oh the little thingsIt’d be nice if he'd let me breathe. Just inhale a little air to keep my teeth company- maybe even exhale again when they grow tired of one another. You really don’t notice how wonderful it is to breathe until you’re lying stomach down with empty lungs and the creepy man from the corner store sitting on your back.

But what can I say? Not- ‘please get off of my back, I can feel my spine against my stomach and I don’t like it.’ Because I really can feel my spine against my stomach and am breathless to say such. My cheek makes like feet against the wooden floorboards. This man has a whole forest of trees in here! A

of storms and skysee my hair dance wild as wind-strings jerk it about//hear the ocean-wind heave itself against us all- crashing into our eyes and mouth//feel the winter-wind brush our skins in summer//then inhale the heaviness of air and sink through the dirt- because darling, you don’t deserve god’s beautiful violence.

(it drags the tree by its leaves saying kiss your trunk, kiss it and it does; releasing with a snap. the other trees flitter-flutter violently, crying within the cacophony of rain on concrete. white stars fall where light exists, and only sound where it disappears. the sky -the colour of sunburnt skin- watches it all with hunger. a

dear diary, today i diedshe's a ghost of a girl in the mirror. dark hair tangles like weeds below her shoulders and cuts at grey eyes. harsh shadows don't leave her with a skeleton like she sometimes hopes, but she feels it in her mind. feels the sharp edges and the trembled fragility, the silent cry for another's flesh and that outward plea of don't break me. cold fingers make love to cold glass while the sky cries over and over for sun.

this afternoon death made to kiss her lips but missed. he'd come so close she now knows what nothing doesn't feel like and she cannot fear it. it's a blankness so removed from consciousness she cannot reach it with thought- but sh

picture death.I couldn’t bring myself to bury her.

I couldn’t bring myself to empty the ground of dirt and of earthworms and of the spindly weed roots, and fill in the ochre gap with her body. Her coffee-cream fur held her tiny skeleton from falling out when they hit her. I try not to think of miniature beat-less hearts and mute lungs. I never saw her dead, but I can imagine.

They found her on the median strip. Breathless and still by the endless whoosh of traffic.

In my mind I see Mum’s face; I see her heart throbbing at her feet and her cradling the dog, like a precious baby to her chest. I see the love flowing down her withered cheeks

flesh puzzlesIn the beginning it was enough. I’d be wide-eyed, quietly watching her through the windows. Limbs and torso like a slender tree; bowing in wind and always shooting up toward the sun. She’d wear summer skin in the middle of winter with freckles spoiling her shoulders and cheekbones. Her birthmark was a dull red stain at her collarbone and she had a mole beneath her left breast. She was thirteen and I thirty, but my, oh my, did I ache to see her insides.

The house next door they called the sea house because it was two stories of cerulean blue. Through my bedroom window I could see naught but an empty bedroom. But late September the P

the weeds across the street.She’s the little girl with flaxen curls at four pm flouncing down her driveway with her hands buried in her pockets, lips pressed out like she’s whistling. You’ll watch her out your window, with your tea lukewarm on the sill, and splutter a cough; fogging up the glass just enough to miss her smile.

You saw her once, twice eating petals off the roses in your garden. You’ve forgotten how to converse with children, you cussed between the wheezing and she stared right past like you were simply a knurled twig catching the wind in its leaves.

One morning you found her; purple stockings, blush mittens and a head of sunlight cur

exhalation.Sixteen. Sixteen years since she was the size of a deflated lung beneath her mothers ribcage- now she has her own mass beneath her ribcage. Thumping sometimes to the outside, treating the skin of Laylla's stomach like a door. It will open in 3 months, it will be sliced open because her flesh is meat and they'll bring Sophie to air and she'll swallow until all she tastes is that dull white of the hospital. And then she'll cry and the music will drone in Laylla's ears until she tastes vomit and she is numb in all the aching places.

She doesn't know the father. She thinks Michael but she tells herself it is Louis. She repeats his name over and

sleep-talk.

isn’t it curious how your fingers fit perfectly between each of my sclerous ribs, or how your breath mimics mine with belated accuracy

(count each breath and you’ll run out of fingers.)

don’t you remember the fairytales?

(and they both lived happily ever after, until after ran out and the monogamy became as non-existent as the magic.)

you were never one for myths. with discerning eyes, you’d plant kisses along the ridges of my back
across my shoulders
and the hollow beneath my jaw, questioning my pastel skin and every involuntary blink.

“I am not a myth.”

she sold seashellsfrancesca sits at the sill with swarthy legs dangling seaward. their holiday home cliffs off to the heaving ocean and together they sigh in a breathy unison. wind gushes around her, quieting her with a 'shhhhh' and gently suggesting a fall. she licks dry lips and almost succumbs to the wind's murmurs. how easy it would be for her to slip and fall weightlessly into the warm sea that held her as a child.

every april they come here and every may they leave once more. francesca leaves the city behind- and with bottles of sand and broken shells she tries to bring the sea back with her. but inspiring smoke and exhaling city air will never really b

this aprilThe moonlight falls through squinting blinds, bowing softly to hug the arc of his naked body. The blankets are strewn about his toes as a girl, no more than sixteen, lays wide-eyed and warm-bodied beside him.

She silently watches the dreams come and go beneath his eyelids, she quietly feels his chest rise, rise then fall and she listens to the heavy breathing that accompanies it. Beautiful breathing, she thinks, tracing generous lips with fingertips.

The air is cool but she is alight.

Everything in this room bathes in blue shade. She watches the alarm clock beside the bed, numbers coming and going out of fashion before her eyes.

leavemedon'tleaveme.you make me sick. you make my stomach fold in on itself and press out against the lining of my flesh. you put lumps in my throat and you tie strings to my tear glands and tug until the world is just a panoply of blurred lines, hazy colour and bokeh.

you made me do this. you put the knife in my fingers and you told me to tear, you said you would care if i hurt myself like this. you said you’d care if i opened my flesh up for you like a gift of blood and flesh and tissue. but you never really did.

i like being small, i like being the blue eyed girl sitting amidst background noise, rubber band arms holding the necks of her legs together.

fall asleep with me tonight.If I wrote you a lullaby with verses of moonlit, fogged breath and a chorus of heartbeats- would you fall asleep with our melody in your palms?

I lie awake at night and watch traffic lights outside my window shout RED into the peace quiet and occasional hazy rev of traffic. I lie awake and shiver through layers and wish to silent stars it wasn’t winter, wish the nighttime cool wouldn’t paint quite so many goose bumps on my skin and make my eyelids so cold. I lie awake at night and night-dream without sleep- about you and all your eyelashes and beautiful wordings.

I like the way your collarbone lies horizontally beneath your neck,

sickDeath slouches over the edge of her bed, licking his lips as he caresses her thighs. He sings the noise of wind and rain crashing all around and her head throbs with the sound. Her head is hot. Her forehead is on fire and her cheeks catch alight with it. She burns silently and sees red, red, black.

Tiny insects have crawled beneath her fingernails and they dig with tiny claws and teeth until they are swarming beneath her skin, biting outward at her flesh. Each vertebrae carries bruises and as she tosses her body about the bed they ache loudly and sharply.

All the heat has rushed to her face, her body shakes like a leaf in wind and goosebump

before, beforei am only just thirteen. he is sixteen. i am in love/lust/crush.

my best friends big brother, or friends ex boyfriend, is tall. once or twice i imagined kissing him. but he never would. he is friends with the boy who is sixteen. and besides he is my best friends big brother or my friend's ex boyfriend. and i am not a bad person.

i am tall too, you know. i am stretched skyward but there was no more to stretch, just bone. so i am not really that tall at all. but i pretend i am. how tall are you? oh above average, you know, pretty tall.

the brother says want to come and see j? and my heart leaps and i sing yes but he only hears a nod and ther

the fluttered- a collectioni

Hear my joints dislocate, coming apart at the notion of sunlight. It falls and it settles in pictures of loveliness, golden tree branches and hints of leaves; of autumn, of spring.

I am so tall in the water. My legs are never-ending, crooked lines of peachskin- watching my fingers draw out ripples until they strain and buckle and fall into the cool. I’ll touch my toes and loop my figure and I’ll make giant ripples, abhorring fallen leaves and sending shivers of blue through his legs.

It’s a faded crimson red holding my breasts, tugging my hips and leaving my ribcage bare to the current. It’s smudged lipstick and smear

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you can't feel through fabric

by ~Pretty-As-A-Picture, Dec 18, 2008, 10:25:24 AM
Literature / Poetry / Experimental / Other

tonight the rain becomes the earth
falling from hidden spaces in the sky and swollen clouds
i hear it make mud of dirt, and lovers of friends
and ask, quiet, where are you going but down?

i’m not all there in the head
you’re not all there in the head, my mother says
i’m not all there in the head i repeat
sometimes i’m there in my toes and fingers and heart as well

and now - in this downpour moment- i lie on the street
so warm that i think well that’s where love’s gotten to
but where is your shirt n? oh someplace else
and is that a light flickering in the house across the road? hide!

i rush in soaken with rain i watched fall (like stars)
am i poetic enough yet, yet?
leaving rain-prints on the carpet but mother won’t mind
mind you she never minds anything if it’s mine

but then it stops a quick shut-eye stop
(i wonder) is it dew now that it sits like jewels upon the grass?
the wind is lovely in my ear, voice like rushing water
no not down; through, through.

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you can't feel through fabricby ~Pretty-As-A-Picture

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first poem in a few years

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~pseudonym-blue Feb 10, 2013

"Where are you going but down?"
I love you for that line.

*crookedthief Nov 30, 2012

sometimes you know
you know

~Geo-Devin Aug 19, 2010

I like the rain to make jewels on the grass.
The ones that lay upon the broader stalks are brightest.
The ones hanging below the thinnier stalks are shiniest.

~wh0rem0ans Aug 14, 2010

I like this.
Idea: Last line of the first stanza might be better with "quietly".

Also ... it is interesting that the same mother thinks you are not right in the head but does not mind wet carpet if it is your own. Interesting.

~february-night Apr 28, 2010

you could turn this into film. :%Pr

~athousandtimes Sep 27, 2009

v relatable emotions... i think you mean 'soaking' though

~KillingTrees Jun 20, 2009

Now here's a poem that just begs to be read over and over. Each time, I find some other hidden little gem. It's like a buffet--'here, try this. Afterwards, you can go back for more.'

You've got some strong imagery here. There's a little bit of insanity, sure, but there's nothing wrong with that.

'Am I poetic enough yet, yet?' Love this line. Ask ten different poets to define ' poetic ' and you'll get ten different definitions. It sounds like a subtle sort of challenge, so I like it.

A few years? Then you've made a smashing re-entry. Bravo.

~medailon Jun 19, 2009 Student Traditional Artist

didn`t think i would ever read a poem by you, i checked you gallery many times but didn`t notice this before. i`m not acquainted in any poetry but slovak, but still i think you are amazing writer- touches my soul, even though i know you only from your photographs and prose (and poetry).

~february-night May 17, 2009

When I'm not feeling the best inside, I often resort to reading this... which is kind of strange, seeing as I'm not too keen on poetry. But this is incredible, especially since it's been a few years since you've written a poem, as you said. I know I've commented already so forgive me for clogging the page, but I felt the need to. This is inspiring. I really can't believe how much I love it.

~Magenta1234 Feb 1, 2009

This is so amazing!
I adore it!!
You're a great writer

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