Sharing EdenSometimes, I think about John.

I grew up in my grandparents' garden. It was fairly large and brilliantly colored in a way Crayola could never compare. I spent my days running through the pods of flowers, jumping from rock to rock, or simply laying on the grass, watching the birds, the bugs, and the days go by.

In my childish mind, I thought that God had one day decided to add Eden to Heaven, but accidentally dropped that forbidden garden on the way home. Eden shattered into pieces, and those beautiful shards fell to the Earth. When He saw how beautiful those fragments were, instead of sweeping up the pieces, he decided to leave them there a

Waste

Call me Anna, she says, hoping they'll get the vague reference, but they never do, mainly because it's too obtuse, and partly because nobody really reads Moby Dick these days.

But it matters not, nothing ever does. She wears her hair swept up and her mind swept away. There are the remains of a meal speckled upon her collar and down the front of her top, but people make sure not to comment. It wouldn't be right, but that's for later.

First, call her Anna. Heroines always had such exciting names, she mourned, drowning in jealousy that she instantly hated them all. She embraced the plain out of spite, and insisted that people called her by her

DensityTell me, lover, how the flooded sky peals the soul's vengeance,
the churning of autumn and echoing footfalls on the stairwell

with dusk tasting like our kisses in their eager, sanguine
(bittersweet) youth.

Fearful of depths, I fled your embrace to fall swooning,
each glance a brush of laden finishing, a heart-heresy.

Yesterday I sealed the last box, wiping my brow and wearing
those sage, harried conversations

as only a crushed kite with torn webbing can muster
in the face of distance.

Now, when I smile at you, there are only waves ebbing
across sandbars and our twilights.

summer children, we were'ii.

we carved animals
from ivory castles
floating in the sun. we were
the doting spring mayflies
twisting upon meadows,
wreathing lilies between
toes, breathing --

iii.

between the sheets
of golden chaff,
she whispered, "let's dance in the rain
on the cobblestone streets
before the singing rosebud
mutes her swollen gown.'
:
past the shivering
moon we snuck
with shadows tucked
into dreams. we were
waltzing toy soldiers,
our peace-broken holster

Eucalyptus

her skirts are so thick
if you spun her upside down
she would open up like a rose-
violent yellow pumps
and bubble ankles on
lanky blue legs, waving like stamen in the rain.

she's pollinating all over the room

a good thing to ask would be
why have I waited so long.
Do you remember burning me around your neck? I singed your hair, but didn't say anything.
It just curled from my fingers.

I sit far away now-
wrapped around my new love like a cat,
telling ghost stories and missing your shoulders,
eucalyptus eyes.
flicking back and forth against the subway walls.

I got a letter today
a train schedule
headphones and
another re

Seven Poems1. I am walking a tightrope
    between here and forever
    to watch you tend roses.

2. I should have slept
    before the hurricane.
    I was twisting wrought iron
    into silver.
    You are so very loved.

3. He made a monument
    to sorrow and relief
    in the creaking timbers.
    With my bare fingers
    I felt songs in the elegiac blue.

4. Oh, little savior of Tlaxcala,
    I remember your sad eyes.
    Spend yourself forward, into the desert:
    tomorrow has seen you first.

5. Do you remember the last night?
    Streetlights painted slatted stripes
    on four naked shoulders
    and an endtable.

6. I am afra

Our IssuesYour heart grew up in a black wooden box
and thought it fabulous,
                    its world of
                    right angles,
                    wood grain,
                    and eternal night.
It hated me when I bored the hole
that let the sun singe its eyes, cook its skin,
when rain collected the dirt on its skin
in a puddle beneath its feet and said:
"look how dirty you are, foul thing."

It hated and
hated and
still hates,
      always crawling
                under any
                    box it finds.

I kicked it
out of its hiding place.
It ran out howling, hating and being
ha

Passion FishHolding you I jump
Into the spectacle of the sea
Sinking into a school
Of vermillion grouper:

The day-star strikes a path for us
Deep into the swelling rhythm
Of the ancient blue,
The somber cool;

Above the surface,
A vanilla sky;
Seagulls,
Lurking.

Time stops.

I kiss
Coveted lips
You taste
Like oxygen,
Or honey:
Licked
From the inside
Of a flower;

We breathe.

Swimming up,
Our hands explore dark waters for treasured touch;
Separating seaweed with fingertip scythes
Of poignant flesh;

Being with you is like floating for the first time
In my own personal ocean,
Or

Seven Reasons Why I Loved You.i.

seven hours
are spent waxing lyrical and
kissing your eyelashes in the library,
studying.
you mouth the third knuckle on my right hand,
and memorize the hollow of my cheek.

ii.

tender kisses press like
afterthoughts and postscripts on my forehead:

p.s. te quiero.

iii.

you inhale so beautifully.

iv.

i will remember your iceberg-words.

the door slams with
a crash,
like a glacier being born.

xcutiexprincessx69I waited a half an hour to see if you'd get online
and now that you are I'm waiting 5 minutes
to greet you so I don't seem clingy or desperate.

Then you ask about my day followed by a sideways smiley face
colon: parenthesis)

And I make up something about a 2 mile walk-
when in reality all I did was watch back to back episodes
of Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

Then I sit back and wait because you seem to be typing an awful lot,
but in 5 minutes when I receive the message it's just the letters "L O L"
A secret code that means you have nothing interesting to say,
and neither do I but comfortable silence doesn't exist on the Internet.

So I

in the quiet.---

i. do you love?

shhh. enough to paddle rafts across atlantic oceans
to brush fingers.
don't speak.

for this, I forsake my own centuries, chronologically absent
of you. I was there dragging pyramids from sand;

I was there.

(if love spans time,
non-linear, then I was a drop of salt
in your ocean when the world was new. I
was there for the celebrated supernova; we
were born of wrought iron and
fireworks and
heat.)

-and it was

NowhereThey were everything, the stars –
their hope we harbored in our pockets,
and it seeped under our fingernails in the winter cold
until we bled and breathed them, believed
their possibilities cupped like fireflies
in our hands – we went to sleep to them
and woke to their memory, dreamed
them in between – we ourselves
piloting the ships of tomorrow.

They called us, stringing their melodies
down to earth in half-remembered
filaments of color: we whispered our promises
up in return, the four of us,
our breaths frosting windows as we
stared up and pointed at the darkening sky.

Lodged in our eyes and minds, the stars,
and th

A driftwood Essayforever and flawless
those un-plucked flowers
pressed in poetry volumes
and the ocean.

oddities of memories
as river stones, well rounded
in their patient education;
as punctuated coffee stains,

those discarded sutras
by accidental monks,
who learned calligraphy from
the rain.

what clever lines
the cipruss roots, embroidered
with lichen 'nd worm trails.
how fertile those monks are now,

as love is recorded
diligently, in chronicles
of a child stomping in
the rain.

I. Jenny Dwayne

I. Jenny Dwayne

Her words were tangled in filaments. She cupped her hand in front of her mouth when speaking, cradled the sounds like children, keeping them close in case she had to try to pull them back. Maybe she was ashamed when they were stocky and short, and stumbled, not quite ringing out with confidence. In her apartment, instead of slippers, she strapped on high-heels, dreaming of elegance.

But though she clicked on the pastel floor-tiles, chipping the gray roses in the kitchen, and left finger smears on the metal refrigerator door as she grabbed it for balance, she could not glide. And so the red-strapped heels did not step over th

Mayfly

-

When we were mayflies our wings were
worn from wire screens, but the tentative
beats of your belly chimed like iron.

And it occurred to me that through
the breeze of burning leaves our eyes
were open to wasps and weeds.

-

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More from ~SpokenAubade

I. Jenny Dwayne

Lilliputians Abroad

They threw us out of Heaven, saying:
"We don't have no wings your size
and our lutes are too big for you anyhow.
You'd ruin the view."

And hooks from Hell failed to snag us
so we fell through fish lines, nets and heat
to the other side of the world.

Dragons twined with clouds there,
writhed, snagged air on green paper scales.

We watched them flutter. You leaned your head
against my straw-woven vest,
your matted, black hair on my face, in my mouth.

The desert scorched your sun-hewn cheeks,
burned eyelashes and locks to white
like crisp, split-ended reminders of snow
amidst topaz sand and light.

Dreams of gold clouds and gates

Sand Dollars

Dollars don't grow on trees
but I've found them on beaches
(after the dumpy towel-sitters retire
to their cheap hotel rooms
and before they wake up,
flustered and hot under the sandy blanket,
burning with an aftertaste of sun).

Sand dollars are like old coins, so
I can't take a handful to the local grocery
and hope to leave with a pack of gum
(Unless, of course,
I smile very nicely at the guard).

These dollars crunch
when a sole presses them into sand
and twists, slowly, to the left.
That's why I walk late at night,
(when it is almost too dark to see
them) and pretend each sharp sound is inevitable.

And I vaguely hope that

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10 moments of silence

by ~SpokenAubade, Oct 17, 2006, 5:02:02 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

[Ten moments of silence.]

I

I fell in love with the full,
fluffy heaps of white on sidewalks,
the icicles that clung
to gutters and railings.

II

My mountains changed;
They’re blue and ridged now.
The summers bleed the pavement
like steaming gray socks.

Shade does not offer solace
from moist, viscous air. In the afternoons,
if luck chances by, the humidity lofts
into thick purple clouds
and rain slaps hot pavement.

I can breathe.

III

The carrot leaves
fell from gold foliage
like drops of sunset.

I closed my eyes and saw twelve wild turkeys
gaggle cross the yard, a doe freeze,
framed by the window, ineffable
bright-lined spiders in the bathtub.

IV

Is it the hoar-frost winters that bring to mind
poetry? There is no Parnassus in Virginia,
only weed-filled fields and roads
that twine like filaments through mountains.

White-blossom dogwood and poison ivy
have me of two minds; Could I have one
without the other, please?

V

No, no thank-you. I'll come back
some other time.

VI

Winter betrays me. It rains wet ice
as if to ask "What did you
expect?" I wanted
frosting on the railings and jagged edges
hung off trees. I wanted silence.

VII

The brown trees stir, naked, drab.
Winter forgot to tuck in the covers
before retiring. I would make
some witty comment but

VIII

leave me alone.

IX

I do not look forward to summer. I tore
a branch and picked the new leaves to pieces
before letting it go.

X

Sunlight is too bright. They call it
global warming, I call it perspective.

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10 moments of silenceby ~SpokenAubade

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I did a bit of editing of this poem. Re-submitted it since I like my new version better. This will likely be the final.

_{Edits from the first version [Version1 found here [link] ] Shifted part one S2 to Part III. Changed last line of S1. Cut X stanza and down-shifted original part III. Cut last lines of VI (the current VII)}

How is the ending?

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Submitted on: October 17, 2006
File Size: 2.1 KB

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10 moments of silence by ~SpokenAubade is a self explanatory title, but that's to say nothing of the other senses. ( Featured by `PoeticWar )

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~AvoidingCliches Feb 18, 2009

Thanks.
You bring so much meaning into your poems.

~lifestylespincycle Feb 15, 2009

One of the best I have read on DA. Seriously. The structure is a personal favourite. Very Wallace Steven's. Well done.

~SpokenAubade Feb 15, 2009

Wallace Stevens

*SaintlyDark Aug 11, 2008

God, this is lovely.. so I will add a comment to the large extent of comments you already have by saying that this line: "There is no Parnassus in Virginia," is unbelievably wonderful.

*jamberry-song Aug 7, 2008 Professional General Artist

The ending pounds my face in. XD I think you could be a bit more eloquent, seeing as you were with the rest of the poem. I think bringing in the actual words "global warming" weakens the rest of the piece. You've said everything up to that point really well without saying it, so why say it at all? Some of the images seemed to strike a discord with the rest of the piece: "The summers bleed the pavement / like steaming gray socks." I'm not sure what's being said there. Gray socks don't steam so... the image is a bit incomplete as it is. Steaming morning waters or river fog, or something concrete and actual would be a bit more effective there, I think. The second stanza of part III is stunning and that is my favourite. I also like how VII ends on an incomplete line. It's like a breath there. Perfect. It could still use some work, but it is a powerful, provocative piece.

Nicely done.

~ConigliettoRosa Aug 4, 2008

The title has interested me, than the poem has amazed me.

~lpowell Apr 19, 2008

Marvelous. The language is crisp and detailed without being wordy; I could see exactly what you were describing.

~IgnoreMeAgian Mar 29, 2008 Writer

really awsome

~StoppedClocks Mar 26, 2008

Record this again, better.

!Sloppisloth Mar 10, 2008

Pffffftt, you and your "talent". Instead of saying "great poem!" im going to tell you to try harder next time, because i am a bitter, jealous, angry child.

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