it didn't used to be this way
leaving hours in decay
armadas sailing chalks of line
rotten days drop from the vine

princess killer hides her hole from burning
as the starlight stalks the skyline
the rain pounds the nails in yearning
we pollute our love with time

I wish I could
fill you up with
beautiful words
like you did for
me, but when I
tell you the things
my heart slides
over my teeth you
always say, "I just
don't understand it"
like I could possibly
be this thing you
don't deserve. How
can I explain to you
that you deserve
someone who touches
you like you are made
entirely of stars (which
I'm sure you are),
someone who feels
lucky at the sight
of your smile, trembles
in the wake of your
laugh?

My darling you do know right?
That I love you in spite of every ‘in spite’
And forever would love you this way
I know you’d wonder-Why did I leave then?
Well sweetheart, have you ever seen
The sun and the moon intertwined?

We always believed that I
was your apple sauce
And you my pork chop
Either went missing
The delight shall remain incomplete

But love, you do know it hit both of us
How weak was the foundation of this structure
Infallibility is not something each
Relationship can afford
With which I perfectly agree

But only if it were for errors committed
Honestly in love
This moon would have defied
The force of gravity to reach his sun
Even when it meant burning his identity

My ashes would also have
Whispered your name girl
If only our attempts had been honest
Just for once

For the eyes drifting upwards
Did see us together at times
But hon, we were never intertwined

If only our apologies had some substance
If only our love were more than just pleasure
If only it were based on truth rather than fraudulence        
If only we had recognized OUR relevance

I’ll not waste much of your precious time
End I shall this sorrowful ballad
With these final parting lines-
“That every night this moon re-lives
The vivid memory of
The light radiated from his sun
That helps him hide the bruises, ugly scars
Dark holes in his soul from
The world’s gaze

Shining brightly every crepuscule
Following a similar phenomenon
As that of the celestial sun- giving its light
From millions of miles away to its celestial moon
The distance in no way affects the connection
between the two

Cupcake we both know that the moon
Will never have light of its own
It is the sun that will forever be the source
And the miles will forever exist
And must be maintained
To prevent the breaking of hearts beyond repair
Prevention is a necessity
Since the sound of such an apocalypse
Might remain unheard
receiving none’s attention and solace
For sound does not travel in space”

The luminosity breaks my cage of crepuscule as the vociferous symphony of the media obstruct the clang of injustice. A thousand eyes glare at Lucifer yet neglect the vision of purity as their hand points with each finger a spindle establishing a cloak made of stigma. The cloak, an item I am now constricted in, is in completion as the gates stance creates a void soaring over me to which I am absorbed - as on the other side lies the devils crooked tune whilst God strums the chords.

on the eggplant
and magenta mottled
side of a snow leopard

its paws barely touching
the winter hills below


SoulSurvivor
(C) 1/16/2016

Smokey Edge, Georgia.
I Wait in the diner. Not long ago Whites Only.
Now filled with black folks.
Mom would say “persons of color,”
that would include the two Hispanic truckers
and the Chinese cook.
Mom said “don’t go, no need to”.
She’s never been.
Gives me the silent treatment
while murdering Chopin on tortured keys.

Cousin Ed slides into the booth.
Across from me he glistens sweat,
wipes his forehead, grins, squeezes my hand.
“Hi cousin Citygirl, “ and adds “Chocolate au lait”!
Mocking, or teasing, I don’t care.
“Ok, double espresso” I say.

Red on white No Trespassing sign rusts in the grass.
Vine assaulted shack is all what’s left of it,
the Juke Joint where grandpa played
banjo with a bottleneck slide,
making it screech and sing.
Where the women Bess sang and danced.
The one he talked about incessantly,
when he had forgotten who we were.
How he pressed into her, ****** her behind the joint,
how she smelled and laughed and rocked the blues,
how she put her lips to the glass of bathtub gin, just so.

Short crepuscule gives way to night. Mosquitos come thick.
“Listen up Citygirl, hear the sounds, ghost drums and strings.”
I hear grandpa’s banjo, the slide’s screech, Bess sings.
I smell the funk, the sweat, ripe heat, the Blues.
I put my arm around his waist, grind into him
I want him hard, in me, lick his sweat.
He pushes me away, “hear up Citygirl,
I‘m not grandpa and you aint no Bess.”
Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth  March 2012

As the lowering sun
Keeps the earth's
Night at bay
They say
Make hay
Whilst the
Sunshines.
As the sun
Disappears
It displays arrays
Orchestrating
Colorful sprays
Magnificently
Closing the day...
The stage is set for
Final curtain calls
The credits roll,
We breath in
Exhaling praises to
The Supreme Director!

She hangs low in the evening
like she's worn out from the shift before.
Her golden feet bless the tarmac
of the road below,
Playing children swallowed
into her glowing belly to
become obscured blotches
submerged in the delicate fabric of
her tangerine light.
She falls.
A silent ambush.
Drowned in the warmed cement.
Dragged down by darkening blues.
Before she is buried into the darkening hours
she peeks her head just above the ground
to see murky figures appear once again,
they wander through the charcoal haze
in gangs of hoods and ski masks
and lie in the middle
of the empty streets and scream.

I’d like to think I am dead,
like an old Maine farm left to decay.
I crumble demurely into the river and grass.

Chickens gone by breakfast, you by crepuscule;
Rockwell never painted defeat or loss of limb
but never has he seen your lips,
cracked with solitude, fortitude, secrets, and
the faint music of a funeral pyre.

I always remembered you,
rising with the sun and whispers,
sweeping the porch, scattering leaves and harvest:
scalding coffee and soft hands on this October Day—
I cannot recall for the life of me—
what color were your eyes.

Now I am wrinkled, small, and tired,
left amongst gentle picket fences,
whitewashed walls, creased linen,
and every single day that I wasted those
silent early oatmeal mornings.

Just so you know and don’t worry, in case you’re worrying,
I still get chilly at night, and yes I kept your flannel shirt; and oh I forgot to say:
I cheated at Monopoly.

--my hands crack in the pastoral stillness.

I touch  your body with my fingers,  
Then I embrace you with my hands.
The wind of change is a love ringer,
Or waves breakin' along the sand.
  
  
Your wishes creep along my skin like
Dancin' in time with sudden gusts.
Our kisses grow, leaves o' breath to strike,
And fall from human tree in  rust.
  
  
So tender ,your enclos'd universe
Like river flows inside my hips
My dance o' thrills flounder in reverse
Moves touchin' lips against the lips.
  
  
As cradling part of my fallin' dance
A predation tremor you are
For my  secret place  in a high trance
From my reality so far
  
  
An explosion of dawn doesn't mean
A present happiness herald
'tis a new world in my grain o' green;  
Love in your eyes o' emerald.
  
  
You keep me really so close in pair
And  I fly to the heavens' high
You run your fingers through my long hair,  
Our feelings are clouds in the sky
  
  
Dancin' lips in orbital circles
A rip-roarin' rain means your kiss,
Or a dawn for my last crepuscule.
More lovin' you is all I miss.

Night is a god
Engulfing
Day's bounty
In a single stoke
Of life immortal's hand
Whispering stories untold
To every ear that partakes
Of its fresh awakening

Once screams of horror bind
Drawn upon by darkness luminous rage
Night leaves us wanting more
Never complacent
Unaccomplished
In all its mystic splendor
Twilight never bids farewell
It comes back with more promise

Of babies unborn
Of secrets revealed
Of faces unmasked
Of night trying to unveil itself
To souls who needs revelation
Vowing neither certainty nor reason
In what it bares.

8/4/2015

"It's,like, the Jersey
theme song," he bubbles out
excitedly

conjuring up images of
driving through the parkway
Down the shore

where they'll say
"Hey, buddy! Whadayya think yer doin!"
Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night,

I wish they'd blow up my house, too
on the steps of a granite building called Clio
Princeton's lost its golden air as said before and

the Sourland crepuscule
of rock and woodchip
under my feet seems

to be just woodland landscape no
longer some powerful nature scene or something
i have friends, but they are in cities

looking through high still air i say
and declare the sourland scene dead the
vague Appalachian terrain the parkway by Princeton

i go to sleep.

through the lips of
the horizon
a purple parasol
of attenuated *****
  spread, flagrant is the crepuscule.

these are the exiled
  in the heliotrope world:

trees saluting the length
  of sprinting air to calm
  these undulations -
  painted are the leaves
  with blame.

lips sinking to find answers
hidden underneath the
derelict of sweat, noisome moan
after quieted breathing,
heavy with the undeniable boulder
  of craving's weight -
  tongue naked, freeing itself
  from the oubliette of flesh,
  finding what is still to be
   tasted in a covetous harvest,

it is indeed strange to be here,
  in this absolute hour
  of absent resoluteness.
to deny want and embrace fullness,
my eyes ***** these visions
   and then dive through steepness.
  no words have to be said,
  only their significations
   held secretively as roots
  are unseen flourishing in their
    obligations to this flower,
    your flower

  underneath the twilight
   of bodies crossing each other
  out, love's derivatives
    ensue.

We'll stay at home, together but alone
but for the mornings that crumple on the floor,
like waste paper printing headlines on the ceiling.
We'll stay behind the door, afraid to wander
in uncertainty, parallel to busy roads,
the voiceless excursions,
the plans for long soporific days in expensive homes
and fresh-aired kitchens filled with frying pans.
Without direction, the answers all lie behind.
Ask me the question; I'll try and make up my mind.

Elsewhere the city men all crowd together,
either not talking or talking about the weather.

The clarity in eyes that bless the walls,
The understanding in a dull gaze on the walls,
sprawling time packed up into a box or a fist,
hurrying on tiptoes everywhere the sunlight falls,
tripped up in the garden, an inevitable descent,
and oblivious to the clock-face, the crimson crepuscule,
disappeared again into the rushes. No one knows where it went.

But it doesn't matter what's been done.
The eyes, still and still clear, don't recognise time passed,
don't realise what they may have missed.
It will end in the same place that it had begun,
nerves tight around the second try as tight as the last,
no space for thoughts of new starts or possible debris,
not one thought for broken hearts, for the people we cannot be.
We'll share this absent-mindedness, between
the clutter of conviction and certainty,
and practicality and potentiality,
and other matters on which we can agree

Elsewhere the city men, all crowded together,
are not talking, or talking about the weather.

And if we are going to fall apart, then we will do.
Our facades will fracture, our fallen faces,
our lost grip on graces, our black and our blue, our lost places
in the queue. We create words for the fears we cannot name.
And although our landscape erodes with the years,
the cage is the same. The scenery is new,
but what we call history will happen again,
so how can there be anyone but ourselves to blame?
Break and build, create and burn,
the pride follows the fall when pride has taken its turn.

As the Sun exclaims
farewell to the earth,
at beautiful crepuscule
is when true
animals come
out and decide
To feed on the
Emotions left
behind in forms
of golden yellows
and deep, bright
reds, which
light up the sky
like paintbrush
strokes, but fade
away so soon.

it is raining in my side of the
   earth
and where light slips away,
ensconcing with its lackadaisical imprint, is the morning: pinnacles and then topples
    into
acontinualeveningwherewordsrunandbreathscometoa      sudden
                  halt:

in the same intimation,
your lip's crepuscule
or your commune's crescent,
  in my side of the earth
    from yours, hurled out
the many sinuous fingers
   of water and the lamp's
  palpebral flutter.

The grass is sage and fawn
where the flaxen lipstick
ruckles through the brick
to neck the lawn:
I love you most.
Here by this chimney is a dried
crepuscule where the sun died,
as we made our champagne toast,
then took the southern stairs
to launch the ******* dark,
& leave kisses like postmarks
in little blooded pairs.
There is no second place
to your coup de grace.

By the vague darkness of crepuscule's foe,
Throned in eventide; Thou art an empress.
Sitting queenly like a calm hiss of ***.
Thine eyes of aurora's hold thine fortress.

Whilst laying there upon the lustrous day,
Is an emperor of dreadful distress.
Owning that place where melancholias lay.
Bestowed upon him a might to oppress.

They're separated by continuum.
Living in the words, they are antonyms.
Coloring the dullness, they are contrast.
And by his destiny they are unmatched.

She's the one he wants but can never have,
And stars above, he wrote: Our tragic love.

Stay with me Howl,
Sofi’s hands pressed against his wounds.
The blood gently slipped through her fingers,
evading her desperate attempts of preserving life in
his quivering body.
The blood tarnished his admiral feathers into a crimson blue,
echoing the fleeting of the roseate sky.
The war that scorched the land was to rid of an angel.
Murmurs of a curse,
a pulsing heart torn from the chest of a man.
A witch, whom bewildered by unscathed beauty
and scorned by his indifference,
sealed it in the flames of a devil.
Even so, Sofi loved him no more than the stars that he
danced in, archipelagos of the ether, where his wings
wielded the air to his command, a seraph in the stygian
skies, his smile resonated a boundless light onto a tenebrous
world, where malice had seized the hearts of men.
The crepuscule paved way for the birth of the moonflowers,
which in mourning, rose to cradle the lovers in their hold.
The wind rises and the little spirits frantically rush to
attest the passing of a love so great, that evil Cain
could not waver.
The moon rose into that brisk night,
having set its emissaries to cloak his gentle
spirit in a fabric of white light, severing the chains that
bound him to a putrid earth.
The fates had spun the thread, but adamant,
She held onto the last strand.