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Shay Ruth Feb 2015
If I could bite the stars I would.
I'd stick out my tongue, blinding you for just a moment as the dust would slide off, right out of my mouth.
I can see it now: you wipe your eyes, crows feet
Gripping the rounds of my affection again.
Your laughter would fill the sky, the air so thick I wouldn't breathe. You'd be standing, gazing and not noticing that for a minute, the earth had lost a quiver of its light.
Shay Ruth Feb 2015
The longer I stood, the deeper my toes gripped
Into blackened strips of earth' score.
My softened toenails, now crushed white seashells
Replicated speckles on some beach years previous.
I forgot the name of each grain of sand after drowning.
My shaking hands sandwiched above my skull, beneath waves.
I intended only to melt jousting memories reeling.
Relentlessly spinning.
I only knew I could finally walk away.
Shay Ruth Jan 2015
Fair is the sunshine that weaves rays
on the loom of callused, weary feet.

All before she surrenders to
gusts of winter winds, tucked carelessly behind
shadows of turned leaves.

The people, withered and tired, have ceased their
incessant questions of her too frequent departures
and mirrored arrivals.

When will she accept her invitation to stay and
melt the dead into the earth?
Shay Ruth May 2014
She met you in the Arctic, we both twirled and marveled

Now that she is me and I was her, we can tell you something true

We’ll never tire of your sweet light, poured limb from limb

Or the way branches shift, too timid to know

A life of severe promises, even in the bleak gray

She can still smile at you, but I know better

I know you have things to tell and burdens to share

She doesn’t think you possibly could, as you stand so tall

On still moons you **** your head and

wonder about the clusters, about the stars

And under a spell she cast years ago

I walk by with moon filled eyes

Disguised as a star: trying to be your light
Shay Ruth May 2014
Divided by the staff lay seven, long years. Touching and experimental moments boggled and wrestled playfully with cognition: systematic and jointed. My left hand still holds the day I changed ***. My being, new to my knowing. I was supposedly cursed, but later I confessed to King Zeus the truth: women, be there pleasure rarer, feel the sweetest flowers of love-making. I digress, my strike against the serpent lovers did curse me, but trapped for seven years behind soft, shifting ******* were utilized fully as I found myself wrapped in blankets of wheatgrass and sheathed in the starlight permeating ceilings of tree branches. I could be touched in every carved *****, smooth and soft. I could never tire of searching and wondering why, as a man, blind and sensed, I had never seeked true self efficacy. In those moonless nights, I’d moan my old name, sexing myself, “Tiresias, feel this and remember,” I’d say. Some crevices so soft and silent it would take me years to discover, as I found myself shouting and begging for freedom, but then would surrender to the burning that blazed anatomical layers I once conjured in my youth.
Tucked between pangs of hunger and ease of the past, I found rippling serpents that once brought me womanhood and with another strike of my staff, I morphed in regression. I believed the seven year dream, I honorable to him with my experience in this truth. I’ll continue to remember.
My body, an adventure - I discovered with myself for years.
Shay Ruth May 2014
For once could I be the wind?
I could sweep the crevices and navigate the map of your skin
With warmth of the heartbeat I've adopted as a compass.
So steadily present until flux began to dance
I celebration over my victory in winning Russia.
We'll play as a team since no one ever truly wins Risk.
Let’s leave the board there for weeks. We’ll make a new game
Where we chatter and chuckle and practice crinkling our noses.

Still, after decades of searching for solidity,
We caught a glimpse of its tail around the threshold of the door.
Something licked those jittering moments into place
Locked, frozen in time.
We started a sickness, now incurable.
This will be the last time I hold any type of innocence, dripping from
The webs of my fingers, running for a sink
Or a container that will hold the substance better than I.
One can find molecules of my personal histories
Stretched along the base of the pale linoleum.
Without a notion of an ever-after, I’ll adopt these
Days with you as my middle initial:
Sturdy and solid and attainable.
If it remains tomorrow, you can accept it as an
Unwilled gift, something like the part of you that I
Possess. I promise I’ll leave it in the the desk next to
Band-Aids and cough drops. I bought them to dull the illness.
Shay Ruth May 2014
Pelt me with weather-torn, slippery pouts
Rough from the spirits' chilly cage.

Push me into fits of anguish, strapped for deliverance
Into pits of overbearing mystery.

Stab me with wails of dusted bones, hollowed for replenished
Tendered air. Sweetened breath

Tears me so that shivers may enclose thoughts, long lost.
As skin tingles and snaps slowly onward,

Loathe me until melted pools of crimson snow drown
Swallowed songs of sorrow

Dripping in time to the soft putters of fire,
Where existence ***** and devours reality bone clean.
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