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 Apr 2020
Miracle Beyond Me
I hide behind a great stone
hoping that the adoration
that my beloveds wish
to shower upon me
will be forgotten and neglected.

It is terrifying the manner
in which such sincere love
will purify me into anonymity,
just the same way tranquility
always threatens to do.
 Aug 2019
Craig Verlin
It is an image of a man.
Behind him, a shadow stretched long and thick—
like tar. Like shoulder blades. Like a feeling you could lay in.
The shadow is a well, a pit, a grave.
The shadow is a hole the artist forgot to fill.
The image is a sadness, dark and shoulder-width. 

The image is a child at the beach,
a toy plastic shovel in his hand.
The image is his brown cap with the strap and
the gold embossed letters “Lowry Park Zoo,”
the sand from the shovel flying forever
backwards without a glance—
tiny diamonds caught by the wind and small hands,
flowering downward into great mountains. 

The image is a child in a hole shoulder-width,
sand in a landslide behind him,
resting for only a moment before cascading back
into the shadow again. 

The image is a false progress.
The child is an old man, the beach a graveyard.
Watch the shovel. Watch the sand as diamonds as dirt as time.
Watch the wind. Watch the crooked hands.
Watch it trickle down again, again. The child is an old man. 
The sand is a hole. The shadow is a sadness.
Do they lay in it?

The image is a regression.
In off-pitch impressions I wonder the comforts of the grave—
satin in the coffin. The feeling when there is none.
Do they lay in it?

The image is a man. 
The image is a shoulder-width sadness. 
The image is a boy and an old man laying in the same shadow. 
The image is a hole I forgot to fill.
 May 2019
Arcassin B
By Arcassin Burnham

Spoken like a true iron monger, stilling thunder,
the pain and the gain of it,
you get any ounce of it,
just don't let the clowns get it,
they laugh and they're mad with it,
but theres no harm in it,
cause these fakes are counterfeit,
pulling through illusions like they're tug-o-war with
guiding force and true teachings of a king to hold the
floor,
prepare to leave defeated some more,
don't want scalawags and your ******,
real lessons of a *******.
don't care for mother's day at all.
father's day was put there to remind us.
that the ones that birth us will not find us...

/

..Is that the only thing you want me to do?
is walk all over you?
eat you like rations of food,
do what what all those men just did to you?
then throw away the crumbs like I never
knew you,
use to getting hurt so much huh?
I wasn't trying to catch a quick night stand,
because I really wanna be with you,
is it hard to have me confess what you mean to me?
in this moment didn't really think I would ever be,
In love with a special someone just like me in the streets.

©abpoetry2019
https://arcassin.blogspot.com/2019/05/*******-love-for-one.html
 Apr 2019
Skaidrum
——————
i.
a dragon's claw;
merely leftovers of the moon
from last night's revolution,
and he beseeched a god long absent:
"how'd you forget my name in the grave
last week?"


ii.
i break bones like i break bread,
and hell recoils at the rare mention of me;
"—we're using blood for watercolors baby—"
'cause sometimes,
i don't think they understand
my heart.

iii.
god took the world to the doctor,
and asked for a cure he couldn't afford;
for the sun has already set in the palms
of my hands, o' father...
and there can only be so many
bones knitted together in this womb.

iv.
recall that,
reality only reveals itself when it feels
like making a fool out of someone;
and i don't know what stage of grief
i'm in—
or if I'm even in one
at all.

v.
i drink tea with ghosts
every other tuesday,
trying to make sense of it all;
because at some point,
—i'll stop eating bullets for
people's whose eyes
pull triggers.

vi.
mama always did raise me to be a sword,
and i killed when she told me to.
because, you see—
the fragile things die
in the cold, and what i find interesting
is that i've remained;
and ultimately?
it's a beautiful thing.

vii.
and when will i learn?
that mercy is false hope amongst all else, darling,
but enough already;
this poem's got universes full
of emotional baggage.

viii.
you said
you're a dreamer?
great, get in line kid,
you'll get a chance to change the ******* world,
just take a number
—like the rest of us;
but, then again...
"the world has always been ready
to receive you, hasn't it?
"
amen to that,
amen indeed.

© Copywrite Skaidrum
 Apr 2019
Craig Verlin
Thin tendrils of splintered glass.
An empty mirror reflecting
an empty sky of asphalt and
pavement and what once
was smoke but is now
only air again.

Thin fingers of shattered glass.
An empty mirror reflecting
an empty sky of sawdust and
strangeness and what once
was sorrow but is now
only me again.
 Feb 2019
Craig Verlin
A misting veil,
two incandescent lights
in parallel beams
reflect individual droplets—
a stream of not-quite-rain.

Among the morning shroud
live a host of furtive sounds:
gravel steps, inaudible susurrus,
a turning, silenced not-quite-heartbeat.
 Oct 2018
Craig Verlin
Paint ourselves a picture:
cold, white winds up against
winter coats and puffs of breath
in dotted lines leaving cursive lips.
Two pink hands held without
gloves, fingers twisted together
despite the cold.

Oils and pastels that blend bright
blue smiles and sharp white-teeth
fences, shaping toward the gilded
hues of a forever sunset that is
never quite ready to go yet.

Colors huddle in thick pools
of a future sketched out in long
ochre strokes on canvas—
a million shades of purple and
orange tell a life that
skipped its ‘if’ and moved
headlong into ‘when.’

A million colors, a million shades.
A sunset, an oak tree turned to autumn,
a crayon drawing on a refrigerator:
two big ones and three little ones,
a slanted red pentagon house,
a yellow scribble of fur.

Paint ourselves a picture: jagged dark lines. Sleepless ink that sits and thinks and can’t quite seem to get through to itself. Dreamless ink that runs down pages in opaque streams and gets nowhere. Thick, blackened tar that covers everything with shadows, covers everything with long stretches of black, a stain:
Hands held in the cold,
Red houses on a hill.
 Oct 2018
PrttyBrd
I found my grandmother the night she died
The room filled with mourning tears
My mother slapped me
because I hadn't cried in two days
At 18 how do you emotionally process a body that once held a life?

Disconnected from my thoughts
I felt neither pain nor love nor loss
How could I say that, without feeling defective
but I couldn't get past that shell with empty eyes
that stared at me until I noticed they weren't smiling

When the body turned to flesh
she was gone and I was lost
in those empty eyes that seemed to
hold a universe of nothing
and if I stared too long I'd disappear in that void
where her light used to shine

**

Too soon, I held my mother's hand as she passed
and watched the life leech out of her skin
The eyes were the last part of her to fade
I stared at her
Willing with all that I am that they would
spark and reignite the fire of who she was
But her skin ran cold the second the light ceased
So cold, yet so very soft.

Two days, and a blended family to hold up
Even with makeup, dressed to the nines
It didn't feel less... wrong
She was beautiful, but she wasn't my mother

I couldn't escape the knowledge
of invisible sutures
As I held her face and fixed her hair
I cursed those television shows I once watched with her
The ones that taught us how things worked
The ones that burned the knowledge of
the sutures into my memory
a memory I couldn't escape

Four days and two shoulders heavy with tears
Too busy with paperwork and wishes
to bleed tears of my own
Thankful for things to do
So I wouldn't get lost in her empty eyes
that stared at me whenever I closed my own

I sit here, grown, wondering how to
emotionally process a body that once held a life?
Praying that she will slap me for not being able to cry
Just so I could feel her
101118
346w
I miss you Mami
Audio file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PZOHeLKJCs3Bu5CUYWTQJI6-JOiZp_4c/view?usp=drivesdk
 Sep 2018
PrttyBrd
i.

melted ice cream afternoons
bogged down

rising from asphalt
in magical mist
that transforms
the day into
a test of endurance

even dusk offers
no solace
in frozen watermelon bliss


ii.

smoke permeates fabric
hair and every surface
with peace and grit
wafting over
the crispy
edges of predawn

begging sleep
to the most stubborn
insomniac

rotisserie style dreams
till morning


iii.

there's less death today
waiting in line
in candy store nightmares
begging silence
from the jubilant

but the sky turned up
a dream state

in that beguiling beauty
is brilliance


iv.

in shadows
the earth falls silent

rustling through
tall tales
the moon births

images in hidden corners

evening strolls
turn adventures

and every day
burns quick
to be reborn slowly


v.

the weight of hell
in short tempered bites
**** will with a proficiency
unseen outside
a viper's silent hunt

ready for war
with fists losing
responsibility

breaking triple digit
pressure


vi.

Incessant banging through walls built faster than I am strong enough to demolish, cradling lace so it won't rip on my forked tongue. There is only so much care left to handle perception just trying to breathe through a smile.
91218
190w
 Sep 2018
Arcassin B
By Arcassin Burnham


Respect others the way you want to be,
If everyone were like you, there would be
an assessment full of happiness through
the planet bringing in a new and a better
array of paths to all,
African American mothers that don't
understand their son always regret it later on,
The life expectancy of a black man to any
other could be limited by any given time,

But it could have been worse,
I'm putting don't my guard now.
I'm at peace with me , but what about you?
I'm in touch the spirit in the sky now.
They don't lie when they say life is a game,
Literally.
I will always rise above all , and love myself
spiritually...

buy a big glass house and live,
on the beach,
learn in here than what your,
body could teach.
I could be the only living person in this
ghost town to ever give a **** about
what goes on with the wickedness,
I could be someone that is homeless
living on the **** street and end up at
the wrong place along with weakness,

But it could have been worse,
I'm putting don't my guard now.
I'm at peace with me , but what about you?
I'm in touch the spirit in the sky now.
They don't lie when they say life is a game,
Literally.
I will always rise above all , and love myself
spiritually..
©abpoetry2018

https://arcassin.blogspot.com/2018/09/tired-of-injustice.html
 Aug 2018
Craig Verlin
I saw you on the plane.
The small crook of your neck turned
outward and resting along the
shoulder-line of another man.
How many lives will it take to shake
your phantoms from my spine?

We made eye contact disembarking and,
awash with turbulent shadows of
an old unyielding guilt, I said nothing.
There is a regret that exists,
deeper and more exacting within the shells
of lives we shake off and carry behind us—
tin cans attached to the wedding car
we will never drive.
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