chopping the carrots
and the onions
with tears..
this fragmenting
in linear time..
now dialogue ensues
carrots and onions
join other friends
ingredients unite..!
a community in heat
transforms and shapeshifts..
an aroma announces
a new creation
a quantum delicacy
before her eyes...

Her wandering soul               
                            l  i
       Takes    F              h    t     
                                   g    ­             with the wind

She runs with Panthers



Can't tell her name
It   C      A                                 with the land
            H     N             S
                           G   E

She shapeshifts through the world



And though she never stays the same
                                   And though she doesn't have a name
Her face is always pretty
                                                 And her eyes are always kind



I feel her in the air

She   
       hovers
   in the atmosphere


You know she's been here
          'Cause
                  you
                        can                              ­                   S
                               hear                                            u
       ­                             the                               ­       n
                                        songs   ­                         g                                     ­                                                     *she's

Time was a pure drop of infinity
From her eye. Time.
When it moved, everything else did.
Music reached me. My soul—
Resurfaced. Come the flesh.
Come the shadow.
Her smile was light.
I was blood pouring over.
I was noticeably inlove.

Time. The Grandfather's Clock.
The pendulum of my heart. Time.
What a cruel alarm!
What vast silence! Time.
I stopped living before, for once,
I know, because—
Because pain stopped chasing me. I
Know, because I'm existing now,
For it has finally caught me.
My heart—hanging
Like an old dreamcatcher.
And one can only whistle hard
Just to stop the crying.

Here's a night like no other:
The cool fire of the Universe
Made its way into me, a certain
Cold I haved likened my soul into.
I miss her more than I remember her,
Like they are two opposite things.
The stars would weep stars.
The moon shapeshifts. The cicadas—
Courting one another.
And I miss her.

Oh, if darkness could only blur
The things that I know
And will never know!

I would give everything to the Sun,
If only it could give back the orbits
The revolutions of the World, hoping
Against all hopes, just to be with her.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

My hands grip the smoke in the air
circling my fingers as though to tease me.
The endless form of vapor shapeshifts
passing through my palm,
as though my existence was a distant laughter
that does not echo
but fades away.

First to arrive at the funeral of warmth,
Last to leave the echo of breath.
What is misery without a mirror?
What is a laugh when lungs collapse?

It’s white outside,
but red claws bloom beneath the snow.
My nose burns with the frostbite’s kiss —
a fire disguised as silence.

I’ll crawl through winter’s teeth
even if the season swallows me whole.
I could meet the end more quickly
if I let go of the brakes.

I carve angels in the snow —
arms spread like surrender —
until I feel holy,
or at least no longer haunted.
If it kills me, I’ll call it trying.
If it kills me…

Smiles are coffins
where secrets rot sweet.
No one lies if no one speaks —
a silence sharp enough to bleed.
The girl in the mirror wears my skin,
but her pulse is paper-thin,
her eyes a grave of me.

I’ll make it through the winter
if the cold doesn’t get curious.
I could fall faster
if I weren’t always catching my own blade.
Still, I shape wings in the ash of snow
hoping to be forgiven
for waking up.

I tried so hard
to stitch the cracks.
I got so far
from myself.
There was a girl —
a wound that walked like love.
I blamed her ghost,
because ghosts are easier than guilt.

But I still search
for her in the warmth of another —
hoping to find the flame
that didn’t burn me.

The seasons change —
grief just shapeshifts.
What fed me then
poisons me now.
I once drank joy from a chalice of ruin,
and called it love.

If I could go back,
I’d still choose the blade that fit my hand.

I’ll make it through the winter, maybe —
but why does time crawl
when you want it to run?
I’ll keep sculpting angels from frost
until the sky thinks I’m enough.

If it kills me,
at least I was reaching.

If it kills me…

I tried.