[x]

"You said you wanted the reverse stripped out of you,
and that's all I left you with."

V. Kingston Upon Thames

How do fancy it? And do you fancy it at all?
Does it have geography and are we grey? Do we have
a time, do we have
a place?

(I am turning British corners and you are there,
middle-aged.)

I will hear our language drown in their heavy tongues. I
will search for their consonants in vain, and they will call
me foreign when I hit mine
too hard. I will search for you, middle-
aged.

We will not look like writers then. (We look like
hell; we look like
authors.) We will be worn dow

True StoryMy proudest day yet, and to top it all
you wrote your first poem.
As I drove, you told me our car was
a beautiful white horse
without a name.
And to think, you do not even know that song
or that this is a desert.

We slipped on slick oiled streets,
and you soothed my nerves with a gentle,
"Whoa, girl,"
and the tires gripped.

I pulled up beside a sedan
turned dapple grey by the weather
and we stepped out onto a badly drained lot.
You closed your poem, saying simply,
"The rain turned into glass."

Our IssuesYour heart grew up in a black wooden box
and thought it fabulous,
                    its world of
                    right angles,
                    wood grain,
                    and eternal night.
It hated me when I bored the hole
that let the sun singe its eyes, cook its skin,
when rain collected the dirt on its skin
in a puddle beneath its feet and said:
"look how dirty you are, foul thing."

It hated and
hated and
still hates,
      always crawling
                under any
                    box it finds.

I kicked it
out of its hiding place.
It ran out howling, hating and being
ha

Self dated

I feel most glamorous when I walk
through Target. Look at the sheeple,

now look at me. I've got a
pinstripe blazer. I "do poetry."

I listen to Gwen and Lindsay
but only for the irony. I understand

the Xbox 360 and Lost in Translation
on more levels than you ever do.

And all I'm coming in here to buy
is a marked-down jar of J. Crew.

HeldWe loved like arson:
After-sex after-
glow floats around like smoke, and distorts us,
restless, and tangles around the rafters,
the room imbued: remnants of star-fuelled lust.

We loved like fireworks, comets and fireflies.
We traced paths through constellations for hours,
across freckled skies, tasting the stars
with every kiss. The night went on for miles.

Now a cathartic still whispers, lingers
as the room burns orange in the morning's
luster. The carmine light bares a warning:
To keep my distance, or I'd clash with hers.

I leave her to draw the blinds, casting shad-
ows like prison-cell bars across

Reasons for the Weekend

Because human nature zig-zagged in reverse
from wand-waving mornings to night,
plucking on harp-strings with bitten-down nails
and mud-trudging through kitchen floors,

Because we ignored the blue neon signs
that smiled Enter through the gates,
and monkeyed up the glass walls instead,
with the grace of a bullet-filled car,

Love grew a shadow, and splashed Friday with ink
when he dived from a springboard of leather and wood--
but the spectators gave him nil out of ten,
though Perfection had wrapped him in white.

Because human nature keeps sliding down driveways
without elbow guards or mothering smiles,
because we attempt to feel

Red DressThe store was not busy tonight.
Customers wandered in and out, solitary dancers to the muzak that floated down the aisles. Cady watched them with unfocused eyes - her job didn't take a lot of concentration.
"Good evening, ma'am, do you have Flybuys?" Hands moved automatically, packing groceries into plastic bags with unconscious precision. "That will be $11.90, thank you, have a good night. Good evening, sir, do you have Flybuys?"
Her eyes focussed with a snap - he hadn't handed over a card.
"Sir?"
There weren't any groceries on the counter, either.
"Sir?"
The man's face was unremarkable, the kind of face that had passed her a hundred

Love LetterI'm sailing on a sea of red, kissing black holes and having conversations with coffee cups. Jotting notes with erasers on napkins and killing idealism with blanks. Lovers like us die slowly, drowning in committment. Stubble above a quivering lip lashing across the table aiming for a heart. But what is "dead" anyway? I'm being smothered by a self-replicating system, voice activated. Black nail polish caressing rotten teeth I'll grind this perfume bottle into your throat and leave you choking on pheromones. Kiss the heroin off my lips, lover. I need you like an amputation.

On Parabola

With subatomic subtlety settling on his brow,
he said 'Time's a broken arrow
that points from then to now.'
Once a grain, I entreated him
to stop this flow of sand,
'You're immersed in the irreversible
until, entropical, I land.'

In that glass all is hours,
the busted bucket and the spade,
and each collapsing castle
that our spilt ice cream made.

Since his hands are tide
we can all be shore,
when the sediment slides
there is no more.

Para Gabriel.
I'm picking up words:
—like trash
like flowers or old chewing gum
or empty cans—
they're absolutely everywhere. Hand-me-down ones.

I'm picking up words
—thrown like paper wads
given up like old habits—
everywhere I stop.

My closet's fair stuffed with
failed syntactic adventures,
fortunes of vocabulary
scorned and censored,

A Casual FuneralA plane home,
holding it together like winter in June,
a passed away friend’s dry ground
hard to find as any
from a mile up,
or only six feet away.

No cocktails, no Dramamine,
I’ll sick and seizure just the same;
my manual is made of liquid,
fragile as a prayer
recited in slumber
at the luggage station,
where a conveyer lets go, go, go
until the rollers break;
until the rubber throws up its hands
in split hair strands, and finally says
“no.”

A plain home,
holding it together like a desert palm,
a seed that strayed from comforts
of tropical showers to root
in spider-webbed salt flats
o

Three Girls and a Boy‘Michaela! MICHAELA!’

Mum was calling up the stairs for my little sister. It was ridiculous. A week of this and they still hadn’t learned. I sucked in my breath and yelled, ‘MIKE!’

Moments later she toddled in wearing jeans, a t-shirt of mine and a pair of Dad’s socks. She had to, really, because everything of hers was pink and girly. She went and stood by the highchair and looked expectantly up at Mum. But Mum didn’t move. She was just staring, and so were my dad and Nicola.

That morning, Michaela had had beautiful long brown hair. Now most of it was gone, and what was left looked like it had be

After DarkAfter Dark

Our bodies are like
unpolished diamonds,
shining secretly.

Starvation

I remember grandmother's hazy eyes
that day and how they'd wander off
into the distance, the memory of a crowded train
filled with the homesick and the watery-eyed
blowing smoke through every keyhole,
the constant tightening in her chest
that no one could explain but her:

She didn't know what to say.

She didn't know what to say
and it broke her heart
to think that war
might have stolen
his grasp away before
the words she
never spoke.

And when she passed,
every verb snaked down
the highways of her face
like a wanderer, wondering:

if only she had smiled
or shown more conviction
as he frowned
and waved goodbye,
if only s

SweaterSwaddled in your yellow arms
and yellow chest
I think you must be
cotton crochet,
propose that there is
someone for everyone.
I wear you at night
and make gloves look a pity,
claim you constructed
for the breath of this ink.
I push my arms through you
with open fists
and with only your thread
paint my palms something rainbow.
(But not quite rainbow
as there’s only yellow here.)
I left caution with
some one night stand.
I’ve had my fill of meaningless sex,
and I’m wearing you now
in the daylight.

Browse More Like This

Download File
TXT, 704 bytes more ▶

More from ~altruisticlies

Sun Hurts the EyesTo the flower in the metaphor missed most
who would laugh
sway gently, realizing as always
a misunderstanding in analogies.
To the star who could be asked,
To the moon who would not answer,
Respond with gentle question
with a glow, wink or absent nodding
And let a heart know peace only found
in knowing answers.

Imitation of MemoryFingers
Slam the keys in a loving imitation,
remember last night?
fucking, though with a playful slap you let me know
what was up.
A silly sad rememberance
of how we lost ourselves..

Poetic justice dripping off my nails
Enlivens those who'd forgotten
- purposefully no doubt -
Why a soul exists or how to uphold our tired dying ideals.

And dear, you let me forget
drowning my philosophy inside some
empty laugh.
I could kiss forever
to escape in these mad thoughts.

But feeling their slip and inevitable slide
An erosion of power; youthful ecstacy in health
Will dra

Echo echo - words save me nowsscreaming stuttering; awake asleep awake and living.

Dear sweet beauty who fills my heart with joy;
with pure

essence love drips across pages and you

you who did not know, who did not want to know
hOW i SCREAM FOR you. day, night, once... in the shower as i walk across the lawn that we, you I...

LOVE! mine - return come
back and hence . she turns; i kick, i flail - where is / WHERE ARE words now and drowns(ed) in a flurry OF eee.

motion through, across that we; i begged and you borrowed and we laughed under those picnic tables.

Dear sweet beauty I cry now; for you.

The Snow Dreams Of FallingThis is never going to be fixed,
it\'ll lie - figureatively, metaphorically -
broken, abused, forgotten... yes, ignoring hurts it, I feel
and thats my weakness.

Snow; falling. Drifts across the landscape to clump and cover.
The beauty hit you like a freight
overburdeningly condensed,
eye of the beholder inside a methodology;
escaped from dreams (nightmares) and ready for the big life.

A word trick slows tracks.
Feet skip, alleys off of avenues where wordless revelry;
A poets midnight dream - reflecting, refracting the moment when you asked -
Is life this beautiful?
No, only you.
And blushing, nothing more than blood flooding

Fear In Life - Fear in DreamsHow mad these dreams must seem;
Lucid seeing into another past
attacking, battering and once through it seethes with naked rage.
Do you know that fear who knocks,
And asking politely gains entry to root in our common psyches?
Shared nightmares conform to nothing.
Live to die or wake to dream
Lying beneath shattered ramparts
in utter silence, drawing down night to cover... protect,
holding in a final scream.
Visions become another burden
and we struggle to stay steady
While the sun is slowly coming.

Violence Isnt RealThe boy sat
in the den
with the gun
held to his lips.

He didn't really hold the gun, the gun held him, and this was a dream.
Remembering his past; the boy was now a man and the man held the gun to his lips quietly.

He was thinking of a time, some really whacked out cool day when it was raining.
And forced to sit inside, playing something innocuous and innocent like Tetris.

But the memory lied, he never played Tetris. Even then, in the midst of youth, the man loved death, destruction and mayhem.
So he played Ninja Gaiden, Zelda and Mario.
But now his tastes have changed, for the worse perhaps...
And this thought echoed; over and

View Gallery

Featured in Groups:

Not currently featured in any groups.

Details

Submitted: January 14, 2007
File Size: 704 bytes

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 29
Favourites: 81 [who?]
Views: 1,917 (0 today)
Downloads: 7 (0 today)

[x]

but it also means

by ~altruisticlies, Jan 14, 2007, 12:02:48 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

It's mundane,
the soda aisle
and my wandering, walking up
then down. I frown to distract.
Look intense.
And buy the soda you love
because you might, you
might be here to have it. Though
with I need a drink.
I don't need a drink.
The same strength, faux-weak
ness that I will always have,
and tell myself I learned from you.
I buy it, afraid I won't like the taste,
or maybe I will and it'll be there
for a few days squishing along inside me.
It's just fucking soda, but it also means
I still love you.

but it also meansby ~altruisticlies

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I write more than once a year, but it is all bad. It was RC Cola.

Daily Deviation

Given 2007-03-12

but it also means by ~altruisticlies is a walk flooded with memories of love past, and those feelings that still linger. ( Suggested by `imperfect and Featured by `coshdaddy )

~Vesiculae May 24, 2007

Goddamn it, YES.

~taintedbliss Mar 19, 2007 Hobbyist General Artist

~rebekkah13 Mar 12, 2007

Favorited.
I don't know what else to say.

~ItzaKookie Mar 12, 2007

Simple is good. I like how you used few words, yet I can picture it so clearly in my mind. You are a truly talented writer.

*Chuquita Mar 12, 2007

Very nice work. :3
I luv RC soda but I rarely get a chance to have any.

!xclockwork Mar 12, 2007

Ohh. The last line is beautiful. It completely changes the mood of the entire piece.

~beautifuloblivionxx Mar 12, 2007

i love this. seriously.

~zardorestinpeace Mar 12, 2007

i like it a lot

~hellhoundp2k Mar 12, 2007 Hobbyist Photographer

Ugh, I love it.

~XXXfallenXangelXXX Mar 12, 2007 Writer

Gorgeous, hon. The whole of is 'cut' perfectly and the emotion in it is great. Oddly enough I think along the same lines of this everytime I pick up a can of pepsi. Good memories always follow pepsi's :3 Well, anywho, dahling, awesome work

More from ~altruisticlies

Featured in Groups:

Details

Statistics

but it also means

but it also meansby ~altruisticlies

Daily Deviation

The Journal Portal

Polls

What is your preferred drawing software?

deviantART [dee·vee·un'nt·ART]

Keep in Touch!

Deviousness

Add Media

Style