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 Jun 2016
irinia
for the distance, the blessing and the curse
in this forgetful bed, on this blank page
I sit as quiet as an empty hourglass
so used to contemplate the wounded pride
of desolation
the dilemma in your steps, the missing link
happiness just an eclipse
an accident on unmapped streets
-space is just the exhaustion of time-
worlds of words caught up in their embryo
crushed there,
their innocence stripped away
paper-thin dreams chased away like useless creatures
from your back burdened with the same shame and
no soft tissue for your tears

if only I could say this loud enough:
love is the courage in our cells
disambiguation
and there will be a day -
no more fear
no more far away
 May 2016
Traveler
Let me catch up
With your suffering heart
Tormented by love's fatigue
The brokenhearted wows me
Your longings that can never be

I too have a shadow following
The darkness of soul that begs for light
Spent my adult life in a literal prison
Lost my children, my world, my life

Still my voice is the liberal in the room
And no matter how ****** up my life "was"
I love who I am
And I'm happy
   So hang in there...
 May 2016
irinia
while fishing the stars
in your window
caught my skin eavesdropping
these rhythms: it must be some truth
I came along ahead the cortege of my selves
straight from
the blues of morning

tonight is simply beautiful,
I'm just saying,
heaven & hell
one metaphor away
 May 2016
Joshua Haines
There's a difference in these woods,
drifting between grey, scabby bark,
sifting into the moist, wormy soil,
beckoning for purpose,
breaking into the sound of a
becoming yet battered nature.

The footprints can be light, thorough --
almost a trait granted by the torture of eternity.
With head-weaves buoyant above tree-leaves,
a hyper-vigilance stemmed from the abuse
of a darkly philosophy weaponized;
an extension of the elbows, forearms, wrists
of huntsmen seeking inferno.

A hollow is an ideal resting place,
beyond the greased veins of trees,
fingertips delving into clustered black,
grasping an illusory livelihood,
only to imprison itself,
hoping for only a thoroughness
granted by the torture of eternity.

When love enters the picture,
it's best to fade into the skyline,
becoming a blue phantom,
hiding behind q-tip clouds,
balanced feebly, anxiously,
unable to realize
how easy you can be seen.
How easy it is to underestimate
your own significance.

You can drag a razor horizontally,
thinking the ink of space
will pour through, staining yourself,
watching yourself disappear,
hoping for only a thoroughness
granted by the torture of eternity.

-

I dance with her, a light caramel mutt,
in a purgatory of racial tension,
between black and white,
living in the grey area of society,
not knowing that it's okay --
and she is like me,
I've just realized.
 Apr 2016
irinia
We are the night ocean filled
With glints of light. We are the space
Between the fish and the moon,
While we sit here together.
a repost, I  accidentally deleted this piece by Rumi and I really enjoy it. Hope you do too :)
 Apr 2016
Joshua Haines
Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

I.

He says Call me Mr. G.
G for Gore, Greed, that Green.
An atypical stoner
with hair wetter than his mouth.
With more ******* than a pound,
he says, With an understanding of
all the suffering in the global delusion
that is the Earth. Mr. G, his name.

Oily brunette, Mr. G., would smoke
Marlboro Green Blend -- menthol --
and spit shot out between stained lips
after each extracurricular exhale.
The saliva would land, tremendously,
and puddles of Rasta shooting stars
would lay, stretching across concrete galaxy.

Hazel eyes invaded and shamed him,
for he wished to be green, like life,
but only envisioned a contradiction:
death (see nature),
for which he learned to embrace, stoically,
like a shepherd of an endangered breed
meant to die among skewed perspective.

II.

This house could be mistaken
for a cinderblock purgatory;
between color and absence of,
eternal and temporary.

A raptor laughter purged the tension --
he abided by no accommodation of civility.
As smoke followed his hyena howl,
the landline lay suddenly of purpose.

Resin raided the clunky, black buttons;
a voice was whispered like a blue phantom:
*******' cheese, pineapple, pepperoni
-- no, extra ******' cheese, extra pep --
Sure, add some more pep with your driver:
he, she -- honestly, man -- they better have
pep-in-their-******-step-you-feel?

Minutes passed like sentient matchbooks
dropping towards a skeletal fire.
G threw the phone across the room
and, like a disenchanted drunk dance,
his words wobbled over each other,
I ordered a 'za, a pizza for the layman.
About thirty, probably thirty-one
minutes, that is.

Passing me the flower-stitched ****,
I ****** in one, maybe two, three,
blasts that I swore
had some sort of nano-insects
bite and burrow into the holes
of my sponge for a throat.

Wringing my rubbery neck,
watching my words leave my toothy cave,
I found out that G doesn't believe in beer.
Believes in souls but not beer,
believes in green men, not beer.

Alcoholic splash is what we all need,
at times. So I told him the obvious,
I'm going to get a case of
(Insert your ****** choice)
and I'll be back as soon as possible.

G stared at me and made a guttural noise,
Do whatcha please, I'll stay here and
protect us from vampires.
You know, blood-suckas.

Pale stoner vampires.


III.

The leather painted door was wide open
like the legs of ominous spider cave,
but the doors of a car
I had never seen before
were as closed as the lips of a VCR.
There's nothing but silence in these situations --
is this one of those situations? Grassy knoll?

Approaching the mouth of purgatory,
I entered with the hesitancy of a lost dog.
On the plastic covered couch,
two people sat atop the invisible cloud
above the patterned fabric
and above the fingers of time.

Blonde hair sprouted from her scalp,
raining down upon vanilla shoulder blades,
her chest a harbor for two pale, freshly mounds,
with crooked, beige diamonds in the center.

She trembled when G said, Meet Steph
-- can I call you Steph, Steph? --
Meet Steph, the artist formerly known as
Stephanie, holding up her licence,
Vanmeter, of 441 1/2 Locust Ave.

That's creepy, huh, Steph? Locust Ave?
Are you something that lives in the ground,
comes up every several years, making noise?
Has this been years in the making?
Are you bound to make noise in my house?

You know this is a house, right?
Whatsa matter, unfamiliar due to ya
living-in-the-*******-ground
or is it because you share a house,
an apartment, Steph? Is it one of those?
Pizza deliveries ain't paying the bills?

G gets up, I, a coward, approaching him
about to say -- Hold up, brother, he says.
Not another move, pulling his hand from
behind her shaking, confused head,
a silver cannon an extension of his arm.

She's here to **** our blood,
She's here to ****. our. blood.
Whether she means to or not,
I know you don't think you want to, Steph,
I know you don't mean to,
But you're here to
drain-us-like-the-Red-Cross.

I tell G that she isn't,
What have you done, G,
You need to let her go
before this gets worse.
That cliche dialogue.
Because these things always do,
cliche or not.

Brother, you don't understand these things
-- It's impossible for a godless man
to understand the mechanisms
of something bigger, something holy --
but you need to listen, G said, You need to --
she tried to move, quickly,
but G grabbed her by her blonde strands,
pulled her back towards the couch,
She swiped at his eye, drawing blood.

There was a pause, a deathly silence,
by the hair, she was rendered motionless,
Oh, no, he echoed, Love, you shouldn't,
You ought not do those things.
Looking at me, he asked me to listen,
Always remember this wasn't your fault.
Sometimes, you can't be in control

Holstering her neck with his gun hand,
G picked her up, slamming her,
head first,
into the drug covered,
resin sprinkled
coffee table.

He dropped on top of her,
Looked at me, Remember, okay?
and beat her head with the **** of the gun,
until the cracking of a larger M&M; shell
muffled towards all eardrums,
maybe even hers.

With blood,
that could be mistaken as war paint,
swimming across his jaw and neck,
and sprinkled on his forehead,
G whispered, You are free,
and I was never sure
who he was talking about.

My feet left before I did,
I was suddenly in my car
with only the ignition
and G's voice registering.
I passed car after car,
pastel metal wagon after
metallic matte creation,
not sure if I ever saw him,
not sure if he ever existed,
if I ever existed.

IV.

Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

Waking up in a cavern darkness,
my dreams disintegrate from my eyes,
swirl in my headspace, evaporating to
heaven knows where.

Scattered pitter-patter
drowns midnight Seattle,
killing and washing away
cluttered, modern filth,
******* carnivorous minds
into hungrier gutters.

This is the part
where the screen of my life reveals:
SIX MONTHS LATER,
in yellow, stenciled letters.
But what it wouldn't say is
how I still feel like I'm dipped
in the ink of Ithaca, NY.

If this were the indulgent
autobiography of my life
it wouldn't say that
the distance doesn't matter,
because that'd be a lie;
I feel like I have only escaped myself.

The rain swells, sounding as
thick as blood, swishing around
the veins of the city.

Stephanie dies every night,
disappearing and reappearing
behind secret doors only she can open.

When she comes to me in sleep,
she is baptized in green, head caved,
Forget-Me-Nots sprouting
between fragmented skull
and select spots of brain soil,
the flowers singing jazz
with a different voice, every time.

One time she spoke.
With blueberry lips that belly cold,
she sounds like my mother:
I am so proud of you, she statically says.
You saved me. Remember.

V.

To be continued.
Half of "Godless". Any feedback, good or bad, is appreciated.
 Apr 2016
Traveler
Staring down
From the high rise
Of their lobbyist contradictions
The powers to be
Strive for the most popular positions

The demon-goddess dressed in blue
Awaits the orange haired devil fool
Now that the social savior
By information stall
Is running not so far at all

So how does such
An obvious evil
In our midst exist
By strategic indecision
  The age old Judas kiss...
One of those Bernie or busted realities.
 Apr 2016
Graff1980
Your pride
comes from
your nationalism,
your patriotism,
rage and dissatisfaction.
You pass each moment
stewing, colluding
with each new oppressor  
in the name of solidarity

Spewing slogans and
other simple statements
oaths and weak ideas
you build a fascist nation
and wonder how you ever got here.
 Apr 2016
rained-on parade
I'll toll the bells in your return-
you've come back empty handed,
without any stories
to tell me.

I'll lie awake tonight again,
and you'll have nothing to tell me.
No happily-ever-after, no stories of heroes and queens.

I'll wait and want to be tangled in narration,
and dialogue and maybe finally
slumber might find me
and take me in.

And you'll tell me that you're sorry,
that you owe me histories and narratives,
that my eyes won't rest
and it's all you're fault.

But oh my dear,
all I wanted was for you to know
your homecoming
was my most favourite story
yet.
Struggling
 Apr 2016
irinia
blue insomnia have woken up in my words
seeds of wind, the lament of unknown men, women
the impossible alphabet of terror
daily I pass by the same cemetery
the willow-trees have new leaves now
the words can' swerve while
their faces dissolve slowly deeper and deeper into death
and I’m holding mine into hands smeared with tears

he  loved me like
they loved their neck rope

we see through the night
what we can
empty jars
purple lies
hardly the collection of killings
that makes
the morning sing

death has no words
 Apr 2016
irinia
those days - each a capsule
a miniature of an idea
or an emptied truth
your soft lips postponed
bitter fingers knock
on unheard doors
my blood unfolds myself
with wonder

I can't drag the shadow of
the afternoon light back
into its nest
into the bud of silence -
back to its muse

my dreams have caught
*time fever
 Mar 2016
wordvango
unseen , only realized by those with vision,
who saw the tree grow tall, like the others
in the tribe, noticed , when it fell down, exposed
what was hidden, yes , from water soil,
from the earth , from our eyes
are things hidden, the roots
to everything often
are right under our limbs
our hard outsides, our beauty
our reaching for heaven,
our eyes but missing one part
of the picture of the mountain
or tree, or buffalo,
wolf ****
or
origin.
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