[x]

Stepping StonesI rip pages
out of poetry books,
the titles of
Shakespeare
and Plath
and Dickinson
littering the floor
like trash,
and I wonder
if we don't all
wind up stepping stones
in the end.

Does It Bother Your Mind The Way You Bother MineIt could be defined as this unintelligible sympathy, refined
and infinitely describable.  Words are a feeble comparison.
My speech is slop, fecal matter.  Repulsive residues spew from ineffective
communication.  And you're speaking, but what the fuck are you saying?
                   To be wrong.

It may run deeper than that, an invasive core crowding the marrow of your bones.
Humiliation in strength, pungent structure uniting beneath sinuous muscle and
skin.  Imperative awareness skittered across pa

An old kind of loveOne hundred years from now
The paint we picked out
Will be seven shades different,
Or old bricks made wise
By some graffiti prophet.
The note you hid in my mittens
– All I dream about anymore
Is the ocean
And you
(But mostly just you) –
Will be drifting through dream-catchers and
Those sapling hopes with
Roots tangled like our fingers and
Branches trembling with the vastness of our memories
Will be driftwood adventures
Nodding off with the tides
But I know in this heart of mine
That the smooth-bark-rain-soaked Beech Tree
You planted for me (there's a swing on it now)
Will still be there
And it will remember wha

fishing for hearts with lace and not nettingtake one - in which burned bread is beautiful

They're crumbs in the road, toast-speckles that spin and skirt and we
     drive past, like we always do, the radio          singing
white noise against my black humor and you say
   you say I'm getting better, and I think no, I am better
I am better, I say and you say        no
and I say
yes,
I'm fucking exemplary
and you ask who Exemplary is and I tell you it's me and I think
    somewhere                we got lost in the words
And I'm not all that keen on admitting to you that sure thing, dad,
    I'm fucking myself
over
and over
            but mostly I'm just fucking myself o

ExhaustionExhaustion

I wake, swollen with noon heat.
Half dressed, I stumble,
elbows and toes catching
on the clawed feet of chairs,
the blunt holes of open cupboards.
I sometimes forget my name.
In the kitchen, I pepper the rice
instead of salt. Black flecks surface
in the boiling water,
sea turtles migrating.
If I knew where you went,
I would follow. But all you left behind
was an old sweater, an empty notebook,
an exhaustion,
complete and infinite
as the space around a closed fist.

Dead Bodies Don't Cryi.

You are born with twisted feet
and a pockmark on your chest.
Your poor mother is drenched in sweat,
straining to breathe,
thanking God it's over.

She cradles you in her arms
and kisses your forehead with curved lips.
Your father reaches out to hold you
but has to pause because
your mother will not release you yet.

The family pays a visit,
hovering in awe, praising, laughing.
You look around for someone to blame.

ii.

When you learn to write
you use all the wrong letters
because you feel sorry for the ones
that get left out, like X and Z.
And you wear mismatched clothes
because you don't like the idea that
only certain c

summergirlNow read aloud over here. Do give it a listen, won't you?
i. summergirl,
you are crowthroated and tumbling
through the aspen grove
hair on fire with sunrise, lungs
full of sky.
eyelashes like wildflowers
and every morning brings
a new spray of freckles
and a sharper curve to your collarbones.
the cornfields hold no shadows
for your lighthouse eyes
and there are no endings in that
surefooted smile.
ii. you have grown
so fast.
autumn finds you with broken ankles
leaning on an oak branch
and watching the skies.
crow to sparrow--you are quiet.
summergirl, there is peace in silence,
perched treetop,
fallen antlers in your hands.
you will come to mourn your deer.
keep them close.
iii. by winter you have paled,
and like the streams
your eyes have frosted over.
you feel the chill--
there is no need for sight.
summergirl, th

the clockwork liari. we dusted dreams off people like the first snowflakes of the season. you'd take one and rest it on the center of your tongue because you hated the taste of ice cream and wanted to reset what cold tasted like to you.
you taught me that the cold could be bitter.
and so could people's dreams.
you drank out of out-of-order wells because you believed they still worked and that the government was keeping it all to itself.
i never realized how insane you made me before i wrote this all down.

ii. i wished on the sun because i ran out of shooting stars.
and just to spite me, you began wishing on raindrops because you believed that they were so many, one of them was bound to remember you.
but we both ended up laughing hysterically with stabbed protruding knives jutting out of us on a bloodstained floor, didn't we?

iii. i talked to clockwork towers and told them to lie because if they stopped for just a while, all the time in the world would s

scar-crossed(my fingers are colder than the solemn blue
buried in her eyes. so much dead beauty,

like an ocean without waves).

she is fading and i cling to her,
and in this tiny little moment
between breaths

we barely even exist.

SehnsuchtOctober again;
and the curtains billow
with broken glass echoes and
Mendelssohn's bride waltzing
to better times

(ein
zwei
drei)

She becomes the rain,
and breaks her own heart as
the sound
drips
right through us.

Stephanie - Collab(I wrote us in free verse over every inch
of your tattered surface ).

you were the beatific grin
of a kindergartener high off oxygen,
mouth stretched wide as the entrance to hell,
black tongue bleeding virtuous sin like ichor.

(You taught me praying was for the weak
as I fell for your gypsum nails,
white teeth scrabbling over my chalkboard frame).

scribbled flesh tells no love story
but three layers of skin
worn thin along the length of our feverish bones.

(Garden flowers tucked away worms and dirt,
my ribs hoarded misspellings of my mother's name).

dipping your origami limbs into my ink

beneath

it goes without saying:

everything

the air that settles
on your chest
awaiting sound

the language of your local fruit
the swirl of rind
their glyphs and runes
like sun-bent cheeks

those
bulbous blots
in utero

and creatured time
that sleeps between us.

i needn't tell you anything
or speak my way inside of you
you've doctored in all my aspirations

your furious dreams' wild successions
no longer carry
my peculiar
cursive

because
i am written
on

Love Poem for a Man Who Doesn't Get PoetryI buy milk as if it is the
most important
thing I have ever done; come home and
lay the bag on the floor
at your feet.

The meaning is lost
on you, a man

who is a snap of clean linen;
no, you prefer strait-line
talk, full-throttle motion.

Not wavering semaphore.

I feel silly with my quiet twist of metaphor,
Darling, Buttercup, My Angry Little Arsonist,
saying your name is the breath between
the waves, your heart
the hungry mouth of the bay.

There is a curve between the me and the you
We waited too long, hoping the pause
would not last forever, but just in case,
we hold hands in the dark.

I had forgotten how to give

swallowsswallows
ennui
we see

swallows
a sigh
to the sky

swallows
emotion
sans caution

swallows
cries
by the byes

swallows

alone

or with

swoop and dive

internalize
seem more alive

again

he swallows
his sorrow

but never

his pride

llp - aug2012 - dA - DLD-8/28/12

Other Girlsit's not a simple thing
reading old magazines
like that
by yourself
like other girls
with other girls
in the same room
with the same shame
but they're not you
and they weren't there
but they know
they know

Waiting rooms that get stuck in your joints
Like screwdrivers
flat heads
how different names seem spelt now
closer to a gamble than a title
now, you're gonna have to spell
selfish
differently
closer to this hell
than hellish

your good sense
chirps in your sleep
chips at your teeth
too smart for that
right?
too determined
too you (makes sense)
to end up like other girls
who look like other girls
with other g

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Limbo (a.k.a. Poems from Work)I.
The machine's being stupid
and her card isn't working,
but he's heard it all before.
He's the kind of man
who expects hurricanes;
he sees the waves
rocketing towards him
and doesn't move a muscle
on principle.

II.
His mind is a prison
and his eyes are on the bars.
They can't keep him here,
not forever.
So he throws himself
against the cage,
knowing that one day
it must break.

III.
She's so young, barely an adult.
Her back bends and aches,
and he hates how her shins
creak and wobble
when she tries to walk.

IV.
He loves
those green slips of paper
as if they were his children:
numbered, ordered, stacked,
worth so

Twenty-One RoundsDream torn,
"Rare form,"
notch-bone,
whetstone,
soles lock,
turn, drop,
twenty-one rounds.

Wrist-shatter,
knife-clatter,
grind-nose,
"Night shows,"
jackal-smile,
broken tile,
twenty-one rounds.

Fall-breaker,
ring-taker,
cursing fire,
ripped asunder,
bobbing, weaving,
leaving nothing,
twenty-one rounds.

Ghost StoriesGhost Stories

My earliest memory is of Mom crying over me, and of you lurking above her. It's an extrasensory kind of fear: both profane and sublime. You can't exactly see it, and you can't pin it down; that’s how it surrounds and suffocates you. Man versus nature, man versus fate, man versus sire; call it what you will. Patient and bitter, you're a spider waiting in a blackened forest. You stalk behind our dreams with anxious hooks; always watching, baiting us, hating us, dragging us apart slowly and cautiously, bisecting us with your subtle scalpel-smiles. One-by-one you turn us away, forcing us to face you and the grotesque truth of

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Dog Days of Summer

by ~Sigma-Echo-Seven, Aug 1, 2012, 11:02:41 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

The city is a raw, open carcass.
I rip into it with my teeth,
tools and weapons alike.
We are bred from our surroundings;
I was born in August,
the son of Sirius and Sol.

Let me tell you what it is to be brought low:
it is a streamlined form of hatred,
to awake in unrelenting heat,
shoved down among vulgarities, drifting
as their glares catch you at every corner.
Is he a threat?
You can watch them drag their ribs through the dust
while you greedily tear into your scraps
behind cooking temple-blocks
(not the scraps they threw at you,
but the ones you fought for).
You're vicious by nature,
but wary by choice.

Asphalt ignites with my stride
as I stray down alleys and sidewalks,
listening for the chain-link's ring.
I can adapt to one-way tides
and dead-end names,
but my soles dig into the concrete
and I barrel down the veins
when I hear the sunset's sympathy.

The fenced dogs don't understand;
enclosed worlds don't appeal to me.
They don't dare invite me into their homes
for fear that I'd track the sunspots inside.
I'd far rather take my chances
and offer low growls through bared teeth
to the collar-men and their sweat stains.
It is a hostile way of life.

Dog Days of Summerby ~Sigma-Echo-Seven

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

The Dog Days of summer were once thought to be caused by the close proximity of the sun and Sirius (i.e. the "dog star") during the months of July and August.

"Hostility" is a theme that helped me complete ~~one~~ many of my other pieces.

Also, some days I just feel aggressive. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Right?

---
Edit: And thanks for the DLD!

*intricately-ordinary Jan 9, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

This is wonderful! I adore the harsh imagery in context. It gives an eerily personal feel. I also love the way you've spun normal ideas. "The fenced dogs do not understand; enclosed worlds don't appeal to me." Wonderful work, congrats on the DLD!

~Sigma-Echo-Seven Jan 9, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

"Eerily personal" not in a bad way, I hope. And thank you so much!

*intricately-ordinary Jan 9, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

All the best poems are personal, this one just happened to be on a whole new level.

Thank you for writing it!

~Sigma-Echo-Seven Jan 9, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

In that case, my pleasure.

~WritingObsessed Dec 13, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

This is amazing. I especially love the last stanza.

~Sigma-Echo-Seven Dec 13, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you, I appreciate that.

*Hfeather53 Sep 26, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I keep re-reading this to pick a favorite part. But I can't. Hostility and aggressiveness seem to be ways some people adapt to trauma. I'm pretty sure we all have our days. I know I have mine.

Wait, I found my favorite part:
They don't dare invite me into their homes
for fear that I'd track the sunspots inside.
I'd far rather take my chances
and offer low growls through bared teeth
to the collar-men and their sweat stains.
<3 Very well done.

~Sigma-Echo-Seven Sep 26, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you! I hadn't planned to include that last part with the final version of the poem, but something just spoke through me in a single burst of inspiration and I wrote it all down from nowhere. As always, I'm glad you think it fits well.

*Hfeather53 Sep 26, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Oh wow. I love the last part. I'm glad you included it.

>.>;

I like to imagine growling at people sometimes. ;D

~Jacoooify Sep 14, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

This is fantastic. Truly.

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Dog Days of Summer

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