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359 · Jun 2015
fantasmacide.
Joanna Oz Jun 2015
i want to collect all the loose pebbles kicked out from the cracked sidewalk corners of this reckless town and hold them in my silky nightgown,
dreaming of little moments forgotten and pushed aside by thematic fantasmacide.
i want to bathe them in the river and let them cleanse me,
soaking in hiccuped breaths and slow motion blinks,
just a second more of peace-ridden darkness before the clamoring jamboree - streets spilling over with hilarity, drunks dancing wild, children searching for love in tops of trees.
i want to caress every weary brick-face
with the souls of my feet,
conscious of all those to walk before and following - so many lives with unique spiraling fantasies
woven into birch leaves.
i want to press them all between ancient book pages as they fall,
let potion brew amongst severed pieces of processed bark and dying leaf,
rejoined and relearning each other's mutated intricacies.
i want to drink the honey dripping
from the eyes of roof-top lovelies, clasp their hands and spin in revelry.
i want to memorize the hue the moon casts over this town,
the way she lays me spell-bound into dewy grass,
the way the wind laughs,
the way your eyes split my heart in half - nostalgic for what has yet to leave me,
romantic sadness holds hands with mystery.
357 · Aug 2014
Loss.
Joanna Oz Aug 2014
its said you can only lose
what you call yours
you can only miss
what you hold onto
you can only remember
what you choose not to forget.
so in the hazy moonlight
of this dreary summer night
ill be letting you go, darling.
ill release my love away, into the sky
ill watch it dissipate in the thick air
floating away on a soft breeze.
and ill breath in deeply,
holding the scent of us in my lungs
and when i exhale, nothing will remain
but my empty, barren, wasteland.
and that too, i will surrender into the night.
leaving just a distant memory of memory
of what once was, but  is no more.
and soon this dream of a dream will pass as well.
and i will be here, now, breathing.
and i will not feel loss.
and i will not long after you.
and i will choose not to remember
the part of me that i let fly away with you.
354 · Aug 2014
Untitled
Joanna Oz Aug 2014
when you’re living in two places at once
you're really not alive anywhere .
when your body is here,
and your heart is spread across the country,
and your mind is lost far out at sea,
you’re truly nowhere.
for when your body isn’t wrapped up
in the sturdy arms that claim it as theirs,
when you aren’t dancing together,
its just an empty vessel, a walking shell.
and when your heart is straining to reach
across mountain peaks and rivers and forests
its no longer able to love, to grow, to sing
its stretched so thin its barely hanging on,
its as hollowed out as the grand canyon
that it struggles in vain to jump over.
and when your body is empty
and when your heart is hollowed
your mind will wander far out of your reach,
it will sneak aboard a pirate ship,
and all of your faith, your courage, your sanity
they will be pillaged, and your mind will rest there
out on the high seas, with villains  that look like friends
and it will drink their ***, til the bottle runs dry.
and you surely won’t find that runaway
before it sinks to the bottom of the dark ocean.
and there you’ll be,
without body
or heart
or mind.
and you still won’t be
with the one that you tried so hard to reach
that you emptied and stretched and sank yourself,
only to find out what you knew all along:
that when you’re trying to live in two places
you’re really not alive anywhere.
353 · Sep 2014
To The Swings At Kells Park
Joanna Oz Sep 2014
Dear old friend of my childhood:

Thank you, for finding me here,
Greeting me with an old feeling,
Familiar weightlessness I've missed,
Misplaced by life's heavy grounding.

Thank you, for lifting me back, up
Back, up through the crisp sky,
Legs pumping ferociously to fling me,
Faster, higher, popping up from your seat.

Thank you, drawing peace back in,
Swinging my fears far from my focus,
Flinging my head back, heart held high,
Ears ringing thick with airy laughter.

Thank you, for throwing my perspective,
See the moon, see the mulch below,
See tops of tress hung with goons,
See dewy grass, see the back of eyelids.

Thank you, for holding my hips tight,
Pressing out wrinkles of over-worried woes,
Squeezing, hugging, assuring you're there,
Catching my bouncing *** from flying away.

Thank you, for squeaking louder, louder, louder
Than my malicious runaway monologue,
Your steady metronome keeps me in time,
To the muffled beat of my heart.

Thank you, for calling others round
You're a common ground for misfits,
A shared memory of past bliss,
A shrine to the good old day,
Thank you.
346 · Jun 2015
I periodically break.
Joanna Oz Jun 2015
sometimes, there is so much boiling over in my chest
that I must stare at the moon and pour out my excess
into her generous craters,
filling in jagged sidewalk cracks with apologetic cement.
sometimes, my heart is a jackhammer and I crush my bones to dust under the pounding weight of the love I carry for you,
I am a beggar who continually
accumulates debt to throw roses at your feet and watches silently
as you don't miss a beat walking on them to longingly greet
the shadow of another's ghost.
sometimes, I catch a whiff of your lips in my morning tea and a moan slips into my cup splashing burning liquid onto raw skin
pulsing ****** regret and chagrin.
sometimes, I wish we had never met,
and sometimes I wish we had been the first sight in each other's newborn eyes.
sometimes, I reach for you at night in my empty bed
and roll off past the missing guardrail your body used to create,
stuttering and floundering on the icy floor sometimes I pray for Lucifer
to burn your fingerprints from my skin -
the blistering sores would hurt less than this.
344 · Apr 2015
suspended in a sun cocoon
Joanna Oz Apr 2015
the first rays of morning light
tip-tap at eyes lidded with stardust.

remnants of galaxies tumble off onto pillows as
fox-hair lashes blink
open to greet the shining face before them
and close again to feel:

the weight of steady arms encompassing
a body melting into feathers,
the even ascending and receding
of an open chest upon bare shoulders,
the gentle breeze breathing from
one face to its lover's,
the warmth of capillaries whispering secrets
across porous boundaries of skin,
the pulsing signals of a heart's morse code
teaching the process of recognition,
the subtle scent of complexities
compounded in spiritual intimacy,
the longing to stay suspended in early hours of sun
inside the tranquil essence of another's being.
338 · Jan 2015
this year.
Joanna Oz Jan 2015
this will be a year of discovery.
a time of floundering
through seas of uncertainty
until surfacing
somewhere in starry-eyed serenity,
stuttering foreign tongues til they
roll from your lips
like old friends.

this will be a year of courage.
of quivering feet chasing mountaintops
to root themselves in truth
and yell from naked sound booths
what your soul has found you.
of grabbing fear by the *****,
and lassoing stars
so you can swing clear
out of this galaxy and
orbit a solar system of dreams.
of climbing the tallest redwood tree
to glimpse all that you can see,
and taste forbidden fruit -
juicy satisfaction, wild and free.

this will be a year of unfettered hope.
though it began in the shroud
of Hades' darkest days,
this year will unfurl golden lotus light
dripping honeysuckle sweetness
onto dried tongues
so they can speak of fearless love.

this will be a year in which
the cruel reality of returning to the dirt
will sprout freedom,
a time of realizing the worth laden
in this impermanent existence.
of plucking the sweetness
from flowering present moment bliss,
fleeting fractals of forever
wrapped in eternally flying seconds.
tick, tock, tick, tripping through times tendrils
and tackling the tendency of tip-toeing
around taboos and tucking tribes into tailcoats.
trapeze through taxidermied truths
until you find a tangoing tune.

breathe in peace,
breathe out light.
this will be a year of moon gazing nights.
of lazy laughter, and daisy dancing.
of miraculous mistakes, and tiger prancing.
so throw doubt out the door,
baby, this year is all yours.
334 · Sep 2014
Untitled
Joanna Oz Sep 2014
My ***** worn feet
Retracing the same journey,
Many souls before me,
Many following behind.
I feel the steps realign,
I've made the same footprints
In the same soil, again & again.
Remembering recurrent realities,
Replay the drama, another reincarnation
Of my eternal soul, slowly
Lifting back the veil, peeking into
The same void of dichotomies,
I feel their resolution has once before
Resided within my understanding.
Now a forgotten fable, told in foreign tongue.

I am here, now.
But I am also a primordial memory,
I am also a vision of the future.
I am here, now with my preconceived predictions,
My view tinted the colors of my past,
But with each new sun rise,
I reach beyond to open myself, again & again.
The flowing current of energy,
Unfolding new perspective in front
Of my eternal awareness --
May my colored glasses be rainbow,
A kaleidoscope of amorphous patterns,
All turning with the rhythm of the universe.
334 · Sep 2015
white autumn morning
Joanna Oz Sep 2015
this morning's fog paints the sky a bleary white,
a blank canvas for streaking black birds and
deep green oaks to dance upon.
a forgotten cold wind sweeps in
over the blue blanketed mountains
dragging the new season along
with a caravan of burnt sienna nostalgia.
the smell of leaves dreaming of
their fall to come crinkles on the earth below,
and they rattle with anticipation
in their wooden beds.
steaming coffee trickles down throats
****** open with yawning
and swaddled in knit scarves
from the crisp, saturated air.
the thickness of the day is delivered
again, and again, in a thousand
cardboard packages
and comes with a knowing feeling
of endings and renewal.
332 · Sep 2015
meek validations
Joanna Oz Sep 2015
it's okay to let confusion drown you, pour over you like the wind sweeps the Great Plains clean.
it's okay to mistake up for down, and have to wear a compass rigged with alarm bells as an amulet.
it's okay to forget your name and make up a new one.
there will be days when you can't see out the window past the dust and sun-charred veneer,
and they will serve as reminders of the universe in the bathroom mirror and it's impossible reality.
it's okay to feel like mundane chaos, or a deflating balloon in the dessert sun.
it's okay to save secrets for yourself and to wear your mistakes as medals on your chest.
it's okay to doubt all that you've ever been told.
there will be days when no amount of coffee will cure the weariness compiled in your bones and you will have to set a timer for breathing.
it's okay to squeal in ecstasy and in fury and in despair.
it's okay to miss people who do not think of you and wish that they would.
it's okay to wonder if you have every truly loved anything.
there might not ever come a day when it all makes sense, and that is okay too.
321 · Sep 2015
bloodlines
Joanna Oz Sep 2015
today i am feeling the stains
of my mother's memories thrash in my blood stream.
moments shadowed from my ears
lay their vicious consequences upon my chest.
ancient itches poke out at me
from the unraveling seams of inherited sweaters.
vintage fears passed down through
generations of women since the first reflection
was ever seen, garish and distorted in a rippling lake.
i wonder at the smudged details.
i wonder if these vanishing phantoms that appear to me
loud and visceral and jumbled
are just apparitions of my murky underbelly
or elusive clues being unearthed slowly.
each step I feel the weight steepen,
my features molding into ancestral craters -
variations on a theme i've been aching to destroy.
my thoughts are betraying me
yet the eyes staring back in the mirror tell me differently,
they pour back the razored gaze of jaded history.
i try to remind myself that i am a sculptor,
but this truth gets warped towards dreams of
shaving away
rather than building.
307 · Jan 2015
spirit song
Joanna Oz Jan 2015
unsolicited, unwelcome, and unexpected,
the universe gave me a
crash course
in the fact that:
this life is fragile, wafer thin -
and we are but dust sailing aimlessly in the wind.
it planted a quivering seed in my bones,
and instantly grew
a sinking feeling in my marrow
that i've been sleeping through my best days,
giving them carelessly away
to hesitation
to hate
to fear,
so i've resolved,
to be HERE
now -
to leap across the abyss
while i can,
to dance and sing and stretch out my hands, screaming:
"THIS IS IT BABY!!
THERE'S NOTHING TO WAIT AROUND FOR!"
and if i land flat on my face,
then i'll embrace the rough ground
taste the sweet dirt,
knowing you're slowly transforming into earth,
and one day
i will too.
children will frolic upon our decomposed noses,
and pick wild roses from our brains,
they'll smell of
moon laughter and
etherial refrains.
freed of our temporary cage,
our spirits will expand infinitely,
exist as sky
as rain
as majestic oak tree.
301 · Sep 2014
La Luna: Mirror of The Sun
Joanna Oz Sep 2014
Laying in a dewy bed,
Lullabies from humming crickets,
Echoing waves through my head
Thats hanging with hazy clouds,
Drifting through darkening blues,
That blanket you, but never cover
Your luminous glow -- magnificent,
Mystifying, marvelous, magic moon!
You celestial goddess, my guardian.
Tonight my bones are quivering
Waves of undulating energy,
Injected from white rays of
Etherial light leaking out,
Reflected from your face to mine.
I can feel the furnace that's feeding you,
Within the pit of my belly burning,
And as I breath in the summer night,
You wrap me in subtle assurance
That a bright new day will rise,
For your gentle guiding light,
Reveals that sun is still shining
Just around the corner.
296 · Aug 2016
Untitled
Joanna Oz Aug 2016
tell me,
what clammors in your mind when you cannot sleep at night?
what are you clinging to when you do not rise in the morning?

— The End —