[x]

affair with anamnesisShe has a long-standing love affair with memory.

It comes to her bed between the lovers who find her in the corners of this city; in cafes and clubs, under streetlights. Men with broad shoulders and scarred hands, rough jaw lines and bedroom eyes – they seek her out subconsciously and find themselves entangled; heart-deep in damp sheets and raspberry hairstrands. They lick chocolate from her fingers in the half-light, and kiss that place behind her ear where her neck smells like cinnamon. In the mornings they wake, sated, enamored with the sight of her in nothing more than a button-down shirt -- too big, picked up off the floor. She is

Happy New Year, loveSuddenly, the nights seem to end so much quicker and the days just keep dragging onto forever. Futility overcomes me as I continue being spread too thin and snap. I am caught in these moments where I finally forget all the rules, all that need not- cannot be spoken, and capsize under the bludgeoning weight of your smoldering stare. Don't you dare; my body is drenched in crude kerosene holding a matchbox in one hand and a single stick in the other, waiting on your signal to strike. 12 seconds are all I need to grab you by the shoulders, push you against a wall, unbuckle your calm and composure, wrinkle away your wry smile, place my hand upon y

neon eye dollThe dead woman's eyes blink flickering neon, garish-ghost-light reflecting off the puddle of blood and water half-covering her bruised face. She must've been beautiful, once.

!WOHS

She's still wearing her jewellery - no-one's been stupid enough to try getting near her, not yet. Visible ear's been pierced five or six times, titanium and steel mixed with bright translucent plastic. Similar in her nose, though it's too gunged over with dried blood for a proper examination. Pierced lower lip, at one point, but no jewellery in it now. Maybe cleaning the blood off it got to be too much of a hassle.

!WOHS

The light and the blood make her look ol

chasing shadows she swallowed the darkness like it was medicine
and didn’t stop until she knew it had turned to poison in her veins.
all she wanted was her skinny heart to shudder to a halt
and her blackberry blood to stop teasing her
from under the pseudoprotection of her skin

but poison doesn’t always work the way you want it to.
sometimes, like the wishes that a genie grants from behind his grinning mask,
poison likes to trick you into thinking you have control
until you’re too far gone to realize
or too far gone to care

so her skinny heart never stopped,
but her bones began screaming under her skin
and cobwebs wove themselves in fron

six nights of winterI.

the branches wave bare,
icicles hanging fragile
soon shatter like glass.

II.

a lone drifting cloud
sails across december skies,
fancy free and charming.

III.

suddenly, time fades,
months wither, years subtly
ache; unlike before.

IV.

the days have now passed;
winds blow us toward old smiles
and to new affairs.

V.

the sky would collapse
and the stars dim like burnt wicks
if you left today.

VI.

and we slept as the
lattice of northern frost crept
across our bodies.

circumventing hearts my frail ankles, wrists
are inversely proportional to
your broad shoulders, chest
so it goes

that
your touch, though tangential
comes at me
full-bodied, whole

whereas
your low

Glass chairs and plastic guitarsCold galvanized roof panels,
licked and caressed; rolled happiness,
filters burnt, preserved centimeters;
hearts blurring past.
Lips against my fingers,
breaths pulled and pushed to wake me,
to beg me,
and little words standing high enough
to cause a strain on my neck
as I barely reach them.
He's dysphoria in blue,
close enough to touch, far enough to run
without his eyes flickering open.
Deck lights, rhythmic glows from love songs
and he starts singing.
-
I forget you for a moment.
I forget how your pupils are always wrongly sized
and the constant movement of your elbows on my ribs.
You're a distant fog,
but you aren't

the angel's lovertime feels manic, working slow and fast
all at once, hyperreal. october is a nightmare.
my moods range from laughing, blissfully happy
isn't life just wonderful to fuck this, why bother, i am
going to eat nothing and lie in bed all day,
crystalline underfed madness. i realise my need
for balance, question my need for a psychologist
(is she a waste of money if i have no intention
of being happy and healthy if it means being fat)
my deep infatuation with black as a colour
that hides me from the world and how i see myself.
i wonder if there are living black flowers or if black
is only associated with death.

you are always
on my mind. when i

xiithe teeth in my neck are like a bunch of seeds being planted,
waiting to bloom speckled purple and brown bruises later.

sundays i sit in the window, smoking and
writing poetry beneath the gardenias with

yellow light pouring out from behind me
to illuminate the grass, the tree roots.

later, my small claws turn you into shreds of
butterfly wings, little stained-glass edges of scratches

embossed all on your winged back. you kiss my collar.
i imagine you replacing me with a bottle of something strong

and a few stray pills. you'd find a way out and sit alone, somewhere
with a pile of books that have my fingerprints, and your back still sting

ten.ten.

seven years ago today
he went to work
on a chilly october morning
and never returned.

he had lived a good life
full of love and happiness,
which was brutally cut short that day
by an inexplicable act of God.

so when the bridge crumbled beneath him
and he fell to the unfeeling ground,
he was cradled by the world’s lament
at this bitter injustice.

he left behind his soulmate
and three children:
the blossoms
of his love’s cultivation.

i left behind my regrets
and my teenage naivety:
the broken steps created
by my blanketed feelings.

seven years ago, he fell
because he had no choice.

seven years later, i fly
be

catch me if you cani'd like to smear ashes
over bloody heathen lips
and twist burnt corsages
around the maypole.

this rotten witch's heart
would love to curse you all.

disease has never looked so
lovely, i do declare, crawling
up your blistering limbs.

in case you are not aware—
love kills slowly, but revenge tastes so sweet,
so i'll just tip-toe off of this cliff
and embrace the beast awaiting for me below.

phoenix rising,
sunlight fading;

we
all
fall
down.

Midnight: A RensakuI'll hold you, fold you
tuck you safe in my rib-cage
-like first love's letters

I'll seek heaven in your gaze,
constellations on your lips

Catch the butterflies
fluttering in my rib-cage
-they know me so well

Write on cerulean skies,
breathe under turquoise waters
You pick at my scabs
kiss me deep in my rib-cage
-while I ache from bliss

I'm but a half-cooked body,
your warmth will surely rot me

now it's just dirt under my fingernails.Novak carried an umbrella with her everywhere for nine years. And when he asked her why, she told him, "Ever since my dad died, sometimes it feels like the sky is falling."

That was six months ago, and he still catches himself checking for cracks between the clouds when it rains.

-

vii.

He likes to remember her eyes. The left was blue and the right was brown, like two people in one, and faded, like old photographs.

But then he remembers that old photographs are the only things she exists in now, and his office will get so small that he needs to go outside to breathe.

-

vi.

He wanted to be gentle, even if he couldn't think of a way how

flying stones -SPAM-I don't understand. I think the problem is that I keep throwing puzzle pieces at you from all the wrong puzzles. All my thoughts are jumbled and you can't piece it together without breaking me apart. It's old, broken and I think I chewed on some of those pieces as a kid.

------------------------

I'm watching you whisper into my clavicle and smiling with my teeth but you make me laugh when you breathe too hard into my coccygeal vertebrae... Maybe just maybe we'll make it without up-heaving all the love we catch...

-------------------

You know something funny? The other day a friend of mine and I were talking... I quote: "stones taught me t

heart shaped like a starShe's not skinny, no. She's not even thin. At least a size 13 I'd say, but her hands are small. When she clutches an apple, her fingers never meet her palm. She wears a chain around her neck, and a silver star hangs from it. I've seen her open it up before, smile to herself, and then quickly close it as though nothing had happened. The chain is so long that the star reaches precisely the center of her chest.

When her heart beats, the star pulses--a misplaced supernova it seems. Of course, it happens more often than I can count. I gave up at beat thirty. Somehow I imagine her heart works the same way: it spreads itself out, becomes big and ra

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Snapshot In Medias ResAnd the boy feels his window's edge,
face pressed against gray glass
of morning. A baby robin flutters,
coming to rest gently upon the sill.

VagabondIt was beautiful
in the low country. Flat,
silty. As she drove outside
town, she saw broken
sunlight passed through water
the colors of fall.

On her left, a river of iron.
The road
giving up its life.

Song for a Certain GirlHow sweet to think of all the routes
and level sands that stretch far
through a man's sleepily
thinking Her happy hair dressed
in suds dancing to Vivaldi
by candlelight
Or perhaps some star-filled
globe above her

Who is to say
peace dreams a body
quite like ours
at the piano
letting
our fingers share
an intimate whisper gone
the way of leaves
in fall

Polaroiddo not tell me
the caveman sought
his chilled rock cave
alone

that he
without language
passed snapshots by

no

tell me he
shouted in his thickets
crushed his silken fruit
colored red the broken birds

and grass and sky and sea

Club 57 At DawnBecause he was 53, because this
was his life's work, because he
lost his family in Kosovo, because his mouth
looked like my mother's, because at 7
he started plucking for change on
his knees outside the strip club, because he made
16 cents an hour, because he had dementia,
because he acted like I was his friend,
because he had none,
I sat there wiping water
that dropped from his nose
onto the police car's grated window,
holding his hand with my other.
I sat there, in a puddle—
his snot, my tears.
Tell me this did not happen.
I dare you.

Poem Written On the Eve of a Major Winter StormWe are a window into the past.

We, a window of hazy glass,
hazy nights in autumn
under fog and burnt-breasted
sycamore. We are a walk
through campus, one camera,
friend, the breadth
of each other's breath
and filtered warmth
coming off the creekbed. We
are the womb. We are the birth
of something greater than
a moment. We are a cool
kiss, a sip of simmering
vegetable stew. A Saturday
matinee. Infused chai tea.

We are everything memory
has left in its history. We are two
clipped blades of wheat, making
love in a grove of trees.

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Footnote

by ~jswebb, Jan 2, 2013, 6:15:05 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I'm sitting here eating
buttered toast and the time
you smeared your sandwich
on our vice principal's
breast crosses my mind—

perhaps I should be more serious
on the anniversary of your death
but I just heard word
of a woman being stoned
to bloody pulp for being
a woman

and now I see (forgive me)
you dancing with some boy
driving hips into thigh sinking low
until your hair tickles
the floor (this story ends

with his cola trickling down
your white gown) and there I go being funny
again

forgive me for rambling but these stars
are lovely tonight and I dare say
they might be
beautiful as you (or possibly just
you)
beneath a bed
of lilies

...

I just happened on a poem
whose first lines read (greater than poetry
is the rain) and I can only think
to myself

I wish
you were here
to prove the poet wrong

Footnoteby ~jswebb

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I can't believe you've been gone eight years, Kait.
Super lame. Happy 2013.

*archelyxs Jan 31, 2013

Ah. Tears.

~stelina-kistune Jan 15, 2013

This touched a very special cord in me. I know how it's hard to go through the years and the moments when you want them to be here for you or just because you want to share something with them only to realise they're not there anymore. And everytime that realisation comes, something inside just twinge like hell and it's just so painful. I like the flow of your poem and I do hope that it helped a bit with the hurt, I know that for me it helps sometimes. Hope you feel better

This is very beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with #SayItHere!

~MiC-TOO-CLiCHE Jan 14, 2013

love the bittersweet feelings of reminiscence behind it. it's beautiful seeing all the great memories reflected as opposed to any negative ones; it leaves this feeling of the person being so close yet so far away. your emotion was very clear to read and take on while reading it.

=realARTIZT Jan 14, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

I wanna cry. And I don't cry...not often anyways.

This was beautiful and beyond what any words I could possibly say to try to put in terms onlookers could readily understand. This is a poem better felt than written about and so this made me feel as if I had lost someone dear to me who was a part of a world I don't even know anything about- like I'm cherishing a memory that's not even mine and yet I still can conjure up sentiments that don't even belong to me.

Your expressions here are impeccable. Thanks for sharing this with #SayItHere

*rlkirkland Jan 2, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Memories processed are a good thing.

~jswebb Jan 2, 2013 Writer

In the long run, I think so, too. In the moment, however, processing memories feels borderline unhealthy.

*rlkirkland Jan 2, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Yes, I understand.

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