[x]

RestlessI’ve been living in the same breathy dream
for too many days now; I’m bed-ridden and
stale and I reek of those moments that come
full throttle like a car crash on a winter night

   this is evolution where weak hearts
   are afraid of the shadows and where
   everything changes,
   an apologetic wind births no remorse;
   he will move on—anchored ship
   set sail, I am the sunken wreckage
   that never learned how to swim.
   he will move on, Darwin says
   I never had a chance

I wish I were the textbook sadness,
symptom and solution and endurance
but I’ve spent too long sleeping on the

I took offMy day off.
I stand in sunlight
without asking.
I can watch it being day.

The mud is soft and cool at home.
I'd bury well without a casket,
I’ll be a naked pill for earth.

I build a garden box from wood,
smash my thumb.
Red bell
peppers;
too late for lettuce.

I had a premonition
I would live like this.
No one will remember me.
I’ll forget by Tuesday.

Revenantthey came like phantoms;

oceanic whispers left me washed out.
those gossamer ghosts that lined
the doorways-- eyes in a constant
state of surprise as they reached for me:

needle fingers pricked, fueling
my addictions. they ached
for my veins, entangled like
the strings of my paper heart

and they stained my skin,
amethyst bruises in the shape
of recognition.

their breaths were the heavy hums
of a forgotten lullaby "one day you
will leave, and you will fade into a
virulent void, like us. you will warm
our icy bones, and we will love you,
like no one else can.

go back to sleep, little girl, we will
come again" with their cer

Oceane, Adrift
Undone from sea-moorings,
I float.

The sea has bid me barren, an
island with no anchor.

Bleak and pale I drift,
to and fro.

Gentle giants nudge me,
their fins propellers – spurring
me on.

Sailors cry out, their
voices lost amid deep thoughts and
deeper dreams.

I drift, an island set
free too soon.

Anchorless, I ride storms and waves;
the way children ride ponies.

Torn from my harbour,
I sail.

the simple truth...he took one breath
and
behold!
(the world)

stars open
sleep pending

and all
is love
between

ThumbtackThis is a broken world.

The thought cannot be broken.
There will be no enjambment,
no:
"This is a
broken world."

It doesn't work that way.
The thought is whole.
There can be no splicing to
make it go down easier.
It shouldn't go down easy;
it should be a thumbtack in your throat
screaming out its presence.

Don't forget to swallow.

Lessons on Being WholeStrange how I fit into you
there's a distance erased with the greatest of ease.
-Vienna Teng, Eric's Song

1.
In a world of puzzle pieces
dumped out of the box and scattered on the floor,
colour and pattern align for a brief instant
and two pieces snap together.
One edge fits.
Their place on the box-cover still unknown
but wherever it is, it is together.

2.
A white-striped fish
teases through the hair of a mermaid with her head buried in the sand.
The blades she keeps in that upwards cascade
don't touch him.
The poison she uses when she's scared-
as dearly known to him as his own skin.
He will dwell in her hair foreve

Summers Lost god died today. or maybe it was tomorrow. i can't remember.

"ask anything."

static skies;
grizzled blue
sketching down
to sewer lines:
like a wish
on a dead star.

the feeling of gritted teeth
and fingers crossed
until they break.

shame tasted
like a scalpel
and a brick wall
against my throat.

and i was
chewing concrete
when i said,
"it's okay."

swallowing cinder blocks;
stuffing steel under skin.

sugar-sweet
on my cheek,
like book pages:

"where have you been?"

Haiku IIIwhite cherry blossoms
melt on frosted window panes -
harbinger of Spring

BlackScraping away at the paint, chips on the windowsill
Remember when the windows weren't painted black?

Soap-smeared storefronts, mannequins peering from behind
Bald and alien, all-knowing smiles haunt the child at night
When the worlds gone black and reality fades to dream

Ice cream hits the summer sidewalk when the darkness appears
Black ships hover overhead, humming like madness
Like swarms of bees, like death, like black metal arms reaching

They took the house away and painted it black, inside and out
They placed bars on the windows and bolts on the doors
They wrapped up summer dreams in heavy blankets in the attic

Childhood ende

InfernoSeptember is a sultry tangle
of curly hair and corduroy jackets stretched
over broad shoulders that I've been leaning on,
metaphorically.

He won't press for answers
and I won't trouble him with my problems.
So he complains about the weather –
he's never gotten used to these sticky, southern delta summers –
while I hold the door
and press the call button.

The half-lit elevator drops us off above Dante's first layer.
I feel sorry for anyone beneath,
but I've indulgences to buy
and my own hell to return to.

But there's a light in my pocket –
abandon not all hope,
and

smile.

misunderstandings left.
you
when we finally felt right, turns out, we were wrong.
I
fell.

lapsus calamiyou're smooth, you know
all soft skin and and long fingers,
cupping my cranium and sliding through
the tendrils of my hair

everything about you screams dangerous,
the way your smile starts--
languid and lazy because
your lips speak in secrets
passed through dry presses of mouths and
shaky exhales

you're ineffable,
the way your chin tips up
just so
to show the expansion of your neck,
the littering of freckles that create
constellations and desire

i'd trace the lines of your body
with careful and practiced touches,
i'd turn you into poetry--
transform your lungs into lyrics
your ribs into rhymes,
your tongue into text and
your spine into som

you need to have a plan...so here's to
conventional wisdom.
1. relocate
to some forgotten shore.
2. fall desperately in love with
i. the ocean
ii. the sky
iii. the honey sunrise and
iv. the steelgray winter dawn.
3. sink
soul-deep into the water and
breathe.
4a. search out the requisite words
i. from behind white and blue curtains
ii. and underneath clam shells
iii. and in the wakes of fishing boats, and
4b. pluck them from the ceaseless
scrawls of sunlight
against the slopes of waves.
5. make time for
i. poetry
ii. and other
selfish
pursuits.

in dark eyeethereally floating there
envying the lust of life
luridly at a rolling boil

expansive outcome of supernova
distant alluring signal
behind fine line lashes

comet trails pioneer the iris
tease of civilizations incalculable
ancient creation secrets born anew

granted before wish uttered
just a shy blink leaves me
ethereally floating there

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More from ~Pr0metheusUnb0und

PrologueWhirls on the street
seed sand in the eyes,
so they open the sky
to bleed the purpure
upon the black hounds.

Their clandestine cries
unslumber me, for to be
awake when everyone
sleeps, is to be alive;
thus I speak with all
when alone, and with none
when with all.

I revel in this freedom,
whilst thinking of her,
and the scars remind:
the past is real
and scathing, but
illuminating for
all the chapters
left unread;
hence the climb
for the eyrie,
with her book
in her stead.

Book of LeavesWe are riddling the mountain
like worms in the apple orchards,
and among those trees the
ominous shadow mask peeks.
But, its sly eyes shy away
when I leaf through her book
that holds the sun, for as
a placebo it gives me peace.

The road unravels into a waiting
room where men leaning on spades
smile crookedly and point at
the garden behind. There the wind
breaks against bars of trees,
that hide the mural of nature
showing people holding bouqets
for their loved ones.

A lonely lantern lying on
a white shirt pours its light
over the river before the wall;
here the sprouts are leafless
and lovers are turned into
ghouls wit

Towards the WindmillWe live on a dead island
swirled about a stoney mound
with corpses in its heart;
in the midst of a sea of green
bare trees are littered,
and peak from roofless houses
with burned foundations.

And beneath the smokey sun
an army of black sapplings stirs;
followers of the rusted beast
conducted upon a fallen log
that bleeds before their roots;
to smother his spouse the cypress
and their cones in their cradles.

The bent weeds watch as they
are watched and avoided
so plastic flowers are smelled
- the litter of the false nature.
In a garden where blind sunflowers
guard the molded prison,
tainted shells hide venomous pearls;
they drip on imp

BabylonNature looking for a relief
in lonely convents immersed
with the mossy green river
where they dream in their
floating beds down the stream.
Inside the labyrinth veined
with waves through stones,
life is given to every corner
so that we are drowned by
the onwave of their stories.

In a myriad of tongues
we swarm back to Babylon
in the bosom of the whore;
nurturing us into narcissi
that lull into statues found
in dalinian infernos below.
Above the once avid tower
lays now a dead carpet
of wasted wool - sad
in the viola reflection
of a parting sun.

LibertyWrapped in pelts on birth,
innocent pups grow into
insatiable chained wolves
in hearts of concrete forests.
Their supercilious minds,
deprived, they walk unaware
forever seeking the valley
in their plastic gardens.
In a somnambulistic rage
heads float towards the flame
that melts the cold hides
from around their trees.
And there they see mad cats
appearing amidst the branches,
to reveal the times and paths
towards the raven on the desk
that drips ink from its beak.

A Massacre of MasksI saw a vain parade
creeping slowly towards
my decrepit monastery,
between awed windows
and doors that surrender.
Even the fabric bows
before their guises
and legless and in limbo
it follows it before
the roots of my asylum.
There they utter ingots
before stairs with
the green fire stirring
in the ceramic; molding
them into medallions
of their fallacy
to weigh on obtuse necks
of rams battering
the vigilant gates.
To descent the high rocks
and kill the black bird,
signifies a silence;
then their library full
of unworthy palimpsests
will be ruptured;
and my will shall
forever give rise
to the flames
in their minds -
burning their masks;
revealing the true text
behind.

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Submitted: January 16
Submitted with: Sta.sh Writer

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West of the Sun

by ~Pr0metheusUnb0und, Jan 16, 2013, 3:24:42 AM
Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

When our worded train
was about to derail,
I saw 'una donna bella'
with hair as the olives
from the groves
where we trailed,
and stole kisses.

She was a more enticing read
than the one absent,
as the sweet red in her lips
was what the wine vapors
were searching for
just to make sense
once more.

Splitting from her locks,
like the grass we were picking,
were her bladed words;
splicing together
in seamless strands,
and cutting south
like flocks of birds.

West of the Sunby ~Pr0metheusUnb0und

Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

In a train in southern Italy.

*leyghan Feb 17, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Hi, I incorporated the title of your wonderful poem in a poem of my own. It's for a found poem challenge using titles of other deviations. - [link]

~Pr0metheusUnb0und Feb 18, 2013

I'm honored. I think you did a nice job, the flow is not perfect, though maybe that adds its sprinkle of mystery.

*leyghan Feb 18, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Struggled a bit with the second verse so I hear ya on the not so perfect flow. I'm reasonable happy with how it turned out though. Thanks again.

~insomaniac55 Jan 28, 2013 Writer

Something about the second stanza reads off (I could be over-reading it though) but the others are great. I'm actually slightly jealous, I wrote a poem similar to this when I went to Spain (use of olive and everything) but mine was subpar.

~Pr0metheusUnb0und Jan 29, 2013

Thank you for the kind words Jesus.

=Lucy-Merriman Jan 27, 2013 Student General Artist

Critique! Sorry I'm way behind on these. Thanks for participating in #Writers-Workshop, btw.

I'm actually trying to make these more conversational, more of a back-and-forth. I'm not sure how this experiment's going to work, but the goal for me is to get people talking and thinking about their own writing, instead of just having other people say what they think of it in a take-it-or-leave-it kind of way.

Okay, so for this workshop, we looked at some strategies for writing free-verse poetry (metaphor, alliteration, irony, etc) . What strategies did you choose when writing this poem? What were you trying to evoke with your choices?

~Pr0metheusUnb0und Jan 28, 2013

Well, Lucy (if we are having a conversation it is adequate that I refer to you by name

), I always try to created little standalone vignettes in free-verse, and strong visual metaphors, also I bother with alliteration when I think it will supply extra emotions for me. So I liked your workshops because it let me use all of the above.

=DailyLitDeviations Jan 22, 2013

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by =DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here: [link]

Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by

ing the News Article. Keep writing and keep creating.

~Pr0metheusUnb0und Jan 23, 2013

thank you kindly.

~Solarune Jan 22, 2013 Writer

Oh, this is so lovely – I really like the images, and in particular the last stanza and the lovely words/birds rhyme in it (and that last line, wow.

) And the whole idea of the hair turning into grass/bladed words/strands/birds is a wonderful progression. Lovely lovely poetry!

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West of the Sun

West of the Sunby ~Pr0metheusUnb0und

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