[x]

petrichorNiobe weeps.

gold scattered rough across
cracked earth and the last
remains of summer - they fell
like leaves in the arms of the wind.

some scents cannot be captured.
the gods bleed onto rock,
and the stone sends her prayers
in return: petrichor.

listen - the heavy thud of
rain on parched ground;
the monsoon sealing life back in;
the sky bows and kisses earth.

Niobe weeps.

l'hiver.(you can't tell the birds and the snow apart in the sky:
the grand church of dizzying space - )

and the trees are yellowed in cowardice, raking the sky
to the ground and around and around.

listen to your organs: the almost grand piano of the
churches i'd never attend.

and never mistake the courage of the sky for the cowardice
of the ground. never frown, never frown.

listen to your palms: the salty swing of the old snow
burning up on silk and splendor.

and visit the dying snow birds in their graves of the
ground, and they drown and drown.

(you can't tell the birds and the snow apart in the sky:
a grand church of dizzying space w

Of Half-Filled WordsShe is not a flutterbird.
Her fingers are skittish,
her smile is not.
Do not fear that you will
drive it away.

Sadness is her fumbling limb.
It is unwanted, yet
necessary.

When it is January
she will tell you,
"I am still struggling.
And I am becoming so many people
all at once.

A conglomeration of beauty that
I have managed to mangle.
Please, do not be sad for me."

Sometimes her sorrow is
meant for you. But mostly her.

Those specks and spots
of ocean storm lulls
reveal her truths:
ones she does not want
to extract from herself.

Her heart is not a rabbit.

When it beats
faster, faster, faster,
you need not
run harder

blue sluicecast off care like blue
snowfields into rigid water,
and wash with mud the thrust
of earth, our skin soft as salt mines.
built you are
of bitch and buttercream,
of soured elements in the blue
dot of a pin-prick spotlight
and windowed skull.

we can watch the fire fade
into a black rat canvas,
into blue gates that tumble up
and loose finger grooves,
smear eyes across your face like warpaint,
faster and faster,
momentum in the race to nowhere.

and once done, we turn,
we go aground and push
up the lines of blue backs
orbiting the moons of that
rising ass, around corners,
a shattered life in starshine,
the masks
beneath the

7.34mmA simple measurement
can make a man
lose himself; a blurring, no more
than a grainy smudge

a scant 7.34mm long
this rice-grain, seven weeks old
with one hundred and twenty nine
heartbeats per minute

—all this, from a mere sesame-seed of a heart

The Thin HoursI.

Those of us here in this skeleton time,
this time of the year when the nights are thin
and dark, and dark with anxiety, peeling
as layers of an oyster shell, brittle and effaced
and somehow iridescent.
When the bell tolls out the time the sound is thin
and reaches into fractured air and softly
seeks the spaces between the atoms and
misses the vital Os and CO2s in a lasting,
failed pinball. The bell sound dies in
some space between midnight and thereafter,
and each tock tock of slipping cogs is
a repeat and not a moving on.
The air is filled with each dull sound,
each tock a repeat and a repeat again. And the
slip betwee

A Textual AnnealingA thousand thousand generations
misinterpreting the lightning,

A tumult of attempts, many
mumblings while we burn - each time
most is lost, some survives.

At the whistle of illusion that awakens,
day drops dream on me. I am
thick with swerve: If there are giants
there is a world they walk on.

And for the final faith
to be an inversion: We are
the electricity lunging toward the sky.

ConfessionLips met in clumsy haiku,
against each other, pressed,
the way the earth touches the sky,
soft and whimsy as the dusk.

Tongues painted passion-
          sunset colors,
          halcyon atmosphere, infused,
-upon every awaiting space offered.

Metaphors dotted the hallows of limbs and tasted like the seasons-
          a bursting and vibrant spring,
          a hot and passionate summer,

TeatimeIn January, Elsa got new neighbors. She greeted them with apple cinnamon tea.

It gets so cold, here, they told her, shivering in overstuffed parkas. Snow had turned to mud in their front hall—an unavoidable side-effect of moving in winter. Elsa nodded along to their complaints and observations, silently brewing the tea in their kitchen. They were young; they had big plans. Allison and Steve, newlyweds, just starting out. They sat on the cold floor together, sipping with chapped lips. The house filled with cinnamon.

In April, Allison knocked on Elsa's door.

Working ClassSmoking is a working class disease
They said; he smiled at this.
Lean in body and broad of mind
With shirtsleeves rolled,
A modern man's philosopher
Who stuttered over the words
Like his fingers did over her chassis
Detroit rolling iron beneath his palms
Grease and lubricant under the nails.
The cigarette cherry glows in the dark
Giving him a hard edge aura
The gloaming settling into the lines
Of his work-worn face

free verse poetryif you ask to see my god,
i will show you the trees;
like ancient grandfathers ,
bark and tree trunk removed
in time over sea-spells of
rain and mist and fog;

if you ask to see my prayers,
i will show you the rivers;
drenched in cool veins of the
deer and stag antler, broken
bridges in masses over which
muddy feet run;

if you ask to hear my psalms,
i will sing to you the songs of the birds;
in a voicebox similar to the
bruja who lives in the forest -
old and sacred, screaming to
the sky for wishes and bottles
full of messages;

and if there lives children in
the river rocks, their hair combed
of algae, faces wet with

tick...tick...tick...i've seen four seasons pass this window,
and now this bookmark finds its place;
it signals not a rash crescendo,
just a steady, metronomic pace.

and now this bookmark finds its place
in the concordance of my life;
just a steady, metronomic pace
somehow beyond both joy and strife.

in the concordance of my life,
it signals not a rash crescendo;
somehow beyond both joy and strife,
i've seen four seasons pass this window.

Our Meaning and PurposeI

All of death is death. Life,
too, is like death.
The way it erupts over you
laughing and spinning.

II

I was confused
so I asked God: What should I do?

Move your body and have emotions. The birds were dancing.

Could you be more specific?

But now God was busy arguing with Moses.

III

All of life is life. Death,
too, is like life.
The way it erupts over you
laughing and spinning.

IV

Tomorrow is the sound
of a question falling
on a bed of questions.

Today I hold out
your name, God,
in the public square.

Yesterday reason, the slayer
of song, wended its way
into our will.

V

All of light is linking. Dreams,
too, would se

EulogyThe dream-catchers are handmade
but each bear the same mark of boredom.
On the reservation,
the dirt is red and separated from the turquoise on sale.
The tops of the mountains have been scraped off
like whipped cream from pudding cups
of beautiful alien rock.

"Plateau," my mother says.
I am not sure if it is a name
or a command.

The lightning storms are brighter in the desert.
I sit perched on the horizon,
the edge of one loss to another—
given up my love, all my bottled water.
The mountains carry their own babies in the muddy puddles,
against the wind they huddle,
but their semi-circle somehow is just one great smile.

The Death of VenusIf there lived in the world a man
as rugged and as strong as I,
who could forbear with me yet go against,
who took to the black woods and the silver hills
mostly unafraid--
who savored salt and the lay of fur
with fingertips of dirt and weather,
whose lips rolled words like smoke, like fog-
I would creep into his arms in the prologue of the night,
air sweet with the scent of new-cut hay,
alive with the nightjar's call.

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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.

Tanka Set 61.
howl
    moon
wind
rain
     fall
2.
someone's mother
swimming in the storm . . .
the waves
of better days
break over her arms
3.
     fall
rain
      wind

howl
                  moon

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The Siege

by ~jswebb, Oct 30, 2011, 2:55:58 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Traditional Fixed Forms

The first mile is always the easiest.
—Kyle Lynn to me, circa 2006

Tell that to the ghosts,
men soaked in sand and blood spray,
storming the shores of Normandy.

First Infantry's sprint through coastal
trenches, up bluffs, under ruptured drays.
Tell that to the ghosts

huddled in half-channeled holes,
a captain's dash through shrapnel, gray
storm on the shores of Normandy.

A German boy adrift in the compost
of his legs, his elbows' grand flail.
Tell that to the ghosts

ripped in four by mortars posted
over Omaha. Dawn's evenly keeled decay
storming the shores of Normandy.

How quickly the lung forgets to oust
its breath. Be wary of the sea's affray.
Tell that to the ghosts
storming the shores of Normandy.

The Siegeby ~jswebb

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Traditional Fixed Forms

A villanelle.

Audio: [link]

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-01-15

The Siege by =jswebb ( Featured by `Halatia )

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=realARTIZT Jan 13, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

You are quite an exceptional writer!
Thanks for sharing this

I could never conquer the villanelle style...

...and you've done it so effortlessly here.

Amazing work! Hope to see more from you!- #SayItHere

~trynke May 13, 2012 Student General Artist

Good work! Very well done

~Honor2Serve May 11, 2012 Professional Digital Artist

Absolutely stunning!

~jswebb May 11, 2012 Writer

Very glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for stopping by.

~Honor2Serve May 11, 2012 Professional Digital Artist

Sorry forgot to fave it

~jswebb May 11, 2012 Writer

You don't have to apologize. Just knowing you enjoyed it is enough.

*lombregrise May 11, 2012 Professional Writer

très beau poème, dur et touchant - bravo !

~jswebb May 11, 2012 Writer

Merci mille fois.

*lombregrise May 11, 2012 Professional Writer

avec joie!

=DailyLitDeviations May 11, 2012

We have chosen your piece to be featured in a celebratory article here: [link] Congratulations on your Daily Deviation! Please be sure to read the other work featured and

the article to show your support.

Keep writing and keep creating.

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