CARNATION: Every frill in her dress is another piece of your heart broken. She withers in the winter but heaven forbid you see her at her loveliest in the spring.

VIOLET: Her voice sounds like steel cutting through velvet. You squeeze her tightly until she blooms in petals of blue and purple.

DAFFODIL: She's a field to run across but be careful that doesn't take you by surprise and lull you into daydreaming for the next 200 years.

SWEET PEA: By the time you lean close to her an inhale her scent, the sky will have already begun falling; she will have already transformed into vapor and taken refuge in your lungs.

LILY OF THE VALLEY: You'd expect to see her floating around in twos and threes, but she'd rather be hidden behind tangles of ivy, where you'd never find her.

ROSE: Be careful that when your hands are grazing her hips that you don't cut yourself because a woman hides her most important weapons under a layer of secrets and maybe there's more to the waistband of her skirt than you'd like to believe.

WATER LILY: A siren of the sea, she is lilting, singing a sad song and hypnotizing you, but you don't know any better and you want to see if she floats in your hands like she does in the water.

POPPY: Kiss her softly and when she collapses into pieces at your feet, scatter her in your bathwater and pull the drain plug and forget about her forget about her forget about her forget

MORNING GLORY: She stretches in the morning and sunlight rushes to touch her and the stripes of rays on her skin make you remember all the reasons why you woke up everyday for a reason other than habit.

MARIGOLD: Beware of the girl who covers her mouth when she smiles. Sometimes, it's because she doesn't want you to see that her heart is in her throat, but other times she's just trying to hide the fangs.

CHRYSANTHEMUM: Her clothes fall like petals in the depths of secrecy, but if you plucked them off the ground one by one, you'd still never know whether she loves you or loves you not.

NARCISSUS: You only love her because you see your reflection in her eyes and all she ever wanted to do was drown you gently.

It should be noted that girls don't always come from Venus, that some boys might be a little deader than they were before they claimed you took their breath away. Some girls have barbed wire around their hearts, and others have white flags. Some boys have touched more cigarettes than thighs, more blades in the bathroom sink than the ones in her shoulders. The city might whisper the name of one boy and tremble at the thought of another; a girl have a hit list with only one name on it — her own. Some boys will **** just to say they lost their virginity and some boys will spend the rest of their lives making love as though they could gain it back; some girls have lost their tears and sweat in the upholstery of the same car that might belong to one of these boys — and some of those same boys are sweaty handprints on the backseat windows while others are fingerprints on your throat (no matter how you look at it, he will always leave his mark, won't he?)
  It should be noted that some girls will miss you like Hiroshima playgrounds miss the laughter of young children, but others will miss you like an 11:30 flight at 11:31, and I bet you never knew that some boys will never tell you that they miss their father just as much as some girls calling everyone else Daddy except for the one they truly need; you'd never believe me if I said that some girls look at the night sky where they used to see their reelection in the stars, but now only see another broken mirror.
  It should be noted, that not all boys are from Mars.

If you want to have ***, that's okay, nobody would blame you
Most sculptures are **** bodies, you told me *** is art.
If you want to **** yourself, I won't try to kiss it out of you,
Like a white guy. I'm not white and you don't like to kiss.
If you hurt yourself on purpose, I swear I won't ask.
If you hate yourself, I won't tell you I hate myself too. If you hurt yourself
on purpose, I won't make you feel like you have to tell me it was an
accident. If you want to be loved in the worst way, I won't hate the girl
that's willing to do it. Because that makes me a *****
and who wants to talk to a *****? If you want to give head tonight,
I won't call you. Sometimes scars look like stretch marks in the dark.
If you rail any drugs, try not to
wander in the streets. And don't cry if you cross any streets,
because i know your friends are dying and they don't seem to care,
but I know you do. If you want to write some bad poetry, I won't say,
"That's bad." That's because I'll think it's good and that's because,
I'm in love with you. I don't know what love is, by the way.
If you want someone to **** you, don't ask anybody pretty.
Ask me. I'm ugly and I'll say no. I never walked a mile in your shoes,
but I keep walking up and down the stairs,
like I can feel you creaking.

My father shouting at me
loud enough to wake my dead grandfather, the
red air is frightening     I try not to tremble,
it makes him worse,
he hits me with a strap -  but his anger soon passes

Tonight the moon seems old,
if it cries it can cry for me because
my sadness is deeper than tears and
the old man I will one day be    will remember this.

--

My mother,  happy in her freedom    swims naked in the bathroom
Swims an olympic record from the tap end
to the end where we keep the shampoo.

Beneath the waves she can't hear the
crashing and shouting from the next room.
The bathroom light is  turned out,
the moon fills the bath with its soft-milk.

--

Sad is my sister crying tears like wet feathers.
Crying for a pain she wants to, but can't feel. Her tears
are starved birds that never learn to fly.

--

My sister cries the guilt of an expert,
My mother tends herself with soft lotions,
My father, a helpless bystander to his own rage,
wears spectacles passed down by his father.

--

Tonight the moon is my quilt
Heart-beats are held and all is muffled
The rage is the sea
My skin milks the light now.




MChallis © 2014
www.martinchallis.com

"In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance-to-knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade."*
Vera Rubin

In questioning existence
It's purpose and
Our place in the universe
The disprover looks for evidence from the Galaxy

No matter how extraordinary the measurements
Such as the size of the sun and it's distance from the earth
The ratio of dark to light matter
The number of atoms in each molecule of carbon
The countless number of solar systems
The disprovers will find no evidence of purpose or cause

I wonder if
they might be looking
In the wrong place

MChallis @ 2015

Wind patterns
Wide the grass plains

Fans dance invisible
Her caterpillars

Cloud shadow
Racing their backs



MChallis © 2015