Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 Jun 2015 E
Joshua Haines
On Fire
 Jun 2015 E
Joshua Haines
Her ribs crackled, in the skeleton night.
And I remember my mouth on hers,
where atomic fish hooks attached our lips.
Where there was nothing like kissing
like our God wasn't dead.

She was accused of killing a taxi driver
in the Brazilian underbelly.
Smoking a cigarette, she dropped it on the ground,
spat on it, and crushed it with her bare foot,
saying she fell in love with the way
his sleep-drenched body lay.

And I told her to stay home.
And I told her that they'd find her.
But she didn't stay home.
And they did find her.

Chasing her through the Babylon brush,
insults were thrown and so were balloons of gasoline.
Each pink, yellow, and green vessel floated in the air, as an internal opera heightened.
And sour splashes spread across her body,
as she fled from the vigilante mob.

The children danced along the panoramic horizon she ran beside,
laughing, pointing, singing.
The slumbering sorrow of the situation became evident,
and she started to feel the calm of fleeting life.

Her dreams aborted and her ideals became fallacies,
and with the sound of fuzzy motors in the background, her heart leapt and her feet slipped.

Rope ate into her, wrapping her like the orphaned recklessness of each set of eyes that painted her.
She squirmed amongst the cheers.
She cried with every thrown beer and balloon.
The empty-eyed males gang ***** her.
The women covered the children's eyes,
and the children tried to move their mothers' hands.

And I pushed my way through the crowd.
And I saw her smothered in blood, beer, and gasoline.
I wanted to halt the hurricane that destroyed morality.
But I am a coward.
Frozen by my fear, I, too, am a murderer.
And a murderer I'll always be,
for the burning of all that was good.

Sudden flames soared towards the sky.
Laughter escaped as molotov cocktails exploded onto her body.
Her head turned towards the crowd,
as flames scampered across her face.
I saw in her, what I never saw before,
which was the human race.
 Jun 2015 E
JM
Wet in the deep night
 Jun 2015 E
JM
You will not be meeting me
at the train station,
wearing nothing but a sundress and
the warm scents of
wet desire rising as
a lustful fog
from your steaming forest,
anytime soon.

The heat would **** the sun.

I will not be showing up
on your doorstep,
rigid and pulsing
with the blood of
centuries coursing through
my thick roots,
in the nearest future.

The pressure would crush the moon.

Instead,
I swim in your teacup
and warm baths
while you roam in
the smoke at the edge
of my shadow.

I feel your soft whispers
across the ocean of time
as they float on broken
spiderwebs of memory.

Our love is in the words
between the worlds;
resting in the
wet soil of
an afternoon nap,
we bloom as one.

As the fire of night
descends, destroying
the boundaries of time
and space,
we transcend all that
is cold and unforgiving,
leaving behind only
echos of wanting.
 Jun 2015 E
rosie
history
 Jun 2015 E
rosie
it was the library
down by the corner
where Oak
and Pleasant Street
crossed every night
that I first saw you.
rugged hands
shifted the pages
of a worn-out Catcher in the Rye
when two spent faces
met one another
like gasoline
sparking up a dimmed campfire.
I took you home;
the sun rose;
and somewhere in between,
when the sheets were dancing
and my fingertips
read your skin
as if it were tattooed in brail
was the moment
I became a writer.




Copyright ©  2015 Alyssa Packard
All Rights Reserved
it was you
 Jul 2014 E
Joshua Haines
She said people were seasons,
and when I first met her, I couldn't agree more.  
After getting to know her, I wished that I didn't.
Her ex-lovers were Winter, and her eyes were a shade of Spring.
I could see the vulnerability of a car crash
swimming in each fountain trapped behind her emeralds.
She was beautiful in the way that could cause suicides,
and fix spider-webbed windshields after each collision of,
“Are you okay,” and, “I’m fine; I promise.”

Every story was Winter, and she was always left alone in the snow.
Mauve lips mouthed words that silently whispered,
"When is this too much? When are you going to leave?"

People are patterns,
and all she knew was the tessellation of temporary love and permanent loss.
Her hands trembled as she looked down.
She was in transit; moving after each hope of home fell apart.
And I wanted to kiss her like the world was falling apart.
 Jul 2014 E
JM
Supine, wrapped in scarlet,
only eye open, third.

I create her skin, flawless and golden;
her hair becomes the color of midnight
on the ocean,
blood at night.

Suspended, bound in purple,
capitulation, freedom.

These lonely visions, they are cobblestones in my twisted path of memories both past and future, overgrown with weeds of time and worn around the edges; an uneven course winding in and around and back again, with branches, heavy and black,
so black,
on all sides.

Where are you, dearest?

I smell acrylics and oils and linseed
and the windows are open; traffic hums on the hill and your brow is furrowed as your brush caresses the canvas, each stroke, love manifest.

Later, you will sing for me

Fluid, mercurial, she sings and paints
and broods
and pouts
and wipes her cheek with her thumb, smearing alizarin crimson on her pixie face.


Time stops at her beauty

The moment falls into my guts, burrowing into
my insides forever;
the plants by the window,
the deep red smear on my angel,
the sound of camelhair hitting canvas, forever mine now
to cherish and carry
with me as I trudge this
desolate and dreary landscape.

*When I come home,
you will sing for me
 Jun 2014 E
Vivian
a mouthful
 Jun 2014 E
Vivian
kiss me with a mouthful of mango sorbet;
you taste like
home and feel like
winter.
my craven desires, and
innocence in the arch of your
neck: caveats concealed in
kisses; you have
misgivings and we have
lain here for years upon years
desiring little more than to be
swallowed up by our
sins and shadows.
I'll be honest, if your moral
halflife is longer than the
school year, then
what's the point?
your beta decay is
pathetic, you're impotent, the
radiation is too weak to be
of any harm;
set my geiger counter
abuzz, like my phone
begging for attention like
you should beg for mine, and I
Love It,
you know I
do, quand tu manges
Le Gateaux, such an
eager little ****, seeking
absolution like I have anything other than
Absolut to offer you.
you drink with the
desperation of a desert-dehydrated
man, with the
fervor of a woman throwing herself,
time and again, at the
Glass Ceiling, further success
visible and attainable:
you always spoke to me like
you had a mouthful of
broken Faberge eggs, and to
close your mouth would be to
Invite Pain.
you were always averse to pain, though you
relished in inflicting it, and I
loved little more than to be
bruised and beaten and bloodied by your
ardent affections.
Next page