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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.
RiftTrains collide through a fist of hot snow.  Her eyes
and mine.  Soot against the thick storm skin,
flashing metal and scraping bones, the earth
screams something primal.  She looks away
and through the peppered sparks of fire
a silence prevails.  
Quiet lips say too much. I follow spotted horses
to the meadow, the waterfall is broken, and
I see her mouth make fog. Lumps of coal
are stacked in the distance, making a hut.
I do not enter, the windows are tied to the sky
with knots.
9am there was a rift in the evermore.  They said
the sky belted open, stars wept plasma coffins,
and out of the dew she put one foot,
then the other.  In her left hand there was a blue fig.
I could not see the other.  The arctic sun set
and a desert sun rose.  
Her hair was put back with paperclips, glimmering
in the cold light. I fell into a vat, watching
a thousand four hornets unnest from behind her. I felt high,
but sank deeper until I touched bottom. She pulled at me
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.
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.  
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?
Poem for a MotherWhen I was four
I'd follow you into the bathroom
on sticky feet,

press my little bird hands
into the back pockets of your jeans
while you were washing dishes
at the sink,

babbling on: Mommy, Mommy,
I love you.

Then there was the youth
who played Simon Says
to your aerobic routine.

I took jumps to your steps,
laughing as I tripped,
I wanted to go
where you went

I practiced to be
who you were.

The world split sideways
and I stumbled out
a teen traumatized
by the gory birth.

I'd've sworn you did it to me:
the red plague of my face,
the heartache,
the inexplicable serrating rage,

I beat at you as an extension
of self.

a streetcar to nowherei.

he must crack
when his hands are tulle:

paling dry,
rough and tearing,
bought by the yard
or cent-marked minute,

spin a skirt
that won't last a winter,

shed bohemia
and snort ballerinas,
hope he's flexible

like tulle:

thin and shimmering,
don't stay another minute,
clear the aisles and say,

halloween's over
and he must crack
when his hands are tulle:

quivering
wind-burnt dancers,
caught aflame
by a craving spark

like tulle:

crisp and seething,
acrid burning,
black waste and thin ash

ii.

"name,
like your real name or
just something i can call you,
something that won't make me

feel like i'm talking down
to you. not because
i r
After a Blue Sundayi.
The week slips hard
rolling in upon itself
to pull me under;
hardly a victim, more so:
a participant lacking
ii.
I clutch at taupe walls,
boring walls that do much more
for occupying
a hangover than breaking
the monotony
iii.
The after-break, break:
realizing my solitude
undoes me quicker
than your infidelity;
than her scent on your body
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.
                   
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
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
Lies I Tell Us After Hours #1I can't live without you
is a lie.  I can.  You will

die and leave me
here, persisting

all truth of the sentence.
relapsethis, I think,
is the way that empires
fall.

there are sometimes
catastrophes—
Vesuvius, Alexandria—
but I will not go out
in such an explosive fashion
this time.

my second death
is preceded by decline,
slow and inglorious;
erosion working its
weary charm
upon my architecture.

the difference is this:
disaster is unprecedented.
it is a noble sort of way to fall,
at the hands of that which
you could not control.

but I am allowing myself
to crumble to dust.
the forces of entropy
have not strengthened:
I have simply stopped cobbling myself
back together.

someday, archaeologists
will discover my ruins
and sigh
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
The Last Lie of SummerQuiet days, the overcast sky keeps
to itself, ignoring the living for weeks
at a time.

From half a state away-

you could hear trains roll through
towns like mine.

There is peace
and it can't be trusted

Undeserved suspicion
given to the first
fallen leaves.

This was the calm before the calm.
The man that is seen, but
nobody knows.

Promise yourself:
"Tomorrow I will say hello to him."  

But we are all too busy dressing healed wounds.
Browse More Like This

More from `vespera

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?
BlurThe road curves,
the centerline blurs,
mileposts count to somewhere

The speakers blare, omnipotent—
Queen, Abba,
AC/DC

It's the highway,
the swerve,
the blear in your eyes,

the passing lane—
what you dart past,
what we leave behind

It's the drum of the wheels,
the whine of the road

It is all-important;
so little of it matters

Featured in Groups

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×

Bad Mouth Habits

:iconvespera:

i.
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 my oral rights in
blaring pendulums.  

521

39 37 15
:iconvespera:

Bad Mouth Habitsby `vespera

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Published at Bong is Bard 12/30/12
©2011-2013 `vespera
Category: Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

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February 20, 2011
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:iconazizriandaoxrak:
=AzizrianDaoXrak Feb 14, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
Hi there! This is a friendly little note to let you know your piece has been featured!: [link]

Please consider taking a peek at the other pieces and faving the article to support the other artists :)
Reply
:iconazizriandaoxrak:
=AzizrianDaoXrak Feb 13, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
oh oh ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

This is so excellent
Reply
:iconsherbetblooms:
~sherbetblooms Jan 31, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
HOLY SHIT! I can so relate to all of them. I love this. I love the way you write, girl!
Reply
:iconvespera:
`vespera Feb 1, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
:heart: :heart: :heart: TY Lola :D
Reply
:iconsherbetblooms:
~sherbetblooms Feb 1, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
:hug:
Reply
:icontravelgirlxx:
!travelgirlxx Jan 28, 2013
You've been featured: [link]

Keep up the fabulous work!!
:heart:
Reply
:icontravelgirlxx:
!travelgirlxx Jan 24, 2013
Whoa. Exactly.
Reply
:iconjade-pandora:
`jade-pandora Jan 23, 2013
I've never seen this one, and now that I have, and have also read the comments that trail its effects, it looks like this piece was an ode to how you tried to stop smoking (for a while). If that's the impetus, then I vigorously apploaud i ; it's descriptive perfection.
Reply
:iconvespera:
`vespera Jan 24, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
:heart: TY!
Reply
:iconjade-pandora:
`jade-pandora Jan 24, 2013
:heart: You make it a pleasure, Raquel!
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