[x]

flowerstoo long
i’ve held watch
over slovens in my chrysalis
rooting in my diaries,
in toilets
and in traffic.

i dream of razing their genitals.
if not for this ugly sycophant . . .

no,

if not for limestone
swept
into mud
how would i know
what instincts have been rewarded?

if i hadn’t made things
sacrosanct,
tree lines as noble architects,
a face, some godly panic

then i’d just see a headless corpse
some cat had torn
from shallow burrows
instead of this:

an Algernon

as still
and as holy
as
the flowers
that you left.

syracuseListen to the audio version for the full effect, pretty please.
cloudshot sky like an oil painting and i am watching the
seagulls. i--
darling, i will swim for you
and swallow every whitecap.
i will pluck myself a coat of pelican wings,
sew them up with salt and spray--
become icarus for you.
you are calling me across the waves, love--
but you pull against the ache
in my bones, the hollow--
the clawing out for unseen sunsets and unturned tides.
i hear you, love
give me time.
i will always listen.

RiftTrains collide through a fist of hot snow. Her eyes
and mine. Soot against the thick storm skin,
flashing metal and scraping bones, the earth
screams something primal. She looks away
and through the peppered sparks of fire
a silence prevails.
Quiet lips say too much. I follow spotted horses
to the meadow, the waterfall is broken, and
I see her mouth make fog. Lumps of coal
are stacked in the distance, making a hut.
I do not enter, the windows are tied to the sky
with knots.
9am there was a rift in the evermore. They said
the sky belted open, stars wept plasma coffins,
and out of the dew she put one foot,
then the other. In her left hand there was a blue fig.
I could not see the other. The arctic sun set
and a desert sun rose.
Her hair was put back with paperclips, glimmering
in the cold light. I fell into a vat, watching
a thousand four hornets unnest from behind her. I felt high,
but sank deeper until I touched bottom. She pulled at me

Cochineal and Beetle WingsI don’t love you
anymore.

I was going to lead up to this. Maybe claim
there was something caught in my throat
about beetle wings, cochineal – you know,
they make that stuff out of flight. Lipstick, I mean.
I mean the truth is

I can only smile like an inferno because
something else isn’t going to be flying away.
And I was going to say I’m sorry but I’m not.

I was going to lie to you like you needed me to,
but pray tell me how to grace through three weeks I hoped
for some kind(ness) of hurricane, so we could recalculate
in the aftermath, and nobody would blame me then for judging
that we came up empty.

Bad Mouth Habitsi.
I carry God around in my lip like he's chew,
spitting his name out in poems like potholes,
I make everything a simile
for the hold he has on me.

ii.
When it comes to men,
I've the appetite of a Roman housewife,
I take, I taste, I tear,
swallow and then then toss up
for the next course.

iii.
I don't kiss anyone so dearly
as the glass pipe bridged between lips
and fist.

iv.
Jameson, you're an Irish Lad,
a young ram of bucking proportions,
I let you rattle around my mouth
til I herd you in
and down.

v.
Sometimes there's nothing so sweet
as the jack-hammer of angry words
or the steel trap clamp of silence.

I exercise m

Lucidityi.
I am a natural lucid dreamer. When I was sick,
I dreamed away whole strings of days that burst
with causal power, as if the sun, shining past
my silted eyelids, had spilled a home behind them.

You watched how well I played that girl:
high heels, sparkle eyes,
sitting on his work desk with my lips curled,
legs crossed, booze at needle length
beneath my skin expelling floral tones,
pectoral blushes.

I pretended to fall asleep on top of his blankets
so I had access to my concave nest,
a place without his hands on my stomach, no,
and without his mouth on my shoulder.
Now I am not even here
and he doesn't know, not at all.

ii.
My res

Southern Belle - 4Ray of scattered light -
a flicker pearls
crests momentarily
hovers above the water
escaping - a flash of orange -
lands back into the mirage

page onethe waves are calling.
watch--stormbound, the breakers
arch up to clutch at the unyielding stones
with a roar and a hiss and a sigh;
gather themselves back and
reach--and wait
and wait.
the sea is patient, and your limestone fear
will erode.
you will be
hollow.
a vessel.
you will be beautiful.
the waves are calling.
listen.

wakingi split myself in two in the face of my reflection:
sin, love. distressed and castrated in the wake
of your ministrations, your lips:
you handled me
so, so disjointedly. rickety, brittle air breaking
in my lungs.

no.

get up! stomp this from my bones, forest
creature. breaking plates.
sprigs of new life
springing up between the spaces of shattered glass.
wild flowers will bloom here after this
apocalyptic tragedy.

i never intended to remain whole, my dear.
i will wake.

i will let this river carry me to the end of myself;
quiet and still in the palms of her current. she will
break me on the rocks
and i will seep into the pores of the earth,

fallsnowi remember when it began, a snowflake trapped in eyelashes
waking up to find my feet cold and buried white
the window menacing as crystal fangs grow

it fell faster, stalking, none the wiser but me
as the supermarkets grew slippery
and offices turned to caves made of ice
even under the sun, an avalanche

gushing like a river, the frozen powder covered all
children and birds became paper puppets in play
how odd to see the snowpeople alive

i walked, just a ghost

as it fell, and fell

but nobody saw

and nobody cared

it's not that bad
just me and the snow

and the blizzard finally blinded me
only winter left in my mind

Dry Swallow--C.You have a nasty habit
of touching me where it bleeds,
ragged fingertips catching
rubbed-raw skin.

There's no scab there;
that wound has never healed,
festering yellow and oozing pus--

and each morning breaks
another plastic seal,
white bottles and tiny blue pills
leaving the bitter taste of almost-tragic
on my tongue.

Swallow dry;
that stuck feeling passes,
replaced by lethargy
and the diluted memories
of a time you made me happy,
when each morning broke
under a red sunset, the sheets
strewn around us.

It's fantasy now,
but I still feel the weight of you
during quiet moments.

VickiVicki, the girl with the long nose,
I called her Cyrano as we smoked
cloves. She said to me,
in her new-age neo-pagan tarot-card-reading
way, "You will live a long time,
fearing death in every minute."
Then that little minx kissed me,
on the nose at that,
and whispered,
"Clever, and better, and smarter
isn't why I like you. Those things
drive me away."

One night, we were both drunk
down at the Princess Theater.
Our friends decided we'd beaten
around the hedges long enough
and they pushed us up
onto the roof. The gutters up there
were full of used condoms, old stockings.
I'd heard stories, we both knew
what was expected.

We chose to sit a

smoking meditationlight up
the nicotine hearth.
hold it like a prayer.
balanced between fingers, is
suicide burning
warms you deep,
the smoke jacket
covering once pink,
naïve lungs
from which now comes a cough
clawing up a blistered throat;
a deafening interruption
bursting black
inside a star numb night;
in a life wholly uneventful,
the tracing wisps captivate -
these soft, pale reminders
of a soul slipping out.

far southhere,
death comes with a swoop and a howl,
and glaciers pour their life blood
to the unfeeling ocean.
here, the space is deep
a deadfall--
the sea flat black
and frost-choked,
gasping in hisses and rattlebreaths.
swollen tides will
roam.
the breakers are hungry.

the complete loneliness of beingGreen, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
– F. G. Lorca, Romance Sonambulo, translated from Spanish by William Logan.

Do not teach me poise.
Learn how to fit your mouth
around my name, around
my geography, my gods, as I do
around yours, effortlessly,
woman, be a language marine.
If you become a mermaid or more,
still, do not teach me poise.
Already, you’re a skeleton willow lean,
and green, how I want you green.

In India, there is a city of gates
but not many know it by that name.
People are gates opening towards a sea,
yet you won't throw w

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More from `tiganusi

Infidelities (A Translation)You were speaking of outdated things,
Of drowsy rose gardens
That spend their nights unsettled by
The echoed suffering of well-dressed musicians;
And of the little chapels where princesses
Linger, praying in silence;
And of the rustic four-post beds
That all the halfwits at the armory still use.
Oh! Your words spoke to my heart—
My heart both bored and hungry at once—and
Have awakened the sleeping:
All the lovers before you.
And they each stand up now,
In front of me in the stagnant evening,
Rising halfway out of the dream
Like a white body rises out of a black river.
Oh! The invisible rivals
That you yourself are calling forth:
These visions are the victors, unsettling
Our paled love like a river-dredging.
Between your breasts—merciful like nuns—
You try in vain to shield my brow.
You know my cruel desires
Would run me toward some distant lover,
And I know it well. Your amethyst eyes
Become full of honeyed blame
And I am saddened to death
To have no love left f

Maybe Anne Sexton Was On To Somethingconsider your car's steering wheel in your grip
as you turn the key in the ignition and the smoke
starts to sputter—you can't smell it, yet, only ink
under your fingernails and that half-full glass
of vodka whose twin burned a half-lit smile
on the face in your fogged rearview mirror.
consider the first time you'll look in a mirror
and see old eyes—the world's babyfingered grip
around them pinching crows'-feet when you smile
your forced smile—through your exhaled smoke.
like a death-echo of youth you'll grab a glass
of mediocre vodka and stain your lips with ink
from a thirty-cent black pen—the same cheap ink
you used for your wedding invitations. the mirror
will be your muse—that villainous square pane of glass
that confronts you with your reality: you've lost your grip
on your metabolism and all those cigarettes you smoked
made your mouth look like rotting corn when you smile.
you'll close your mouth, and at least then the sadist smile
will abandon you.

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Submitted: December 16, 2012
Submitted with: Sta.sh Writer

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Manifesto (Villanelle)

by `tiganusi, Dec 16, 2012, 11:04:41 AM
Literature / Poetry / Sociopolitical / Traditional Fixed Forms

the uniforms of our revolutionwill be our naked skin and we
will embrace our execution

we will not need absolution
we will put onto and into our trainees
the uniforms of our revolution

and after our skin-on-skin elocutions
in their beds of contraceptive debris
they too will embrace our execution

they will be envoys of a new evolution
initiating the uninitiated at afternoon teas
in the uniforms of our revolution

and in their post-fuck diminution
the messages they erect on church marquees
will embrace their own execution

then with our tongues bequeathed to the prosecution
and our sweetbreads bequeathed to the mediterranean sea
in the uniforms of our revolution
we will embrace our execution

Manifesto (Villanelle)by `tiganusi

Literature / Poetry / Sociopolitical / Traditional Fixed Forms

Re-reading some lines from Grey Gardens for inspiration, I stopped a few times at "This is the revolutionary costume—I'd never wear this in East Hampton". I'd been thinking about a few things lately but heavily so the fucked-up-ness of the world and, in light of the Connecticut school-killings, suicidalness to the point of not caring who you take down with you. As a reply to the line in Grey Gardens I wrote "My revolutionary costume is my skin—I'm not afraid". I took a break, read some Violeta Parra, spent an hour laying in bed half-crying thinking about Anne Sexton's final moments, and came to this.

"Who is it that took away my voice?
The black wound he left in my throat
Can't even cry."

- Bella Akhmadulina, from "Silence"

In spite of the fact that this is a bit literarily heavier and less trolling-the-community than the stuff I usually post here, I thought I'd share it briefly while I think about finding it a forever-home.

Fuck society, and every single component that makes it. Some days I legitimately hate the average citizen of the world.

`FuzzyHoser Dec 19, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I'm normally not big on fixed form poetry, but this is fantastic!

*TheDorsai Dec 19, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I've had this up on my computer for days. I can't resist coming back to read it every now and then. This is so...mesmerizing.

`tiganusi Dec 19, 2012 Professional

Thanks.

=egotisticalasshole Dec 16, 2012

Weird. This doesn't have the rocking rhythm I usually associate with this form.
You take a lot from Grey Gardens, don't you?

`tiganusi Dec 16, 2012 Professional

I wanted it to feel a bit more... walk-like, I guess.

Yeah Grey Gardens is a fucking gold mine lately.

=egotisticalasshole Dec 16, 2012

More plz.

~Hanachi-Shitsukki Dec 16, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I love this, it flows very well and the rythm is enchanting. I wish I could give you better constructive criticism, but I'm too busy singing your poem out loud!

*glossolalias Dec 16, 2012

mmm, well done.

^neurotype Dec 16, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Damn, it did turn out well. Go write more fixed forms.

Can't decide if the last two lines should be a scream or a whisper.

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Manifesto (Villanelle)

Manifesto (Villanelle)by `tiganusi

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