Hey, everybody! So I've had this account since I started high school and now that I'm well into college and working on publishing more and more, I've created a second account dedicated to some of my favorite, more refined work. Here's the link! http://hellopoetry.com/ecarsyn/
There may be some poems from this account that you'll recognize as I'll be revising and posting on my second account from now on. I would love your support in this transition! I am open for collaborations, edits, suggestions, comments, etc!

With love,
Carsyn Elizabeth Smith

If he were a canvas,
     My fingers through his dark hair
     Would be gentle whips of cornflower
     Or the shade of the southern shores
     Aching for sun kissed sands.

     The deep tint of the midnight hour
     Is the feel of my palm on his cheek;
     Unspoken words spark between our skin,
     Igniting as I am red phosphorus and he is sulfur.

If he were a canvas,
     Our breathless laughter
     Is a warm canary radiating
     Across all the dark spaces we ignore
     Like solitary candles in suburban windows.

     Our hushed voices on the pillow
     Is the gold with which the sun shines;
     The reflection of my heart in his eyes
     Is silver like a glowing full moon.

If he were a canvas,
     My lips gently grazing his forehead
     Are a soft powder pink,
     Like the petals of an awakening rose
     Or the shade of clouds draped in dawn

     But when mine meet his, amaranth.
     A ceaseless incandescence
     Of raw desire and a hint of diffidence
     From a flower seeded in our gray matter.

     When he touches my skin
     It’s in shades of pine and dandelion and wisteria
     And suddenly I see the painting
     Has covered the painter in romantic chaos

And it is the apron they put on display.

The painting collided with the steaming floorboards,
a single nail which once held the frame
torn in half like warmed taffy --
a single string, thin like a strand of hair,
dangling in the painting's place,
swaying in the slightest breath.
The wooden six-panelled window trim cracked and whined
but the glass remained untouched,
reflective of the doll carefully decorating the fur-covered bed.
Crystal eyes blink but do not break,
a manicured hand overlaying her mouth,
melding with the porcelain that is her skin.
Her elongated lashes dripped down her blushed cheeks.
She shook slightly but did not move.
Her ears, hidden beneath ruby locks, burst.
A puff of black smoke pushed its way past her curls,
framed by the sound of barotrauma.
Her eyes rolled back, lids fluttered shut,
chin collided with the soft skin of her chest . . .
A slug dropped onto her shoulder,
wiggling side to side with its newfound freedom.
It lost its balance on her delicate sleeve
and landed on my lap in a gooey pile of slime.
There are too many mirrors in this melting room . . .
I can't twitch my eyes without meeting the doll's.
The mirrors shattered as the frames which held them contracted.
The room glittered like the inside of a snowball,
but soon the luster turned to dust,
and the shards left clinging to the frame turned black,
bubbling glass dancing to a lethargic beat down the length of the walls,
trickling into the melted monstrosity swaying like an angry sea.
All the while the doll sat content in her fur-covered bed.

What are you supposed to do when you return to a ghost town?
Do you walk among the dead, pretending to belong,
breathing from a straw as you watch the shallow water rush over your senses:
filling your ears with the same white noise you tried so hard to run away from,
bombarding your mouth and consuming the space your voice would perch before it decided to fly,
making your gaze so blurred you're never sure exactly how shallow you've become or how far you've sunk,
wrinkling your fingerprints and numbing everything but the constant rushing of a thin layer of blue silk,
you cling to the memory of the tulips you paused to smell as it's replaced with the eerie aroma of copper…
but that straw, those frantic shallow breaths, is all that keeps you from floating along the stream of sleepwalkers that litter this town.
This valley is a cage and every tunnel you see makes your heart whisper
"You're almost there."
In a city where nothing stretches for the ever-clear postcard sky
except the fumes of the local factory,
the people crawl between city blocks whose red lights
cast a net crafted for salmons at narcissistic sardines.
The suburbs are quiet on school nights, at weekend's dusk, in holiday's dawn.
Teenagers who have lost interest in the quiet are up late either coughing up ****** or SAT scores,
all searching for a heartbeat they forgot how to feel,
straws protruding from their lips like unlit cigarettes.
Their eyes are cloudy, pupils expanded, the whites bulging with pulsing red rivers, delving deep into a landscape the world forgot.
They shuffle next to you, faces purple from the lack of oxygen, but they'll never say so because
haven't you heard?
the walking dead tend to eat the living.

The hot summer breath pours over the expanse of my exposed neck,
nearly silent as it reminds the rest of my body of the shadow's chill.
I'm under a tree, its leaves hang in the air as if they have no weight;
they simply decide to lay their heads on the sea-sprayed grass below.
The waves kick up from the water lurching below, kissing my brow;
I want to peak over the edge, but I know if I do I'll fall straight down.
It's an arm around my waist and under my temple that holds me back,
A kiss on my crown and the feeling of fingers interlacing with my own.

shift

My cheek rests upon the soft surface of a desert's sun-kissed sand,
everywhere I look the dunes never end, they simply shimmer into the sky.
I breathe out hot wind onto a landscape that defines the very word,
watching the breath create stirs that turn to circles that turn to clouds.
The clouds become a storm, but not a single grain of sand grazes my skin:
I trace the spine of this towering wall with the very tip of my finger nail.
It trembles under my touch but does not waver against the mighty storm;
my body curves to his, my arm around his torso, my cheek upon his back.

shift

Here I float among the stars and planets as I look upon the earth,
gently, like the bobbing of a canoe down a river, I glide on the moon.
I can feel my heart pounding through the thick material of my suit,
or perhaps it is another's as I can feel my own through my hand.
The two different beats dance and race until they are nearly one,
putting on a show with lighting provided by the Milky Way above.
Something stronger than gravity holds me fast from drifting away:
an arm around my back, my cheek upon a chest, rising with his breath.

shift

The vines of the jungle hold me tight under the thick canopy above,
humidity causes a bead on my brow, but I dare not shake it from its place.
I am like a body in a coffin, but more like soft pink petals in a spring bud,
held tight but not too firm as not to cause a misguided cut or bruise.
The sunlight burns my skin, the rays that squeeze through the ceiling
try to bubble and churn me into a misshapen form, but I am protected.
Forehead to forehead, a heartbeat in my palm, mine between is fingers;
four legs tangled, unidentifiable, so they become ours not mine.

shift

The sunlight kisses his crown and falls through my lashes,
unforgiving of any peace we may have found with eyes closed.
A small bed in a small room, two people stumble in at two in the morning.
They talk of the future, of rings and a white dress between quick breaths
and within the slow mumbles of midnight gripped promises.
For now, he wakes her with a soft kiss like a single drop of spring rain
and she reaches for him with fingers dripping in memories of a dream.
To them, love is an unspoken promise,
like the change of the seasons or the pull of the tide.

*shift