[x]

DormantWinter is a blank slate,
but not like Rousseau's—
it cleanses
sucking out warmth like poison
leaving only windburnt frost
tacked to the window pane

all we remember
is the numbness
the shuddering
skittish steps across the ice
snowflakes pasted to our faces
smoke rising from our lips
dragged across bleak clouds

winter has us captured
bound by fur and walls
drifting in our eggshelled silence

bone cold until we birth ourselves by warmth
emerge from our shells wet and heaving
uncurl our fingers one by one
joints crackling like fire at our backs

until spring comes
drip by tender drip
old wounds thaw
we are found raw,

6.12There are days when I recall the litany of your kisses over my shoulders and I wonder, numbly disconsolate, how I ever maintained my disbelief in god, when your movements over me were so profoundly biblical, when my name filtering between the fog of our joined breaths was so much like a prayer - when I would think, for those minutes or hours or days we spent locked in the grip of fever, unaware of the movement of those heavenly bodies outside the reach of our bed, that there was hope for me after all. That I could be saved.

I remember so clearly the feeling of loving you and I wonder at what point, when it was, the exact moment, when that lo

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

The Nature of LungsThere's that
feeling
you get
when you
keep
breathing in and
are
so concerned with getting
air into
your lungs,
to fill them up
so fully
that
you'll never
need
to inhale again,
that you forget
about
breathing

out.

But when you do,
the emptiness feels
so
much better than all
the oxygen in the world
pressing out on that one
overcrowded lung.

on commuting with no hurrythere you go
lighting matches in the rain,
walking with two feet
that the gods gave you
because they cannot walk,

heading home as if with news
of some miraculous disaster,

counting the steps between yourself
and the clouds that disappeared
behind the grey veil of October.

thunder and lightning unfold
so close above

and you dream of a destination
somewhere in the south

where birds and stormy weather coexist.

behind you there is nothing,
running water will erase
every footprint you have left
on the dark sand of this metropolis.

before you there is distance,
enough to live your life
in a constant state of travel,

but not n

Survival of the IllestAre those hints of lemon I detect?
Look, I'm just here to get wasted, don't try
to make it more than that.

I'd drink motor oil if I thought
it could get me high; chase it with a shot
of antifreeze
so
you can keep your survival instincts,
locked up
in that pretty velvet box (along with all
those other things
you thought you could convince yourself
you lived for). Instincts are the bare
bones of the impossibilities we wanted
to believe in,
remember,
those times you tried to tell me that
adrenaline was God's way
of saying
that
we were His chosen ones, we were
special, we were free.
I tried to tell you that instincts an

GlassI always laugh when you refer to me as glass.
Not just because of the way you say it,
(glass-as-in-gas).
Or because I know it's a crack at my fragility.

Glass is pure.
I am like granite -
my body nullified from too many clashing traits.

Glass is transparent.
I am like clay -
illegible from all the plastered smiles.

Glass is unyielding.
I am like chalk -
easily broken and scuffed away by meagre things.

Glass is hung up on walls and in great cathedrals,
tinted for enhancement, but only ever painted on by fools.

I am hidden behind keypads and camera lenses,
coated in a thick paste of deceptiveness.

No, my love,
I was never glass. (Despite

earth circuitAnd when the sun sinks, the earth's skin crawls:

I.
I wonder if this awkward creature would notice me the way I notice him.
He's so tragic at his throne
I stare after him longingly.
And yet,
He never realizes that I'm the one
Who forever basks in his brilliant beams.
If only he knew how much brighter he could burn
[with me]
He'd light up the universe.

II.
I heard him speak of thirst, once.
The quenching lust of the stars had run dry.
So that night, I brought along a jar of acid.
(And how it gleamed in his glow).
I handed it to him, wrapped in taffeta ribbons,
screaming
I wish curdling joy
On my gurgling boy

The Price of Dying“I want to be interred after I die,” Mr. Peters said. He made that clear to his family while he was still lucid, before old age and illness rendered him unintelligible. Seventy wasn’t that old, but he recognized the symptoms that were creeping up on his ailing body – the aches, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness and despair. Despite his daughter’s attempts to assuage his concerns, he sensed his own mortality.
The worst part about dying, Mr. Peters thought, was what happened afterwards. Even since he was a small boy, he had been afraid of fire. He could never forget the scorching heat of the orange flames searing his skin, the dark billowing smoke entering his nostrils. The time that his house burned down, the fire almost took him with it. How ironic then, to escape the fire only to be fed into it after death.
So one day, he sat his son and daughter down after dinner. “I want to be buried whole,” he said, emphasizing the

Whale Songs of the PacificListen, the girls swallowed by whales are the ones that grow up lucky.

Listen, no one will warn you about the little boys with the magpie eyes and the fists swinging splinters of glass. No one will warn you that their smiles are sweeter than their words are sweeter than their souls are sweeter than their intentions. No one will warn you of the sheer weight of the world.

Listen, sometimes girls are fragile. Sometimes girls are frothy. Sometimes girls let boys nuzzle "I love you"s into their necks and sometimes girls drink the wine of believing them.

Listen, sometimes the boys really are sweet, and little girls' tart puckered mouths can't ta

Star SwallowerShe's
an enigma.
her head, a stadium drowning with applause.
yet its seats are empty like the notebooks
where armies of words should be marching.
instead she dismantles clocks
thinking she can play with time.
behind the mountains lurks a darker reasoning
a twisted labyrinth of rationalizations
hidden from the suns brilliance.

Years alone beneath the bleached fluorescent
reading those already dancing in the moonlight.
she is living a literary half-life through them
hiding from the symmetry of the writer.
licking salty rocks of excuses.
saving her secrets for posthumous excavation.
decades of productivity left for moths to chew.
you're throw

I Took To Howling With YouI was shy at first, timid in my dealings,
I laced the trap against my throat,
sang sparing, tip-toed
around your poems.

The tone, the slow vibrating
from the shoots of my shoulders
to the gleam of polished talons,
it purred around inside me.

Oh the song, Coyote,
the same resigned call, it
paled before you, swallowed down its insides,
wept.

I took your little hand in my big hand,
flew out towards Crow, and for a while
My Love, there were poems
and the world was enough.

I took to howling with you,
down from the branches, safe
womb of the tree, I spread
dirt between my toes, sang happy,

sang the song of free,
your wild howl

PlowIt's finally snowing again,
blankets of peace falling
with a freshness that lacks innocence.

Nearly forgotten, they're here as expected,
clearing the streets,
trying to push aside all the worry
that makes things unsafe, but

the steel mouth askew grates against my heart;
its thick bass scrape pushing more than piles of white aside,
it pushes my blood aside too,
piling it up in the corner of this pumping vessel that falters,
ice-caked and bitten, stiffened,
and keeps faltering,
again,
and again,
and again,
until the air is silent
and the street no longer shivers in torture.

The only evidence is the blanket of white
that keeps

On the Unsuitability of Fairytales for ChildrenThe following essay will appear as an Appendix to the sequel of my fantasy novel, Her Unwelcome Inheritance, which is available for Nook and Kindle.

On the Supposed Unsuitability of Fairytales for Children

Shortly after supporting a local library event promoting fairytale literature, the folklore department at Lightfoot College received an animated communication from a very concerned mother regarding, in short, the "unsuitability of fairytales for children."

As this seems to be a rather widespread idea (I might mention the Daily Telegraph article of February 12, 2012) as well as an oddly long-lived one, I take the liberty of pu

SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.

It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic ki

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AlloquyAlloquy: speaking to another, an address

There are the songs that just sound like the ocean,
bridged and bordered by forests,
dressed in mist.
I got all your letters.
Your constant addresses addressed to me.
I folded them into air planes,
pushed them into the ocean air,
let the wind tear them from my fingers.
As long as you keep writing about the sky and the weather,
the ways the cats sing,
the confines of your dreams,
I can keep listening.
I'll wait for the letters to stop coming.
The red flag to rest,
and your alloquy to trickle off into the basest sounds of words,
to begin my own.

AlleviateAlleviate: to allay, to lessen in pain or negative occurrence or consequence

I don't know why your love is a drug,
my dearest meth,
my darling cocaine.
Could you come kiss me again and make my lips go numb.

When you aren't here-
I feel brittle, abrasive,mean and small and sad.
Your smile is a light.
Your hands soft and sure.

I wish you were here in the dead of the night,
when the cats begin to cry.

AllegrettoAllegretto: music term, moderately fast tempo

I'm not flat out running into the skyline,
you could still catch me,
the movie is just ending,
people are still collecting their things,
as the credits start rolling.
Stop hesitating.
If you wanted to catch me,
if you just believed in yourself,
you could stop me.
I'm lingering at the door,
I'm passing through the halls,
I'm going through the doors,
I'm walking along the sunlit street.
Why haven't you caught me?

Aliment/ PancakesAliment: something that nourishes, food, to supply with sustenance or food

You made me food,
broke the eggs,
beat them until they were yellow and frothy,
poured and measured the flour,
white and soft,
but sticky,
you've got a streak across your cheek,
that I can't bear to wipe away
Salt, to melt the ice,
Sugar to sweeten me,
Vanilla, To emphasize what's good about me against the backdrop of bland, white plain things,
Chocolate chips, to show what's not good, how rich and cultured I am not.
You made me food.
Heated up the stove,
turned the dials and watched as the coils turned red.
You burnt a hole in the oven mitt when you w

AlienateAlienate: to estrange, to cause to become unfriendly or hostile

How can I feel human,
when you've pushed me beyond what you think is normal?
I've been forced to find my own way,
by your insistence that I remain the same as everyone else.
How could I flourish under such scrutiny,
How could I flower under such derision
for what I am and what I say?
I will walk the alien path,
I will find more aliens like me,
and we will speak of alien things,
and you can smirk and snort and simper,
but I'll know that I'm more human than you'll ever appear.

AlabasterAlabaster: dense translucent, white or tinted fine-grained gypsum

White towers barely seen against snowy hills,
pushing up through the mist.
What if the world were made out of shades of black and white?
If Alabaster was the clearest, impenetrable
and midnight black was the darkest, impenetrable
Devoid of any colour.
Just the presence and absence of light,
warring against each other,
and craving explosions of colour to create peace?

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Waiting

by ~PrideofPanem, Sep 30, 2012, 4:51:57 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

We are still waiting for the thunder from the distant stars,
The echo of mortality,
the whispers of a storm, half-remembered,
in sepia-coloured hallways in buildings that smell like books.
Time gets slow in waiting,
ghosts are formed from the wanting,
taking shape in the spaces where sunlight,
or moonlight doesn't touch.
The stars shake from the vibration,
and the ghosts shimmer in anticipation,
but we can't hear your voice in the dead of the night.

Waitingby ~PrideofPanem

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I was watching a youtube video about " Why is night dark?" and at one point they likened the universe to a thunderstorm, and said the first line of the poem. After a quick perusal of the comments section- no one had realised how pretty that line was- they were too busy having a science/ religious debate. [link]

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-26

Waiting by ~PrideofPanem Deviant suggested by many others. ( Suggested by ~Laeneris and Featured by ^NicSwaner )

~~love 0 0~~

joy 1 1

wow 2 2

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

neutral 1 1

~burning-girl Mar 13, 2013

can i fuck you

~PrideofPanem Mar 14, 2013 Student General Artist

Excuse me? O.o

=LadyofGaerdon Jan 28, 2013 Professional Writer

This is beautiful, and your description in the artist comments adds a nice layer to it as well. It's nice sometimes to stop arguing over and analyzing the universe and just indulge in its beauty.