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 Mar 2013 Kaleigh Vaughn
-D
a tear is forming on
the beginnings of the healing marks upon my heart--
the words pull the jagged scarring apart
[the words you tell me in abrupt moments of precisely practiced and most delirious serendipity],
as you say:
i was never meant to love you,
but i'm also not meant to leave you.


just leave, you sadistic thorn in my flesh,
and don't dare to think you may breathe from my same lungs again,
that you might hoist yourself over me,
[the words you whispered once in barest moments of agonizing vulnerability]
as you say,
i want to feel all of your skin
on all of my skin.


is it not enough for me to hear those words knocking at my door,
barking,
their claws sinking in to the wood,
tearing at the elm barricade,
[the words you speak as a wolf howls at the door and as a dog begs for scraps]
as you say,
i will decide how you are to love me,
and how you are not to?


no--
i hold your face in my hands,
sink my nails into your skin,
tear one last glance from your vacuous eyes,
and say with my own words,
**i am not
listening.
What is it
that lives behind your ribs?
it beats all night long
keeping rhythm with songs
which have never been sung
keeping me up at night
wondering if at times
we find synchronization
in the pulse of our passion
because nothing is more poetic
than that moment
when I realize
that what's behind your ribs
and what's behind mine
are one in the same
 Mar 2013 Kaleigh Vaughn
Eric W
If you, could see you,
through my eyes,
You would never doubt
yourself. No, never.
You would never have
the audacity to say
"I can't" because you,
yes you,
are amazing beyond anything
I have ever known.

If you, could see you,
through my eyes,
You would never be the
same. Not ever.
You would be blinded
by the beauty
that radiates from
within you, from outside
of you. The very essence of beauty
that makes up you.

If you, could see you,
through my eyes,
You would never be sad
again. No, never.
You would know why
I love you.
You would see the grace,
in every little thing
you do, say, and think.
You would see the endless
depth for which my love
for you grows. The never ending
abyss of swirling,
crashing waves of love
I have for you.
You would finally understand
the absolute perfection
of you
if you could see you
through my eyes.
 Mar 2013 Kaleigh Vaughn
Ian
And I suppose that if you asked
I would carve you a home
In my heart
In my bones
And it wouldn't take so long
And it wouldn't be so bad
So **** it, let's try it
Because truly
All I've ever felt
I never felt alone
If you're a flower,
Then I'm a ***,
Because you grew up,
And I did not.
Enlighten me.

How does your smile,
your subtle, adorable,
irresistible grin,
still manage to break the lock
of the room in deep within
a love long dead,
and glow ever so slightly...

Enlighten me.

I only hope my smile kills you the same.
 Mar 2013 Kaleigh Vaughn
-D
I remember how your brown eyes shine in the sunlight stretching through your truck windows;
& I remember how we used to do the same,
like a bang & then oh,
such a whimper…
—-
but like a supernova, what we had brewed with so much energy
[all. too. soon.]
& it reached the point where we glowed as brightly as we possibly could be.
so our walls bounced off of each other,
& the implosion consumed the both of us.
-
so we continue to exist out in space somewhere,
mere particles of cataclysmic stardust resembling what we once were,
but what we had was lovely & brilliant;
(& isn’t that what we are:
lovely &
brilliant &
temporary?)
-
but hell, do we shine.
supernova: noun-- A rare celestial phenomenon involving the explosion of most of the material in a star, resulting in an extremely bright, short-lived object that emits vast amounts of energy.
I

Crested by the infamous gown
during a tribute                            to all digestible,
                                                     ­  sentient,
                                           grown strips of light
            playing splatter off the sockets
                                                         ­      of fishermen birds,
                                     who can no longer ignore all
                                     the puppy dogs and kitty cats canned
                                                          ­               in squeeze tubes.

Now every corner of this landscape--a puzzle-piece room
                                           designed to think in shades
                                           and seasonal plume dances.

The usual beautiful* late evening
has become clotted with hip hop Down's Syndrome
mixed with jazz Dual-Personality Disorder.

                                                   Vampire Hades' skull evacuated of ****** power,
                                                          ­      a scene of literal watercolor
                                                    wh­ere moods collage with paper rings

                   on their stubby tongues. An unfixed saturation,
                                                     ­         clean oils
                                                            ­   split
                                                           ­    like the parting of hair

                        Alice's pirate boy, her beauty is parched of tomorrow,
                                                       ­ a wolf for a blood-red moon
                 that works like a farmer
                          to      
                                                              th­e                       water.

                            Let us all that are wild
              quote the stormy truth that                          shifts the particles in space
                                             "It is all in the direction a flower grows,
                     educating a sea of doubtful faces--to the cruelty of nature
                                      Close the brutal mind,
                                                           ­       unless your eyes are flame-proof, Alice."

--It is yours to consume
but it is relatively us that belongs to the consequences--

                                                 ­  Churning coffee water,
                                            reenacting romantic bloodshed
                                    to addicts in attics
                                                          ­  --jostling war heroes
                                               back to this side of the looking glass.
--coming back to their tempest
                          of cremated breaths--a den with no one
                                                             ­   to sing with.
        Sad Alice,
   always sad Alice--mud on her face from             the Dead Sea's end
      of immortality           because Death is albino.


II

  
The top of the day,
                                                            ­              negative space
  has a dying voice        as it lies under the boot
                                       of the night sky  
                                                           ­      watching stars.
                                              "Simply tomorrow is right there
                                                above the mortals," Sweet Alice
                                                speaks, "To the many heavens
                                                      its­ overpopulating the fields."

       The earth needs its cotton blankets.
   Fresh air accents symptoms --dancing on slick gravel
  at 10:18 at night with a pale, pompous view of someone else's Paris.

Crocodile roads spit up by patterned archipelago drags,
updating the scream, "think more about going off the edge of hair and the last number
after twenty shots                         of anesthesia." The culture of Spanish sun denial devolves
         the fig tree
     novel delights.
99% of the fear that saturates the throats of people is a blonde tumor.
1% of the love is too passionate to contain the fires of field cotton.


III

         end of immortality
accepts her                 trying to escape her pirate boy
              but tones of nostalgia prevents the revival--a war with God, herself,

                                                       ­                 trying to escape looping Paradiso,
factory vents malfunctioning forth
                   the guts of Inferno.                     Purgartorio  plots on
                                                              ­          erased continents
                                                      ­   rolled down lamp shades/ everything is useful,
             waste nothing.

Republics spawned in damp pits stamp bargains on trust
     ringing each solo anthem as one: I saved you,
                                                            ­  feeble beast.
                                                          ­    I saved you,
                                                            ­  dear lonely and you didn't care.
                                                           ­    I reserved us both
                                                            ­  and you cast me back
                                                            ­  into Dante's imagination.
                                                    ­          I saved you,
                                                            ­  you feeble child
                                                           ­   and you burned
                                                              me­ with your
                                                              wo­rld.

     Weaving Alice, calm Alice lies in a dingy on the river Styx,
                                  cobwebs fit to her feet like rank shoes
           she gave her children when they were born malnourished
                                        ---starved of insurance money, mouths agape
for the silk heart of their father--an image of a moth in the shape of a human pelvis
                                                      with­ alligator mouths on the wing tips. They shared
                                      --Alice and him--those wings like scribbles tied together on chalkboards
                                                     ­                                 
                               ­                                       --places to venture--

Your Wonderlandia, she spells, a wasp's nest
                                  of combs
                                          in a hive locked
                              in with the others--concave atlas skies.

            Alice smiles with inebriated
   country boys
                          tossing comrades in the natural flow.
             Richly blonde Alice, admires the impression
                        of the night
                  once charred dreams,
                                               now volcanic forests.
              She glides on a dingy
              across the luscious joy
                             --lubricated veins in atheist's beliefs
                                 don't get lost here, just new places to venture.

Beneath malicious eternity, on the River Styx
                                                            ­        
               the boy she adores
                                    all of a sudden, she steals his hat,
looks into his double-barrel eyes,
                                       sees how sad
             she makes herself                  --like a mother tired of brushing
                                                                ­ her daughter's hair, looming tears
                                                           ­                                         extend beyond widows
                                                          ­                                          to the water.

                      The pirate boy says
            his friend isn't far up the river--she cries through her hand.

                               Hopeful Alice prays, smiling, hoping everyone goes to Wonderlandia.
                                             The pirate boy never finds his friend
                                              but keeps his promise
             and takes her away from Euphoria
                                                        ­       --the cranium loss still fresh.
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