Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Loewen S Graves Mar 2012
Your hand submerged
in the clearest of mud puddles,
my crystalline heart floats

Smile traced in ink, a
porcelain mouth
cheeks kissing dreams
over the pavement, shining
whiter than your skin

The clouds listen like her
favorite son, the blister of sun
gasping from above

Your morning eyes,
I've never seen them brighter
holding your mind asleep
beneath the overflow of ideas
recorded in your head

That shot of whiskey
clouds your speech, teeth
stained sharpened boldened
by the alcohol within

My breath knows
the walls of his mouth
like it's never known yours

Moons fogged over,
the eclipse complete
I forgot to remember
the dream as it lived -
no longer used, it sinks
to the bottom of my fountain mind

I focus on the turning
the weight of my feet
on shallow ground
Loewen S Graves Mar 2012
There are power lines
buried in your wrists,
barbed wire fantasies
dying to escape

You and I,
we were fingerprints,
we were the ink stains
left behind

We were the frost left
aching on the windows
after winter has gone,
we were feathers drifting
down from the sky after
the geese have flown

We were the song
played during the credits,
we were the silence after
the storm, we were the glow
at the end of a perfect kiss

We were the hearts
that had never been broken,
we were the breeze that had
never been touched,

You touched me like
a sandstorm, like the flames
licking up the pyre on the day
Joan of Arc died, you touched me
like a fingernail moon,
longing for the sun

We spent our days in the sun,
our chapped lips turning red
under the sky, the paper dreams
you never gave me, because

if there's one thing I know,
it's that my waiting arms were
always waiting, you never
let your hurricane heart sweep me
up in the storm, I never knew
your mother died until I saw it
on the news, you had a life

outside of this and I never knew.
But if there's one thing I know, it's that
my heart stopped the day you let me
brush your freckles across your face
like wayward strands of hair

That little mouth
open,
soul escaping
through your lips
Not sure about the title on this. Let me know what you think.
Loewen S Graves Mar 2012
Desire woke,
carried football kisses
and barnyard blushes

The great American pastime,
getting ****** under the
bleachers with a towel spread
over the grass during the game

Voices rip through the halls
breeding rumors strong enough
to plunge shame so deep
into the heart of a person

that it may never crawl
back out through your throat,
the venom spewing from your lips
as dark as the blood spotted
on the backseat of your
father's car, that night

Through the cracks in the
armor, every girl carries this
burden in her chest: *** is shameful,
it's not to be talked about, and
there are boys out there who cannot
wait to take advantage of your
one warm and vulnerable heart

She found her own monster, one
with blue eyes and a blonde ponytail
like the cowboys in the movies, an Idaho
farm boy with hot breath like the smoke
of a gun, she gave him her secret when
she was fifteen and at night she screams

when she thinks of it, his ***** hands
and where he put them, lightning sparks of
the pain she can still feel, it sticks inside her
and twists, the wound growing larger
every day, she knows it will never leave,
her own ****** spot to carry

Patterns forever crawling up her spine
in the shapes of his fingers, and someday
when the one she loves drags his fingers there
she will never lose the memory of that night,
her promises to herself left broken and bleeding
on the mattress, her crime of passion shattered
in the wake of what she's done

Engulfed in shame like ink dripping dark
from her hair, she's ***** and she knows it,
she's filthy and she swears they can see it
in the bright ****** of day where she can't
hide from the pushing and the smile on his face
split wide, it's the Joker with his ****** grin

She spent years falling for wisps of dreams
she could never quite grasp, those fleeting Sundays
fuzzy outlines in her mind, lust comes with a price
she says, and she means it when she says that she
will never love again. It was a contest, who could go
the farthest without taking that final step.

She lost.
Loewen S Graves Mar 2012
July 29, 1976*

Eighteen, skinny
as a whip, all curving bones
and freckled knees
Your curled hair, that timid
smile balanced above the
pearls of your jaw

The city is dark at night,
you were never afraid but the stars
were diamond-sharp that night
and you stopped, shivering in the cold

I can hear your last words
frozen on your tongue,
"Now, who the hell is this" -
your hand on your hip
voice a knife

A bullet to your chest
breaks the silence, folding
yourself in half, a paper crane
crumpled on the pavement

The papers said you were killed
instantly; I don't think you were
I think you knew, a bullet buried
in your best friend's thigh -
did she watch you die?

The petals in your hair,
they've fallen, years ago
This woman lying here,
the scarred pavement of a
New York City street -

She is someone else, not
the starling you were
in your father's eyes
Wings outstretched on
a fire escape, waiting
for a breeze to pull you
over the edge
Based on the ****** of Donna Lauria, first of many "Son of Sam" murders by serial killer David Berkowitz. In a letter to New York City journalist Jimmy Breslin, the Son of Sam wrote "... you must not forget Donna Lauria and you cannot let the people forget her either. She was a very, very sweet girl but Sam's a thirsty lad and he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood." I got all of my information from the Wikipedia article on David Berkowitz.
Loewen S Graves Feb 2012
Her skin is held together
by a thread, rips and tears
make it hard for her to breathe

Vision going yellow in the
half-light, twilit fields rippling
in the breeze

Holding seeds between
her teeth, her bones balanced
over the concrete

She knows it will not last
forever - she has seen the yard
where she'll be buried

She's a victim still intact,
waiting for just the wrong eyes
to reach her hair, her skirt

Fear presses through veins
and she watches the sky,
remembering that angels

will wait, in the clouds,
until you need them - her
grandmother said, they

will wait, and she believed
it. Her cactus tongue ******,
catches blood there, and

the tide washes through,
its rhythm a comfort
She finds her way home.
Loewen S Graves Feb 2012
I could never paint
your eyes right,
sticky drops of green
plastered among
the warmest browns
Your river's light lost
in the reeds

The walls of our house
stir and shake, children's
fingers poking in between
window frames, pushing
skeletons through spaces
in the screen -

They pulse there, hot
and wet like grass outside
on the lawn, my breath
catches when I think of them,
lungs trampled into the carpet
Our youth this yellow honeyed
liquid decomposing in the sun

Someday we'll sit, together,
and remember them
as they pass - today is not that day
Winds bluster through the cracks
and my highest clouds melt
with the fog

Deep love shoved
as food into the garbage,
moving bright under the grime

Yearning to be seen for
what it was,
kaleidoscope heart
shifting
until it found
what you were looking for
I'm not so sure about a lot of elements in this: the title, the line spacing, etc. Let me know what you think.
Loewen S Graves Feb 2012
I can feel his breathing
pull
through his neck,
the stream running clear
in his throat, desire melting
from his arms.

I never needed anyone,
he says
from a warm hollow down
within, I only needed myself
and I liked it that way. His tears
contradict him.

We share one of those
dark, sweet
kisses and he keeps his
eyes open, straying from me
out to the colder places, where
I've never been.

My crushing heart never
needed
anyone like this. The aching
locks where keys will never fit,
where cups lie emptied on the
***** ground.

Those long fingers I love
pause
against the grass, sunlight
breaking over his face, streaking
swirls across his clouded
brow.

His wild jungle heart bubbles
alive
beating crimes into the hollow
of my cheek, I never try to resist
when I find a heart so deliciously
lost and broken.

The baby bird in his chest has
flown
and I come home to the blues of
my windowpanes, grace in the
unholy whispers, thoughts engulfed
in the tide.
Another poem for someone who needed one a long time ago. This one feels a little rougher to me, so any feedback, as always, is appreciated.
Next page