deviant art

Deviant Login
Buy ArtBuy T-Shirts & Gear Buy adCast Buy Premium Membership
Shop		  Join deviantART for FREE Take the Tour
×
Bone Blossoms
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.
AcquittalWon't you leave me?  I will love you
more than if you stay, transfixed

to the point of reference, our bodies
melding a sad, soft sublime, the back

spine of a little universe blown out
like a crafter's hot glass, the growing

moment, the wonder, the expansion
before a chill.  
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
caring for p(o)etsscribbling down vicious verses on
tissue napkins while seated at
the corner of a sidewalk cafe is
about as romantic, raw and
honest a p(o)et
  -outside of the four corners of your bedpost-
can get

if you've got that person dreading over
drafts and dreams on end
  -of you, for you-
consider yourself a new owner
it is now time to
tame this p(o)et's perverse mane
you've got your hands on
a fragile purebred
which can be very tricky for
first timers
dead1.

i hear these words
and something happens
in the yard;

it doesn't fit
a poem
or planet.

i see it squeeze
into the slits
beneath your shirt.

i feel it fly the smooth
of you
from off your back. it turns

and hides behind the acres,
stock frontiers
of jagged rooftops,

kept far and safe
and free
of me.

2.

the squirrel
has left the limb
as light would leave
a photograph.

i’m staring into its absence
and some new kind of animal is made;
one where
only
its reversal is alive.

it doesn't move or breathe.

the park is wintered over, and i don’t go.
the poppies
are all gone.
and when they do come back, they never chan
AlterI stopped dreaming the color of my wedding dress
years ago

the picket fence around a small square home

the soft surety of a kiss
every evening. One morning it was

one leg in the left and one leg
in the right

you know?  Things change. These days
I dream simpler:  Waking up

laying next to another warm body, at least
a little in love.
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
Ryan's PoemHow many times did you save me
from myself?

The quiver girl,
strung tight and shaking,

self-nursed at the end
of a whiskey bottle;

your ever-night,
shuddering off to sleep

a sick bat wrapped up
beneath your bed,
half rabid;

half intelligible-
if you were lucky.

Good nights I curled up
against your broad shoulders,
smiling
as you palmed a bowl,

taking in air
to request records
and savory things
to eat - and then,

I nested on top of your pillow
as much
as any girlfriend

yet never quite
a lover.

I was hard on the heart, Darling, wasn't I?

Never yours
and now

we never speak.
unfolded letter having something to do with shame
hello again.

i was here, just now, and i thought of waiting.
but you won't come.
and even as i say these words, i know they must remain unborn
like busy blood the coffers keep.

these sounds are ways i cannot be, i don't believe,
i'm not alive.
but i'll arrange them, anyway, one by one
to be eaten by your oval minion
or blindly forwarded like propaganda.

i am always without you and without myself.
i offer this ambassador, but he only sees the stain of things
and not even this; just their emblems, their saltless confederacy
of coincidence.

i've wondered if you're searching nights
for dark clad summoners, or silhouettes &#
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.
                   
EnnuiHere's where things got hazy:
you talked about pulling the stars closer
because the bigger they got, the less insignificant you felt.
I presumed it was because I called you mine.
Bottle caps and paper punchers
were the things we made love on when you decided
to live life more dangerously.

Indentions were made on my skin and not by
your touch, but by distractions - carefully planted, unlike
the way you used to kiss me. Your lips
lost instinct, but still tasted as they always had; soft
and pure, in the way no one else before me understood.
Maybe simplicity pulled you from me.

Or maybe you felt like I was too easy,
too predictable, and my end
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,
Bleachingi.
So far beyond black
there has been a whiting

Ten arrows shot
and the moon blew out

Took my color as I
took her heart

ii.
Do not be surprised
when night follows

Puts his shadow at your back
and tugs at your ankles

I will be at your neck
a finger trailing

iii.
The moon
I rarely give thought

Her pale too stark
for my black

Her pale now paled
to yours

iv.
Did I love her?
No one holds an orbit

No one; she told me
black was much the same

      well-
I'm willing to wager my pale
if you'll wager in kind
flowerstoo long
i’ve held watch
over slovens in my chrysalis
rooting in my diaries,
in toilets
and in traffic.

i dream of razing their genitals.
if not for this ugly sycophant . . .

no,

if not for limestone
swept
into mud
how would i know
what instincts have been rewarded?

if i hadn’t made things
sacrosanct,
tree lines as noble architects,
a face, some godly panic

then i’d just see a headless corpse
some cat had torn
from shallow burrows
instead of this:

                          an Algernon

as still
and as holy
as
the flowers
that you left.
Browse More Like This

More from *Scarlettletters

Featured in Groups

:iconthepoetryofda: :iconauthors-club: :iconwriters-central: :iconknownames: :iconwriting-obsession: :iconbreathing-poetry: :iconword-smiths: :iconcalling-all-poetry:
×

Why Poets Drink

:iconscarlettletters:

Christ,
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.

2,903

315 121 50
:iconscarlettletters:

Why Poets Drinkby *Scarlettletters

DescriptionDetailsShare
Download HTML download, 641 bytes
This is for the:iconglory-be-project: While you do not have to post every day, you have to at least write something, even if it is a couple of lines. I have found that doing this has been great for my muse. Please consider participating!
©2013 *Scarlettletters
Category: Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Details

Stats

Submitted on
January 9
File Size
641 bytes
Views
2,903 (3 today)
Favourites
315 (who?)
Comments
121
Downloads
50
URL
Thumb
Only verified accounts can report policy violations. Please check your email and click on the verification link.
* Required field
Add a Comment:
 
Preview   Add Comment
love 5 5 joy 1 1 wow 0 0 mad 0 0 sad 0 0 fear 0 0 neutral 2 2
:iconohineedtea:
=OHiNeedTea Apr 27, 2013  Student Writer
This is an interesting piece. I'm a prose writer, but I know this feeling!
Reply
:iconlord-of-justice:
*LORD-OF-JUSTICE Apr 27, 2013  Student Writer
Quite an interesting poem, I'm trying to be a writer myself but I don't drink...after reading this I may have to reconsider
Reply
:iconvikingjon:
*vikingjon Feb 2, 2013  Professional General Artist
Been there... :)
Reply
:iconlcipher42:
*lcipher42 Jan 25, 2013  Professional General Artist
Damn good piece of work. And having been on on mind-altering substance or another for about the past 23 years, I've done a lot of writing drinking. It lets the tongue loose, but it brings out the darkness in me quick. Generally I wind up with a stack of poems waiting on me when I get home from jail...
Reply
:iconbeyondjen:
*BeyondJen Jan 17, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
Hell yes. Let's pray to the bourbon gods and place the poetry they give us on their altars! I love this. :love:

I'm especially taken with this:
It grows words where
none have loitered for weeks
and handfasts me to
the rest of the world.

:heart:
Reply
:iconscarlettletters:
*Scarlettletters Jan 21, 2013  Professional Writer
An offering worthy of the gods. Many thanks!
Reply
:iconbeyondjen:
*BeyondJen Jan 21, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
A pleasure! :)
Reply
:iconexquisiteoath:
~exquisiteoath Jan 16, 2013
I think this is just about perfect.
Reply
:iconscarlettletters:
*Scarlettletters Jan 16, 2013  Professional Writer
Many thanks - I am glad you like it.
Reply
:iconexquisiteoath:
~exquisiteoath Jan 16, 2013
Most welcome. I've been away from your words too long. I look forward to enjoying more of them.
Reply
Add a Comment:
 
Preview   Add Comment
©2013 deviantART. All rights reserved
About Us | Contact Us | Developers | Careers | Site Tour | Help & FAQ Advertise | Premium Membership Etiquette | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Copyright Policy