deviant art

Deviant Login
Buy Art Buy adCast Buy Premium Membership
Shop		  Join deviantART for FREE Take the Tour
[x]
beta physicsi.
the rain wrapped impatience around your roof,
bored through the wood like a thousand million termites
(or one you-sized termite, blind, breathless)
and seeped from the cold clockwork like battery acid.

ii.
you lived in a widow's closet -

a house swarmed with antiques
that collapsed in their own gravity
and combusted -

and then you lived in widow's charcoal.

iii.
"galaxies are either lovers or termites," she mused.

(earlier, her fingernails bored into my back
Hubble's thousand million stars, all drops of acid
branding my spine.)

"they are drawn to each other for years
and in an instant, once together,
eat themselves alive.
mosaics.sometimes unique
is not loud;
or bright, alive and raging,
possessed of a hunger for the atypical,
up front and too close,
or thrice-pierced and drenched
in the rebellions
particular to the latest generation.

sometimes it is a girl with
mouse brown hair and eyes
the color of weak tea,
who stands with her schoolbooks clutched
to her chest, in uniform shades of grey-blue
like the midmorning autumn sky

who has a wide mouth prone to nervous smiles,

pale lips and pale cheeks
and words that don't always come out
the way she means

who holds the universe
in the intricacies of her fingerprints
and laughs in treble clef notes
and u
Hubris.today
we're younger
than we're ever gonna
be.

i. and we finally did it,
drove to the mountains
watched meteors
and let the mattress
grow damp
under our love
under the stars

ii. there are things to
be reconciled

iii. my eyes sting like
chlorine, but from
crying,

I finally disappointed
them;
the highest order of shame

iv. but you cannot put
people into pockets;
good, bad
don't mix
with them

v. and I cannot choose
who I love

vi. your lenses are straight,
elite and proud
mine, open and accumulating
filth

vii. maybe
I should run away more often,
we never talk like this

viii. and you have to realise
that I live in
a picture of a plane.The day her daddy got sent away, the whole neighborhood fluttered with closing curtains and eyes watching through cracked doors. His wife called it a mistake, the cousins called it rape and said he was a pedophile.

And she just kept dipping her fingers into paint and dreaming about kites and the eyelashes on dolls, because she didn't know what any of those words meant.

A year later, he came back, and she washed the sidewalk so he couldn't see that she was drawing their secret in light blue and petal pink chalk.

-

"Those are nice pictures, baby," her daddy would tell her, but she hated it, because he always sounded sick, and he would rub h
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
I Guess We'll Live To See ItYou should start looking
for a place we can make our last stand.
The dawn is breaking:
Every morning, a little less light,
and the end
is not as close as you think.
Love is not enough,

and wanting

is not enough.

The desert is coming.
The sea is coming.
God forbid
they find us holding our thirst
in both hands.

Instead,
instead;

No,

There is no
rescue.
You should start looking for a place
we can make our last
stand.
Take my frenzy for resignation, put your boots
on. I have a lantern. I have a little
knife. We have so much still
to survive. Open

your hands

and let the thirst out.

Build. We will stand
until t
SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.

It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic ki
Lion HeartIt is building up deep within her fragile body like a heaving monsoon forming over the dry, cracked, heavy heat of an African savannah; an unforgiving and all-consuming storm desperately willing to drown out its less than fleeting welcome. Flickering with ceaseless coils of skin-searing energy like a grey-faced fugitive's adrenaline stricken heartbeat, it is not a bringer of life, but a threat to it—and even the most reckless are hardwired to take flight in the face of such a colossal and uncompromising foe.

          Beyond these white-washed walls, the world would have her believe that she is brave, a lioness, an exception confronted
Tears In HeavenMommy looks just like an angel. She said she would be one soon and tells me not to be sad because she'll be looking over me where God is.

"I won't be able to teach you the things my mommy taught me, and the things her momma taught her," her dry hands felt soft on my cheek, "but maybe some day you'll have a new Mommy. Someone who can make your daddy smile again." She gazed at him from her hospital bed. He wanted to speak but choked back tears instead.

"But can't I make Daddy smile?"

It's been a year and a half, my memory of her is like air. I don't know if it's real or what I think I remember when I read the letters she left behind. He woul
The CartI always got my best book recommendations from my old library cart. Well, the library cart wasn't really mine. I was a shelver at my town's library, before I started college, and I would use their carts to do my job.

I first noticed something was up with the cart when I was shelving juvenile paperbacks. These were the lightest books we owned (and kept in the worst shape - kids are brats). But when I was rolling the cart, it was heavy. It groaned when I pushed it, and steering it was a mini-workout. It wasn't this hard to move a double-stack of adult non-fiction.

What was really odd, though, was as I removed more books, it barely got lighter
for unseeing eyesladen with sky
we stumbled
and painted mockingbirds
on loveless branches
folding in our slender limbs
and ducking under our own
voices, fidgety and frail
against the wall of night.

between the dipping blades
and drawn shoulders
we learned to craft our words
steady-soft,
a drumming rain
that carved canyons
in open hearts and
drew the sunshine to
our supping lips.

keen-eyed, we watched
remembering the weight
of unseeing eyes
and scalding remarks
and we learned to slip
the noose-knots and slide
through the soul-cracks
and somehow
build kingdoms under
upturned noses.

with lyrical uncertainty
and tender determinat
The FountainThere were sixteen tall windows. She'd counted them over and over when she was small, her chubby finger outstretched as she spun in tiny circles. Eight walls, sixteen windows, thirty-two black curtains—the arithmetic of her childhood.

"Eight window seats, Daddy. Eight buttons on each—sixty-four. I counted."

The fountain stood dry and dead-center in the middle of the black and white tiles. Eight sides, eight lion-mouth spouts. Sixteen limestone mermaids poised gracefully around the edge. Four thousand and ninety-six blue tiles. Five hundred and twelve white.

And two doors. Always the two doors, huge and solid and radiating a sense
don't get tired of elephants yetI've had my crippling moments.
They'd either start in my stomach
with an ache like broken glass
or stab me right in the catharsis,
somewhere near my heart or breath
or maybe my left foot.

I wouldn't know how it feels
to hurt to walk, but I imagine
with a destination like farther,
it's no pilgrimage.
So take the burden off your back.
Life is not a sandstorm
and your lungs are only a mirage
if you expect to see your breath
every time you breathe.
So take a breath

back, just one step

and listen with your smoke signals.
Help is on the way.
I just can't promise
it knows much about this lifetime.
It's the same way I could never promise
elephan
bedIt's a stabbing sight
Letting in the morning with a crack of the shades
And you forget you could page-turn horizons
Waft through free territory
Where acres are just beds
Made of fresh land

Wrinkles in the river
Tell remembered times
About old languages that could make you cry
About soft beds that carve away canyons
A speaking voice lifted from the earth
Begging you to remember
epitaphin the end
when i'm almost gone
and all i've left
is a red lamp
and a ragged song
to pave my way
into the thunderstorm
let every raindrop murmur
i loved you and lost
nothing but emptiness
and the company
of ghosts
Browse More Like This
Download File
HTML, 741 bytes more ▶

More from ~trembling-knees

It wasn't a mistake.I've dragged my lungs
through packet after packet of cigarettes,
so it's no wonder to learn that all
I've got left is ash-grey and
tar-black and useless.
You lo(i)ved inside my chest.We made love

       (once, twice, and
   I stopped counting the
       bruises)

in the middle of winter
and pretended neither of us were
casualties when we collided,
a heart-on collision,
(precision incision).

I keep the room you rented
from me empty,

I don't think about you anymore,
but I don't think about you
anyless.
3.I've waited;
you'll soon be here.
Honestly dishonest.I'd kissed you seventeen times before they tore me
away from the coffin.

This could be tragically romantic but I'm lying;
I wasn't allowed through the chapel doors.
2.Please believe me, I've nothing else.
1.Kiss me, the world can wait.

Featured in Groups:

:iconeliteliterature: #EliteLiterature
Elite Literature Collective :iconcreativitytoconcept: #creativitytoconcept
We The People

Details

July 1, 2012
741 bytes
Link
Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 38
Favourites: 249 [who?]


Views: 2,956 (0 today)
Downloads: 278 (0 today)
[x]

i won't quit

:icontrembling-knees:



    there's not much to taste when years of nicotine
    sit heavy on your tongue, stale like week-old bread
    and vintage cheese, but you won't quit.

    no, you won't quit.

    because once upon a time all you tried to live for was
    your next cigarette, and every cigarette you lived
    for was a battle won.

    no, you won't quit.

    because once upon a time you swore
    you could taste her still with each inhale and every
    cigarette broke your heart, but filled it too.

    no, you won't quit,
    you won't quit.
Add a Comment:
 
Preview   Add Comment

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-07-13
i won't quit by ~trembling-knees Addiction is more than just one vice. ( Featured by ^Beccalicious )
love 5 5 joy 0 0 wow 0 0 mad 1 1 sad 0 0 fear 0 0 neutral 0 0
:icon0hgravity:
*0hgravity Oct 14, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
the simplicity here is refreshing and the repetition works well.
Reply
:icontrembling-knees:
~trembling-knees Nov 9, 2012   General Artist
Thank you!

:heart:
Reply
:iconi-am-a-bridgewalker:
~i-am-a-bridgewalker Jul 17, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
"every cigarette you lived for was a battle won"

heartbreaking and brutal and quiet.

nice work.
Reply
:iconherzeleid31:
!herzeleid31 Jul 16, 2012  Student Writer
Apart from your inconsistent punctuation and certain line breaks which lack integrity, and the cliches near the end, this is a good start. A little editing and you'd have a pretty good poem.
Reply
:iconsigma-echo-seven:
~Sigma-Echo-Seven Jul 15, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
The kind of addiction that can destroy a person. Well done!
Reply
:iconpacifierboy:
Mood: Love ~pacifierboy Jul 13, 2012  Professional Digital Artist
jaw droppingly good.
Reply
:iconcrackerjackthe4th:
Mood: Sarcastic ~Crackerjackthe4th Jul 13, 2012
I would smoke in my sleep if I could.

'nuff said. :finger:
Reply
:iconsolaric:
~solaric Jul 13, 2012  Professional Writer
The stanza about the woman and heartbreak is really striking. I could definitely imagine someone refusing to break a habit out of fear of losing the person the habit reminds them of, and that stanza really captured the idea perfectly.
Reply
:iconlit-twitter:
*Lit-Twitter Jul 13, 2012
Chirp, congrats on the DD, it's been twittered. [link] :)
Reply
:icon28342634906:
~28342634906 Jul 13, 2012  Student Traditional Artist
This feels heartbreaking, very well done.
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