#fraynarte poems on Hello Poetry

fray narte Dec 2020

Virginia

lately, i am a wreckage of bones
sinking into an internal wound.

if woolf had been alive,
she would carefully fill her pockets
with rocks, falling off a gravestone
and tread,
slowly into my skin —
all drenched and waist-deep
in a heavy, black dress.

and down, she slips away.

oh to never resurface
has its certain poetic appeal
so send some flowers
to the bottom of the lake —
it is now a deathbed
for my weary bones.

and down, down, they slip away.

lately, i am but prosaic murmurs
and bloated flesh
and i guess the difference
between drowning and sinking
is the art of giving up.

i guess the difference is that
here, sirens do not sing to lure;
they all still
and mourn a poet's death.
so young,
so wrong,
so tragic.

and lately, i am a wreckage of bones
sinking into an internal wound.
and down, i go.

and down, i sink.

and down,
i slip away.

#virginiawoolf #poetry #poets #drowning #sadness #grief #pain #fraynarte #poems #woolf

fray narte Dec 2020

Persephone and Demeter

I remember the days when
a broken glass was just a broken glass,
a poem was just a poem,
a wrist was just a wrist —
and not a headstone for
sunlights, melting;
flowers, wilting;
mirrors, breaking.

Now, it shows half summer smiles,
half dead and sunken cheeks —
an oddity that is Persephone, unhinged
and descending into darkness
and maybe one day,
I'll feel the haunted murmurs beneath my feet
and not in my head —
not in the poems
I cannot write again,
Now, the mirror shows
my aching — it shows my waiting
for death to show up at the doorstep
as though it was an estranged husband
finally coming home.

Slip your grief into Demeter's hands —
lithe. Graceful, and drenched in sunlight.

I remember back when this was an abduction
and not a quiet, slow dance with death.

Slip your sighs, carefully now,
into Demeter's forsaken hands —

I remember how breaths
ended in mine.

// "Maybe Persephone chased her death."

#persephone #demeter #greekmyth #greekgoddessess #hades #death #poetry #poets #poems #fraynarte

fray narte Sep 2020

avarice

i am so tired of
my wrists being a battlefield —
the shrines for all the times i fell —
they all keep falling apart,
and nothing lasts long enough
for all these wounds
to turn into scars.

maybe the problem is that scars mean you're healing.
maybe the problem is that i'm not.

i have worn this skin away —
long shunned by softness
and each day, i cannot fathom how
i can ever manage to hold gentle things —
press them against my chest
when everything i hold
bleeds and breaks,
including me.

i wish my tongue was more made for poems
and not for dry-swallowed poppies;
the moon flinches at the very sight.

i flinch too.

and i am so tired of my entire skin
being a battlefield
when no one can see the casualties
buried quickly —
buried well.

and oh, what i'd give to be
soft enough to grow flowers on graveyards —
and soft enough not to break myself.

#poetry #poets #words #poetscorner #writers #creativewriting #softness #poems #fraynarte

fray narte Sep 2020

September 2

I. One day, the moon will forgive me for all the ways I broke myself, until I was a driftwood crumbling into dust, stirring on the edge of your bed — all the faint traces of the ocean gone. The moon will forgive me for growing bruises where your lips once staked claim.

No, that was not my fall from grace, I whisper; my skin has long abandoned tenderness at the doorstep of the first boy who broke my heart. Maybe I had been broken since. Now, there are some things you can never fix: all the bones that you'd once held are all the bones that break.

II. And I know, it'll forgive me for sinking into the comfort a stranger's sheets somewhere in this bleak, forgotten town. It's been a month, and I am made of lows and pathetic attempts to forget your voice. And the moon knows I was never cut out for love — only for things that resemble it. So when you wrung poems out of my tangled pulseline, when you muttered you loved me that July night, it'll forgive me for sighing myself to oblivion, having been undone by your gaze. It'll forgive me for having wanted to die in your arms. And oh, it was beautiful while it lasted.

We were beautiful while we lasted.

III. And still, I am never cut out for love. The one I know is made for burning down cathedrals. For leaving dead flowers in the gaps of your ribs. For throwing poems under the bridge. For throwing myself thereafter. I always had a proclivity for things that leave me hurting in the aftermath of disasters. And there are no poems left to make sense of it all. Just erratic thoughts. Just a flight risk caught in the loose ends where memories are left to rot.

No, there are no poems to write anymore. Just heartbreak. Just lonely rooms, and drawn curtains, and your scent, fading from these sheets — held close. In silence. Despite it all.

IV. And one day, the moon will forgive me for wanting to stay when I should be leaving.

Maybe I will forgive myself too.

#prose #poets #words #heartbreak #heartache #moon #love #fraynarte #pain

fray narte Sep 2020

9/3/2020

Do storms ever feel lighter?

#prose #spilledink #words #musings #storms #poets #writers #fraynarte

fray narte Aug 2020

potter's field

this poem is a lovechild
of my weary skin
and the sensual creeping of an all-consuming melancholia;

my voice, hoarse
from calling for the gods
whose names all fall away
at the sight of my undoing —
besides, who falls apart
at ungodly hours
but sinners?

why hast thou forsaken me —
there no longer is a need for this
when they had all forgotten your name
hours before the daybreak.

and yet everyday, i still wake,
waiting for this bed to collapse
under the weight of my hollow bones, holding
the weight of the frailest chaos
to ever befall these sorry sheets —
i thirst,
for a new kind of skin, unstained,
untouched —
wide enough
to hold all this weight of sadness
lying in these sorry sheets.

i've wanted too many epitaphs for a girl who's still alive;
today it's started wanting me back.

now, i tire,
wrap the cloth around my skin:
all ashen, all stench,
all cold, all dead.

now take this poem.
take this lovechild in your arms —
all brown eyes and little hands;
half melancholia;
barely a girl.

now take this body;
take its peace.
bury it in a pauper's field.

#sadness #melancholia #melancholy #poem #poetry #fraynarte #creativewriting #poets #poemsporn

fray narte Aug 2020

helen

oh, to be a
delicate thing
in these feral waves;

i remember steady grounds,
veneered floors,
greek columns —
my hand pressed softly
in the small of your back;
fingers —
aching
for the slightest of touch,
i remember sunlight;
our hearts were
lighter back then.
oh how we were
the envy
of chaotic things
and lonely gods.

now,
look at this war
i'd waged for you
as termites
eat away
at those
sunlit memories;

what's the point of fighting
when the sea already
has swallowed
and spat poems
written from the
losing side
of this war:
a mess
of what used to be
a delicate love;
now,
i'll fit
all of these
heartbreaks
in a letter if i could —
leave it on your shore.

and i
loved you
so;
i remember you
loving me back, helen;
i remember
sunlight
and
happier times.

now this love
is a wreck
of a battleship,
sinking,
drowning
in the weight
of these sighs.

now this love
are embers
dressed
in all
the muted shades of blue.

now this love
is not delicate —

it's just
breakable.

it's just
broken.

and oh how we were
the envy
of chaotic things
and lonely gods.

#helenoftroy #trojanwar #poetry #poets #poems #creativewriting #writers #words #fraynarte #spilledink

fray narte Jul 2020

2018

Maybe it's all still here, like storms made of bruises and the relics of Carthage under siege. Here, like the laments of a Sunday morning while staring back at tragic eyes. Maybe it's all here, somewhere in this layer of skin beneath the white lines on your wrists. Now the blade just feels like another stranger coming home at 4 a.m.

It was right here in the bones of a girl that once was made of sunlit blunders and curiosities; if you dig deep enough, you might exhume the remains of what she used to be — all purple vervains and the poems she swallowed whole.

Oh, that cruel, cruel joke of delicate things, still withering at the wake of storms such as yourself. Has no one cared enough to tell you that maybe, this isn't what getting better looks like? Maybe you just learned how to seem less messed up.

#poetry #spilledink #words #musings #spilledwords #creativewriting #sadness #emptiness #fraynarte

fray narte Jul 2020

sea nymph

calypso withers away in a lonely island —
a blunder away from crumbling
at the sight of seaspray and empty towns.

sweet one, this isle is too small
for heartbreaks too big and soon enough,
gods and grecian men
and sad, sad, dead-eyed boys
will be greeted by a mayhem of sobs,
like flies dispersing off a dead body
held together by skin —
pale,
porcelain,
dead —
skin, stretched across these bones,
like the sea stretches across all of its sadness —
and ogygia, a lost isle,
disappears —
a speck of black in a shade of teal;

a pity your heart is not big enough for these sorrows
and not small enough to vanish.

and perhaps, betrayals do not come from
temporary lovers but from your skin
stretching, growing,
making room for years of blunders
until y o u are
n o
m o r e
but a name baptized in the wrong side of the war
and caught in a blunder
thousands of years too late.

it's been a long while;
the sun remembers your smile in his death bed, sweet one.

#poetry #poems #calypso #greekmyth #seanymph #greekmythology #creativewriting #words #fraynarte

fray narte May 2020

icarus and the moon

if only icarus had fallen in love with the moon,
for the sea is her pining lover.

if only he had fallen in love with the moon this time,
then maybe,
the seafoam would have understood the heartbreak,
would have been kind enough to caress his dead body
onto the shore.

sweet one,
poems are for when you fall in love
with someone who just breaks your heart,
and this is
an elegy.

#icarus #moon #elegy #poems #words #creativewriting #poetry #fraynarte #sun #sea