Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
 Dec 2011 Madeline
Natalie Kurjan
I will not write about love.
No sooner than I had you,
Did I lose you;
You chose to go.
You chose,
You chose.
No.
I will not write about love.

No more tendrils,
No more pain.
Just sleep,
shh, just sleep, My Dear.

I beg you,
Do not wake.


I will not speak of love.
To have it,
Yet know nothing of it.
Just murmurs in the night.
Secrets.
I will not speak of love.

*No more hunger,
No more need.
Just sleep,
shh, just sleep, My Dear.
 Dec 2011 Madeline
Natalie Kurjan
I sit. Staring at the sky - under a sea of unrealized potential.
I sit. Waiting for some kind of sign that I've made the right decisions.
  That you were not a mistake, time and time again. Certainly not the same mistake?
I sit. I stand. I shake. Slivers fall from my lips. They crumble to the ground.

My fists close. My head tilts upward.

I sit. Staring at the sky - under an ocean of dreams.  
I sit. I wait. For someone I haven't met yet to draw me close.
   To whisper lullabies and know my cries and still love me despite them.
I sit. I stand. I shake. Slivers fall from my lips. They rise in pure decadence. They fly.
 Dec 2011 Madeline
Ed Cooke
Untitled
 Dec 2011 Madeline
Ed Cooke
Two boys
and girls
unclothed each other
simply at a picnic
flush with wine
alongside
sun-flecked trees.

The girls,
easy as the
forest round,
burned,
delicious,
as the boys
eager and nervous
in unequal measure
partly gave up
concealing
their joys
at forgetting
or remembering
in flickers
their bare bodies.

It went on
over nettles
and half-hours
and clambered
trees and
photos taken
almost formally
(on film,
of course).

And boyish lust,
at first sinuous,
a darting tongue,
began to
soften against,
for instance,
the sheer,
unthinkable
texture
of the two
girls carved
now backward
over the bough
of a storm-felled elm.

And there
in the embers
of evening
they learned
to thrill originally
at the vast,
gorgeous
and astonishing
irrelevance
of what
might happen next.
 Dec 2011 Madeline
Alicia Strong
And here we go again.

We're searching for an end.
A* means to stop the madness,
Kicking and screaming in spite of
Everything society has to throw at us.

Unjustifiable
Punishment.

Calling all police officers,
Arrest us, if you can.
Let us go, if you will, but,
Let it be known, we will be back.

Fighting for freedom
Of opinion, speech, and looking for equality.
Rebelling against

The **** that the media throws at us.
How will we know where to go if
Everything around us is fake?

My friends, we must be critical.
Actions speak louder than words.
Send out a message across the
Seas, so that
Everyone can rise and
Say this with me...

Everyone is beautiful, everyone deserves to be free,
if I am true to myself, then I will be truly happy.
 Dec 2011 Madeline
Faeri Shankar
Paper Man had brilliant hands.
He smoked at the corner store
Where the ginger girl
Can't keep her man steady
with pitch black locks.

Every day, in and out
A northern escape to a southern route
Worn thin by pasty toes.
Those cigarettes lit his world on fire.

Peeling away, yellow and aged
Engraving lives between red ended lines
He brought color to the tall tales
Reincarnated beneath Mother's wrinkled eyes

He smoked ignorance, rolled in bliss
With closed eyes between dusted rock
Aged with lies and peeling paint from the windowpanes
With curly blonde esteem, chanting his name
Drifting between salty pines
Never settling for another grain
Of a lesser design.

Paper Man, that was the plan
A scribbling upon burning paper
Ashes to ashes, they all fall down
Never brought to life
Paper Man made a stand.
The floating bark of the lemon tree still whisper his name.
 Dec 2011 Madeline
Chris Ott
but, the fact that police are now
kicking, beating, arresting and bullying
american citizens who wish to make a
change only strengthens the fact that we
really need a ******* change, doesn't it?

or am i the only sane one left?
because that's a scarier thought.
 Dec 2011 Madeline
Conrad Aiken
Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers
The golden lights go out . . .
The yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn,
In thousands of rooms we sleep, we await the dawn,
We lie face down, we dream,
We cry aloud with terror, half rise, or seem
To stare at the ceiling or walls . . .
Midnight . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls.
A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers,
A vortex of soundless hours.

'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died--you know the way.  Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'

He folds his letter, steps softly down the stairs.
The doors are closed and silent.  A gas-jet flares.
His shadow disturbs a shadow of balustrades.
The door swings shut behind.  Night roars above him.
Into the night he fades.

Wind; wind; wind; carving the walls;
Blowing the water that gleams in the street;
Blowing the rain, the sleet.
In the dark alley, an old tree cracks and falls,
Oak-boughs moan in the haunted air;
Lamps blow down with a crash and ****** of glass . . .
Darkness whistles . . . Wild hours pass . . .

And those whom sleep eludes lie wide-eyed, hearing
Above their heads a goblin night go by;
Children are waked, and cry,
The young girl hears the roar in her sleep, and dreams
That her lover is caught in a burning tower,
She clutches the pillow, she gasps for breath, she screams . . .
And then by degrees her breath grows quiet and slow,
She dreams of an evening, long ago:
Of colored lanterns balancing under trees,
Some of them softly catching afire;
And beneath the lanterns a motionless face she sees,
Golden with lamplight, smiling, serene . . .
The leaves are a pale and glittering green,
The sound of horns blows over the trampled grass,
Shadows of dancers pass . . .
The face smiles closer to hers, she tries to lean
Backward, away, the eyes burn close and strange,
The face is beginning to change,--
It is her lover, she no longer desires to resist,
She is held and kissed.
She closes her eyes, and melts in a seethe of flame . . .
With a smoking ghost of shame . . .

Wind, wind, wind . . .  Wind in an enormous brain
Blowing dark thoughts like fallen leaves . . .
The wind shrieks, the wind grieves;
It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again;
And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams
And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.

One, whom the city imprisoned because of his cunning,
Who dreamed for years in a tower,
Seizes this hour
Of tumult and wind.  He files through the rusted bar,
Leans his face to the rain, laughs up at the night,
Slides down the knotted sheet, swings over the wall,
To fall to the street with a cat-like fall,
Slinks round a quavering rim of windy light,
And at last is gone,
Leaving his empty cell for the pallor of dawn . . .

The mother whose child was buried to-day
Turns her face to the window; her face is grey;
And all her body is cold with the coldness of rain.
He would have grown as easily as a tree,
He would have spread a pleasure of shade above her,
He would have been his father again . . .
His growth was ended by a freezing invisible shadow.
She lies, and does not move, and is stabbed by the rain.

Wind, wind, wind; we toss and dream;
We dream we are clouds and stars, blown in a stream:
Windows rattle above our beds;
We reach vague-gesturing hands, we lift our heads,
Hear sounds far off,--and dream, with quivering breath,
Our curious separate ways through life and death.
 Dec 2011 Madeline
Chris Ott
My most monstrous fear that eats at me
(like a mechanic devours his rare, ****** steak)
is that one day I'll wake up and be normal
(normal as mothers publicly yelling at ADD sons)
that I'll lose my gifts, or any real form of expression
(like the misguided lawyer working on Thanksgiving)
that I'll be another faceless statistic in a fat, thick crowd
(normal as ignoring the gifts we've each inherited)
Next page