May 2013
6 posts
1 tag
There are whispers of the winter in these branches though laden, they, with trappings of the spring There are echoes of your footsteps in these chambers though I’ve bled them empty in my suffering We were obstacles surmounted to the north wind To the hillside, we were shadows on the sun till the twilight brought the moon to bathe our madness We were lovers once when we were very young In...
3 tags
For you on this day and those to come
What are we alone, we bones and blood, we minds and hearts animated then stranded on our rotating rock to grow above the heavy handed, to walk in search that reveals more than find What are we in the darkness but children, feeling our way blind down these vacant yet familiar corridors fingers poised to touch the light we’re moving ever toward Hope passes the blurred masses on the streets...
1 tag
For You Alone, I Kneel
ghostsandonionskins:
There are titans on the apex there are monsters for the flame I think I was a mountain too when Jesus was my name
I think that someone moved me when Allah was a quake Seven billion hopeless prostrate to a thousand war mistake
You went dancing in their flowered wakes we went rolling in their smell There are urges in your silken dress to scream sweet proof of hell
...
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The year after
I dug a hole in the backyard, approximately three feet wide and four deep and afterward couldn’t remember why I’d done it so Kristin and I made a pitcher of Manhattans and lists of all the things small and insignificant enough that they could be buried there A few more people left, a few more arrived It’s like a bus (terminal), life, I guess and after a while, the lady at the...
1 tag
Mercy mild
How many people will wake up tomorrow with something in their lungs other than the I love you hidden away in that satin-lined box for a special occasion We are too young, you know to say I would have been if only and so today I am a poet and you don’t have cancer How many people will wake up tomorrow to the realization that mortal coil was just the broken box spring beneath a borrowed twin...
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Yet ours is thicker than water
Patrick, I’ve walked in the footprints of saints a sinner in summer silk, barefoot and born of the same cradle song that spun its constraints through the paladins’ downcast, leviathan scorn Patrick, I’ve prayed to the first light of morning the fiberglass idols adorned on their thrones to the sweat and the solitude, false and forewarning the gathering host and their...
April 2013
11 posts
1 tag
A pawn, a rook, a polished night onyx against the alabaster wood and stone, would she alone move kingdoms if you asked her Thursday with a hammer Friday with a sigh and curve of hip and lesser men have lain down arms for less from looser lips Broken on the bedroom boards fine china, dawn, promises, hearts A maddened mind’s mosaic fashions absence into art and fills the empty spaces in with...
1 tag
I leave poppies on the park benches now for the ghosts of the young soldiers imprisoned in the old men’s eyes They lie a scarlet offense to the grey-green iron defiantly alive against the rotting wood until the church bells break the silence to mark the slow march of the bent and weary and defiantly alive; and the silence reclaims as they pause to let the others pass- the ones I can’t...
Thanks :)
I was just pleasantly surprised (more shocked, actually, considering I haven’t been writing much lately) to find several extremely lovely messages in my inbox… thank you, guys. :) Truly. The ol’ real world has been doing a number on me here recently, and I can’t adequately express how much the kind words meant. Thanks again… all of you. For reading, for sticking...
2 tags
A Victim of Convenience: And did we need a... →
And did we need a savior or do saviors need the lost someone to tell, something to sell at distribution cost a handshake with a hatchet inamorato with a spike who sits upon his mount and waits for you to make the hike The earth, she has been promised to the patient and the meek who spill the wine and stand in line and smell of doublespeak for what they’ll say tomorrow they haven’t done today and...
1 tag
I did the best favor I could think of for the man that told me the backs of my eyelids must shame the walls of the world’s great galleries -I didn’t fall in love with him not by that knee-jerk definition that sets off alarms on biological clocks sends every shadow-spooked soul afraid to sit alone in a coffee shop on a Saturday rushing to the hardware store for hammer, nails and white...
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You turned the volume lower as if quieting the sound of the ocean rushing through the door would mean we needn’t drown like the thousand frozen faces on the evening news at five would be home in time for dinner if we didn’t hear they’d died In the dark, this town looks cleaner neon hope and bar-stool vows that we won’t be here when we’re older when we shouldn’t...
1 tag
A poem for the poet
Have you read the one about the stars? Not the billion lights burning in and out of existence in time with every breath held long enough to matter another world ending so midnight lovers might wish for immortality not just histories and futures but ancient gods and divination silver trails of breadcrumbs and horizon-bound road maps that don’t fall but are sacrificed, that don’t bid you...
1 tag
The year they found Stephen floating in the shallows at Brantley Lake I stopped having birthday parties I was 8, scabbed knees LA Gears and faerie wings He was 11, skateboards baseball bats and stray dogs that followed him through the neighborhood like disciples for the lost can sense their own And I think I loved him but that word still stung like leather and smelled of bourbon
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He told you he was magic and a thousand other things the puppeteer sings to his hollow toys while tightening the strings so you practiced the illusion till you learned how to believe and hid your eyes behind the handkerchiefs he pulled out of his sleeve Now your wooden heart’s grown heavy and your feet drag on the floor and the smile that he painted looks more faded than before but he still...
1 tag
They named the mind’s plague dissonance and it seeps in through the ear A discordant disillusion sounds like worry, feels like fear so you christen it and coddle it and hope that you’ll unhear the weather sirens and the church bells that rang your intention clear It’s surrender to the stigma that’s the abstract in the art but still you swear the note won’t stand when...
1 tag
For Dani and Her Unbearable Lightness
My best friend when I was 13 bought me The Unbearable Lightness of Being and sat most nights cross-legged on my bedroom floor pretending to watch Food Network but actually watching my face as I read She knew I was finished before I did perched on the end of my bed 10 minutes before I saw her like some elemental that might blow away on the next breeze sapling arms, reed fingers (too thin, too thin)...
March 2013
18 posts
1 tag
Epitaph
Lay me to rest past the edge of the map when at last I know sleep and leave you no stone nor mar you the earth for the sake of your grief; let the mother reclaim what she knows for her own Let the mother reclaim what she knows for her own Let the heather remember and all else release Leave my spirit to roam where the gods dare not tread when at last I know rest when at last I know peace When at...
Anonymous asked: Is there a reason you only ever reblog Ghosts and Onionskins or is it just because you're a fangirl kiss ass? Other people reblog you, maybe you should return the favor sometimes.
2 tags
ghostsandonionskins:
Listen!
It’s all wrong this god damned mess! When people see passion and without a thousand images to anchor it to themselves think it unmotivated
Some people don’t have words just honesty and a founded fear that they’ll be dismissed
And sometimes, sure it’s a hollow trick but who’s so fucking proud that they can see a soul beg to be held and not think ...
1 tag
Whose hands hold the strings that compel you to dance for the crass congregation entrenched and entranced as you seek to inherit the earth for yourself by your silent submission secure on your shelf Who spoke the command that ignited the war from a parapet over the tired and sore faces frozen in fear that felt more like relief Suffer unto the weak the burden of belief Whose urgent breast swelled...
2 tags
In the in between, no fashioned thorn could hope to bleed a heart from the plastic stem of painted rose that’s sold disguised as art to a modern-day Magellan plotting romance by the charts In the in between, no satin glove could tear a soul apart Where the hollow find their solace there’s an ache that doesn’t mend there’s a flame the breath of mercy missed and taught...
1 tag
Marry me, you said in those blue jeans with the hems torn to tatters and that t-shirt you ripped climbing over the airport fence on the night we met I told you the simplest example of love I’d ever found was my mother’s antique vases lined just so to catch the sun in the kitchen window each spilling over with blossomed weeds because when I was 3 a flower was just a flower You liked...
1 tag
Urges
I stood once at the edge of a cliff in Mazatlan and felt it It starts in your toes steals up your legs until you’re not entirely sure they’re yours anymore and certainly your hair isn’t your dress your breath those belong to the wind coaxing everything forward as if to say there’s nothing nearly this exciting back there And if they call it fear they’re not feeling it...
1 tag
Would you think the night brash if it stood on your lawn serenading your fast shuttered pains until dawn with a verse for each lover who’s come and then gone through your well-oiled, discreet garden gate? Would you toss down your favor in floral or lace like the sun raining hope o’er the moon’s upturned face from its monument to unattainable grace and speak light on the fortunes...
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I could have kept the fire burning if I’d never felt your kiss but you stepped soft out of the night like you were born of only this and finding no use for belief I worshiped every silence kept inside that tomb behind your ribs where someone else’s savior slept And I loved you in the places past the edges of the map where no pin could pierce our hearts and bleed a sea to bridge the gap...
1 tag
This is no love song and I am no poet I will not call what your fingers left on my neck ghosts or compare a love turned cold to the seasons I will not shape who you were until I see who I am in what is not and say I am better for what was I will not polish truth in search of gems I will not hang on your words or by them
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Leave lighter thoughts engraved upon the tomb of my stolen youth I drink just to feel anything anymore and this empty glass prison’s the proof And you watch as I swim for the bottom before all the answers I’m seeking can sink but what waits for me there in the shallows waits still and I’m drinking these days not to think I let you inside because you had his eyes and it’s...
2 tags
A Victim of Convenience: This is where I keep... →
This is where I keep illusions like butterflies in jars for ink does not stain permanent and words, they rarely scar Though I sharpen them forever I know you’ll forget this verse and I’m aiming for the heart, I swear time heals, and is a curse Do you know what we were given ere being stranded on this dirt? Words, my dear, and nothing else to give, to steal, to hurt I dreamt that I awoke once and...
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4 tags
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Perhaps we’re too young to be this nostalgic but something about that look in your eyes -I think the old soldiers call it the thousand-yard stare- tells me we were present at all of the world’s great disasters And those biblical words they throw around in hushed tones like stones words like pestilence and exodus feel like 2:30 Friday at the coffee counter I think I might have caught...
1 tag
There’s a history between March and the cherry blossom in Central Park You can tell by the way he pulls back when she starts to open up and lets February interject going on too long with his icy breath until she politely excuses herself And it’s obvious he misses her although he pretends otherwise for a week or two but eventually, he’ll send her a signal and she’ll return...
1 tag
What my grandfather would have told her
Here is the parchment I nurtured from seed that I might watch the seasons pen sonnets to me in the green of my youth and the gold of my fall and the absence of winter that comes to us all Here is the mortar and here is the stone that I shaped so that you might turn haven to home in the blush of your youth and the gold of our vow and the comfort of then in the hope of our now Here is the ghost of...
1 tag
To you, wherever you are
I hated you because hate was something In that nothing you left between my neck which at least aches after a night on the couch and my hips which have pulsed to the rhythm of too many others in the name of forgetting this I could quantify kindle and let burn for a while before that desperate, gasping breath that wakes me drew the ash back into my lungs I hated you for watching me sleep and leaving...
February 2013
18 posts
1 tag
Waning winter spare spring’s first rose for the soil that blankets my blush where once I bloomed at our every could be ‘fore I knew what could become of us
2 tags
Campus Starbucks, 1:45 a.m.
Those decaying Russians whose names are commands shouted down in thunder through steel and blood by gods of war did not weave metaphysical spells take to task regimes and make sacrifice of the written word to earn the honor of visible block lettering on that $6.99 paperback pick-up line you’re employing to try to get that other pretentious twit across the room to buy you coffee
1 tag
I danced to defy ancient gods of restraint Without worldly temptation what martyrs a saint and if serpentine limbs lured you on from her side well, man learned not of pleasure by being denied But I didn’t need words to decline your goodnight Eyes spill secrets like wine for the keener of sight and lips say all the more when so little needs said sacred breath better spent specious cloth...
Anonymous asked: As totally honest as you seem during the few times you answer questions there is still such a feeling of mystery around you. That's kind of nice but isn't there something more about yourself you would tell us, dear lady?
Anonymous asked: i think i remember you saying you work saturdays. so do i. i wanted to ask you to write me a poem but i feel like listening to something like audio and visual and would love to know what you listening to at work. please.
2 tags
This is my 400th post. And this is my favorite poem. :)
ghostsandonionskins:
Between the pints and cigarettes we bared our teeth and laid our bets on which dark sacred pit you’d fallen into a well dressed hole within in the soul of alcoholics all, who went to washroom sinks to stare upon their saviors Kate said she’d heard about you from your neighbours
That you’re not writing anymore she...
1 tag
Liberty
Her name is Liberty the sole survivor of a nightly apocalypse at 3 a.m., Main Street a ghost town and she haunted by something just beyond her grasp She shouts at it, pleads with it hides from it in deserted doorways and leaning over the balcony an unlit cigarette between my fingers I watch her and christen her more appropriately She is Joan of Arc skeletal arms jerk to life to ward against unseen...
1 tag
Your Southern Cross soliloquies my bottle bottom courage We’re growing wiser by degrees and empty by the day But hope, it’s still afloat, love though it’s hardly holding water Funny all the things you think of when you don’t have much to say So pen your silent sermon and we’ll send it out to sea pretend that fate is undetermined by the power of our will ‘cause I...
1 tag
Don’t tell me it’s cold in that four poster bed in the night when you’re thrown to the wolves in your head and you find yourself missing the one you misled while another lies sleeping beside you Don’t tell me the spring was the warmth of my breath that your lips find my name on the curve of her neck for Pride drapes far too loose in the garb of regret to pretend it’s...
1 tag
When the scholars, the visionaries and the madmen all work for Hollywood and the starving have traded their loaves of plenty for assault rifles I will pick my way through the ruins that were classrooms libraries and sidewalk bully pulpits to the park bench where I imagine you’ll be and when the first mushroom cloud blooms on the horizon I will rest my head on your shoulder close my eyes and...
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I think you said something about love or it might have been Dostoyevsky The two would have landed the same anyway on that silken altar on the seventh day my hair an auburn vestment to maintain a pretense of morality Both would have mislabeled us deists in the throes of veneration exhaling conviction and christened in sweat immortal of soul in those rare moments when bloodless lips attended more...
1 tag
February
On another day like this when supple arms still rose sunward to hang weightless and wait in these branches for the slightest breath of wind or yours to blow me away I loved restless as the waiting blooms concealed beneath my fingers ardent but aware of February’s fickle heart- as quick to kill as to kiss cheeks crimson
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I swam those heartache flooded streets alone perchance to hear you sing while all the crowded cafe Cyranos staged romance in the wings and every dagger note found purchase cut the dark to shine a light into the corners that betrayed us, made us honest for a night Through the glass, the city set its pulse to the rhythm of the rain an urban heartbeat drumming frantic through your pooling silk...
1 tag
A Hallmark hope a hangman’s rope a heart too quick to bleed and left to drown inside to hide a want too much like need For fear of dark submits to spark to flame to cigarette a communion as destructive as the nights we can’t forget And when we’re old the future sold we’ll sit and wonder why those secrets kept on pain of death don’t mourn us as we die
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The lunch break lovers seal with a kiss their 20-minute rendezvous lips no more than brushing lest she leave behind a waxen red reminder or cornsilk calling card upon collar This is the business of seduction knee length skirts just loose enough corner offices just secluded enough midday promotions on the line and transactions complete The split second hesitation of his hand still warmed by the...
