[x]

silkwormthe morning brazen with
work, clambering from our beds
still pulling out of dreamtime
hypnosis; the shiver, backbone rumble
leaden work of unintellectual nature
how do you dream without success?
cream molding coffee groaning
jerking out of stasis
work a lifetime away
every monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday

all my diplomas are unwritten
murmuring lullabies of grand grab bags
sickening amounts of cash
spindles in the head of massive
debt consolidation one fucking big weight
chest exhaling invisible depressive
napalm of a meta-catastrophy
sunken into little corners
of an apartment disorder

little silk threads are fallin

compareeins.

you were

the smoke pouring out of her mouth,
(misty coils of a vague filth,
dancing to noir jazz, fading with each note)
smudged lipstick on the side of of her mouth,
and the little streak that crawled to her tooth
when she bit her lip in a supposed wonder,
and her eyes threw a faint film over themselves,
(like an elegant lady wraps a silk shawl around herself in a light breeze)

zwei.

you had

the light feet of a dancer
whose calluses were hidden under tight shoes,
whose toes would arch like Nut over her children,
(and she or you would spin with the earth, holding her frame as if-
as if earth was something of mass, as if

The Price of Dying“I want to be interred after I die,” Mr. Peters said. He made that clear to his family while he was still lucid, before old age and illness rendered him unintelligible. Seventy wasn’t that old, but he recognized the symptoms that were creeping up on his ailing body – the aches, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness and despair. Despite his daughter’s attempts to assuage his concerns, he sensed his own mortality.
The worst part about dying, Mr. Peters thought, was what happened afterwards. Even since he was a small boy, he had been afraid of fire. He could never forget the scorching heat of the orange flames searing his skin, the dark billowing smoke entering his nostrils. The time that his house burned down, the fire almost took him with it. How ironic then, to escape the fire only to be fed into it after death.
So one day, he sat his son and daughter down after dinner. “I want to be buried whole,” he said, emphasizing the

darwin's revengein the embryo of the city
in their cage
they paint their nails not
knowing

that the sun is watching
from his trap door
in the cloud ceiling where
whales can't swim but go

to dream
and drop down their weight in rain
not measured in pints
but lives overflowed

in lost archipelagos full
of automatic islands
that catch the eyes like needles
when viewed from further away

than the end of the world

tree, fiddler crabIt took days to hollow out the soft parts
of the trunk, dig out the tree-flesh and sap,
polish the raw wood so that when he sat,
there would be no splinters. He carved his name
into the side, like a blessing, a declaration
of good fortune, and stowed his forest inside.

despondenti.

"are you sleepy today?"
"yes."
"but you were sleepy yesterday."
"i know."

ii.

she stirs her pomegranate green-tea until it turns from clear to purple
setting it on her bedside table and climbing back into bed again.
her fingers follow the bluer-than-usual constellation veins on her wrists and down
to the freckle on her forearm and then the scar on the inside of her elbow
crossing the tendon as if it were crux.
and then she remembered that God hasn't been with her lately.

iii.

today is long and sunny but when she steps outside the humidity creaks her bones
and her skin starts to inflame.
she assumes that if getting the mail

RatsWhen I was a little girl, I went to church. Our church was an illegal one: the building was unregistered.

We would sit on the benches made from stolen floorboards and listen to a man dressed in black as he read us tales of angels coming to save righteous men from evil, their swords clean and their trumpets blaring.

The man dressed in black was old. He was sick. His Bible was missing pages.

One day in March, my mother turned to me and said clearly, "Masha, I want you to remember something for when you grow up." Maybe she knew she was dying. "God loves murderers."

I just looked up at her, thumb in my mouth. My mother was still a beautiful w

shhhwe are lurking too close to jesus,
on the empty edge of a lightless stage,
curved nails digging into the skin of our pale palms.

he asks as an afterthought
do you believe in something holy? and i think yes,
i think this is what i believe in.

This Is Why We Can't Be In LoveThe day we first met, she was naked. The empty gallery had turned the A/C off and she said, "it's hot, too hot for clothes," and she stripped down to skin. She was pink and raw from sunburn, shiny plasma peeking out of translucent cracks in her epidermis.

"How many times have you done this today?" I asked her. "Also, hello."

I know I flushed pinker than her, fully clothed in my capris and navy fingerless gloves even though it was already July-- burning for her, because she didn't seem to notice her own skin.

She smiled, asked, "Am I beautiful?"

"I don't even know you."

"Okay," she said.

"I have to go," I said.

"Okay."

* *

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

on watching the night close its eyes on you1. I will not tell you
you are pretty.

How can the halls and angles of such honest humanity
be so pinched between sounds as elementary as these?

2. You need not be two stringent boughs of syllables
nor weave your viney bones abreast these five petty letters,
whirling in the fire of the river
Styx.
Do not attempt to peel yourself layer for layer,
leaving all the disgust behind.
Do not tally your body six &

plumbumshe has a heart of gold
and she, a heart of lead
and she, a heart of uranium.

and they go walking sometimes, the three of them.

gold is confident in her worth,
untarnishable
bought and sold and bought and sold
the virgin whore

and lead behind,
heart heavy in her chest
guilt from bullets
and pride from pipes
and anxiety from irreparable brain damage

and somewhere off to the side treads uranium,
tumors growing,
white skin glowing,
thin frame for a dense core.

What I Know of MadridI dream of Madrid
Because I know nearly nothing about it

Except that the heat is tangible
And sits in a layer beneath the skin
And the sweat of the heat is silk
I imagine it tastes of honey and wine

Except that the churches are tall
And God still has a fist of gold
Just as he has a palm of silver
Shaded in the vaulted arches of another age
The cheekbones of giants holding up the world
There the air smells of musk and incense
That has long since been swept away
By the wings of the doves that dance where the choirs sang.

Except that the nights are long
And the golden lights filter across the water
Like a sunset sleeps on the sil

the hungry look...the hungry look,

the wolves
weaving through
and around
the gully of your throat like wraiths,

we can feel you rusting, lost one;

i know that drainpipes and fenders
begin to crackle after winter wet

and that there’s a touch of snow
in all of us,

but no one,
no one could hold you as tightly as you do,
your whole body, bloodless in this arrest,

and if you will not let your fetters show
i will show you
there’s a place for going, and you haven’t gone there yet;

where quantum particles, once in contact, can retain a connection
even when separated

where you
wander up to a stranger
with your shirt inside-out
and say &lsq

cliffcliff
e.bojnowski

on velvet roads,
I impale a belated dawn
with my incisors and
shiver with perfect leaves-

I have no qualms
with the dark hills
that slope
and stagger into
a bed of scorched fly husks:

where
the thrum of the ground
melds
with the rapids in
my clairvoyant ears.

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Blue ShadesThis is poetry in motion, running (shrieking) away
from the downbeat; skip out on the town.
Paint it red like the cubists do;
paint it blue, yellow, blueyellow,
(blue)
the blues, they got nothin'
on those speak-easy jazz riffs,
signatures melting
into velvet and the trumpet sounds his wake-up call,
smack that beat down like cafeteria potatoes.
Keep the tempo up,
up,
crescendo rallantando diminuendo
off we go.
Off to the races 'cause this sound is
so fresh
says the crowd as they stomp away,
martinis sloshing and swirling
in time.

Smooth.
What's the rush, friend? Just stay here a while;
this town's big enough for the both

Concerning You, Concerning MeI am medicated, too,
just in a different way.

I wanted to know how the world
turned 'round
and 'round, and how I came
to be you (only slightly) and
how you came to be you
(only worse)
and
how we came to be separate,
so separate,
but still fully fused at the spine.

I wanted to know
what it's like
to drown in hard liquor, self-pity,
and come out on the other side
alive
(some may say unfortunately)
and what it's like to feel the burn
of chemical sorrow;
breathe in sweet resignation;
and
somehow snap back to me (to us),
to reality
(that you are still burning,
and it's not what you wanted
at all).

I wanted you, just a

ConquestNewton only synthesized a relationship
old as the bones of the earth
herself,
but who am I to judge?

Throw me in with '80s sitcoms, flapper garb,
and I'd be just the same (here),
sitting
on a concrete slab by the metro,
counting on callused fingers the ways
in which Brahe was wrong
(oh so wrong) and the ways in which I am
wrong (oh so very wrong)
for I know nothing of time's client states.
I am an accident of nature's conquest
over Father Time,
(but aren't we all, though, aren't we all such
pretty fools).

Serendipitous are we.
If not for the perfection-intersection
of seconds with minutes with hours with days
we would

SundayMorning.
Hot Pockets and LA Noir;
sirens mingle with the chimes
of evidence found
and the whirring of soapy dishwater.
Check clock.
The dishes can wait.
The cone of sunlight streaming
through the window blinds
is so perfectly
placed
on my left hip-bone,
and just one more mission can't hurt.

The sun sits high,
in that one spot where the visor
just can't reach.
I fiddle with it until I find myself driving
off the road,
and settle on knock-off Ray Bans instead.
Rihanna is singing that song
about unbrellas,
and I speed up just enough
to break the law.

My nostrils fill
with gasoline and sweet alfalfa.
Gentle nickers a

The Regrets of the GuiltlessRebecca,

I've lost track of all the letters I've written you. They'll probably show up eventually, but I can't wait for eventually, and I just need to write to you, okay? I just need to heave up the mess of Mother's Day cards and Kraft Macaroni coagulating in my lungs, and I just need you to listen, and I just need you to sit down and think about who you were really mad at that day because I know it couldn't have been me because I was just a kid, goddamnit. I was just a stupid fucking kid and it wasn't my fault at all.

Damnit, Rebecca. I just wanted you to come to my fucking concert. Was that too much to ask? I would have been fine if you h

OzymandiasSaturday graveyards inch closer, closer,
closer
to the mandibular mandible mandibosity
of loveforsaken skeletons; the chiseled king
in his rocktattered throne
(all that remains of Ozymandias, choking,
choking
dust particles till they crack
and start to sing)

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair…

It's back to Egyptian cotton
and reminders of a grander time.
The stones, they tell a tale
(they whisper)
of death and failed rebirth (of failed immortality),
and we fall.

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Survival of the Illest

by *Vagabond-Arcadia, Nov 26, 2012, 1:53:57 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

Are those hints of lemon I detect?
Look, I'm just here to get wasted, don't try
to make it more than that.

I'd drink motor oil if I thought
it could get me high; chase it with a shot
of antifreeze
so
you can keep your survival instincts,
locked up
in that pretty velvet box (along with all
those other things
you thought you could convince yourself
you lived for). Instincts are the bare
bones of the impossibilities we wanted
to believe in,
remember,
those times you tried to tell me that
adrenaline was God's way
of saying
that
we were His chosen ones, we were
special, we were free.
I tried to tell you that instincts and God
can't exist side by side, but I was already
so
far gone, cornea constellations
spiraling and you looked at me with such pitiful
disapproval,
I just gave up the fight.

I told you once that my goal in life
is to kill myself slowly, immerse my organs
in gallons
of whiskey and scotch
over a fifty-years-or-so period. "Just think,"
I said,
"it will be like an ocean, waves of grain
alcohol lapping gently at the lining
of my large intestine, my liver, my useless
spleen."
You looked up from your magazine for a moment,
glasses slipping down your nose.
Once you find yourself an ocean of whiskey,
you let me know.
We could make a fortune off that.
I remember turning
away to wince in private. You've never really listened
to me, just the prerecorded tapes
of me
you have on repeat in your head.

I told you once that if I had any sort of survival
instinct, I'd have run away long ago.
You didn't say anything
that time, just stopped your skimming and smiled,
sadly,
and I knew that I had found it, the secret
to staying young
forever. In that moment,
I almost ran, could almost hear the hills
calling to me and God didn't have anything
to do with it,
it was just power, pure power of nature
and
I could have been glorious. You would have let
me go; that's what's so
infuriating, that's what gets me every time.
You would have let me go, but the wine cabinet
wouldn't,
it was calling, too. Where is the voice of God now,
child? you asked, already knowing the answer. You asked,
already knowing
the price.

I don't give a shit about God, or survival,
or any other instinct
thrown at me
from these pamphlets or shrinks.
All I know is
this, my life here, with you. My life here, unsafely
uncontrolled.

You refill my glass and adjust the cross
around my neck. I touch it and it feels heavier now,
leaden
like where the spaces in my lungs
used to be. The liquid is thick, black,
unshifting. "Is it safe?" I ask, already knowing
the answer. I ask,
already knowing the price.
Hints of lemon, just like I said, dear. But you don't care
about that, now, do you?
That didn't answer my question, but it answered it
well enough. "Okay. This one last time, then."
It touches my lips, warm
with a trace of rubber tire spice. You look at me, smiling
sadly.
Of course. One last time. Just this one
last time.

Cornea constellations spiraling, I become
a new rebirth. Far away, a different voice whispers,
Can't you feel it now,
you crazy fool, can't you feel
your instincts
buzzing at your fingertips? Smiling cracks my face.
I put a finger to my lips, shushing
as I laugh, as I
gasp, as my heart beats a million times in a single
second
spiraling. Shush. It pleases me to spin
in silence here.

Shush.

Survival of the Illestby *Vagabond-Arcadia

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

Inspired by Michaela.

I imagine I'll go back and fix this next week sometime. It was sort of exhausting to write.

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-12-29

Survival of the Illest by *Vagabond-Arcadia ( Suggested by `tiganusi and Featured by ^neurotype )

The Artist has requested Critique on this Artwork

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~WingDiamond Jan 23, 2013

Get yer licence to Ill!

!travelgirlxx Jan 5, 2013

Whoa. This is really brilliant. Lovely, fine work.

*Vagabond-Arcadia Jan 6, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you <3

~AngelOfMassacre Dec 30, 2012

This is beautiful. Really depressing, but absolutely beautiful. It's so well written... I'm so jealous of your skill. ;~;

~AngelOfMassacre Dec 30, 2012

This is beautiful. Really depressing, but absolutely beautiful. It's so well written... I'm so jealous of your skill. ;~;

*Vagabond-Arcadia Dec 30, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you <3

~Musakcritiq Dec 29, 2012 Student General Artist

This is the single most stunning piece of poetry I've ever read. Such a refreshing break from the "OMG u broke my hart i cry blud" crap I keep finding. Wonderful job.

*Vagabond-Arcadia Dec 30, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

You honor me with your words. Thank you so much <3

~PippinFox Dec 29, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Wow

that was phenomenal

*Vagabond-Arcadia Dec 30, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you

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Survival of the Illest

Survival of the Illestby *Vagabond-Arcadia

Daily Deviation

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