Lilac-scented winds
furtively creep through
the window, rhythmically
stroking the lily-white hair
that rests upon her hunched
shoulders.

Thin levees barricade
the emerging seas of salt
as the stationary clouds
dissipate from the
sapphire ice crystals that
encircle her atramentous
pupils.

Beneath her round,
brittle cheekbones
ancient ravines wind
downwards toward
her steep, narrow
chin, pointing at a
skeletal frame blanketed
in an off-white, floral gown.

Blotchy, autumn, amber
hands cradle the pudgy
infant’s limp body.  She
smiles as she presses her
chapped lips on the baby’s
smooth, plastic head.

She leans back in her
chair of solace, rocking
back-and-forth to the
pulsating tempo of her
heartbeat. Her world is
in perfect harmony.

My feet
Have perfect
White V's
That point
To you

Azrael Always James
© Copyright 2013

Faded, I thought, into the nuisance of life
flowing down a river like brown algae,
overlooked by clouded skies that seemed to care less.
You were metaphorically,embossed with beauty,
bejewelled and golden with the glitter of stars
and the proposals of love never faded away
but struck into the background
of every single day, for your whole life,
and I hurt, because I am your friend,
but I fear to ask, why do men not love me
as much as they love you?

I am in love with him, and he lays with me.
He kisses me among crowds
but not even he truly loves me the way any man loves you
when he casually passes you on the street.
Though my lover only loves you as his own sister
I fear your own person, to be more personable than me.
I am covered with fat I believe, my nose not as perfect,
always tormented and bombarded.

My mind shudders at all the love
that is always given to you.
You are like a sister,
I love you but I want to hate you,
but I peek deeper inside myself, it flushes with desire
to disspiate from the weeds and the algae
that surround my skin, surround my air.
I long to blossom as a rose that is scented with oils,
that riles the desires of all men.
I feel I may be revolted at myself
because of the vanity of a young girl,
insecure because her lover was her pillar,
insecure because of the past
that has apparently not yet set her free.
Freedom will soon be here
I hope when my lover beckons,
but if he does not, and he surely may not
I only wish to be sent away from my vanity.

I don't want success. I want significance. I yearn to touch everyone. Explore their deepest fears, darkest secrets, most passionate desires, and beautiful weaknesses. My heart cries to save us all. I can't live for science. For math. For facts. I live to watch you breathe while you sleep. I live to stroke your spine and reassure you that it will all be okay. I live to trace your scars with my fingertips and leave my swirling prints on your skin forever. I live to give you hope for the present and future even though the past still glimmers menacingly behind your eyes and threatens to tear you apart. You are imperfect, and to me, you couldn't be more perfect. You have a purpose. You are beautiful because you don't believe it. I want you to know I love your every flaw. I love your every failure. I will go to the end of the world to rekindle your inner fire, and that is all I need.  Now I know that success will never make me whole. I only crave to kiss your wounds and make You whole again. I ache for you to understand you are significant and I want to touch your life in an invaluable way that resonates in your dreams, thoughts, and hopes. I am intelligent, but that will die along with my appearance and worldly accumulations. What will survive? What will distinguish me in this infinite circle of life- ominous and inescapable? I live to discover my purpose. I will fight to save you from a mortal fate six feet under, and that alone will save me. It is the greatest thing I could ever ask for.
Darkness will fall but we will not. I always thought my most destructive fault was my obsession with fixing the broken, but now I know it is my only chance to overcome the monotonous pattern of life and death.

imagine, as I do,
the clutch of tensed pale fingers
on stain-spotted porcelain

tendons stretch like telephone wires  
under perfect, loving skin.

her slop spills over loose lips,
drains itself through antique piping systems,
leaves her skull a musty cave,
slowly panting for revival flames.

                                    he stretches.

the fingertip connects to the handbone
connects to the wrist
connects to the arm/chest/neck/face
         each surveyed in turn, slowly,
         the irises staggering over cloth and hair.

   (his smile is a sunrise through fog,
   the song of angels into a bathroom wall,
   heartbreak from a distance.)

there was no night,
only daybreak over two bodies
locked in a mobius strip.
                     (one twist of mind, a sleight of fate)

and they lay disheveled.

                    quiet, the breeze
                     snakes through curtain
                    
                     exit stage left.

there once was a man
and he was different
and all he wanted was to be normal
and he spent his whole life
pretending to be simple
and wishing to fit in
and not knowing that others
spent their whole lives
only wanting to no longer be normal
pretending to be different
and wishing to stand out.
n.d.

We met on a street out in the middle of Brunberry.  Often times, we'd sit on the curb, watching the middle aged man in the corner house fix up his boat-of-a-car.  Or, on Sundays, the chubby, bakery-esque woman would walk her grandchildren down the road to church.  We were young, then.  I still visit that street in Brunberry, and, in fact, it is called Feldspar Road.  The man on the corner, with the old car?  His name is Charles North, and he's a retired mechanic.  The grandmother is dead now, but her daughter and grandkids moved in a couple years ago.  I still come back and check up on those people, and I still watch the leaves fall in autumn and watch water pool around our favorite bench in spring.  The air is just as crisp as when we were children.  Feldspar Road is just as it was when we were young.

--

Just off of Feldspar Road, there is a park.  Really, it's just a wide, open field, with unkempt grass that the neighborhood has picnics and late afternoon barbecues on.  Do you remember when we stopped by the Feldspar block party on your twentieth birthday weekend?  It was warm and the sun was blinding; a perfect July day for grilling out in the park.  You pulled me down onto the dried grass and we watched all of the familiar people gabbing and gossiping with neighbors.  Charles, grandma and the children, that young couple that had recently moved in.  These people were like our family, even though we didn't live here.  They made us feel at home.

--

It's October, and Feldspar Road is coated in bright yellow leaves.  I haven't heard from you in a few months, but I'm sure you're doing okay.  You've been busy with your new friends at your university a few states away.  Feldspar misses you, as do I.  Charles is getting old; his car sits, rusted, in the driveway.  The young couple got divorced, and I'm pretty sure the girl kicked the boy out of the house.  Things are getting dark, despite the turning leaves.  I do sure hope you're doing okay.  The park has a playground, now, and the few children in the neighborhood play there after school.  I've memorized jump rope rhymes, patterns in cat's cradle, and the hardest hopscotch courses.  I know you always loved kids, and watching them play makes me wish you could be here to laugh along with me.

--

I moved out to Kentucky this April.  I needed to get away from home, and away from Feldspar Road.  I visited much too often, and after Charles died, and all new people lived on the block, I felt out of place.  Whatever made Feldspar feel like home was gone.  It's been years since I saw you, and I can only assume you've found someone to love, someone to lay in the grass with, someone to marry.  Me?  I'm starting to meet new people in the area.  I like to spend my time out in the fields by the border.  It's quiet, unless you count the crows and crickets.  It's peaceful, and standing there in the breeze, with the wheat up to my chest, watching the sky turn bright orange in the evening, makes me feel a bit happier.  A little less lonely and a little more at home.

how are you? what's up?
you sense my loneliness and
tell me:
you're cute. you're cute
kind of turns me on in a way
i'm glad we're on the same wavelength
we're connected--so synced
so obviously vulnerable
i don't know how this works
but
i'm not interested
in anything else
and
can i just, can i just say
you don't have to put on a front for me anymore
you are
this sleepy, rumpled,
put-together mess
of
hyperempathy issues
fear and sadness
and frustration
you're perfect
beautiful
god, god, god
i have to tell you something
incredibly embarrassing
(shivering--
really gracelessly
i'm laughing but
i can't breathe)
i'm glad you pushed me
to get to you

There will be days where
you can't move,
can't get out of bed.
Where you have no desire
for activities. But then,
there's that flicker of hope, that
"You can do it!" voice that
keeps shooting in your mind.
Then, you get up and have the
strength to do anything.

Where does strength come from?
What does it mean? How strong
you are? Courage? If we have
strength, we must have weakness
right? Our weakness show we are
only human. We aren't perfect. Hell
no we're not perfect, an I'm fine with
that. Life isn't about figuring out
our flaws, it's to celebrate we have life.

My strength comes from being myself.
There are days where gravity works
overtime and where lifting your fork
seems impossible, but I'll still smile.
Rain or shine, I smile. Everyday is
a new day, a new chance to be
yourself.
Believe in you.
Be strong.

You, who for some infallible reason, was weeping, said-
"You are lying, and that makes me sad."
"But I never told you a single lie."
As soon as I said that, you started crying once more.

I used to reassure myself,
When the paper airplane that I threw-
Full of my foolish whishes that seemed so beautiful at that time-
that didn't reach the sky, but instead
came back down to my feet-
"It was just too far away.
That's all.
That's all."

And-
there was a time when I climbed the side of a radio tower,
repeating desperately to myself that the stars up there were not a myth.
At the top,
overlooking the city,
I tired to reach those lights.
"..I'm just not tall enough."

Now,
I think to myself,
my beliefs are just a mirror,
Reflecting my repeating delusions of a perfect world.
But when that mirror,
that sick fantasy,
that desperate,
oblivious
illusion shatters-
There is nothing but shards of dust left on your palms.

Did you know?
I am scared of the moon.
Mainly,
because I think, sometimes,
"That could be me, up there."
With no light of my own to shine upon the world, only reflecting what others saw.  
But, still.
The sun's warmth was too brilliant and bright,
my pupils couldn't help but dilute every time I faced it.

I've almost given up on the exuseful theory,
that everything in the world is masked
beautifully.
And that only the gifted,
and few,
could unveil that ugly screen,
and see the true façade underneath.

Until I have found a warmth untriumpthed by any other,
until I find a kindness that lets me say-
"Thank you, Thank you, Thank you-"
Over and Over and Over again,
Until I find a feeling that makes me feel like the world,
is somehow,
sometimes,
beautiful,
I guess,
I'll try to stop making excuses for everything-
and accept the fact
that the world
has its secrets too.