[x]

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

WaitingWe are still waiting for the thunder from the distant stars,
The echo of mortality,
the whispers of a storm, half-remembered,
in sepia-coloured hallways in buildings that smell like books.
Time gets slow in waiting,
ghosts are formed from the wanting,
taking shape in the spaces where sunlight,
or moonlight doesn't touch.
The stars shake from the vibration,
and the ghosts shimmer in anticipation,
but we can't hear your voice in the dead of the night.

Survival of the IllestAre those hints of lemon I detect?
Look, I'm just here to get wasted, don't try
to make it more than that.

I'd drink motor oil if I thought
it could get me high; chase it with a shot
of antifreeze
so
you can keep your survival instincts,
locked up
in that pretty velvet box (along with all
those other things
you thought you could convince yourself
you lived for). Instincts are the bare
bones of the impossibilities we wanted
to believe in,
remember,
those times you tried to tell me that
adrenaline was God's way
of saying
that
we were His chosen ones, we were
special, we were free.
I tried to tell you that instincts an

The Solipsist's LotThere's something about yourself that you don't know. You probably don't remember the circumstances very well, but I do. If you enjoy things the way they are, if you revel in even the smallest speck of ignorance, you need not read ahead. I won't force you. But from what I know of you, you don't like secrets. Especially not when they are about you.

You see, when you were born, so at once was everyone else. Your mother, she sprang into existence, just like that, the instant your tiny infant brain achieved the smallest semblance of self-awareness. Woven out of the ethe

The Cat on the PorchYou asked me why I do not believe in ghosts,
celestial at four in the morning.
It becomes the common hour,
not a biting static shock in the eye veins like I anticipated
but dangerously vogue and precious
like a real diamond ring or sapphires on your breast.
No wood pecking or oil teasing or misshapen duck bills bleating
just clay, but lighter, lightest
and bright
seductive and crestfallen.

They bled Peter and Pangloss over a river.
I was wearing white for the funeral
humming 'home', the matronly letters
soothe me
clotheshorses and moonlight,
Mayan jewellery in my cabinet
the mother tongue kissing my molars better

But then there

if only, if only.i.
we drove nowhere
and we spoke a language
that nobody understood
underneath a foreign sky
blanketed in the scent of pine.

ii.
you told me
my eyes were like envelopes—
because they were always
opening
closing
fluttering to the sound
of breaking seals
and ink stained fingertips.

iii.
i told you
we should run away
to a new land
with new faces
because
i was enamored
with people i had never encountered
and places i had never gone.

iv.
you laughed at me
and said that
if i didn't spend
so much time with my head
buried in world maps
i would realize
that i was living on one.

v.
i remember
it rained that day
and the tea went cold
but the

What I Know of MadridI dream of Madrid
Because I know nearly nothing about it

Except that the heat is tangible
And sits in a layer beneath the skin
And the sweat of the heat is silk
I imagine it tastes of honey and wine

Except that the churches are tall
And God still has a fist of gold
Just as he has a palm of silver
Shaded in the vaulted arches of another age
The cheekbones of giants holding up the world
There the air smells of musk and incense
That has long since been swept away
By the wings of the doves that dance where the choirs sang.

Except that the nights are long
And the golden lights filter across the water
Like a sunset sleeps on the sil

A ParenthesisYou were (a parenthesis, that paused
the daily, mundane stuff
of life;
a bundled breath
of fresh joy,
and borne in the wonder
of love.

Gasping and grasping,
'til in quiet you laid
still;
and I, my Child,
lie in quiet, still
tears).

And now, that is all you are,
and still so much more.

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

a ribcage drenched in dust i have your ribcage, you said.
what should i put in it?

i told you i'd always wanted a fire,
the kind that would fill my eyes with starlight
and pump my blood full of passion, but

you're made of wildflowers, you said.
a fire would burn you to ash.

you wanted to fill my chest with
the sound of a train, whistling
far away in the night;
with the sound of rain smacking leaves;
with the sound the wind makes
when it seems like it's trying to speak

and you wanted to throw in the
smell of midnight in august
and the feeling of sand being
sucked out from under your feet
when the ocean inhales,
and the strange little moment of
bitter

the trouble isi'd like life to be
quiet and lovely
like distant church-bells
chiming through snow,
muted by the smell of
an old book and the
feel of a fire warming
me into my chair, and
a mug of tea, steeping
the moment in hushed
gratitude, easily in reach.

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

A Night at Pinetop's TavernSomewhere in the back alleys of the city's older section there was a crumbling brick building that had been around since before ragtime music was popular. Hanging above a faded green door that led down to the building's cellar was a wooden sign, and despite the peeling paint, you could still make out the bar's name: Pinetop's Tavern. Nobody really knew when Pinetop's first opened; local folks would tell you it had been there since time began, and the world had grown up around it. It was one of those places where the lighting was always dim and the cigarette smoke never dissipated and the cloud you were breathing now had probably been around

The SculptorBefore he would have harvested a tree,
hacked off its limbs,
skinned it,
torn it from the earth,
shaved one by one its cells - its outer core,
until it was what he believed it was,

no more a tree.

Wiser, he walks deep in to the wood,
underneath a forest giant he stops,
looks up in to the leafy branches, sighs,
climbs and sheds his tears upon its boughs.

on commuting with no hurrythere you go
lighting matches in the rain,
walking with two feet
that the gods gave you
because they cannot walk,

heading home as if with news
of some miraculous disaster,

counting the steps between yourself
and the clouds that disappeared
behind the grey veil of October.

thunder and lightning unfold
so close above

and you dream of a destination
somewhere in the south

where birds and stormy weather coexist.

behind you there is nothing,
running water will erase
every footprint you have left
on the dark sand of this metropolis.

before you there is distance,
enough to live your life
in a constant state of travel,

but not n

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isabella.it was sunset- magic hour,
when she walked away from me for the last time.
she was exquisite,
awkward in her sadness
with her eyes just a bit too big
and her gorgeous rose-blossom lips quivering madly in the cold;
i cant ever forget her there,
how stunning she was in her strangeness.
she was all sharp angles and hardness
but she melted like warm butter under my fingers
and when i kissed her she was the most beautiful girl in the world.
she tasted like honeysuckle and clove cigarettes
that left a tingle on my tongue
and spread like a wildfire through me when she pulled away
with my lip beneath her teeth.
her hair was a ta

prison sentence...i watch the smoke drift as i exhale...
it burns my eyes
and i close them and cringe
at the faces sticking out their forked tongues at me.
it only takes a moment for my head to start spinning
and the sludge-filled cough i burst into the world
serves it's only purpose well,
and that much more of me ends up jetizoned onto the computer screen too close to my face;
i just stare, and smile.
i try to laugh but my shattered whiskey voice cracks
and instead,
i hack up another bloated blackened bit of lung
and wonder just how much more could be left in there.
the liquid behind my eyes starts to burn...
i feel like they might wither u

meathead.the crisscross of raw meat across my abdomen tells me ive had another episode.
somewhere deep in my skull laughter rings,
sickly and deep like a rumble of thunder.
my arms and legs are numb and quaking
and my lungs cannot seem to get enough air.
im unsure of myself,
of whether im alone here now.
i feel her slithering through me,
spreading like weeds through my thoughts.
if it werent for the music blaring against my ears
i think i would hear nothing but her,
taunting.
she shows me tims face,
his rabid wolf smile
and all his fucking charm
and i can feel his knife between my legs as if he'd never left.
my stomach chu

madman.he stands above me with the fire of madness in his eyes.
sleep still hovers over my vision but through the amoebic blur i see him smile -
a mad smile;
all bared teeth and dripping spittle,
he looks like a rabid dog,
a coiled wolf,
frothing at the mouth,
waiting.
i can feel the bristle in the air,
his darkness coalesce into this one frame,
this one strained waiting moment before he lashes and
his restraint bursts and sends his violence to me in a flash of blood spatter and slit skin.

i blink,
hold my breath.

my vision clears
just in time to catch the shooting star of knife-flash in a white knuckled fist come crashing

invisible man...I had a dream last night about an invisible man...
A whisper in my ear was all he left behind when he left my room at dawn.
He always knows where I am,
I saw him once Ill never see him again
there was a note under my pillow when i awoke today,
it said "You're beautiful when you dream"
he leaves the same note everyday.

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Submitted: December 26, 2012
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6.12

by ~maimtorturekill, Dec 26, 2012, 5:24:51 AM
Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / General Non-Fiction / Stories & Vignettes

There are days when I recall the litany of your kisses over my shoulders and I wonder, numbly disconsolate, how I ever maintained my disbelief in god, when your movements over me were so profoundly biblical, when my name filtering between the fog of our joined breaths was so much like a prayer - when I would think, for those minutes or hours or days we spent locked in the grip of fever, unaware of the movement of those heavenly bodies outside the reach of our bed, that there was hope for me after all. That I could be saved.

I remember so clearly the feeling of loving you and I wonder at what point, when it was, the exact moment, when that love became terror, when the realization dawned that I was wrong, all along, that, with or without each other, or our sighs that scraped like sandpaper while our bodies bruised at hips and ribs and our lips bled from the force of our desperate kissing - with or without the iliad of our romance, we were doomed.

I have always poisoned beautiful things.

6.12by ~maimtorturekill

Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / General Non-Fiction / Stories & Vignettes

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-04

The piece is terrific and it needs some eyes the suggester emphasizes. 6.12 is by ~maimtorturekill ( Suggested by ~Kiresg and Featured by ^NicSwaner )

love 4 4

~~joy 0 0~~

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

sad 2 2

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

*BeyondJen Jan 9, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Wow. This is...wow. It's like looking in a mirror filled with words.

It's all very raw and powerful and definitely speaks of something known. I especially like the opening (which I guess is the entire first paragraph. Ha!) and this: ...our sighs that scraped like sandpaper while our bodies bruised at hips and ribs.... So, I'm pretty much taken with the entire piece.

Congrats on the very well deserved DD.

~Nullibicity Jan 4, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

This literally pulled tears from me: I've known that feeling, though it was never accompanied by a serious love.
This simply stole my breath: you were so eloquent with the way you described this... the emotions ruled this piece, and in turn they ruled the reader. We came along on your rollercoaster, to see this hope and to watch horrified as it devastatingly wilted, like rose petals... it was such a powerful piece of literature. It will definitely give me much to ponder in later hours.
Wonderful job; the ending line was especially wonderful. I congratulate you on your well-deserved DD.
_{I also hope you could find some peace through this expression.}

~BloodRosesForAll Jan 4, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Nice...

~moonlitcleric Jan 4, 2013

you wrote this with a rare articulation of emotions, visualisations loved it

~CecilyRoseMidnight Jan 4, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

God, this is gorgeous. I love how you've made the point that love is biblical, celestial eve, I've never had that thought before; and then you contradict that thought with natural human emotions and actions. So truthful, and wonderfully written.
This is going to be stuck in my head for a while.