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Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
One of the few things I know about your father is that he hates me or
at the very least he's ****** sure I'm the one who, you know, pushed
the situation that we were living into the mess and the chaos and the
scream of sirens and phone call cries and late night drives through
perilous raining passes and hospital sheets and threats and breakdowns
that something once like love finally warped and quickly became.

There's no real problem with any of that except for the fact that now
it's so many months on and we both know we're still living the lives
we were, only now extended and separate and lonely but more close
than ever, over the North/South distance we created to say, Hey, we
don't ******* need each other and what we left we're leaving because
the reality of the ecstatic sort of good times fever dreams we dreamed
was that we woke up every morning feeling worse than the last,
running our engine and spinning our hamster wheels and talking
talking talking about things we'd do, but never paced ourselves enough
to spill our brains and hearts and our souls out of our bodies through
our capable hands, instead filling the gaps with more gaps and chasms.

Too much green grass to adequately water the land that matters means
that over the great expanse of minutes and hours and days we fall
behind without the energy or the means to cover enough ground and
give water to the buds we love, ******* buds into our lungs more
often than in the beginning to hide the fact that we bought a farm
from the start and never, ever, ever, once ******* thought to buy
a riding lawn mower or the seeds to sow in hopes of furtive futures.

I've been spending so much time falling apart, over and over in
what I thought might be the eerie and pitifully pathetic beginning
of an endless staircase that I tripped down the moment I told you
I'd never talk to you again and cut you out of my life in a fit of
anger and blind eyed tunnel vision that strikes, snap, lightning
fast from the terrible, less kissed and uncontrolled side of intro
version, intuition, feeling and perception, only to find myself here
in a melting meadow of ice and slush and feeble gray sunlight
through slate clouds as if we've seen the dead of Winter and stand
dumbfounded in boots and wet wool socks in the aftermath with
our mouths gaping in the face of the fact that we're painfully
breathing ice cold breaths that are slowly growing warmer, like
two lost kids buried years in sand to our necks, thinking the
possibility of dual meaning coin in our coffers like a dream.

We talked.

We have things to say, maybe, but we don't say them, because
in the light of a quiet, hopeful dawn we both learn that your
father's dying at the exact same time while we play with fire,
Catholic youth in public high school sneaking into each others'
bedrooms without condoms to do the things we want to do
without thinking about the consequences that fate's lining up
and laughing as every punishment falls into place like the last
time we ******* tried just crumbled into God ****** pieces
of glass from our oft mocked frame and bones of stone and
blew away in the Summer's wind, but we expect the Winter
is as over as the seasons are attempting to tell us.

We know that all pass.

Dad pass well, please.
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
Blades of grass collecting crusted mud beside the train tracks
of the downtown transit
remind me fast of how much traffic we passed on foot paths
through both the Summer and Fall

If you don't recall, it was a lot of traffic.
Better call sometime because if you don't then I won't.

Loose change falling from a palm into a used cup becomes
your swinging wallet chain
regardless the fact there's barely a reason for rerun
I find similarity

Enough to see the lies of your lines
between those of some clean, plate glass windows
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
Worry is the ****** star
in descent falling West
holding woe deep within
as it burns

A searing tail opening wounds
closed in skies ever in night
inking bleeding black into
what follows

Stitches made of wishes
unfulfilled and barring
future pleasure melt
with my mental state
each dawn I climb
the ivy covered ledge
mossy marble slick to step
in ****** silence where
the gulls laugh at me
in the light.
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
Where did you read what you heard?
To be truth or may be slow lowered
fringe word from a deceitful and purple sinking sun?
Mirroring my hurt just as a dream would
turn nightmare. Will you please join with me?
For you, black, far and fleeting figure
would I break my legs to injure
my flesh all to have you back but I've become the air

in my push to remain Earthly me.

Ghosts won't curse time
as you soon won't find
substance clearly soul.
I embrace this
clear fated descent
as my hands that I've tied
close while evolution unfolds.
Talarah Shepherd Mar 2014
Dressed in the best clothes I could find at the thrift store
long lost and rediscovered in this bottomless closet
dressed in a dark red dress, best dressed of anyone
sitting and waiting for kingdom come

this is a small room to do it in

cramped up muscles and tendons embracing bone
squeeze tight round my marrows while my warmth
yeah all my outsides spill freely, unwrapped alone
sitting and waiting for kingdom come

star stuff imparted with potential unknown
realized through wisdom realized through time
who gave me this bus to drive home?
manual ticket tear before the automation
who gave control to the ticket holder?
it wasn't you it wasn't you it wasn't you or you
***** all others waiting for stops at stops
capacity for passengers tops out at one

sitting and waiting for kingdom come

concentrating with eyes closed and cheek pressed to carpet
trying to return to Earth through wood and stone
and all the bones hidden below

lights out but incense

sitting and waiting for kingdom come

what a small room to do it in
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
Window open to night and pine trees
Breathing near feet and chest
Heat from fed tongues rises to North breeze
Cooling what tension left
Of our last passing daylight still clings
To dream with no regret
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
Well maybe you should ask what's in a name
But before you ask you throw that finger
Like you know
You don't
You weren't here one year ago
Unlike your accusations
That isn't speculation
It's a fact
A fun fact

Scissors cut
Photographs snap
Speech concerns
Hair regrows
Pictures burn                  (but not on the internet)
Though words hurt
I will learn                       (but I'll as soon forget)

A pop star in crisis?
You're right
Money can't buy attention
Money can buy attention
And I'm broke

(This is the stupidest thing I've ever put on paper)
(Congratulations!)
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
Exchange between four eyes, four lips
two chest cavities containing two hearts and double that in lungs
apologies between bits of conversation
not taking the easy path in unsheathing the easy sorry in hand
trading glances spilling out love notes
like our lids protected emotional human oceans, open to the table

but never saying,                                "I want you back"

Sidestepping every memory left black
and as tires on the expanse with our knees tucked into our necks
excellent at simply skipping bad scenes
while we avoid recalling pieces of happy recall for which we met
our big successful forward movement
continues healthy momentum's slipstream of the highs we forget

We forget together how it was to vibrate
We forget together exactly how to speak

never saying                                       "I want you back"

Pound pulse-like music                               where                                 Logic never touched page
Revelation coil twisting                               where                                 Sleep broke with the day
                                                             ­            where
                   Human being water, spooned, was the shape and sum of its container
                   Still, silent, covered lightly under bed sheets in euphoria's sad recovery
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
Recently, things exploded
Violent threats and screams
Aimed in a general direction
No one of us could have predicted
Eruption casually erased two
Of the whole who now drive off
Maybe for the better

What am I to say?
You don't choose family
This muddied bloodline
This displaced gathering
This collection of lives all picked from the same strained places in history
All grown in and picked from the same orchards and pastures of ****

Well

What am I to say?
You can push away if you want to push
It's that recently I've had a chance to
Meditate

And

What am I to say?
I agree with no sentiment at all that you share
And you all share your opinion on the same subject
Nightly, Nightly, Nightly
What am I to say?
I don't talk anymore since I tire of your ignorance
Not comprehending how you hold such hurtful views
Highly, Highly, Highly
What am I to say to the world about you?

While it would help my image completely to hate you so deeply
This little life support system survives and I like it enough to provide
Talarah Shepherd Jan 2014
Sleep with a wrench
For my protection
Always from violent men
Who head my family
Never been struck

Always threatened of my life

They all sleep with guns
Fear their transgressions
Committed and damage done
Eyes ever open
Rage that they failed

Whatever standard was set

It makes me worry so hard
My matriarch
Can't take shock to a failing heart
How easy would it be
With this metal beat
Respect into
Their heads
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
You bought my time
One whole day
Just to be in the street lazily walking the paths we know
DX DX
D-A
Access we had for free and empty rides led us nowhere

Desperados.
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
Once before the age came
did I feel lifted
How about you?
Prior post heydays,
Fire to create
Drive in you
Did you feel rising
The heat you thought you'd never lose?

Smoke of the long wind trees comes
welcoming birth of seasons
on designing you
Here I thought I'd find. . .
Confines offering reason
to the lottery we won
to like all life die
and return
Talarah Shepherd Jan 2014
Hard Fall
Dead Winter
Soft Spring
Suddenly Summer
Rehash

All the needles on the ground I found
and cigarette butts
Create the frame of this city-town
and liberate us

Liberate?
Indenture
Is a better descriptor
Should you beat elitism
Peace and Love?
Progressive?
Truth is lost to history
Should you read you see schism

From one bridge looking North
I see at least five more bridges
Westside and East split by a river
This is a long, long division

And it's not stopped
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
To divine the truth, is to define a miracle --
since you asked I'll reach into the bag of
both realigned and canned answers I keep
with the good intention of weaving old
wools for you, into wisdom anew,
just for you
Hell, I'd rather reach inside my lungs,
scrape with ten jagged fingernails at
lining sprayed with silver by what's
become known as better judgment
until the flesh caught underneath
peels away
There's gotta be more to this exhaling
exchange of words than we've let on
constructions of construction in the
destruction come from centuries
of hard and stark speech revision
for science
Ever open restaurant rooftop under
four grounded legs, four gazing eyes
Sky scape splashed navy painted dusk
You ask lightly, highly of me
How do humans rust?

A burlap bag broke in bleeding insides
I reach deeper into my recesses
the cavities keeping my trying heart intact
and pull that bleating piece of trash
up through my teeth and cough
up for you

Is there a soul there?
Is there a soul there?
Is there a soul there?
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
Here it is in full speed
The ground of hallowed mirror walls
Pavement with cracked up
Asphalt patches masking all the holes
That mark the very bones
Buried by you screaming into your hands
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
Caught lying down
The violet kiss
The twilight's wisp
At April's end
Resonates in lungs
Here is to calling emotions
Here in the green grass and the wind
Here is to culling memories
It's no lake, though,
It's too late, now
Chest pull, brain float
Alone in the motionless ocean, so cold
We turn black, earth and I, partners of stars caught staring up
What man made slow bleeds from the world as I sing
Wary, weightless, spinning in white flecked purple, in orbit or free fall
Orbiting free fall

I found elation, but can't find connection
I could have grown mushrooms on touchdown
I traded memory for medicine

Twilight, violet, orbit, all words I've used before and always, tightly, weave into the living picture painted years and years on all alone on reset honing torment to the self as if as if perpetuating involuntary EVA will translate to a skill that will well elevate me from the cave, the only connection, that I've built by locking up all my insides in taking pills that I fell back on for happiness and to get a rattled head settled to the ground rather stripped me of what history I lived and put my weary body in the open for all the universe's bitter energies to infinitely catch me floating lying down.
Talarah Shepherd Jan 2014
In flux
Forever
To no end
Will it end?
(I hope not)
I hope so
I can't lose
If I lose
My mother
She loses
She's dying
Till I win
Will I win?
(I hope not)
I hope so
I run for
The hills with
My good drugs
Forever
In flux
Talarah Shepherd Jun 2014
What do you want me to do about it? You're acting like, like we can't
do anything about this, Nandu. Like you're, I mean you're acting like,
this is my fault, here. What was I supposed to do? I mean, I had no way
of knowing, man. Oh ****, might have to shok this guy who's ****** little
kids -- wait a sec, better not say anything about ReFresh water! I mean, what the ****?

I am blaming you because that was the worst joke I've heard.

In how long, ever?

In a long time.

Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. But this is not my fault. We should fight this.

They're doing what they're doing. If you do something like this again, I'm firing you.

You're not gonna fire me.

How do you know that?

You're not gonna fire me because, people make mistakes. And you know that.
This is a conversation between Miriam Marcus and her boss, Nandu Kumar.
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
Conduit failing in view as far out as the sea
from within the arid wasteland we walk along
How many more days must pass before we
lose sight forever of the emotion
once controlled, now gone, trailing, failing us

Remind me how we lie
Being here is not enough
Remind me how we lie
Touch to the external won't stir within
How will you remind me?

Every caress disturbs me
I've felt the last live day
Every whisper in my ear
For the last nine days
Every promising, intense whisper goes lost
Falling in ruptures
Where's the feeling?
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
Too much rain for a good day
She dreams the door won't open
There's the scrape of metal again
And the face of a stranger pokes at happiness
Enough to evoke a bright smile from the dead
She's a ***** just as all of us

Her familiar gesture calling in
Sober drones who use her and run
Sarah's familiar gesture calling
Friendly, friendly, always
Dreaming of closings
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
So I was just thinking about you, and I was like, I think I should tell you a few things about you that you probably already know just so you know how I see you. I came up with this list of three things.

Okay, 1: The way you look at the world makes you a great person instead of a normal person. You lack the cynicism I see in a lot of people. Your attitude is admirable, because you walk forward in spite of fear, and you project confidence.

All right 2: When you laugh and smile, your eyes scrunch up and you get laugh lines there and all over your face. A lot of people call laugh lines crows feet, especially when they're by your eyes. I think that it's a sign that you've lived a life where you've always held onto how to listen to someone. Mostly, I find that people need to talk about how good they are at listening and miss the point. You open your ears genuinely, and do it without asking anything in return. So I guess what I'm saying is that it's okay if you get crows feet.

And then there's number 3: When I mention farting, you talk about your gas. When I nudge you, you nudge back. When I call you a punk, you call me a big **** face. This is just one thing, so it's not cheating -- those are just examples. What I mean is, you're the completion of a loop, even if it's just the loop between two humans knowing each other.
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
Again, the path of pink, crystalline, digital highway twirling its corkscrew all around,
close, as if it were my eyes themselves, the only thing to see for miles and miles,
blistering by at a breakneck pace and straight through me. There's only sweat and
the highway. The days are long and the nights are not at all. Just the pink on
black for miles and miles. When, where will I be when the road ends? I know
what I'll be doing, that's for sure.
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
Humble shadow sprawl
oak fingers stretching out
breaking quiet astral glow
in crossings on your cheek
with one closed tearing eye
the river forms
A silent and weary wind
whispers to exposed moon
you're lifelong miasma
going by night upwardly
back again for hours at best
with morning sun.
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
I burnout in your field of black rot
Seedlings in hand as the quiet you took
Match can't take health you've displaced
As much I strike, the damage is done

Quill filled lady in red pilfering sanity
--But worthy of love, worthy enough
Witch of the East wind's casting bringing her flood
Of mirror images I can't bear to be

Whose right weighing the scale would weigh in the least?
Guilt laden innocence spinning directionless
Like it mattered at all which one of us two jumped first
I heard it was you
--From those who heard it was me
#oh
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
This woman of blonde locks
slim body and perky *******
acne and ribcage and vertebrae
she gives me that look
drawn smile with teeth bared
heaving tummy and deep stare
into my eyes like, "Come on."
Like a run-on sentence I'll make
her come on my face all night
and all day the next day

Best *** we ever had,
we had on a naked mattress
after a Sunday doing nothing

This woman of five o'
clock shadow and travel size ****
loose skin from weight loss and a thick neck
she is me and look
at that lucky feel
smearing over my dark mug
like I just won the sweepstakes
Like a run-on sentence she'll run
She'll run, she'll run, run me till
we need an oasis

Best *** we ever had,
we had on a naked mattress

Squeeze your legs
Squeeze your legs
Squeeze your legs
Squeeze your legs
Squeeze your legs
Squeeze your legs,

Release them,
A baker's dozen
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
Least of all to embody walls
Built with gloss for human thralls
A box taken shape of its container
Like water soft at first erosion
Picturesque

Filled with the love the cosmos needs
Tinder to the sweat I squeeze
Solely to see beauty in my motion
That this **** mirror glass view makes me
Remember
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
I fall along with your plans I fall along with your ward I fall along with your walls
I wonder was there ever connection to sever cross this collective expanse of years?
Or was there no love with to begin your hallowed bond?

Hallowed, hallowed
Devil, my brother, will you permit room to breathe?
Oh, I so wish you'd leave no room for Jesus.
Talarah Shepherd Jun 2014
My jean zipper coming down, all for the eager hand and mouth of a dark woman walking the night. Nothing heard and nothing seen could pry us from our silent, carnal screams or move us from the asphalt. I thought it was all over as we split, but I left with a number left for me, by her fingers on my cell phone screen, oh, I thought it was all over and done.
I wrote this about my first and only experience with a transgender woman. This was years and years ago, long before I came out myself.
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
Life tends to kick you quickest when you're down
Like the little pithy scratch of jealousy
On your neck as you see the signs
When your girlfriend's stale eyes
Begin to wander
Begin to wander too specifically
For your personal
Comfort
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
Loft for the weighted memories still stuck to earth by way of highways in mind deciding worth lost to the odds just might light your best and not the worst to leave you burned and make you hurt with a hole left mid breast so the whole heart started at first sight turns wild in flight and down to depths of stress plumbed once per month while you cry out little droplets blessed with time passed and spent at life's expense, listless and bound to recollect proud moments of ownership, passe notions of leadership, the one who leads and was led is nondescript, if it's turbulence or asphalt smooth to speed in sleep in place of days waking, walking two by four recede to dream where you toss and kick fears and pain away under thick rain you'd rather dry with orange rays and haze of heat, one mute mouthed faux biker writer always at the call though no admittance, transmits recognition of what feels like martian love at collision where no rocks were hit but rifts roared and wracked the soaring sky, pyres and stars reflected in moist eyes at night with even gentle wind or slight breeze, these fragments of us chipped off at cycle's start darkness whether live or lie, do not comply to be cautious when the very thought, though heavy, brings loft for the weighted bevy of ties that chain what happiness we weep to celebrate.
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
That moon of mine
Hides in clouds above the rail line
While wind twiddles tall grass
"I'm all for you," you said
"And you're only for me."
I'd be ****** if I'd let on
I haven't felt this lift in so long
I might have forgotten I'm alive
So these lips shut
What wants out I leave to rust
While eight fingers entwine
"What?" you asked with a smile
"Nothing but happiness."
I'd be ****** if I'd let on
Both naked now I'll sing you a song
And maybe staring you'll catch my drift
Talarah Shepherd Jun 2014
I look out at the light
red filling in my eyes
with Indica rising
I look like I
Am a textbook stoner
preparing for the test
by reading all the answers
there is no question left
except the meaning of life
which I might well express
except again, I thought up
another good question
again I realize that I
don't know for sure where my pipe is.

It's about this big. Like between the size of an index finger and a *****.
I know that's vague because I didn't specify yours or mine
--But my ***** is twenty inches long
and a device that long would probably be a water pipe.

(I don't want to get arrested)
Obama's listening, oh
and I don't own one, oh
seriously, did you see where I put that ******* thing?
It's No Cash Monday.
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
I've been paying attention more to the airwaves of ether we weave
And also the air around town or wherever else
I feel somewhat inclined to sit in a half crossed and dead legged pose
Clicking the keys of letters in hackneyed prose

You notice a noise and you look up to see
You hear the voice that you wanted to be
Calling for you from the opposite wall of the room
That smiles and laughs despite those people who
Scout out the cues like Jr. Detectives
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
Never mind the headache, ma'am, I got no time for your wishin that you had another couple hours sweaty spoonin with me
These days I got high time
racing like underline
all the while the future words seem
as if they're repeating
much slower or bleeding
white into the rest of the page
I gotta go ta work

Never mind the simple kiss, the stranger smile, the holy art.

Never mind the needful hand, I hear all the words that you're speaking and I've spent years making them not cut into me.
Talarah Shepherd May 2014
You know what I realized? How fantastic a thing realization is. Like, nothing particular or anything. Just, that moment when you kinda stop in your tracks for a second and go, "Huh. You know what?" Even the simple things are revelatory and what a great way to accidentally give yourself an unexpected better day. Wow, you know what? Today, I was keen enough and let my busy mind relax just enough to touch the universe again, and in that moment touch myself from the outside so that I remembered something I'd forgotten or before had never known. What is that, like the human singularity? Feels like it. QUICK, GRAB ON COMMANDER AND ALL YOU SPACE CASES. **** IT, GRAB ONTO THE WORLD BY THE ANT HAIRS! DIG YOUR FINGERS INTO THE GRASS! Let go and fall because you know it's better for your eventual grip on the state of matters in the laundry list you ordered with tasks representing your life. Am I better if I have one, I usually ask at the grocery store, to myself as I bag and then I get distracted by the sign for $3.99 pizza.
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
Would the deathless deep thirst
dry up my insides
from the mouth to marrow
if where you hide
becomes your home away from
home in mine?

Sleepy wind mulls over
moments lost in thought
to water's wild surrender
I walk the vagrant's path
hand in hand with nothing
I would not have let go
of my own in time.
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
Challenging status in a head space
Toiling boiling disappointments past
No stir of the heart as we meet again
Has it always been like this?

Shining in your black drab dress under the Spring for water in the night
Desperate in confines to divine and plan an escape
Drawn again within to spin the minute hand
Spend all you want in your sad silence while the time comes

First,
You choke hopelessly like me under yourself
Worst,
We buoy tentatively froze at the water line
Talarah Shepherd Jan 2014
We say
Time
We mean
Life

Time is when you wake up and when you stay in and don't leave until you're ten minutes late for work because you need to look your best
And
Time is when you sit in silence in front of the same television for years watching the same shows you've seen a hundred times and hear the hour hand on the same old clock slowly travel until the Sun's gone
And Time
Is when you're sleeping and eating and bathing and loving and building and breaking and moving on and coming home and leaving for good and returning one last time because time got
the very best of you

Time happens
and the measure is your keen perception
and so you don't feel time as it happens

Life is
When you stop to breathe
And stop to place the pieces
And realize there are pieces lost
And missing and you look down lost
As the soil falls
Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014
It's all I could ever do to read this
informative wall scrawl, idle
eyes hiding from peripheral refuse
scripting lines in lines in lines
the lines
engulf and then recede at light speed
inverted to white on black as the last night's
last bright stars erased over our expanse and
while I continue to dig, I await some conclusion or loop
wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait
while I continue to wait, I dig at conclusion or loophole to return
I find only my positive proof to the absolute
Did we move?
I never did

— The End —