charcoal
oxblood
poppy
pomegranate
maroon
cranberry
cherry
creams­icle
orange soda
saffron
lemon
egg yolk
buttermilk
sunflower
olive
forest
lime
mint
ice
blueberry
royal blue
navy
bubblegum
fuschia
salmon
grape
lavender
wine
chocolate
espresso

Like her husband, Claire's wineglass
left rings on the table. Her coarse
hair stuck to her thin, oxblood lips.
She found time to breathe in between
sips and dry coughs brought on by her friend,
John, smoking on the couch. He put his Pall Malls
out on the armrest like Dalmatians. Her sister
lay in a red wine carpet stain counting
the pennies behind John's feet.
Claire hid behind a fruit bowl;
oranges with skin far tighter than hers.
*Oranges her husband would've been glad to ****.

the safety vest my rib cage calls home,
tight on my chest as i pave this road

tangerine juice in mismatched mugs
at a midnight breakfast

sunset in the dusk mirror of Pelican Lake,
tendrils of light sailing on a gust of wind

the crisp, dry fire of leaves
crowning autumn trees

my garden marigolds, rimmed in oxblood,
planted despite their toxic pollen

prescription bottles in my cabinet,
filled with pills, model of an addiction

a lace of rust, climbing trusses,
devouring steel with tender teeth


embers at the shore of my bones
in this skin, a permanent glow.

Everyday in English class, she'd walk in, sit down and open a book. The Teacher in silent understanding allowed her to.
He handed her the work wordlessly and within a few minutes she returned the fully completed work back to him. These A*'s meant nothing to her.
I sighed in contempt, this enigma of a girl, what was she? I see her around school a lot more, I noticed that she was the most popular girl but one would not associate her with that, for her persona was not that of one. Everyone fought to talk to her but she just looked at them with empty eyes, seen as full, but I saw through her guise. Her eyes....nothing was in them.
She intrigued me, I couldn't help it, and worst of all, now I can't let her go.
Everyday I am a soldier, constantly fighting for eye contact, yet those bottomless pits of icy brown avoided my searching eyes like the plague.

As usual, she walked into class and opened her book, her precious book was coming apart at the seams, almost a few seconds away from crumbling into pieces for she had used the book as a lifeline.
I cautiously made my way over to her desk that was nestled in the back, she stiffened at my looming presence,sigh.
I stared at her, waiting, with the patience of a saint, a devilish saint.
She failed to look up once, 10 minutes had passed...it was like she was frozen...had winter come early?
was she even breathing?
you see, I had bought a book for her, but this game was tiring and I couldn't abandon my responsibilities for my new-found muse.
I set the book down on her desk and walked away after what felt like eternity crossed with purgatory.
This book was from my personal library at home, I secretly hoped in mock amusement that we shared the same taste in literature although I had an inkling that my assumption would naturally be correct.

From the corner of my eye I gleaned that she was taken aback and that her curiosity was about to override her passive responses. I watched her pick up the book like a predator sets his gaze upon his prey.
My heart felt like it was beating at the speed of light when her elegant fingers caressed the spine and brushed the pages that moaned at her touch.
My breath hitched as her lips parted in thought, ****, she looked up.
God, the realization hit me that she was my own book that I read every English lesson.

The years went by, two years and four days, to be exact, since I first gave her my book. Nothing changed, every week she'd return my book to me after she'd read it, expression, unchanged.
It has been 740 days, 17,760 hours, 1,065,600 minutes since the day she became my muse, and not once did she ever escape my mind.

She started coming into class with punctuality out of sight and much to my  shock, empty handed. Her book was not in sight, my mind was reeling. To compensate she completed her work then stared, enthralled at her desk for the duration of the lesson.
Reminiscent of the first time that I approached her, I took the plunge again, opened my mouth and firmly asked "is everything okay?"
I hoped that the deep baritones of my voice would not get her shook but little did I know how familiar they were to  her, instead she shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. I sighed, walking away, I felt nothing, this was completely expected. crazy.
**** it, I craved to hear her voice, directed at me and me only, something a little less casual then yes or no or even answering for the register.

I knew the that the next time she was to walk in, something will have changed within her.
Correct, I win, hah.
but it wasn't so funny when I noticed the red around her eyes or the lilac blush of feint bruising underneath her eyes or that she kept sniffing or that she couldn't sit still or that she grinded her teeth.
Welcome to coke 101.

That ******* phone of hers that she was glued to all of a sudden just made the anger within me rise further up.
Who was getting her this excited, she was jittery and oddly enough her face looked brighter and less torn...did she almost look happy?

All my questions were answered when class ended and I walked behind her glancing at the screen of her phone to discover that a girl who was my property was engaged in a conversation with a 'J <3'
I saw red, I don't share my property unless I condone it
who was this devil who changed my little mystery?

scanning...scanning...scanning...who was she running to...ah
a group that resembled something fresh off the saint Laurent runway
and within that group, with his tight grip on her shoulder, I assumed was J.
They all wore ripped jeans, shirts that appeared as a second skin and overly large jackets...typical
but they seemed to be teetering on the edge of life, like they lived for adrenaline rushes to make them feel whole. perhaps they'd lost their way and found it again in an instant.
she fit in well and I cherished the smile on her face.

Months went on, the same thing happened every lesson, she'd stumble in after doing a few lines, struggle to breathe or even stay awake. this was all just a waiting game for her.
the day she walked in, stained with blood was the day my being snapped in two. The whole class sat shell shocked as they looked upon a fallen angel adorned with crimson.

2 weeks passed without her, left on edge until my craving to see her was satiated.
Monday came and she walked in, holding a note that she dropped upon my desk.
She stood waiting for me to read it, i did, but in a state of elated confusion.
scrawled in her elegant yet spidery identity "I miss you and I miss your books, I miss the way you gave them to me and I missed the anticipation that came alongside it"

Exterior I was authoritative and powerful, interior i was a ******* mess. I silently handed her a novel with an oxblood colored cover. I looked up and for a split second I could swear that our eyes met.

A week later on Friday, she came to me, with the book in her hands and set it aside.
She looked up at me, directly at me, biting her lip
this devil was not innocent or so God help me.

She guided my hands to rest on her unnaturally thin waist  and just stared at me. Engaged in an internal battle, I could see, she was choosing what to say
but she just whispered my name and left.
I overdosed on the way she said my name, left in euphoria over what could have been.
I grabbed the book in an attempt to make sense of all that has occurred and saw that in the front cover where I had written my name, her name had been placed next to mine.
Just a waiting game...a really ******* long waiting game.

Leaflet or scorpion I care
Not
I am unstoppable
And loved
Looking not to the left or right
Walking straight honest
Fist clenched anarchist
I am true from seed
A Greyhound pure breed
I've caught a scent
Now in chase full speed
Cherishing
Pangs of honesty
Stabbing delicate ego
I stand alone at the
Gallows
Revolting against this
Modern world
Til my dying breath
Fully bloomed
My life will be
A chrysanthemum
Soaked by dew
Dyed oxblood petals
Sword and pen
Will of lead
Some reggae in head
4 dogs & a laugh
By music I fly
Rebeling with grace
Saving no face
So out of step that
Even the boot on my throat
Gives me hope   
Without gimmick
Love simplistic

One night, Death came to visit me and I
Offered him a cup of tea.
He sat gracefully in a fragile chair
That had only ever known my
Grandmother
And said:
      "Young sir,
Have you anything with pomegranate?
      I find that it
traps more of the flavor."

I stood up--my hands trembling enough to cause an earthquake--
And fetched Death a cup
Of the oxblood fruit.
I tried to give Death the cup, my hands as bad as a scared tightope walker;
he
                  Refused.
And instead insisted I drink it.
(I didn't have the guts to tell him I hated pomegranate)
In the same instant my lips touched the hot crimson water,
A zipper opened across the face of death.

"Now, I have you."

From a ripple to the roar,
Of desires and desperations,
Hopes and aspirations.
With songs unsung, memories unseen,
Moves undanced, sights unblinked.
They riddle through a riling heart,
Languishing the clod of infinte memories,
Leaving behind a trail in oxblood,
On lanes of the suffering they imprint,
Never-failing pillars,
A Niagara of ambition,
Struggling and chasing,
The ring road of passion.

In this passage of arms,
The wants and these cries,
Shall put up a fight,
The first of its kind.
Moving every mountain,
Warming stiff snow,
Freezing the unforgiving fire,
Chocking the unmoving souls.
With a focus down unshaking roads,
They shall create a nexus,
With the nimbus, the whole universe,
To provoke the storms,
The thunder and the tides,
To hold their arms, to stay on their side,
In this endless unfailing ride.

With the mantra of victory,
And horse-like sight,
They come marching to lead you,
Down this one one life.
But in this march of time,
Through the years that crawl by,
Every road that you take,
Clinging onto dreams you've always dreamt,
Shall engulf a mist--
Some cocainic smoke,
That sting your eyes as they behold,
Your graceless retreat,
From closing doors.
Those million desires,
From burning heartaches,
Shall freeze and founder,
Fall and break.

Only leaves of paper,
Made by a dry-eyed stranger,
Doping human wants--
Most passionate minds.
Rendering them coarse and dud,
Cloudy and undone.
These leaves, they decide it all.
Your breaths, your wants,
The heartbeats, your wish grants---
The forest,
The ones who have most,
Shall foreshadow,
They can foretell,
The end of the roads they choose to take.
And those who have fragments,
A passive flow,
They know not where this journey,
Will allow them to go.
And yet they fight!
They give up their all!
But alas!
In this clientele of cliche,
Will breathe a cradle--
Will live the neverness of the niche,
That bears, where blooms,
From a dying ripple, to the fading roar,
Of desires and desperations,
Hopes and aspirations.
That will not live,
Oh! They die so slow...
As the pillars fall,
The Niagara runs cold.

Your arms around me are rich, oxblood velvet gloves that match a couture gown, and my lips against your hand are petals.
My own head is so paranoid, and I'm sorry that I make these beautiful things into metal and industrial machines meant for pain. I want nothing more than to love you and from all these bad things, refrain.
Your laugh is a string quartet, your walk is a waltz. I've fallen in love with you, and it's all your fault.
Your eyes are painted with divine murals that reflect myself in a more beautiful way than I've ever seen my own face. It is this luxury, this ballroom that I call your love for me, that constantly leaves me amazed.

The darkness of oxblood naugahyde booths barely steeped
in feeble candle light
Cocktails upon cocktails and cigarettes until we realize,
my companion and I,
That we have been completely blocked in
No chance of escape
Not even to ***
So we’re basically sliding out to nowhere.

In time the tabletop becomes covered
with the rings of dripping condensation
from Guinness cans.
Wet ring upon ring sparkle and
At times aluminum is slammed down upon the table,
And not at all casually.
You see, we were being marked
as theirs
A mighty squadron of faux suede heads
blocking access so
that no **** Yank may approach

(and this is Hollywood)
They might as well have hung a Union Jack)

These two birds
We were territories to be given
To Her Majesty.
I’m Hope and She’s Glory.
Or is it.....

They keep announcing to us that
“Diana is dead.”
And we keeping replying “yes, we know,
the tv is on,” pointing behind us.

Earlier that night
we sat on the floor
At the coffee table
Snorting narrow lines of *******
with CNN on in the background
They announce twice as we lean back and wipe our nostrils that
Diana, Princess of Wales
has been in a motor crash
and has broken her wrist.

Well that *****.
A broken wrist in Paris.
We returned our focus back
to the coffee table
and the announcer comes back
this time with a completely different tone
Sombre
Really sombre
He states
Diana, Princess of Wales
Is Dead.

Dead?
We announced to each other
with jinx simultaneity and incredulity.
It was just her wrist?

Once at the bar we made cracks
About off-shore bank accounts
receiving wire transfers from the Queen.

That previous summer in the first food aisle of
Rock and Roll Ralph’s
I turned towards the sunlight and
saw her image on an American tabloid
Displayed in the point of sale racks
At checkout
There were two rather fuzzy photos
Shining golden hair on a turned feminine head
A blue maillot
A diving board off a yacht
Arms wrapped in the Sea
And I thought softly to myself
“Oh no.”
But I can’t even tell you why.

Beneath my painted skin
Caramel brown eyes
Lined precisely with a black ink
Flicked at the end
Forming the most exquisite wing
Roseate lips coloured with an oxblood maroon
A peachy radiance
Emanating from the apples of my cheeks
There's a heart
Tenderly beating
And a soul
That desires love
Try to look beneath
And reach for it
Rather than gaping and grabbing a corner of my surface
Which causes nothing but sheer pain in me

I'm in love with this boy
Who drinks so much at times
That he fails to recognize me
And pushes me away
Like the cold beer bottle
He just emptied
Before falling on the floor
And closing his eyes for the day
I'm in love with this boy
Who takes days to reply to my messages
But texts me whenever he is bored
He knows that I'll leave everything at once
Just to talk to him whenever he wishes to
He tastes like tobacco and kamikaze shots
Doesn't cares if I wear a **** brown shade
Or an oxblood red
It doesn't makes any difference in the dark
When my mouth he explores
like it's a diamond mine
But his hunger for me subsides
As soon as the sun rises up
I want him to ask me out
for coffee and movie dates
But he only wants to meet me
In hotel rooms and nearby bed and breakfasts
Where he can love me I guess
But I only hear him saying
Are you ready for round two
Sometimes I ask him
How often do you think about me
Do you see us together in future too
To which he tilts his head
And scratches the nape of his neck
Then says
Some questions are better left unanswered
Cause future is uncertain you know
And at that moment
I struggle to hold back my tears
And attempt to smile a bit
I don't know why I love this boy
But I do
And I hate myself for it

bless thee and paste the words.

literally.

oxblood does not offend me,                   unlike

your rantings, protestations.;  words continue.



sweat

beads.



bless thee, pray your maggots

leave.



while we pick out the remains.



days continue with                       blessings

while the thoughts that this is not personal

are failing.



so i will continue to raise tickets on your befalf



&



bless thee.



sbm.

i want to sit next to my sister - we do not have to say anything --- do I recognize her as a near 30 year old? - i want to stop and curl and curve my body like a little conch shell - i want to hum like the ocean - the songs of infants - the hands of grandparents - i want to laugh on my death bed - surrounded by bugs and bees digging deep into pollen cradles, clawing and rolling in dust, rocking wind.

i want to braid my sister's freshly washed, cool, clean turquoise green hair.  it feels like it has been years since i did something so simple, so caring.  i want to sit and weave it until there is almost nothing left, but the silk aqua rope i can run my fingers down like water.  i want to thread the pieces over and under my heart strings.  she is the earth, the sky, the moon - the altars of rocks - the shapes we see in them.

///
i dreamt of a woman sleeping - she was made of sand - she was off the shore of new york city --- before the sky scrapers, streets, pandemonium --- with purple kelp for hair.  she was so beautiful - a sand bar, as big as a dune, beneath a thin layer of sun-warmed translucent water as open as day.   she was silent, laying like a fetus on her side under the waves.  i swam to her, held in on the loose sand like an anemone. \\

i want to sit on a warm rock in the sun - overlooking the valley, the lake, the blue mountains.  i want to be the Appalachian air - i want to do nothing - but to live.  i want to listen and dance and run and flow - join a coven, scale a cliff.  i want to talk to the night, watch birds and find mushrooms - follow magical, mysterious things.  oxblood berry juice runs down my fingers.

filling the bath up to the overflow drain - i want to fix the faucet.  spaces became smaller, memories overlap and forage in Michigan forests.  the sprawl and creep - moss inches glacially over our backs.  the spine remains on the island, the bogs embalm.  i sit sweetly, cross legged, twisting my hair around my finger - thinking of pebbles as road systems, sycamore and sumac houses.  the quietest, mildest evening sunlit place you could imagine bathed in green and gold, grace - lit and heaven - struck.  a place of peace, calm, warm.

i am thinking about the sound of the stream through the house, how we always can choose simpler.  i want permeable walls to the sunrise - to rain sounds - to the crickets and cicadas and spiders - to the smoke, the fog, the mountain laurel.  wild raspberries are wisps of cadmium red on raw canvas.  ducks fade in and out of graphite and watercolor drawings against the sky // buoyant on the pond, hawthorn and mugwort dreaming.

i want to see the flickering rainbow lights, sit on a fairy's wing.  sway and jump and spread my arms wide - wide - wider - up - up - and up!  iridescent, shining, on a beam of light.  i am lighter than air, i am the essence of light.  the memory of time.

a copper suncatcher eye, a fragmentation through a lens.  i want to sit - i want to rest and run backwards in my mind - upside down and through the channels of plants - tracing each petal of a daisy.  the circulatory system of green canopies.  i want to turn off and on again, i want to be shocked and taken to the sea.

the patterns take me, the colors soar.  i sit and feel the love from everything.  it is tangible, weaving itself between my fingers like yarn.

uncover my soul, tell me it is real?  i want to make - i want to remember - i want to plant, eat, grow.  i sit and revel at it all - my motherhood, my sisterhood, their daughters.  the womb, the darkness to light to the peat.

to live in a spiral bound sketchbook, in my great grandmother margaret's wooden, hand-painted pencil box.  i would make the memory of her love my home.  the piano keys float through open kentucky windows to the garden.

i tighten the knot, the bread rises in the corner of the kitchen.  i live in a place where i am but i am not - the story is told, i put together the pieces differently.  the forest shatters, i'm holding a piece of the mirror from 3 years ago.  it shimmers, cuts, fades, dissipates the bass neon jungle throughout the night - i find it all incredibly comforting and dizzying, being made of love to love to be loved.

the moon phases - arcs - dips - dives - toward you - through you - glowing, resonant, alive  //\||

heirs and heiresses
erring their cautions
blood thrusting through veins in hurried vigor and vitality
floating in fine wines and melodies so effortlessly poured
knowing not a possibility of drowning.

Clenching oxblood between teeth,
What little remains dripping down lips
creeping down my chin and
sinking into the depths of velveteen fibers caressing my neck.

Tighter
but loose enough to breathe.
Damper
but dry enough to stay afloat.

Flaming chiffon carnation
unraveling into a dance of ruffles.

Recluse of intrusive
thoughts beyond attainment.

No fife nor drum
conjure evidence concurring victory.
No strife to be named nor likened
to familiar perils.

Just an ethereal
reprieve of condolences
irradiating in the plague of mine.
Ephemeral sparks of hope
placating the absurd.
Entrenched in the hopeful hopelessness of the universe.

What catharsis lifts such dull fog?
Light enough to see through
yet dark enough to burden.

If I could be a pastel goth
stepping forward to state a claim
for the fashion most avoid
diving deep with little shame

hipster with the chicest vibes
understood by like-kind
travelers meeting doom
acknowledging rainbow’s boon

tones of pink fade to black
combining purple with oxblood
always flirting with extremes
before returning to the pale

matching eyebrows to the hair
corsets blessed against the chest
socks with skulls in candy tones
pastel goth will be my bomb.

© 2019. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20191106.