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 May 2021
Tiger Striped
a summer scent seeps into spring,
the bitter hint of our endings
the years, begun in swelling tides,
now ebbing toward the shores of time.
this summer heat is scathing now;
the sky found wanting of her clouds
and sun the sole tenant therein,
burns with echoes of what has been.

so long ago, she deigned to rise
from darkness to uncharted highs
and now, our greenest life is graced
by torrid waves shone from her face
once lush and verdant, now descend
the lifeless leaves to life's grand end
our feet will find, in passing by
remains of those who knew the sky

so autumn falls, apprising death
and beauty takes a ragged breath,
exhales a gust of frigid truth,
reminds us of expired youth,
then lies down in her crystal bed
as isolation takes her stead
our memories and warmth are lost
'neath blankets of life's lonely frost

we seldom see the craven sun
we crave that fire that kept us young
and full of life's bright, loving rage
but fateful wind has turned the page
it leaves a blank chapter for us,
to our ink-stained fingers entrusts
invention and a flash of time,
future ahead and past behind

where life began, we pick up now
and to the blessed spring endow
an offset to the bitterness
that once beset our eagerness
we suffered, learned, and now we fight
not nature; not the flow of time
but to preserve humanity
to safeguard that insanity
we named love, for we have found
it is all but by time bound.
 May 2021
Tiger Striped
This is the story of smoke,
mirrors,
broken fourth walls,
and me.
I
used to play with fire and pretend
I was a goddess, like
I'd created it with my own
fingers.
I once set my carpet on fire
(that's not a metaphor),
and for one brilliant moment I
thought I might have
inadvertently burned down the house.
But I outgrew fire,
grew bored of ice,
and discovered the final frontier—
it was disappointingly tepid:
dull, a bit smoky
from ex-flames that scorched the carpet.
My once-raw lungs are now
jaded and fading.
What is left to grow tired of?
I don't care enough to find out.
 May 2021
Tiger Striped
You're dangling again, darling;
existentialism isn't your color
flush bright and laugh skywards
finish your homework and fall in love.
You rise with blithe baroquism,
I can see it in the faint
shadows beneath your eyes
as you rush windward into past.

It's alright to love the program, honey,
but if you're over-cautious
you might turn too perfect.
Just don't while I'm alive, please,
for I love the curls in your words
and the feathers in your walk.

Be me when you don't want to,
and be you when you forget what it's like.
Just remember me around the edges,
paint me in the corner below your signature
and remember my kisses goodnight.
 May 2021
Tiger Striped
Blindly first he walked,
trampled saints with righteous soles.
Blinder still he fell, kissed dust
writhed beneath the gaze of God.
Weaker still, buckled his knees
like pride and war and dark and faint;
chaos spans his vision now.
His horse was night and wrong and run.
He had no eyes for outstretched hands.
Where is your righteousness now?
It steams with mine,
it is mist and overdue goodbye
it evaporates with myth and law.
Drought waits for monsoon,
famine waits for feast,
he waits for light.
Now it floods,
bread breaks,
scales fall from his eyes.
Now is sight and scab and scar.
See: The Conversion of Saint Paul (Caravaggio)
 May 2021
Tiger Striped
10
I am empty song silence,
written without words
heavy drifting from the earth
pleasurable deterioration.
Crumble with me,
run quick on milky tabletops
sweep easy like the dust
between rug and solemn shine
fit where no one is
meant to be.
Flattened, minus one dimension
ground to fine lines and
humbled there:
rest is nothing when
time is not.
I long for nothing
when nothing is me
nothing nothing nothing
lines and zeroes
nothing.
 May 2021
Tiger Striped
Red midnight glares above my head
heating coals in my belly,
pushing tears from the corners of my
eyes.
Education, success, modernity
boil me - I scream to sleep cold.
Just outside the window rests
a faint outline,
the shape of my future.
A train shudders to a tired stop,
miles away
the driver
daydreams of going backwards
or getting off
I dream of today, now yesterday,
as I enter, sleepless, tomorrow: today.
 Apr 2021
Tiger Striped
The old woman at the bus stop
is a lover of all things:
I can see it in her tired smile
and the way her hands
are determined not to shake
as she colors in the squares of
today’s crossword puzzle.
Focused on her mosaic, she
does not hear
my dragging footsteps or
rasping breaths.
As I collapse next to her, everything is
quiet and I
hear her blood rushing
in her veins, singing a melody her
lips forgot.
I pretend I am her for
five sacred minutes,
finding mirrors in puddles
on the pavement and
battling time and gravity
trying not to sink through sidewalk into sewer
trying to spend eternity here.
But the bus comes like always,
its wheels
screaming silence into oblivion and
ripping loose newspaper pages
from their holy tranquility between
two leathery palms
and tearing the old woman and me
apart.
 Apr 2021
Tiger Striped
Midday is almost dark; the
ashen sky holds its breath
rain buzzes between cloud and sun
leaves drift, blurred,
in slow frames through molasses space
to kiss the sidewalk with
thundering authority.
Between the daisies, lightning sprouts and splits,
spitting stripped splinters into heaven
then pausing, fingers frozen, posed –
a portrait of aloof elegance.
Midday is blinding, deafening,
nature's cinematic masterpiece:
terrifying, thrilling, and everything but numbing.
 Apr 2021
Tiger Striped
The elixir of life
is the stuff of self:
we are spit and ocean
minuscule, innumerable, pellucid
drops dangling dangerously
from windowpane and eyelash
anticipating the inevitable;
the fall
dying to dry
when the sun shines scarlet.
We are nothing more than products of the sky
earthbound, plummeting, wishing
we were suspended in the clouds
gathered just beneath heaven,
hoping to float higher than destiny
someday.
 Apr 2021
Tiger Striped
A couple falling in love, first date,
another falling out, last fight.
Two boys playing chess,
a girl hungry, won't eat,
a reader, a writer,
an ocean full of thoughts,
and the rare listener.
 Apr 2021
Tiger Striped
Art
She does not shout, she’s
the color of mirror
and the shape of song.
She whispers that she loves
herself; she’s clarity
in the absence of reason,
perched on the apex of pain.
She hurts like my stomach on
my birthday,
glaring red beneath my sleepless
eyelids. She was
firstborn from darkness and sprawls
fleshly into light.
Hers is a compass with a
hidden true north,
a tapestry woven of
all love and evil.
She’s poster tack stuck to the wall,
in little shapes like a near-cloudless day.
She is all we can pretend to know,
the only thing we create and
never fully understand.
 Apr 2021
Tiger Striped
If you drank burgundy we’d get along better
I think;
I’d like the way it would
stain your white collar
and laugh when you couldn’t get it out.
It would sit angry against your neck and
stare at me, and
I would smile because I'd
know how it feels.
You’d think it was you who
had painted me happy, so you’d
forget it was there and I’d
know how it feels.
I would take a napkin
and wipe the crimson tracks from the
corners of your mouth,
just so I could have some
burgundy of my own.
It would sit folded
neatly in my lap and
long for your spotted collar and
I’d almost cry because I
know how it feels.
It’s too bad, really,
you and your glass of clear.
No stains and no taste
and no idea how I feel.

— The End —