirty
Put aside childhood love
And just lived a little
I guess I'm stubborn that way

Only now it seems
I can't run fast enough or far enough away
Distance is key
But some people don't want to be left

If she loved me
She'd let me go
How's that for a cliché'

Instead I have to push and pull
Tear myself away

I know what you're going to say
Save it for your priest
But I don't talk to God
And I don't read the horoscope either
I never trusted mine anyway

I write instead
And not unlike yourselves

I've learned a lot along the way
Lessons old and new do

That Age Old ClicheYou always said,
if only one could be saved
our children
would always
come first.

Well this is a lot like that.

It seems every time
I feel I've reached my limit,
I always find a new one.

Now I'm asking myself:
Have I become the bad guy
for letting you
take away
from them?

You see I knew a girl once:
I loved her to tears,
and she had more love for us
than even herself.

Only now,
I don't see her much anymore.

It's that age old cliché
about how people change,
and they usually do it
in the blink of eye.

When you turn with a smile
and realize
you don't know the person standing before you.

It's at that m

PositiveLeft to me, your worst historian,
to pick up, in a daze, some depth of diction
I never found while you had lived

and I can only now pretend that words are capsules
of sanguinity, that they’ll unmask the symbologies
of sound that bore your binaries to their realms
like sacred dreams of Hypnos.
Regret’s a simple word.

I always thought of "A Separate Peace", and in those scenes
you were this Mozart in the rough, a perfect chord, one
which I would meekly channel through cracks of light
shown through the fist of my own interference,
steady indifference.

Browse More Like This

Download File
TXT, 888 bytes more ▶

Featured in Groups:

#Authors-Club
Where We Live to Write

#United-Arts
where all art meets...

#PenAndPaperPoets

#Loving-Lit

#FreePoetSociety
We Are Poetry.

#hello-artist
hello...discover me please...

#Writing-to-Live
because words are necessary....

#theLiteraryVoices
the Voices of Literature

Show all (37)

Details

Submitted: January 17
File Size: 888 bytes

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: Disabled
Favourites: 114 [who?]
Views: 2,257 (1 today)
Downloads: 20 (0 today)

[x]

Bone Blossoms

by *Scarlettletters, Jan 17, 2013, 9:37:24 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Bone blossoms,
a ghost of iris-
blue so pale,
it slips off the page
and sheets.
You know the scent;
you borrowed it
from some girl
who was your best friend.
You slept together in the same bed;
she borrowed your sweater
and bracelet,
and kissed you
when mother was not looking.
You fed her books
and strawberries
left out in the sun,
ripe as the boy
next door.
She put her hand
in yours
one warm night
in August
and asked you
what it made you think of.

Just blossoms
you said -
teal and purple,
feathered like summer -
like the summer
when you were five
and the heat
just could not keep away

and the sky went out.

Bone Blossomsby *Scarlettletters

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

This is for the

While you do not have to post every day, you have to at least write something, even if it is a couple of lines. Please consider participating!

The preview image is by the very talented

Please view and fave the original here:

Wordsmiths Literature Site: [link]
Artsmith Magazine: [link]
This Disturbing Magic: [link]
Facebook [link]

The owner of this deviation has disabled comments.

More from *Scarlettletters

Featured in Groups:

Details

Statistics

Bone Blossoms

Bone Blossomsby *Scarlettletters

The Journal Portal

Polls

What is your preferred drawing software?

deviantART [dee·vee·un'nt·ART]

Keep in Touch!

Deviousness

Add Media

Style