[x]

Two dreamers on a bargei.

encrusted with salt
and hair stiff with
the sea, we searched
for endless horizons
but failed to find even ourselves.

night chanced upon us pressed
against opposite ends of the
deck, obstinately shivering
as if the damp was enough
of a substitute.

ii.

the sunset glows blue
up north, breaking into
a million pieces like snowflakes,
and if your silhouette spells
anything, it is that lines are not
forever, nor light, which soaks
into the edges of the earth.

we are sitting balanced against
stone oars in see-saw motion,
eyes clutching like shoulders against
arms, and hands folded against
our backs, balled into fists.

iii

AcidI stopped writing when I turned 20
degrees Celsius, and the acid
evaporated from my veins.

No more stormy seas or dreams that
I can feel the erythrocytes crashing
against my eyelids and fists—now

My heartbeat is like the hollow
canals of Venice drowning in air,
drains overflowing into drains,

Like abandoned gardens hanging
between bricked up dreams, built
six stories higher than I would ever need.

The Witch's WoodThese woods hold darkly,
lost and asleep, the witch's heart.
These brambles walk slowly inertial,
like honey running through her veins.

The wind chilled spare rows run,
anhydrous and crawling with
an arrow filth and rhyme
deceased upon her pedestal, misplaced,

this time.

We walk through the quicksilver sands
and enter the desert, her deserted domain,
where the labyrinth runs for miles
beneath our echoes, and slipping to

A serenaded vertigo on through,
her mind, her heart, her mirrored eyes
trapping the soul into their gaze,
and lets us fall through, lets us hang on to

these cracks. drip.

a liquid identity, bramble struck and

RaskolOur son and his wife sleep in separate rooms. They are painted the same colour and bear identical scars but are separated by a hall so long that by the time I walk from one end to the other, I am too tired to compare and know what is different.

That is the convenience of an oversized house, I think, that we did not have in our small one-room apartment—they never have to see each other’s faces. You remember the nights when we were given no choice but to lie next to each other, against the hard corner, when we were seething in each other’s anger. How wonderful it might have been to stare at a blank wall, letting the heat of our

Mangosrunning barefoot down
narrow paths sodden by
a deafening downpour
through mangroves and palms,

in this land where
no corn grows, and
sugar cane rows blind the view
from untilled slopes of
low-slung emerald hills-

I don't recognize the rain,
it smells of volcanic ash
and sea salt burning

as I search for the stain
hopelessly trodden,
changing its course

if only I could find a tree
that bears familiar fruit,
and see colors or hear sounds
that point me to you

but I'm a stranger-
this path wends to the shore
where the island comes full circle

offering dead things in the sand
and no escape
because you're not here...

I

FirebrandsAt the park on this balmy evening, I lay supine upon the grass while all around me, picnickers loiter long after the sun has set on the word that a meteor shower will put on a show tonight. I don’t know what to expect – I’ve never seen one. And then... it begins to happen, slowly. A wisp that comes and goes. If you blink you miss it. And then another appears... and another. Each time the light fades suddenly. As the event continues, the entire sky starts to fill with so much light from all the space dust burning up in the atmosphere, even my skin and the ground and the trunks of trees reflect the thousands

A Ghost For Every SeasonIn the spring, amid the tall grass, the swamp grass
on the outskirts of a wood
he takes her paint smeared fingers,
sepia, crimson, vermilion branding
the ivory white palette of her hands,
and presses each one to the curl of his mouth;
sucking and biting and longing for sustenance from the
ochre, copper, violet streaking her blue-veined skin.

She smiles with eyes that match the sky
and gives him all her strength.

In the summer, under the green leafed canopy
she laces flowers in her hair,
dances across the umber of the
forest floor, braids and ribbons streaming.
He watches her with folded arms, flicking ash idly,
until

Sackcloth and Ashes

She wears sackcloth like
ashes and kneels
by the river, lets her stones
slip one by one into the rippled sky.
Her hair dark and indistinguished
against night branches,
her fingers become twigs.
There is a shadow
she keeps under her tongue.
And only the dawn-sparrow
knows.

your songi plunk untuned keys aimlessly
when empty words misspell themselves
brittle fingers on cracked black-and-white,
regurgitate cacophonic fears in broken eardrums

the drums i used to match my heart to
are now beating a new and unfamiliar tune
with blatantly manufactured metaphors,
dry and flat, singing in off-key crescendos.
doubt and confusion cracking
through their oft-trite syllables

i'm trying to learn your song.

The RainbowIt rained on a pale Friday morning;
The streets were a sore sight to see.
Bright neon signs flared a flood warning -
No one saw the rainbow but me.

A woman sat fixing her makeup
As I gazed into the white sky;
A man sipped black coffee to wake up -
No one saw the rainbow but I.

It shone through the gray cloudy heavens,
A sword in dank misery’s mist,
An arrow to pierce the sky open,
A lance the dark could not resist.

But then, as the sun broke, it faded
And quickly left nothing in sight.
The people, all stoic and jaded,
Had missed the rain’s banner so bright.

My heart glowed with warmth through the downpour
Though pas

Well-worn WingsWell-worn wings are what we wear
To navigate skies of despair;
Breaking ties from what was sworn
Our fledglings fall, their souls reborn.

Well-worn wings are what we need;
Shed and frayed in times of greed.
Like sails upon forgotten masts;
They are reminders of our pasts.

Well-worn wings will travel far –
Let’s soar away, land on a star!
Let’s fight the urge to speed away;
Let’s save our flight for another day.

From well-worn wings we’ll take our scars.
Gifts tied with strings, but not labeled as ours.

AlwaysI always knew.

Ever since that day in the first grade when you told me I had pretty hair, I knew. Your eyes sparkled like emeralds in the sunlight, and your own hair seemed more like gold than blonde to me. We became best friends from that day on, wrestling in the sandbox and holding hands in line and dancing to music no one could hear. Your parents and my parents knew each other like brothers and sisters at the end.

When I learned what the word ‘love’ meant, I knew it described us. Teacher only said, “Love is when two people spend all their time together, and want to live together. Love is when people are like best fri

To FlyTo long for wings man is not meant,
Nor under flight's sweet weight be bent;
To seek the rush among the winds
Until his breath be wholly spent;

To drink the clouds’ light-nectared sighs
Nor find his soul among the skies;
To sing with joy lest he should faint,
Or burn and thirst to upward rise.

And yet the zephyr calls to me
To grace the firmament and be
At home in blessed flight at last,
Unhindered hence by gravity –

To feel the swell of wing-blades’ ache
For all above, until I shake
From matchless bliss, unrivaled thrill,
And whispered prayers to never wake.

To long for wings man is not meant,
Nor hope until h

Fall and RiseRunning stunted stum'bling soldiers
soldier on with all their cunning
gunning down without a sense
of wickedness or innocence

face to plaster blaster walls
wallowing in their disgrace
trace amounts of small remorse
flicker through the brutal force

smoking ruins tune in laughter
laughable to think their joking
weeping windows drip with flame
o'er reckless revolutions game

a civil vigil's what remains
remnants of a darker day
gray ashes and smould'ring sky
under which their mem'ries lie...

LethargyHalf-asleep
Partially dreaming

Wondering
How I can
Forget to eat
For three days straight
Just because
You spoke to me

Drug induced
Sleep reduced
Nauseas
Infatuation
With
Candy-coated narcotics
That dance like rainbows
Over
Things I refuse to want

Refuse to
Throw the alarm clock
Out the window

Let this sleep last
A few more days
Reveries through
Blasphemy
In the shape of

Sunrays

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Harvest MoonYou remind me of the harvest moon
tugging the shore from beneath my feet, of
rowing out to sea in winter with empty nets
till spring, of catching every breath
in crystals on the same forgotten docks,

Where gravity knots my tendons into rope,
my teeth into chalk and ash, and my eyes
into searchlights scanning the horizon
for the first ship that leads to you.

Knotted SkyDreaming of knotted sky in the cold
autumn night, I sit fences, cathartic as
the morning light that stirs the marigold
I call home when winter climbs aboard.

These fields are no substitute for your
apartment floor, clamouring breathless against
the morning sun, the city's eyes, the last
hurrah before the train home, or elsewhere.

UnderstoryThis crosswalk is the record store's
canopy, as surely as that patio is under-
story, home to the horny simians of
civilization (pause for ironic effect).

Today, their ears curve around another
transient mating call: observe elbows and
knees and lips locking into a new beast,
as simple as biology and complex as song.

I watch from the crosswalk, and trip.

The Snow GlobeAt the boarding gate, the man appears almost lost in a crowd of passengers, periodically bumping into a shawled grandmother or a businessman on the phone and apologizing profusely. As the queue thins, he reaches into a tattered jacket pocket, pulls out a torn ticket, and begins folding and unfolding it along a familiar crease.

The last two passengers cross the gate, and he stops to stare at the flight attendant, all red nail polish and shine and starch like a wax statue carved out of the sky.

"Your ticket?" But her voice is nervous, almost girlish. It makes him feel more at ease among the strangers pressing in.

Still, he scrambles to give

Songs for my father"Don't close that car door,"
she says, but he is islands away
and cannot see the shore, does not
know that walking means running means

The world is never the same when you return.

He forgets porch lights sometimes burn
out, and whether they are hot or cold depends
on when the world decides to turn
on your side of the sun, on summer heat, on

When you come back fighting, or if at all.

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Your Mother's Heartbeat

by ~poshlost, Jan 8, 2009, 9:24:37 PM
Contests / 2008 / Sensing Winter

Wistfully taunting, it echoes your pulse—like so,
tinnitus stretches walls solid as drums, and you
bury your laughter with lilies on frost-bit toes.

Drawing her likeness on old mugs does naught in lieu
of glass jars holding it pressed on your blue cheek and
would that these ribbons and paper could hold it too.

So I am hanging her scarves like a Neverland
circling the tree, faint with eggnog and cinnamon,
hoping warm carols remember her clapping hands.

Scattering sugar on counters, I tap the thump-
thump of her twinkling eyes, and inside it is
snowing, bright white like her hair in a make-shift bun.

The box is empty but, love, lift it, hugging this
warmth to your heart like a conch pulls her ocean near,
beating in rhythm with every smile. Do not miss

Her voice against your closed eyelids stealing your tears—
Holiday memories always weather the years.

18 Comments

Your Mother's Heartbeatby ~poshlost

Contests / 2008 / Sensing Winter

OH NOES. SHE DEAD.

Breakdown</u>:

terza rima - reference to the three wise kings, and because I am too lazy to seek out a more challenging form

alexandrine - twelve days of Christmas, and because someone challenged me to do it

dactylic tetrameter - just kind of happened (actually, it was pretty obnoxious but decidedly less so than iambs)

In defense of my somewhat bland rhymes: pyrrhics are hard to rhyme, yo.

love 1 1

~~joy 0 0~~

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~Elmara Dec 16, 2010 Student Writer

that is EPIC

each line, each stanza brims with such evocative detail. God, I would happily part with a limb to be able to write in so structured yet fluid a manner. Kudos!

~poshlost Dec 16, 2010 Hobbyist Writer

Thanks so much for reading. How have you been?

~Elmara Dec 16, 2010 Student Writer

You're welcome! I've been alright, been away from dA for a while because of exams. I hope you're well

~poshlost Dec 16, 2010 Hobbyist Writer

I am. How did the exams go?

~Elmara Dec 16, 2010 Student Writer

Can't say, man, i'm just praying very, very fervently that i'll pass everything

~poshlost Dec 16, 2010 Hobbyist Writer

Good luck. You're in medical school right?

~Elmara Dec 18, 2010 Student Writer

thank you! yup

~wonderfulrachel Jan 28, 2009

This is my favourite piece of yours. And for good reason too - like the first line, this piece is "wistfully taunting", with enough abstract imagery to entice, but not so much that the meaning is befuddled and frustrating.

phrases like "lillies on frost-bit toes" and comparitives like "like a conch pulls her ocean near" pull at the heartstrings, as does the following line:

"Her voice against your closed eyelids stealing your tears"

That line is possibly my favourite - the image is absolutely heart-warming, gorgeous, and sentimental without being contrived. That said, the first stanza is my favourite stanza, because of the naught in lieu/hold it too rhyme, which is stellar.

oh, screw it.
I love it all.

~poshlost Jan 28, 2009 Hobbyist Writer

Haha, thank you. You are amazing.

J.

~PerpetuallyLuminous Jan 27, 2009

That was quite lovely. Where did you come with the idea for this? It has the feel of a piece that came from someone with a great wisdom

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