the sky falls down on me
but
I'm starving my umbrella
to death

Drunk on liquor metaphors
High and falling fast
No direction in the clouds
Why does winning feel like losing
Why does your image burn
So extraordinarily
On the inside of a skull box
I am tossed away from answers
I’m a coin in the fingers of the sun
The last hundred flips were
Unsatisfactory
The white puffy scarves
Only swirl into themselves
Sympathetic, yet,
Not bothering to reach out
Because
They know they aren’t strong enough
To catch me
Or break the fall
But my lips are wings
Stretching into flight

My look perched on its medicine,
Twin hazel pills approaching slowly
Going down even slower,
My look took the dose that I tried to convince the doctor, is insufficient
I was told I couldn’t get another prescription
I’d have to adjust and make do, and cope, and adapt…
My doctor says it’s for my own good
And in time I’d feel more appreciative, less trapped
But I don’t really have time… it’s the other way around
And time has Me instead… And I refuse to be a resource to be had
I just want those caramel pills
I just want to feel the sun spill into my heart…
With an unending kiss that bears your name...

Caught a wave,
snatched the chance
to ride the tide;
took me straight
through the goosebumps,
the antennae
of the skin
protracted and receiving

...and the ripples multiplied

I always thought
the depths were cold,
not warm
but melody knows best
and I can't wait
to be surprized
holding breath
in the uneasy calm
before the storm

Distress calls are a Venus flytrap
Don’t come flying to the rescue
Or your wings will be
Its 4 o’clock snack
Can’t seem to shut its flap
Ever hungry for more
Always empty at the core
Traveler beware;
Heed not that mayday;
Move on and pay no care!

in the realm of man, beauty is a weapon that maims everyone within its reach… and ends up killing the one who wields it…

cold drops falling
soft leaves slowly
sliding crystals
the soil again
becoming rich
color taking fill
lungs come whole again
one with the rest
connecting the opposites
into the loop ever stirring
the wheel slowing down
never stops turning

archangels banish the devil
in the depths of your heaven
like a non-violent exorcism
the likes of which I haven't witnessed
sentimental plague covers our
binary consciousnesses
until the veil burns off
and the ashes feed the land
till it softens
wiping clean the mourning
desiccating grief
from the haunting
worshipped debris
embedded rootless
to the thick of the longing
to the excised fat
of past-time reveries
yet the ivory towers
still stand bared
amidst newborn flowers
sparing no sand
from the hourglass
for an epitaph
for only tomorrows
carry redemption
promising blossoming

the sky is death
(unbeknownst…)
the sky is closer than you think
you’ve been living upside down
you cannot fly or swim
the sun takes all
the sun will swallow you

light rented your body
and it will take it back
nothing can ever be stolen
for nothing is truly possessed
you are just as cursed as you decide
and you can be as blessed

My broken lightbulb,
I have conserved your light
Unto my pages
Stop raining shards
You are weeping now
Inconsolably
Your crumbling body
Wasting further away
Unnecessarily
Beyond return
But you will find no solace
In my eyes
In my skin
Where you cut and you burn
For you’ve been but a shining
On my ceiling
That I’ve let too long replace the sun

We are building New Babylon
out of carcasses and bones,
repeating the design flaws
of ancestors,
undoing our future,
sealing the destiny
for generations to come,
We are the very stones
built into these walls,
the same ones we throw
when we turn on our own.
And these stones
are what our hearts are made of.
Our thoughts are but paper
forgotten tomes, decaying pages.
Redundant and irrelevant
is what we have become.
Behold the great construction
of our ultimate destruction.

Everything is so slow when I have no bridge to you… everything is the pace and longevity of the kiss I dream your lips in… but time is a reverse-caress…

I am casting shadows
to stop the growing
smiles of petals
for they are feeding thorns
carving poems on my skin
but
I can't unlove your demons

I do know lip-reading
But that smile
Demands for tactile

She said "to hell with your dreams" and "let's do like the others"
I told her, to me, there could be so much more to discover;
"Join me, I said, this insanity burns with countless tomorrows"
"Forgive me, forget it", she pled, "you're on a road I can't follow"

My amputee heart
Recognized its long lost
Severed limb
A recurring phantom
Of a feeling
Naturally grown
Excised at its ripe
That you were the root
And the blossom
The marrow of the joint

How come... so well preserved...
Frozen? For so long.
Perhaps it still demands
To serve a purpose
One that hasn’t coped
With moving on

I no longer
wear hats
or drink from cups

the eyes of cats
are searchlights
and curiosity
is killing us

As my footsteps disappear into puddles
And the ripples go silent
I put to doubt
The things we make
Of mud today
As knowledge travels
Rails of science
Instead of the path
Of knowing time
We’re sending light
Where it wasn’t meant to be
Like the greatest of all angels did

We have turned learning into
An autopsy of everything
Lobotomizing every liberty
Analyzing mistakes to find
Better excuses
Bitterly abusing conscience
And sapience
Numbed by the applause
Of every new Eureka!

You rearrange the constellations
Of my compass
With the grace of an orchestra
With the majesty of symphony
Yet you keep my central star intact
The spine of the cellular staircase
You shine the way
Two steps at a time
Not leading; keeping company
On a voyage in the dark
Beneath the sails of night

natural elements
meet
unnatural monuments

primal ingredients
mixed
in a mold of obedience

we'll have none of this
and flee
dull predictability

we weren't meant to be
asleep
through the voyage of history

so we daydream in mutiny
to feed
newborn possibilities

They say that scale can break the laws of science
A crime so high in magnitude
Yet they cannot police
This bully that reality turns out to be

We met by means of tunneling improbabilities
The kiss of a miracle
Punishing the God complex
Of the self-righteous
Because the real laws, unknowable,
Dwell in realms higher than dogmatic notion
Whose knowledge is the surface of an ocean

Hence judgement cannot be
Wrought by the swimmers
And their fear of mortality
That guides them through the waves
And so their laws are the transgression

And We
Are the justice of the storm

To war!
The queen commands,
Battalions defend at once!
The battleship is pounding on her shores;
and past defensive lines extends
the front of the invading force,
retreats, regroups,
rallying the troops,
the enemy is pouring through the doors.
Her thoughts are soldiers finally expired.
Her generals now under heavy fire.
Yet she's the one who, after all,
this battle, skillfully,  provoked.
It seems that she forgot
that cold wars can turn hot.
She managed for awhile to slow down the assault.
Now the end draws nigh when final hill embattled falls.

The Catcher In the Rye reboot trilogy; sequels comprise Pitcher In the Rye and part 3: Batter In the Rye. The love story of a ball and a glove, whom a bat tried to separate. Stay tuned for the spicy novel 50 Shades of Homerun, where the characters go through all the bases, all the way to the home...

love is evolution window shopping for eyes

light blue - as in light enough to fly; blue enough to fall; a pull in both directions; pooling inflections of the light-wave sifted through the dark weave; near-symmetrically mindful of the sent and received

Do you remember me
because I do
remember you
like the sea waves -
the shore sands;
for I surrendered truth
into the scarred hands
of time
where our silence
left its hesitation marks...

And the breath she took
Didn’t cool her down
The heat was spilling out
Thirst began
To scale her tongue
Lips and legs ajar
The fire spread within the dark
Until it rained
And clouds embraced
Sighs escaping smiles

Don't keep this
hidden inside
behind the windows
beneath your eyelids

You shy away
from the flare
in my gaze,
the light bulb
in your room,
lit blindingly
between the
osseous walls

heart, a softened shard
thumping deeper than itself
I insert music in my ears
Picking things, living and inanimate,
snatching from all around me;
I put reality in my pocket,
kidnapping eyes
as I build my time-armor
to crunch the kilometers
so hard to swallow
feeding the cogs of routine
daily and hourly bits of myself

I’ve seen shooting stars,
Their, bodies, burning undesired
Thrown away
Like banished tears
From the dark pupil of the sky
I’ve been holding the hand of
A decade worth of dreams undone forever
So they could achieve dreams of their own
Before my gaze
I’ve held their ghosts in my arms
I’ve been standing at a full “I mustn’t” worth of distance
From their lips
I’ve been filling in vain, the bottomless glasses
Of the most beautiful words,
That spring from the electric spark
Beneath the ribs
I’ve been leading the guerilla squads
Of my beliefs
Against the empire of Impossibility,
And its most decorated generals: Doubt,
Insufficiency, Wrong…
I’ve lied face-down, hands tied behind my back
For that traitor, Restraint…
But now… I forgive him now…
And now, Empires fall on their own
Now those dreams unachieved,
Meticulously paint their eyes
Wrinkled from the salty trickles,
That realization has drawn towards me
For I’ve always known that…
Loving is now or never
You cannot wrap it in tinfoil
And freeze it for later
Yet, they, those morally unattained, chastely righteous dreams,
They do arrive at Knowledge station
Aboard the Intuit train,
Atop the tracks of true common sense,
Alas, too late.
My loving is given now
To Fulfillment,
For it chose now to never
And caressed my scars of restraint
With warm fingertips
And kissed my see-through “I mustn’t” from the other side of the wall
To melt away the distance to my bloodless lips

fingers grasp around you
the ribs of my embrace
slicing solitude in ribbons
wrapping new flesh
with shy promises
filling up the body
of a possibility
its youthful iridescent eyes
now blossoming
giving out near-future sparks
to the world-pyre

carbon - the backbone
of our density
so unexpectedly flexible
that the marrow
is woven of poetry

I found out that I’ve known
The language of the autumn
All along
But she couldn’t handle
Her own
Transitive verbs
And the silent consonants,
The stressed vowels
That brought her sorrow
I was pure torture when
I spoke to her
With a passion that
Shed her chills
In cold tears
Stabbing shards
Crashing in my ribs
I was our undoing
Inevitable as winter

Thought you got me in your grasp
Fallen in your hands,
Money in the bank
But
I'm a human hand grenade
you’ve pulled the safety pin away
division now awaits
the careless

Everything is digital printed on glass by silicon
All analog feelings, a thing of the past
Like a million years ago
And emotions are coal
Buried deep beneath stone
And steel and concrete
Like our bones are
Beneath our plastic skin

and with their hands of words
they reach towards
my thoughts to slice them
to widen the cut
and tear open
my intricacies
digging for spice and mud

as you unsheathe analysis
I devour all the violence
of voyeuristic
snaking
searing intentions

I will not allow
this foul transparency
to be my autopsy

The ghost of spread lips
will haunt the house
inside your skull
because
there's nothing wrong
with being who I was

Beneath the facade
The opposite awaits
So few though, I let in
Because my friend,
This heart of mine,
It may not be a temple
But make no grave mistake
For it’s neither a brothel

cities with their
glass skin
iron bones
gray flesh
of concrete
and a soul of
light bulbs
silhouettes,
the skylines…
the giants that
swallow us whole
because
we didn't know
how to stop
the magic of
the beanstalk
and now
that we have raised
our titans to unite us
we gave them will
we gave them back
the gift of fire
and it returns
to **** the life in
to burn the bridges
throughout and within…
our Atlases...
are they home
the shelter, still,
or are they now
the labyrinth
and the Minotaur

Carrion wings hang limp
On the backs of broken yesterdays
I don’t want them in any proximity
I cannot bear the stench
But vultures come along like doubts
At the speed of darkness
To save the undying from burial
And bring them back to me,
The predator feathers of prey wings
I man the guns myself and
Call all hands to battle stations
And it starts raining
Exhumed evidence
That the buried hatchet often is
A boomerang seeking fulfillment
With the new found vengeance
Of primeval sapience
Burning mad with
Insatiable curiosity

The puppet master's gone completely mad
Who knows when
Weaving webs of chaos
Knots collide
Casualties fall
And so I do not know
What he was before
But now I’m sure
He is a spider
Eating his own
Children

She wants every poem
To be about her
She wants the foam
Of every wave
As the skintight
Dress of dusk;
Divine forces be her tailor
And every Olympian as
The servant-king
To every whim of hers

Heart is singing loud so loud I can't hear other sounds but the rushing bloodstreams
Head is yelling uncontrollably
"oh my god the brakes are severed; Reason's gonna die in a horrendous high-speed crash"
they're pulling Common Sense out of the wreckage mangled on the seat beside the driver
something happens to the flow of time and there's a comatose thought still left alive
voices fading in calling names some crying some sifting words through teeth
you look what you did you killer, liar, thief, deceiver, cheater, coward, selfish hypocrite
Guilt will lead the trial but the tried is firm with silence
See you, Heart, don't forget to write and the conjugal visits, after all I'll do Your time

secret agent
nearing endgame
chessboard of patience
unraveling sapience
burning the haystack
the needle will come up
delivered in charred black
the countdown is on track

she said
"my clothes are beings of their own
they come and go
as they please
but in your eyes
they melt from me
like wax from а candle"

Stretching out, my palms
Are swaying in the wind
Like leaves of palms like
Leaves of trees
That are my palms
And off they go like kites
Like leaving calm
And making way for grinning madness
And its widening smile

I feel the call of Arachne
The pull of fine threads
And in the rifts between
The web of thoughts
The interlinked highways
Of my inner circle,
A hunger wakes
The lids of eyes are jaws
And I promise you rebirth
If my love consumes you
If I loved you now to death

Cheveux noirs,
mystérieux comme le soir,
sachez que
pour vos yeux verts
mon coeur est ouvert

* * *    

Open

Hair of blackness,
Mysterious as the night,
Know this:
To your green eyes
Open is my heart

And some might say
I've lost my way
But who are they
To judge
When numbers rule
Our nights and days
A life of Midas' touch

And all of those
Who quantify
All the good and woe
Will be too vain to realize
They are their own foe

And some might say
I've lost my way
A sentence I'd forgive
But it's the dreamer, not society
Who, the way forward, shall cleave

Do the blind dream of blind horses
And of long monochrome, dark on dark, black glows in the unequivocal hell.
Do the blind dream of blind horses
Steep hills, winds and skies,
And nightmares unnamed.
Do the blind dream of blind horses
And longings unseen,
And blind arms like snakes,
And the sorrowful dark scream of the flesh.
Do the blind dream of sighted horses.

*

Author: Pavel Vesselinov
Translation: Gabriel Burns