Oh my Lady Malady, your presence is a melody!
Forgive my nails if they dig too deep
beneath the paint that covers you.
Please free my hand, the one that tries
to shove you off the train.

I serenaded you when everything and everyone yelled
"YOU HAVE CANCER!!!"
I thought
you had a soft-
er heart, oh Lady Malady.

I, guess, not.

Last night you took my photograph,
the sky dark like a hand that sinned
within the winding wood. We laugh
and find peace in the wind.

After the night
the morning mourned: you looked lifeless,
foaming overdose. Disappear,
for I grow fond of your breathless
death. So run away from here,
as fast as you can,

run-
away -
Runaway as fast as you can.

Je suis née éblouie par la ville des lumières
and grew up in a city that once couldn't sleep,
dazed by the lights, my whole life I fled from
a heritage I wasn't told I could keep.

Je suis née des trottoirs, des rues noueuses et sales
and grew up on a block which remained much cleaner
than my conscience because I remember seeing
through blue eyes a black man being clobbered for a
misdemeanor.

Je suis née dans un pays où les fleures se fanent
and grew up in a place where the flowers were fake,
a house where anything that wasn't of plastic
was soon tossed in the sky, left to plummet and break.

Je suis née à Paris
J'ai grandis à New York
Je mourrai, ailleurs

There's a storm in my mind it's awaiting
because the harp's hum is abating (softly,
softly; you only hear it now
that it is but a fading vow)
with the years; it seems like the intercept
read a promise that was stolen and couldn't be kept.
You lied, how you laid your lies with truth,
how the truth was lain and slain in lies,
how the trees burgeoned after you were gone
with blossoms like decaying wounds
i remember, I remember your sparkling words
words that unfolded their black wings like birds
and collapsed into the wind current, and unlatched,
and abruptly arose, wings rigid, propelled by your smile,
propelled by the thought that our characters matched,
only to buckle within the next mile.

I felt the premonition. I just couldn't accept
that your eyes were a promise stolen,
(as your conscience became swollen)
and what is stolen can never be kept.

No, no - I don't love you, lover, not quite,
Not in the way that I love this fair night.
The cyclic kingdom of a waxy moon
Reigns o'er the darkness like a sparkling spoon,
Ready to scoop up the mess that the Sun
Has caused in passing, its garments undone.
But this night, this lithe, obsidian fire,
Nurtures the cloudless cloak: somber pyre
Where those who blanket themselves go to burn.
And I, puerile flame, wait in prayer my turn
To be tucked in tightly 'n' sent off to bed
In that still place where the astres are wed.
Night is the time when my thoughts bathe in light,
When musky warmth wafts in without a fight,
When even the most stubborn dreamers yield
And the fear and the love in my heart are revealed.
No, I don't love you in that way, for
As much as I love Night, I love your eyes more.

Because yesterday we were one of those frustratingly simple paintings,
(maybe a blue one with a dark streak in its center);
the Pragmatic find it laughable and "an insult to art,"
the Artsy tear it apart until it has a meaning, and
you and I, the Artists, want it to represent everything we are and will ever be.

Because tomorrow we'll be an umbrella in a trashcan,
(maybe a dotted one with the complexion of a dead, twisted spider);
the Realistic will attribute it to the strong wind and showers,
the Fledglings will nod at it like a tombstone in a cemetery, and
you and I, the Hurricane, will regard it as a mistake, a blunder, a bump on our mutual journey apart.

Well if I sound depressed enough,
maybe I'll scrape together enough followers
to be taken seriously
when I write with
the melancholic grit
of Sylvia Plath;

and maybe then this sadness draped over my shoulders
will flow gracefully when
I walk by all the things I did for you;

and maybe this statement piece isn't so impressionable;

and I don't have to wear something plain to go with it,
because I'm tired of being told I'm 'over-the-top'
like a teddy bear peaking out of a garbage can;

and maybe I'll post this the instant
fashionable sadness falls out of style -

and then your pity would be quashed
and then your pity would be quashed

I write in the trance of triangular years
whose reverse-osmosis has done but clear
the last memories I held dear

and somewhere along the line of
perpendicular feelings, Love
found its nesting in my heart like a dove
seeking the shelter it was deprived of

because maths and science concretize
my malady. Brittle beings, they vaporize
like mist exhaled for exercise.

These faces I try to exorcise
are the only ones I recognize

They say there are passions you cannot tame,
Which may beat you down until you see spots.
I don’t know why I have to say your name,
Every time I’m alone with my thoughts.
I say it in the elevator, I
Sing it in the streets, I yell it so loud
In my head it seems like this desp’rate cry
Is a trumpet sound on a holy cloud.
I say it like a passion I don’t want
To tame, like something big that has to burn
Brightly and scorch my skin, and taunt and haunt
Me, a prayer for your presence to return.
There is a sea I can’t ever sail smooth,
There is a fire that water can’t soothe.

, but depression seems the more obvious
topic to exhaust recently.
and i went running this morning to feel less fat
and stretched afterwards in a short-winded burst of resolution.
An hour later i collapsed into the arms of a friend
and exchanged ambiguous signals with him until night fell:
(he wants a friend, i want a kiss, you see).

I'm actually happy right now,
energetically kicking the can down the road.

There is a host of different men
populating this blue earth;
like piglets in a barbèd pen,
we share both our death and our birth.

Some are merely pallid ghosts
of what they once aspired to be
boarding boats on craggy coasts,
then sailing to eternity.

Some are statues carved in ice:
beauties 'til their time runs out.
Frigid, cold, they pay the price
when comes along a cruel drought.

But we - the poets - are different still.
We arm ourselves with brutal pens,
and from the crib are taught to ****:
a blank page is a thing to cleanse
with words that swarm in like a flood
with words like trails of crimson blood.

However we are oft the same
and with the years are taught a name
so that at length we all turn tame
and somewhat quench the inner Flame.

We are the captains of our lives:
Stranded ghosts in mausoleums,
Artifacts in cold museums,
Killers in a coliseum.

you're a game of "fill-in-the-blanks"
and your soul is a canvas
etched on in the manner of Dorian Gray's.

you're a prototype and an original
you are "buy now because it won't be printed again!"
but you are also a stickman made out of dough
cookie-cut so you fit into your box.

you're fast when you run
you're a storm when in love
you're a puzzle and a statement
and a Rubik's cube with 54 facets - all different colors.

but you're not a problem that needs to be solved
you're not the only solution to a problem
And sometimes you have problems
and not solutions
but that's the Struggle for you.

and you're quite small, really,
if that's what you believe.

*Not everyone can change the world; it's true.
But *someone has to do it, right?

I only had one window in the world.

This window, like a scrawny kid, had been recently clobbered by the rain.

Just looking at the trickling rain made me all cold. That was when I pondered
all the things we
could have done
yesterday,
eyes closed,
lying above the sheets.

I thought about your breath close to my ear,
staccato, powerful,
like wind during a storm.
And I thought about our bodies: mine, cold; yours, burning - entwined, our bodies make a
Hurricane.
Then again, it is what it is. Your heart is cold to me; you think my heart is too feverish: you think it needs to be exiled, quarantined,
outside
underneath the rain.

ORIGINAL POEM (OR CHANCE TO ROCK OUT YOUR BEAUTEOUS FRENCH ACCENTS)

*Je n’avais qu’une fenêtre sur le monde.
Comme un gosse maigre, elle se faisait
tabasser par la pluie.
J’avais froid rien qu’en contemplant le
ruissellement. C’est alors que je pensé à toutes les choses qu’on
aurait pu faire
hier
au-dessus des draps
les yeux fermés.
J’ai pensé à ton souffle près de mon oreille,
puissant et saccadé
comme un vent de tempête.
Et j’ai pensé à nos corps: le mien froid, le tien
brûlant - entrelacés, nos corps font un
Ouragan.
Mais enfin, tant pis. Ton coeur m’est froid;
mon coeur t’est trop fiévreux: il le faut
exiler, il le faut mettre en quarantaine,
dehors,
au-dessous de la pluie.

Our love was like an autopsy:
you cut open my stiffened chest
and browsed through my anatomy
and found your image in my breast,
and found my dreamings and the rest,
and found the place where we were blessed.

My papery, vulnerable skin
once smouldered under your touch;
I was always one of those open books:
burning too often, and showing too much.

Tainted glass
no more grass
cheaper crystals:
better smoke

Powder cloud
hazy shroud
faster substance:
higher high

It's opaque
so opaque
so God help me:
can’t be read

Night.* And I think I might stay here, and pretend
I can smell your perfume on each passing shadow;
because I love it whenever you think that we're
friends: you're even more disillusioned than

I am. But this black dome above me doesn't
ricochet obscure calls and silvery hands; there
are no stars, there is no moon, and God is too
busy with the Southern hemisphere. Where

is your smile as I walk through the night? Where
is your stuttering voice, and those clumsy English
words jammed between your sweet French

lips? And where are your arms, those binding tools,
when there's an emptiness inside me aching against
the heaviness of Summer nights? This was Night.

Because if you close your eyes for a single second,
you'll glimpse at what I've been seeing since the day
you showed me true beauty.

I love you,

**Goodnight.

Dusk.* I won't paint you another sunset,
another beautiful striped sea; no, not today.
Picture instead a smooth discolored surface
on which a firmly gripped stone was roughly

ground, causing a painful chalky screech; the
misemployed rock left vague yellow scars and
lavender bruises on the horizon; the sun cowers
behind them fearfully, distraught by the undue

violence; this is the sunset I experienced at
your fragrant side, and wondered - not unlike
that astre - what could possibly justify the

yellow, spectral scars in my heart, the bright,
undue violence brought upon my pride, and
the slighted sunset in my soul. This is *Dusk.

Noon.* We are closest at Noon, when
the sun is cruel and when I teach you
how to tell when a girl wants a kiss. I've
built a wall between us; now be a dear

and lean against it. As the sun hammers
onto our heads, I reflect upon how difficult
the word Noon must be to pronounce in
your precious French mouth. You feel self-

conscious about your accent well guess what
so do I and I've been encumbering this
freedom-infested continent since 2001. You

try to dig out a groove in the wall - but you
see, when I built it I made sure it was so
sturdy we'd die against it. This is *Noon.

Dawn.* God, I still can't accept the fact
that it's almost morning, and you're
almost gone; you are only ever with me-
around me -when I close my tired eyes.

And then, during what feels like a
lifetime, we sleep so close together
we could be one body, one heap of
flesh under the warm and heavy covers.

But you're not here, and you're not
in my coffee when I get up either;
you're not outside when I open the

window; you're not alive when I
dial your number. At dawn I dislike
(re)discovering that you aren't real.

Release all the words from your stringent heart,
And lose the hush tonight,
We talk! But look, we edge apart
when honest words take flight.

Don’t make up feelings: I know you’re bluffing.
When is it we lost hold?
We say so much and yet say nothing
but echo what we’re told.

I believe we should feel more.
You wouldn’t dare to cage wild birds:
communicate the inner roar,
And don’t you dare hold in the words.

Release them from your tense black heart.
And don’t you dare hold back for me,
and don’t you dare leave out a part,
for what we’ve seen we’ve yet to see.

it's so much easier to write about her

(i see her when i stare into the mirror
she stares right back
and the viscid jealousy
seeps into my ears
and out through my eyes)

i write her up
and erase her completely
and push her out
and summon her again

i wear her skin every day
because i figure she's the one people really want to see

(sometimes i wonder
if i'm in love with her
but then i remember
the pain she dealt to me)

she's beautiful, fearless, ablaze.
and when she dances
she leaves a trail of fire so dazzling
that it moves the sky
and the preachers wonder
if the rain was brought not by their clasped hands
but rather by the thunderbird

because it's so much easier to write about her

blunted on the riptide of fury:
i am not your resolution
i am not your answer
i am your destruction
and your absolute contrary;

but i will seep into your system like a cure
because i am connivance
yet not quite compliance
and i'm not inwardly pure
because i am a cancer

and a swan-like dancer
dancing my way into you;

taking a twice-trodden path
i am
your lasting and indelible wrath
i am red vision tinted with blue

i am you
*i am you

je ne te céderai pas, jamais plus,
toi, le monstre, parti pour un carnage,
voulant montrer tes crocs, mais hélas, tu oublies
que je suis aveugle, et que toi, tu m'appartiens.

j'oublierai le goût de ses lèvres
et l'odeur de son cou,
et le toucher de son pull, oui,
j'oublierai tout.

je serai sans pitié vis-à-vis des mémoires
qu'elles aillent craintives se recroqueviller
dans un coin sombre de ma pensée

intransigeante. sans concessions. une statue
de marbre sur la joue de laquelle
coule une larme.

*i won't give it to you, never again,
you, the monster, off in a rampage,
wanting to bear your fangs, but alas, you forget
that i am blind, and you, you are part of me.

i'll forget the taste of his lips
and the smell of his neck
and the touch of his sweater, yes,
i'll forget everything, without exception.

i'll be ruthless regarding the memories
i hope they go cower, fearful,
in a dark corner of my mind.

intransigent. without concession. a marble
statue on whose cheek
falls a tear.

don't follow me
if you see me running
down the street
into the subway
into the train
into the seat

i'll plug music into my ears so
the words won't spill out

i'll watch people think over their day;
did you get promoted?
is your best friend a mess?
do you wish you could be free?

the train's wheels screech against the rails
like a fat metal monster calling out in pain
a sound so stringent it plucks my heart's cords
stifled only by the loud murmur of collective Life
my city, my city, don't follow me now
i'm headed northward, eastward 'til i'm out of earshot

you're too much of a perfect storm, my city,
my city, you're too much of a muffled chaos

you're on my heels despite my warnings
i would run faster but the train is deaf as the people who wear headphones and complain when they hear nothing

i'm on your train, dear city, going further than i should

in this way,

i flee conflict.

I am not as human as I used to be.
Sure, I crossed the threshold of childhood
smoothly,
but only as smoothly as one can cross
a river ending in a
cascade
a road ending in a
cliff
a trial ending with a
sigh

You never remember when you lost something,
or where. Was it on the road back from school? Did someone
steal
it from you?

So when did I lose touch? And where?
Did my childhood
fall from my pocket by mistake,
or
was it
stolen away,
before I could realize
what it meant
to me?

Something happened, before, beneath;
like a flower buried under snow,
I am not as human as I used to be.

And no more shall I part
from the stone which is my heart,
I choose an ending from the start;
and I think I need to breathe.

And no more shall I try and try
to change a murmur to a cry,
to trade a whimper for a sigh,
because today, I have to breathe,

because the heart is a cold stone.
And bones don't break that are a stone;
and all around the world is stone,
One stone, left in the flames to seethe.

You epitomize rhyming poetry,
because these rhymes do not bind you,
or rather you have not let yourself be bound by these rhymes,
as so many others have.
Your rhythm and rhyming do not hold back your poetry:
on the contrary, these rhymes allow your poetry to be stronger.
You may not know it, but this is a spectacular quality. Write,
and never be afraid of writing.

I read all of your poetry from the beginning because from the very first poem I deemed that it was worth my time.
We are a family, by heart, and not by blood; there is no foe.
and
I am never blind to not see the world's perfect wonders.
You describe yourself as an optimist, and rightfully so. This line is beautiful. The whole poem is awesomely crafted, and once again, the rhymes don't obstruct the poem's meaning and significance, and only enhance it.

The canvas of black paint and glitters of gold.
A story that was left untold.
To golden new, from rustic old.
Too clear, yet too bold.
Your use of rhythm in this poem is very impressive. It's unconventional, and it works. The imagery of the black paint is beautiful. I love how the rhythm drops at the end; it's literally bold.

I have watched the stars, for they are like your eyes.
I saw it. I made a wish to an entity from afar.
Never was I wrong to see things that are lies.
A light was beaming. It was a broken star.
The line Never was I wrong to see things that are lies really stayed with me. It's a powerful sentence and sticks right into the poem's theme. The way I interpret it is as "It's okay to delude yourself, as long as you're happy," which links back to the popular phrase "oblivion is bliss." Also, A light was beaming. It was a broken star is entwined with the previous line in the idea that we really can chose to see only what we wish to see. Who is this broken star? I'm really curious.

Anyway, thank-you for publishing your work. It's poets like you that makes HelloPoetry a real blast. Keep submitting your work!

I dreamt up your arms last night;
they could have been a thousand birds
a thousand birds for every word
you typed up in the night

In the night I see you like a
memory that never was
In the light I see you as
the One you’ll never be

In the night I want you like a
cure to a disease
In the light I want you like a
storm to a still sea

I dreamt up your kiss last night;
it could’ve lasted a thousand miles
a thousand miles for every smile
you sent out in the night

You say the sound is beautiful,
of rain
against your roof,
and God knows I would die for e’en
a little bit of proof.

And God knows I would die to be there, cradled in your arms;
you tell me of the weather,
how it sets off your alarms.

You’d tell me of the
morning birds
and sing to me a song;
oh Ocean! How I crave your kiss!
My heart wants to be wrong.

Because I picture you at dawn,
your body holding mine,
my heart wants to be wrong.
I say:
my heart wants to be ‘fine.’

Despite my cravings, Ocean,
‘spite my dreams of us entwined,
I tell you that my current state
Is far,
so far
from ‘fine.’

Les amours ne sont rien que de piètres adieux;
Rah, n’en sois pas si fâché.
Eh, mer! Tu n’es qu’un serpent amoureux,
Tes mots sont des vagues gachées.

Love is nothing but needy goodbyes;
Rah, don’t act so angry about it.
Hey, sea! You’re nothing but a smitten snake,
Your words are wasted waves.

Les amours ne sont rien que des brindilles sèches;
Rah, n’en sois pas si fâché.
Eh, mer! Tu n’es qu’une bombe sans mèche,
Tes mots sont des ailes arrachées.

Love is nothing but brittle firewood;
Rah, don’t act so angry about it.
Hey, sea! You’re nothing but a defused bomb:
Your words are pluckèd wings.

Les amours ne sont rien que des choses éphémères;
Rah, tu t’en remettras vite.
Eh, mer! Te lasses-tu parfois d’être mère?
Tes mots sont des eaux sans mérite.

*Love is nothing but an ephemeral thing;
Rah, you’ll get over it soon.
Hey, sea! Do you sometimes have enough of being a mother?
Your words are worthless waters.

i am a concrete project amidst
handsome skyscrapers, like titans
of yore, 'yore', a word
which hasn't been used since
the time it describes.

and just above my edifice,
there is a crow that circles round;
no one understands Eponine,
but everybody loves her.

Yore, yore, she would have been
a thousand times
a lover because all she
could do was
love.

i looked out my fogged-up window,
beyond the crows and urban trash,
and saw myself back in the glass,
me, Eponine,
loved by all,
seen by none.

"It's honorable to love that way,
Eponine, you lovely liar."

i want to be something you can catch
and then let go,
like a reasonable yet fleeting thought
hovering, hesitating above the keyboard;
i want you to type me up through and through,
and then erase me completely,
like i had never even mattered;
i want to jab a neat whole
into your heart,
so you won't feel any hurt;
and later have you show it off
like a 'manly' scar.

i want to be something you can love
(moderately).

Pray that she doesn't plead insane,
When they ask her: "close your eyes":
These men who seem to cause her pain
Do not know more than her disguise.

You'll never hear her whine, complain,
For she lets no one slow her stride;
May the ones who caused her pain
Find her tall and dignified.

There is no cage that can contain
This woman that the Lord has made;
May the ones who caused her pain
Find her proud and unafraid.

Do not assume my will shall wane,
You know, in sum, the price I paid;
May the ones who caused me pain
Find me proud and unafraid.

Ah, yes, I recognize this nightmarish place,
the place you kissed me for the first
time like I was something you could lose
in an instant.

And you kissed me even though
you claimed to have never done it
before,
and I guess they were right when they
said no one really knows how to kiss
during the aftershock;

And you are the aftershock
that never ceases to resound
loudly in my ears
like a nightmare that started
as a dream.

That's right, us.
We were a
storm
that
started with a wave.

admittedly, They are right when they say
that teenagers can't love;
they can only
lust
and i guess that's
what i've been doing and it'd
also explain why we don't
speak anymore

and when we do speak, you feel
as if you're speaking to a cold stop-sign
and i feel like
i'm munching down on
cardboard with a gun to my back

and all i would picture was
the texture of your lips and the
length of your pride, as if these
things
could ever be measured without some sort of
bias

In all honesty, i am still not completely convinced:
i can't say i loved you, so i'll find a way around it;

i got shivers when i whiff your scent around burning wood and shaving cream i still read your letters and they break something in me i did know i possessed your heartbeat was all i could hear when i turned off the lights i cry when i learn you still love me or lust after me but frankly it's sort of the same, isn't it?

i'm not allowed to say i loved you, but i promise, just for you, i'll find a way around it.

you were my only fan the only one who would cheer me on if i shaved my skull clean and wore my agony in public you were the only one who consistently thought of me when someone said the word beautiful i might have truly loved you but i'm too green for love and you were a dark blue and i cherished you for it

you were a dark blue and you never loved me, if you believe
what they say about teenage "love."
frankly i don't really care i actually wish
you'd hate me instead

You could never make me feel special without
nurturing the narcissist in me, Dragos, but
i thank you for trying anyway.

And I'm sorry i had to do what i did however
you said you always knew it would end
so why are you sad?

Maybe you want a kiss for every time i
wished you away with my cynical
tone maybe you want a parcel of skin
for every condescending look.

You can't build a castle out of sand and
then act surprised when it crumbles
into the sea.

All i know is that you realized
i was imperfect and somehow that further fueled
your desire.

i don't even want to be your friend if
you're going to be lousy about it or if
you decide you'd rather die than
eat from my hand for the remainder of your
teen years.

it wounds me that i've become some kind of god for you, my
friend, and that i cannot
properly receive your offerings.

i hope that you'll hate me, Dragos, when
i'll start falling for others like a wounded bird
that chooses to stay wounded so that it will always be found and tended to by another boy; i hope that you'll hate me when you learn to love another girl, only to realize she isn't half the me you first fell in love with;
i hope you'll hate me,
so it'll justify my cruelty and coldness,
a man's eye for a woman's,
a gold tooth,
for a rotten one.