[x]

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.

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

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.

The Creative ProcessYou sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and decide:
you will be brilliant today.

You will write about your crazy ex-lover, your vengeful mother,
the teacher you had in 2nd grade you barely remember
but who called you by the wrong name during your awkward encounter
in the supermarket last week
and it pissed you off.

Ten minutes later
your paper is full
of doodles of your dog
and you decide to check your email,

Find that your spam filter is as productive as you are.
A fine outstanding, yet cruelly mistreated, gentleman in Nigeria needs you to wire him money,
but his father with three doctorates treating AIDS across the border will pay y

I Took To Howling With YouI was shy at first, timid in my dealings,
I laced the trap against my throat,
sang sparing, tip-toed
around your poems.

The tone, the slow vibrating
from the shoots of my shoulders
to the gleam of polished talons,
it purred around inside me.

Oh the song, Coyote,
the same resigned call, it
paled before you, swallowed down its insides,
wept.

I took your little hand in my big hand,
flew out towards Crow, and for a while
My Love, there were poems
and the world was enough.

I took to howling with you,
down from the branches, safe
womb of the tree, I spread
dirt between my toes, sang happy,

sang the song of free,
your wild howl

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?

Browse More Like This

Download File
HTML, 890 bytes more ▶

More from `vespera

This Sh*t's Too Intellectual 4 Your MamaOn a Saturday I circumvent melancholy with
melancholy. You are at a friend's contemplating

hops and barley. I smoke my final cigarettes. You have
requested a switch for my new year: e-cigarettes or whatever

you call them, health benefits. I have been testing them,
the freedom of smoking indoors, wailing myself

giddy at the notion of it: puffing like a dragon, sitting
regal as a fat caterpillar. Well, final smokes are a goodbye;

we'll substitute this kind for the other.

It's a good thing I don't haveIt's a good thing I don't have readers
They'd tell me: stop writing poems
about being crazy-
you've clichéd yourself
into a petty corner
of your bending

Does one go about apologizing
for a cyclic mind? I am I am
I cannot unbe – I have become myself
and cannot undo the learning

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

Southern Belle - 7Out of the Sahara,
my eye: the tiger

Gleam, you are a blanched lantern
on the Savannah

I was on the prowl
until you came to my domain

Ivory, I shall hunt
and harvest you

Writhe on my belly
until I am close

Listen, Anasazi laughs
his black spider joke;

I laugh as we begin
to weave.

Southern Belle - 6She is the Roman
I wait upon

her pale skin
olive'd, pressed dark

beneath my thumb;
a black print

against her father's brow-

I am oppressed
by her presence.

View Gallery

Featured in Groups:

#Self-Publishing

#HumanConditions

#Word-Smiths

#Poets-and-Warriors
Memory Tattoos & Scar Tissue

Details

Submitted: October 24, 2012
File Size: 890 bytes
Submitted with: Sta.sh

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 22
Favourites: 26 [who?]
Views: 334 (0 today)
Downloads: 1 (0 today)

[x]

Ryan's Poem

by `vespera, Oct 24, 2012, 11:02:45 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

How 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.

Ryan's Poemby `vespera

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2012-2013 `vespera

Published at The Neglected Ratio 1/23/13

This is "version 4" which really doesn't describe how many changes this went through.

sweetly put up with about 45 of the 49 changes over the last several weeks. I think I finally have it.

There is so much more to say, but I never seem to have the words. Out of everybody I've lost, I miss you most.

eight. Sometimes I wish I loved you,
we would make a simple thing,
grow old on the couch, grow old on cooking,
grow old on the notion of pot and drink and sex,
and you chiding me for my neurosis.
I can’t tell you that, it would hurt you more
than me leaving.
I settle for telling you I wish we had the beach,
I wish we had my flask,
I wish that we were driving and joking
and that I miss you.
I’d send you this poem, but you’d ask me what it means.

8 Things I Wish I Could Saytwo. I guess I never really told you
I fall a little back into infatuation
every line you write. I’m sure you could
catch me, for a drunken moment,
heady on the self-destruction.
It was never the idea of you, really,
or your old eyes and young smile,
but the idea you had and your long-road ways.
I stay away now with your life-break in my ear,
I know your voice.
It sings smoky Darling.

five. I don’t know how to speak to you,
you’ve half my blood but I can’t find me
anywhere in your face.
Since we were kids you were not a kid,
you were a giant. Even when I outgrew you,
you were this adult-thing. Intangible

:thumb96712768:

The Artist has requested Critique on this Artwork

Please sign up or login to post a critique.

~Hijinxd Feb 25, 2013

im crying because im in such a situation i cant begin....

Reply

`vespera Feb 27, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I a really sorry to hear that!

Reply

~Flummoxative Feb 12, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Lovely descriptions here, and oh, goodness, that ending...

Reply

`vespera Feb 18, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

TY!

Reply

=Wordeea Jan 24, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

that went straight through me. the ending. oh the ending ...

Reply

`vespera Jan 24, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Reply

!travelgirlxx Jan 24, 2013

This is lovely.

Reply

~valkvick Jan 24, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

This is heartbreaking and beautiful.

Reply

`vespera Jan 24, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

TY

Reply

`thetaoofchaos Nov 19, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

you have been featured: [link]

Reply

Previous
1
2
Next