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kfaye Dec 2012
the front door open.
the dogs not barking,
slapping some wet skinned faces in front of everyone,
wishing i was a broken bottle
or something.
there's want of a forest in my yard
-the whole world softing out:
action dust; to the girl that screams:
there's no such thing as sinners, there's no such thing as love, there's just people and what people do,
whole forests of paper feel your words.
           sincerely,
                            we're all just crazy.
sweet dharma dewdrops fell off the tongue of the clean-cut kid.
he had soapy teeth and no shame to speak of
and when he spoke to us, his fingers glowed
because.
did you think that words could do more than arms-
and that anything else alone could do more for you than a full bodied embrace.
and
i looked at the rose you had buttoned on your blouse and i tore it off and dashed it upon the ground
because of
the mist
and the yellow billboard
lit up softly like a wheatfield
and frost was setting onto the long blades of crisply dying vegetation.
and there is the matter of those ghosts in the parkinglot
unaware of the cars that skid by full of people, all with capacities to know and be known-
sometimes i wish i could tell them
that it's okay to reach out with soft red fingers, wet from running water, warm from hot running water rinsed
over our hands to bleed out the chill that leaches into our too-thin fingers on cold nights such as this.
meanwhile-whole forests of bright white paper
i think that if i ever found you,
it would be walking on a road next to blueberry blossoms-and close, dry
thicket branches that crunch swiftly sometimes-and slowly, others- behind our heels
and hands shaped like mantras gesturing towards us from trees- telling us to go this way, and that,
welcoming us with their imperfect notions of morality and telling us that everything was going to be.
light a match on the bathroom window,
take one step closer to breathe in the bad-handwriting of the graceless morning. put one foot forward on the floor-
one hand on your temple.
only time will tell
if this is hell or just a special hell for me and you
choke me in the white-noise drone
of the shower.
push against the vitalities of my neck-
offer your hands around my faltering voice.
tell me about the pharaoh.
and the legless learners of passion.
tell me that you need to fall forward onto your face just to remind yourself that you're alive.
drum against my chest imperfectly with your
fingertips.
the unskillfully applied paint on your nails already chipping off- (you do this thing with your thumb and
forefinger as a nervous habit and always ruin them.)

the sun come

i trace over my neck with cartridge-blade razors
-rip away the stubble like peeling off snakeskin shadows.
snow falls
dusting my eyes with the harpsichord sounds of porcelain.

there is no longer bitterness nor sorrow.
mûre Oct 2012
I see a Woman eating her muffin
looking at Man who is looking
looking into the depths of his paper cup
and the wrinkles and rivers on the back of his hand
thinking When did I get those?
Coffee Cup looking at the blue bin in the corner
Coffee Cup thinking Well, I guess this is how it goes

The secret force that wrenches eyes upward
from the secret morning monologues
happens like electricity happens
and Man sees Woman's eyes and frowns
and can't tell whether they are blue
or brown.

Crumbs are on her lap.
Man doesn't notice but Woman thinks he does
Moving imperceptibly and not wasting a calorie
she flutters her hands over the warm loaves of her thighs.
Man notices an ephemeral strain Simon and Garfunkle and
becomes aware of a softening within his sternum and
electrons slowing, softing, into a May spring aesthetic
Woman rubs her finger which does not have a ring
and Coffee Cup wonders if it will still
have sentience within the bin or if the world
with all its broken beauty and mornings and warm hands
will suddenly just stop everything?

I look at my keys. The sort that express, not
the sort that open doors and drawers
but even these, time to time, will
fall beneath the wooden floors.

Man pulls his long coat off the back of his chair
without ceremony rises and turns to go
leaves his cup on the table for a coffee girl to attend to
and exits as the rain turns to snow.

Woman sits. And sits.
Woman might order another pumpkin muffin.
Her knees are chilled, watching her pinkly from the edge
of a pencil skirt like children's faces from a blanket.
A moment later she makes that same comparison
and laughs internally without gesture or sound.

And Woman looks around.

Woman smiles. Not because of Man or muffin
or the secret life of a Coffee Cup
but because she is Woman
struck lively by the sudden meta
fleeting passage of The Bigger
and her eyes, definitively brown
spark like bumper car antennae
and struck by magic, the same magic electricity
for an irreversible instant meet mine.

And for one fourteenth of a moment
Woman knows Me with all her life.
I shiver and she lobs me the red bean bag
and I hold the image in my mind like
a relic of the living divine.

The Bigger, the morning
the secret was mine.
shamamama Jun 2019
if i could pay you in poetry
would you prefer
fiery and feisty
loving and longing
crazy and crafty
scentual and sightful
playful and pranking
guru and gonzo
singing and songing
listening and lightness
softing and sensual
tender and tinder
laughter and limitless
insight and winsight

tell me,
what poetry would you
put in your bank?
On the notion of money in the bank, I wondered if he world would be different if we paid each other in poetry.  What do you think?
kfaye Nov 2012
"do you believe in madness?"
i whispered in the dark, half afraid of a reply.
"yes,"
trembled from her lips,
"but this it not it."
i say her lips trembled but in truth i could not see her face. perhaps it was i who was trembling, but if only in my imagination i could of sworn, she was trembling too.
the walls pushed forcibly on my chest and spine each time i inhaled

each mouthful of still air pressed me to the sides as a harsh reminder that the passage was only barely wide enough for us to walk through sideways, shoulder to shoulder, scraping our skin as we went.
i'm not sure how much time had passed
not much had changed
since the last word had been spoken out-loud

i had begun again to forget what words felt like,
both on the lips and upon softing the delicate hairs of the inner ear
all i could know was the dark, and my breathing, and her breathing.  and i begun to wonder if she was breathing at all,
of if the fainter, more distant breaths-  were not just echoes of my own.
had i gone mad. was i truly alone. no companion. no accomplice. just an invention of my lonely silence.
was it days that had been passing. or were they weeks.

perhaps just a few hours, and my sense of brooding, too dark.
syzygium Feb 2021
In out the cold

These hands of stone
Webbed with woven red
Gemmed yellow-blue

Softing, slowly
Flesh displacing ice,
Imperceptibly
Written during the process described.

— The End —