[x]

Southern Belle - 2I want to sing you songs on the low notes
for hours. Comb your hair behind your ear,
gentle and lingering. Slip into your eyes-
anything. You are

a ripple spreading across me. You are refracted light;
slickness of an abalone's back. The soft pearl.
Idle thought of my afternoon- always, always

I imagine. And Bourbon's not so far:
nineteen hours through a day,
then I could see you. Will we ripen
on touch?

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.

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

PixieI never had enough faith in you,
my best postmodern pixie friend,
who presses herself against my shoulder
killing her fall with leaning.
You taught me something new
about anxiety today:

   how to wake
up when it's morning, how to miss
dactylic illness with the parched
indelicacy of a crinkled sun.
In the eternal rendition you say
your name is always in the vocative
   case, and only vocative:

says the girl
who taught a smaller girl to sing,
a girl of thirteen, with the same
nimble character we shared, the same
calderical eyes we shared.

   The girl's voice
tumb

Jenner - 35This will be the Christmas I remember
stringing popcorn and cranberries for hours
to wrap around the tree

the lightly buttered popcorn, all we could find
musking fresh pine- and a smidge of blood,
won over by the needle. The year of a

mostly empty apartment: the plain
white walls and black metal chair
we use as a TV stand. Telling ourselves

we're not broke; we choose to live like this:
nomads with little to grab
when we get out and go

and one buttered Christmas tree
adorned with blue lights
and beer corks.

Happy Birthday"This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter, and we'll tell them that we love them, and we'll remind each other how deeply we love one another. But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight..." ~ Barack Obama

Next year I will wrap you presents
and you will not understand the need for bows,
but will reach towards them for days
in anticipation.

I will fret my wardrobe decision: do I dress you
for photographs or in a pattern that will hide
your smudgy fingerprints? Or maybe the floral one
your grandmother, your father's mother,
will su

You Need A New MusePoets, if your muse smells like eggnog, boiled eggs, fresh eggs,
or any sort of egg at all: get a new muse. If your muse makes sounds-
chomping or mewing, smacking, or worse, slurping - when she eats
animal crackers: you need a new muse. If she’s that sloppy gal that
downs a pint and hollers, “Freebird” at the bar, you know where I’m going with this:
you need a new muse. And trust me, pudding, when your muse misquotes
Bill Cosby while eating jello, you're going to wish you had gotten yourself
that new muse.
If she begins to insist on beginning debates with “irregardless,”
you won't need a dictionary to tell that you need a new muse. Even brings
to question your rhyme scheme or does not know how to tell you
she set the table in iambic pentameter, seriously, you need
a new muse. If you can’t get her to write you letters, but can’t break her
from sending four-page texts, then it’s time to call in a new muse. If she doesn’t know
t

Jukai IIYou are a soft rustle of promise
across the calm Pacific and
wasted sun of the Sonoran

and the sad truth is: I don't know
if I can wait for you

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.

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

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

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

Download File
HTML, 506 bytes more ▶

More from `vespera

DiscipleCome and let me kiss you;
there is an apocalypse waiting
beneath our skins.
Sins, never lacking in our love,
will be the end of us
whether you are willing,
killing or offering forgiveness
for my coming to you in the dark
of night; Under the spell of wanting,
taunting us both, or maybe
only of me. Tell me, my sweet,
have you, of us, finally decided;
one-sided or reflected:
are my cravings, my urges,
my achings?

UnlayeringThere are words queuing in line
 for the page, simple words, trite
 words, words of circumstance, words
 the world could have never gone on
 without their repeating; as day and night and fear,
 the kind of words you never wanted from me,
 void of Eutony, a simple psalm
 of sound rhythm, but—

  they cannot go unspoken any longer:

  My heart unfolds like an infinite peel,
 an onion pulled fresh from damp earth
 that has forgotten it was once fertile.
 You wash away packed dirt and tear
 roots with your fingernails. The inside
 of y

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.

View Gallery

Featured in Groups:

#Prosepoetry-Elegance
for excellent writing

Details

Submitted: December 5, 2012
File Size: 506 bytes

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 40
Favourites: 28 [who?]
Views: 267 (0 today)
Downloads: 4 (0 today)

[x]

Alter

by `vespera, Dec 5, 2012, 9:41:00 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I 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.

Alterby `vespera

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2012-2013 `vespera

So recently my laptop got a virus or some such, and while I've been battling it, I've been using my old laptop - so I've found all these little partial poems from around August. Took this one a different direction than the original.

to my suggabunny for helping with the title

The Artist has requested Critique on this Artwork

Please sign up or login to post a critique.

~~love 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~craazhy Feb 11, 2013 Professional Writer

Sometimes we romanticize particular examples of beauty too much to remember that it persists through all existence.

Reply

=Wordeea Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

OH. i love this

Reply

`vespera Jan 17, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

TY!

Reply

~MariaTala Jan 13, 2013

I love how even in the simplicity of your language you evoke the grandest of feelings.

Reply

`vespera Jan 15, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

that is so kind, thank you

Reply

~jessicaconk Dec 29, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

This speaks volumes to me.

Reply

`vespera Dec 31, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

it is nice to have someone who understands, but at the same time, I'm sorry you do

Reply

=SilverInkblot Dec 28, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Hi there! Just a note to let you know I've featured this piece in my 2012 showcase of literature: [link]

Reply

*riparii Dec 13, 2012

and this is velvety soft as a pony's nose.

Reply

`vespera Dec 14, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Reply