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1.3k · May 2013
Mud Puddles
Emmaline E May 2013
Mud puddles
Seeping
Is that mud?
Nah, prob’ly jus’ …
Just what?
He thought for a while,
Adjusting the stance
Of his cigar between his thin lips,
Barely covering the hole in his face.
In the dank silence,
I stared, and began to wonder…
How could he stand it?
The noisome smoke,
Right under his nose-
The rough texture
On lips that could not quite afford anymore sand-papering…
He took a drag, finally looked back down, and answered.
It’s mud.
We both knew it wasn’t mud,
But the foulness that seems to follow
The human wherever he
Would wander….
As I contemplated, he spat,
And added his own contribution.
the first poem I wrote this year for a creative writing class
Emmaline E May 2013
He danced in light, son of the Wind,
And colored the minds below.
She was too deep, locked in herself,
But he still had inarticulately tried
To convey his longing in light.

When he asked the girl
What her name was, she replied,
"I am the Marianas Trench,"
And he blinked, smashing lashes
In a vain effort
To extract an answer not forthcoming.
She gazed blankly, concealing
Three million dying hopes
Faintly sparkling within her depths.
He bashfully cast his eyes
Downward to conceal his own
Inner turmoil.
"I am the Aurora Borealis,"
He finally yelped as his fingers drummed
Notes in the tension between them.
A light flickered across her
Black eyes, flitting to his own.
Quickly extinguished, it
Carried within it her slipped
Composure and raw yearning.
He drew breath, and the coronas
Of his eyes slid to meet hers,
Blank once more.
Before she could bolster
Her dwindling courage,
He was leaving, taking with
Him all her color.
"Don't!" She pleaded.
Her cheeks flushed magenta.
He blanched, his eyes dark.
But he was far from her,
Shrouded in light
That could never color
The stone walls she built.
Miles high, she hoped
They touched his sky someday.
Until then, she was hidden,
Sound, and he was brilliant, lost.
876 · May 2013
Licking My Insides
Emmaline E May 2013
I have a small fire burning up my lungs
like shredded kindling. I don’t know how he
managed to lodge himself there- or why it is me
that he chooses to inhabit.
Yet he’s mine and he sings in
rusty crackles that propel
my lingering wounds to bubble to the surface-
his heat renders me magma; I am malleable to him.

I think of titanium and ice cubes
and liquid nitrogen, occasionally,
but I remain true
to my fire. He has me. I’m burning.

A branch once charred is never truly immaculate again.
And I have become magnificently singed,
no matter how much of the
ever-present precipitation
I coax into my blistering throat,
I can feel him smoldering.

Perhaps I’ve grown too
comfortable, too familiar with his crackle.
But I’ve found my own reach
Mirrors that of his many lapping tongues.
864 · May 2013
Fake It Till You Make It
Emmaline E May 2013
Tendrils of hair caress your cheeks
And you sigh, in a manner not quite forlorn,
But wearied.
Yesterday you picked up the red icing from
Your birthday cake and smeared it on your lips.
Your eyes contain a light that seems to dance
In their pools of relentless curiosity,
And you blink, for a moment,
A reprise from your absorption of
The Way Things Are.

Last week you were covered in dirt and
Blue on your eyelids that stretched to
Your browbones and made your
Stare look menacing.
I watched as you came home and
Scrubbed it off, allowing yourself
The small kindness of an easy cry
As you muttered and cursed, scaring me.

Today you are buying fake nails
And your makeup covers the
Oily tear-tracks on your cheeks.
And, for a moment, I am proud
Because your eyes light up ferociously
When someone calls your name.
So I say it over and over, reminding you you’re real.
A 5-minute poem based upon a conversation based upon reinventing yourself based upon self-hatred based upon losing someone very close to me whom I adore
861 · Jun 2013
Your Cheekbones
Emmaline E Jun 2013
Light Darkness,
Soft Shadows,
Brilliant Undertones-
Flush with Flesh.

Dramatic
Elegant
Raw
Trying to go for a more minimalistic approach as many of my poems are quite rambly.
808 · Jul 2013
Pitfalls along the Road
Emmaline E Jul 2013
My eyes snaked,
sidewound, aware, wary.
Wretched wishes do not plague me now,
hopeless as they were in the empty cataclysm.
Yet, with this newfound freedom, flayed and
fragile, fumigating the baby breaths from my lips,
I still feel a sudden descent;
I do not trust my senses to allow me peace,
as I admire a cumulonimbus thunderhead, the sky turquoise through
the windshield, and the concoction of summer
sky tantrums in the afternoon and the kiss of stale air conditioned
zephyr propagate my subconscious, and,
thus, I have yielded to razor-edged heart shards again,
even after I pledged to leave them on the cold, tile floor.
the road to recovery, that is. even after promising myself I have moved on, a curious atmospheric sensation can bring me back to a time when we were one. Although I detest it, but it is one of the most bittersweet and curious romantic things I have ever experienced. I was aching for a pencil to write this as it occurred. It is just so...devastatingly unprecedented.
801 · May 2013
Ride Home from a Long Week
Emmaline E May 2013
Wind whips, whistling in the seat belt,
Crooning along to the emotional ululations
As I succumb to the emphatically teenager-like emotions,
Grand in their extremity,
Both realizing and fully embracing the cliché-ness
And dramatization of every quip, gesture, glance.
My mood soars irrationally with the voraciousness of my tires,
Devouring every granule of cement at velocities upwards
Of 30 miles per hour.
Jason Mraz and I make an excellent duet,
As I’m quite certain the disgruntled woman a lane over
At the stoplight thinks as well.
He sings of skies “getting rough”
And I allow my eyes to wander to our own ominous clouds,
Creeping from the east like panthers prowling in search of prey;
I appreciate their slate undertones and umber rumples,
The gold shining from behind and within, tinting their edges,
But I turn my attentions slowly, with a bittersweet notion,
To their fluffy brethren, friends of Magritte,
Iridescent and captivating as they weave among the rays.
Possibly one of my only happy poems, written in a flurry of exuberation.
Emmaline E Jun 2013
I've felt a lingering, encompassing contentedness
and I only hope she will stay.
I woo her like I would
a friend, I brew her coffees and teas and
we speak of the world in terms of
relativity and we laugh.
There is the most catalystically crucial point:
we laugh and laugh at all that
once seemed something
to be sorry for, or ashamed of, or
beneath our bustling cognizance.
Our jocundity is riddled with shining
jewels of barbaric opulence as I frantically
bare my canines in a persuasive exclamation.
I hope she'll stay,
but to receive and not give would never convince her.
Emmaline E Jul 2013
Perhaps all I missed
was lightning-quick to some,
wrapped in a glance of derision.
But in my gaze, you were
chimerical , wonderful,
the one to complete the puzzle.
Now I see the ragged edges
and frayed ends of your strings
and wonder how I ever thought
you'd be the one to tie things together.
The colors slinked from
my tear ducts in striations and I knew
I knew
all along you should have appeared grey.
734 · May 2013
Iron
Emmaline E May 2013
I pace myself with thoughts of trivialities
And brush depth aside like it is nothing
When I am called upon.
But I never call upon myself, for that would be too much effort.
I try hard to forget that I am rusty, too,
But you need so much more oil than I.
So take it all, and take it gladly
Because I’d love to see you glimmer
In the afternoon sun.

Your hinges no longer squeak in greeting,
But unfold in fluid motions to
Encompass my ragged entirety.
And I am rusting now,

I am rusting,
Russet and flaking.
My paint chips and I appear dull,
Weathered by water and watered by weather.
I only diminish.

Glass and translucency
Mock me continually
As I struggle to find the caverns
In their beautiful facet, undeterred,
But realize that cellophane
With its loud crinkling, stains
The sight instead.

If only I could show others
The way you paint
With my reds and chestnuts
And the sunsets that I choose to mimic.
The continual exposure wears me,
But I am galvanized by your whisper,
“You are iron.”
699 · May 2013
Microcosms of Holes
Emmaline E May 2013
Last night the moon
Wept her warm tears
For me, and they burned
Dime-sized holes in my
Coverlets. This did not
Concern me, as I knew
That the laborious breaths
Creaking through my
Ivory-wrought sternum
Will soon overturn
In substance.

Strip mines line my
Stomach, and the little
Traffic director inside
Me has declared that
No substance should fill
The hole that should
Hold, wishing to gnaw

The profound depths
That paralyze have
Tunneled to my core again
I was never ready to go
Spelunking, but then
Again, no one is ever ready
For the darker side of the light.
Emmaline E Jul 2013
Some deserts look so much like the ocean floor.
And we were laughing but I wasn't sure why
and the dusk sky was the same indigo as the sweater I wore
when you kissed me so softly in the back of my car with rose petal lips
as we took refuge from the hail with the other drivers.
And worms sprouted from the loam, brown like the earth.
I found an unused chapstick,
and I remember the wrapper was green,
but not the green of your eyes, and definitely not the same green in mine.
I still don't know why it was there, or why you'll never be again.
And I'll add those to the list that includes the way
your eyes were full of cypress trees.
just reminiscing with personal truths I suppose
Emmaline E May 2013
I stumble upon them
In the silkily inked night-
Stars straining through like
Candle light in caverns-
And oftentimes nurse my
Stubbed toe in whimpers.

For some revelations
It is like the dandelion in reverse,
And all the pieces I catch,
Blown to me by the cold and unrelenting wind
As I strain my short arms, - higher, higher,
Softly, gently -
Nestle into a place that has been and was and always will be for them,
As it was and has been and always will be since this
Infinite and cumbersomely graceful universe was constructed in the cosmos.
The truth flowers and blossoms into being for me.
I caress it to my chest and stare at its multifaceted simplicity,
Shielding it from the wind that bore it with trembling hands.

Other times, I feel a blow to my temple
And my sternum turns to black, glass shards that implode,
Ripping and flaying as they exit.
My ribs slip to tar, laboriously oozing down the inner constructs
Of my collapsing frame,
Until it seeps from my toenails, puddling around me.
I rest a clammy forehead in its depths,
Soothing compared to the devastation within.

My heart, marred by these,
Flutters in apprehension,
And the closeness of contact causes
An indelible, impalpable, incredible
Rhythm
Falling in with the other.

The best moments of truth
Are when warmth
Crawls like sapling ivy from
The tips of my fingers to my earlobes and calves,
Navel and frigid nose,
Thawing me from the inside out and the outside in and all at once.
Chills cascade down my spine,
Fleeing to a safer place where they always will reside within me,
But that does not matter now.
I am walking on this knowledge,
I am prancing with my heart,
I am surrounded by a melody,
I am, I am, I am.
I was wrought with a tight throat and
Choked whispers
And a courage to hope,
And the moment when I began to know and suddenly knew all at once,
Because sometimes knowledge is inherent in our very being
If we are so bold as to taste it.
627 · Jun 2013
Hindsight Musings
Emmaline E Jun 2013
I remember
there were nights when I found it
incredibly novel
for someone to tell me, "goodnight."
And now it is as if
you have corrupted
me with sorrowful expectation.

I will never know whether
my name is afforded a second glance
by you.
a bit of peripatetic writing tonight~
Emmaline E Jun 2013
i know that i am on the cusp of something
the graceful lip
and with each passing second
i am leaving the person i once was

my fingertips dwell on hers,
clammy- i liked her very much
and i try to shake my views
of myself as a battered frisk upon
the roiling waves of circumstance
beneath my quaking keel

i'm behind glass,
enclosed with condensation
with each of my ragged inhalations
and with chipped nails
i sketch pictures of who it is
that i want to be
but, still, i cannot quite make her out-
the lines are blurred and
my breath erases her
i am unable to see the future clearly
if i truly live
561 · May 2013
12 Tomes
Emmaline E May 2013
in 12 ancient tomes is kept
your yore,
with pages blank and
pages scrawled with tears
(salt-edged persipiration from one
thousand toils),
ink bled through in
a chemical reaction of
struggle with parchment
to create lines fine enough
to be seen as beautiful.

There are no lines but those
of the author and she
writes with a sagging fer-
ocity.

Her toil is mirrored in the
Eyes of others and the
Smiting of thousands.
Sun sets on the spokes of
Wheels meant to carry her to
The library of tomes,
But they cease their revolutions.
some wordvomit, unedited and rough indeed. also angsty.
530 · Jun 2013
View Me As You Will
Emmaline E Jun 2013
I am not the ladder with the creaking rungs upon which your dusty feet may find stability,

nor am I the svelte key to dissipate any and all resistance to your god-given right to happiness,

nor can I entice you successfully from all the obstacles you have constructed
precisely for someone to lead you through.

And in all of this you are mistaking my momentary passing

for a longing glance in your direction.

Like the bile in my throat, all the Valentine's hearts and roses on anniversaries that
have been force-fed to you from an early age ring out

as you call y name, your voice cloaked in what you thought was love.

and I hear only the clang of my heels upon the pavement.
462 · May 2013
Finding the Origin
Emmaline E May 2013
Sometimes** I want to cut my eyelashes
Off when I think of all the
Stupid things I have done.
I’d end them at the root (
The follicle
)
Of their tormenting process
And leave only the small stalk of
Good that my intentions stemmed from
In the very beginning
( Before they feathered out into
Devastatingly long things, meandering
Wisps )))
That interlock with others and
Make the artist shiver when
He tries to draw them (One
By
One)
Sometimes I want to
cut (
Down to the root of things )
To make sure that everything
Started nobly
And that all of the suffering is for a cause.
Because my dark eyelashes have blond
Tips that are obscured in the sunlight
( And cloaked by the night ))
And I’m not sure if they actually ever end
Because they rub against one another (((like
Everything always leaves abrasions on the
Edges of everything else)))
And I never even notice the ripples in the
Air molecules when I blink,
Involuntarily and inevitably-
A dark flash withers-
Unnoticed-
An odd confession. It is the truth. I won an award for this poem... plus some stern words from my grandmother about being ******.
435 · Jun 2013
Untitled
Emmaline E Jun 2013
The moor was dense
But the film was loose
and my blistered heel
broke the surface
and paralleled your cry,
ringing.
reverberation was never so kind in
this fog,
and it swallowed you.
Mist licked my open eyes.
Inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Homes: The Adventure of the Priory School

— The End —