[x]

runoffchemicals course through my
veins and
seep out
slowly, from underneath my fingernails

from my eyes

from out of my
mouth

geronimo

If We Are To Be GhostsIf we are to be ghosts then let us be good ones

Let us not rattle sorry bones across a chasm
Until one or the other
Looks up
Smiles
And sighs again

If we are to be ghosts then let us be glorious

Haunting incarnations of what could have been
What should have been

Let us cry folly across the battlefields of an ordinary life
Burning lantern bright to light the way home
Screaming sacrifice for the good
Of one
Or the other

If we are to be ghosts then let us be gentle

Let us whisper words half heard on empty nights
Cold comfort in the absence of warmth
Silent strength reflected from the ether

If we are to be ghosts, then let us b

I Want to be ReadI don't want confinement
behind strict white
cut to fit a traveller's pocket,
squeezed in on myself
where you peer around folds
to glimpse a meaning.

I don't want to be
recorded, sorted and optimised,
placed against the others waiting
to be discovered
or left preserved
or maybe lost.

Take me from them premature,
toss me to survive
and see myself reflected
many times a different angle
in prismatic clarity
though from uncertain origins.

Tear me from my bounds to share,
transpose me to your breath.
Prop me up
so that I may see myself live
in thought and speech and action
of the everyday.

Don't let me be another one of them;
I'm not content w

The Taste of YoungSucculents are a freak of nature.
Come here, boy. Let me tell you
about real plants, waving, twining,
root deep, reach-for-the-stars frond tips.
They'll change your skinny life.
Come, boy, down to the hardwoods
wearing their summer green.
Slip yourself through the tangle of underbrush,
damp leaves clotting at your feet,
the mulch of death sucking you into its soothing bed.
Follow the stream to the west end,
where the poplars thin
and the sun begins to spread its skirt
over the fattened ground. Never mind
the thorns; the vines are not confused.
They know exactly how to please you
with their blackish seeds.
Purple your mouth he

The Hole You LeftA bizarre kind of high
is the blue depth of pain,
like the pressure in your lungs
from the clear nitrous mask
when they tear out your teeth
and you laugh through the holes
in a bruised, splintered jaw
for the tickles in your brain
and the bubbles in your blood
like a flute of champagne
at a wedding...

And the gaps left behind
in a moth-eaten soul –
like a sheet on a car
that's been out in the yard
for twenty years or so,
like a veil on a virgin
or a shroud on a corpse,
maybe coming, maybe going,
never staying very long,
like a Hallowe'en ghost –
but I digress...

No, the gaps left behind
in that sandblasted s

DaddyThere was a metal door
between his office and me
and sometimes I'd drive

cars into it. It was a garage,
before. Then, filled with
communion wafers,

hidden in desk drawers
like buried treasure,
sacraments for nosy girls.

When outside he finds
the holy departed, he
calls me for a plastic bag.

He picks up my cat,
wracked with rigor mortis
Daddy gives no eulogy.

But calmly he hands us an offering,
repeating the Psalm,
"Why don't we get some ice cream?"

blood poisoningOnce you've had a baby you don't care about
people contemplating your cervix. It's waiting
for the call. Or the letter because your new phone
doesn't have voicemail. Mostly normal.

It's as good as these things get.

There was a shift change when I had my daughter
so the night nurses leaned on the wall in the back of
the cheerful room and the day nurses touched my arm,
the inside of my knee, everyone laughing and cheering
and yelling PUSH

and then there was you.

And a lot of blood, I could feel it rushing away from
my body, my host of hosts, my living flesh, the
quick stitches, the pressure worse than the contractions,
my long,

The Cello's LamentThey call me brute.
I'm permitted to chant,
   but they won't let me Sing.

They've confused non-agility for
   inflexibility—
        my belly enfolds the earth;
        my throat trills at the stars;
        my eyes embrace the cays
           of the sea.

I am an omnivore,
   yet they will only feed me leaves.

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

ServitudeHeart painted lips poke outwards as though mucous squeezed from an tender, shuddering eyeball. A frog pout and sucked in pink-tone cheeks battle for prominence on her round face. Poisoned yellow eyes swim, darting and floundering, in glaring ovals of cerulean paint. Eyebrows smothered, color gagged in virgin white over the chocolatey grey of her asthmatic skin. Unshined silver hair perches like the dried, immobile sand of a beach day castle on the tip top of her head. Dust hangs in the drapes of lace and chiffon oozing off her wasting body; it latches on like leeches, sticking to her bustle, her moth-eaten pettic

intersectionMy father's hair is gray now.
I'm not sure if it was the elevator
or that realization that caused
the lurch in my belly.

There's a little plastic container
on the bathroom counter, housing
blue, yellow, beige pills, designed
to slow the body's inevitable breakdown.

There are lines around my father's eyes now -
I feel his loneliness echoed in my chest,
in the mirror as I prepare for bed.

A blurry, half-remembered moment,
smudged with time, of sitting on his strong
shoulders, laughing in the sun,
so sure that he would always be able
to hold me up to touch the sky.

We live this half-baked life now,
circling each other, moments

7 November 2012

If you should capture
the whole of my last breath,
I will dwell in you
with contentment,

for a portion of a moment.

If you should share
the whole of your next breath,
I will dwell with you
in them, contented still,

for a portion of a moment.

If all should release
the whole of our breaths,
We will dwell everywhere
with all, more content

for all our forevers.

Palaeothic Art     The mind in the cave
     At Altamira
     Paints rock face red with ochred
     Bison, horse, lion,
     Megafauna come to life.
     Yet in one corner
     The tiny stencilled hand print
     Says 'Kilroy was here'.

caminoi am full of war song sadness.
gathered to you in disguise i
am past you, i who lived beyond
the path, beside your route, your
avenue,
a roar on the moors,dwarfs my lonely
sigh
i am casting
myself upon the edges of those
lanes you touch
weary lover
i am a broken tourist low
with dissent, i can
travel no longer with only my
bones and conscience, even
if i am dismissed by you,
i would cross the hardened steppe,
to come upon the highest land
and trawl the eastern shore
for the sound of you in a moment
yes, how is it that you have thrown
yourself so far away from me,
what was it that compelled
you to become there,
even

10:18 to VictorySticky sour air
Unmentionably close
Friday night metro

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More from °euphoria

Stand Inside the Storm

Tumultous, spinning;
a blue sky waiting to break through the gray.

The clouds rotate around too many thoughts;
blown to hell and back, only to come together
in a deadly dance
that leads to no good.

I am standing in the storm, in the thick of it;
in the fury.

face
turned
up.
arms outstretched.
...needing the heavens to wash me clean.

The river swells, grows.
My breath is choked off by the rain,
even as the wind pushes itself

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Rebound or Turnaround

by °euphoria, Jun 17, 2007, 8:49:41 PM
Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

Four months ago you worked across the room from me
six hours a day
five days a week
and I thought, "I'd like a man like that."

Except I already had one nothing like you,
and integrity trumps all.

Two weeks ago
it all changed.
Suddenly I was by myself in the bigger picture,
and with you in the smaller one--
across a table for yet another friendly lunch,
another forty minutes of secretly feeling sixteen.

I watched your shy eyes smile in that different way
and wondered if it was moving fast
or just moving closer to home.

Comfortable silences
and real laughter combine
to make unfamiliar deja vu.
I remember this,
or at least remember what I wanted once
before I traded it for what I thought I needed.

You think I'll be sick of you soon.
"Anytime now," you laugh as you kiss my forehead
and I close my eyes so my sense of touch
overtakes everything else.

You don't want what everyone wants,
the quick satisfaction of lust dressed as
a soulmate.
You don't want the lust at all, and
that scares me.
The last time I felt like this,
four years took a piece of me and
left a jagged piece of him.

You still sit across a room
six hours a day,
five days a week.
You raise your eyebrows at me
in one of those little faces you make
because you're too bashful sometimes to just smile.

That's all right.
I'm smiling enough for us both.

Rebound or Turnaroundby °euphoria

Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

Is it a rebound if there's no sex? Is it moving too fast if it resembles a merry-go-round in a soft breeze?

Or is it just something comforting to be enjoyed for what it is while it's there?

*xlntwtch Dec 2, 2012 Writer

Your questions are as poignant and real as your poem. It's good to find comfort in faces made across a room.
Smiles can be brief, but real ones (disguised or not) are always a comfort.

One good kiss -even a light one- can comfort anyone.
Congratulations on the DLD.
This piece seems to be a "rebound" that way.

Thank you.

=DailyLitDeviations Dec 1, 2012

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here [link]
Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by

ing the News Article.

`thetaoofchaos Nov 30, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

The facade of lightness in these verses sort of dances over a heavy and excitable fear. Dueling emotions is a sign of depth in a poem, so I say this is a good one.

~lelioimmortalIS Apr 19, 2008

This is a wonderful piece...all your work is...

~neywon Aug 30, 2007

Life is never simple. Love is even more unsimple. But both life and ;love are, so therefore we still need them both. Thing about them is most often we don't choose either fo them, they choose us.

~rcybergeek Jun 18, 2007

You never know until you try...what was that saying about better to have loved...

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