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place-names for outer spacei had to get
the extra letters taken out
of our last name. i couldn't wait
and be systematic

about it. you expected me to act
with infinite civility,
like you had only
just met me. it's hard to take you seriously

when you're the mess of brightly-
colored hair and broken tree limbs
blindly stumbling onto my floor and
slumping over the back of my chair,

but i tried, and i will
keep trying because you're
my one true razorcliff.
it might not work like we thought it would,

it might be bleak, intangible,
like the laughs we scattered in shredded vapors
across the night: this being
in a domestic mudslide with you. and you

keep saying that you kn

astronomerswhen we're together
dusk is containable; the moon in my palms
and the stars on your ceiling.

we lull the city to sleep
with our theories of life; my tongue curling
into speech.

do you remember,
when Jupiter was a silver wick, lighting its countless moons?

that night,
you balanced a cigarette off your lips,
and I watched the vermillion flame burn life
as a newborn sun;

stars forming,
planets moulding and constellations snaked
above our eyes.

i imagined
what it would be like to be curled
inside the embers – creator and destroyer
of worlds,
so close to your lips.

Let the Sparrows InI.

Blackbirds are resting on the power lines,
Their silhouettes form the notation to
A dawn song set on the sheet music of
Telephone poles contrasted by the sun.

Curled leaves are land mines littered
On the lawn where imprints of twigs
And a nurturing robin's tracks collect.

Branchlets and leaflets stem from
Porch step railings and mailboxes;
The numbers read even on the
East side of the asphalt:

Seven-seven-thirty-six.
The engraved letters on
The siding reads, "Davis."
This house is home to family

So let the sparrows in.

The house,
With its branching hallways
And
Overhanging décor
And
Furniture rooted to the floor

The Jersey DevilYou have come,
splitting the night,
hunting and always pursued.

You have seen the fireflies,
followed them, escaping in the
dim scarlet glow.

The rhythm in the silence.
The undying moss
the horse's skull
the vertex and the thick heat.

You have not forgiven her,
the Mother's guilty cry,
the one sin for which
she will never find redemption.

summergirlNow read aloud over here. Do give it a listen, won't you?
i. summergirl,
you are crowthroated and tumbling
through the aspen grove
hair on fire with sunrise, lungs
full of sky.
eyelashes like wildflowers
and every morning brings
a new spray of freckles
and a sharper curve to your collarbones.
the cornfields hold no shadows
for your lighthouse eyes
and there are no endings in that
surefooted smile.
ii. you have grown
so fast.
autumn finds you with broken ankles
leaning on an oak branch
and watching the skies.
crow to sparrow--you are quiet.
summergirl, there is peace in silence,
perched treetop,
fallen antlers in your hands.
you will come to mourn your deer.
keep them close.
iii. by winter you have paled,
and like the streams
your eyes have frosted over.
you feel the chill--
there is no need for sight.
summergirl, th

a hospital bird with soot in her lungsshe slept through a car crash
that almost killed her,
through whitewhite walls
and dreams
where her lover dies
nobody thought she'd make it
but she woke up a few months later
with flowers in her hair
and ash in her airway
trying to remember how to start all over
but forgetting to remember how to live.
fall slipped from her open eyes
and winter crawled in for a long hibernation
of not-quite-cold-enough-for-snow
to her the clouds looked sick
and pale like they might
let everything inside them out,
but she opened up wide instead,
spilling blood where there was none to be spilled.
her heart slipped down the street
and with unsteady hands
she stitched in a bird and cut off its wings.

amaryllis.Naked ladies stand
with their pink petals up and
their tall, green stems down.

she said, we're not worth itit was half past ten when i came down to the kitchen and told her how i felt.
she was a little bit drunk, and i was a little too high,
and i couldn't put the right words together
because they floated too far above my head.
"i am hopelessly in love," i said.
"with me or what?" she asked,
her eyes rolling around in her skull;
eyes make for broken windows into quiet souls,
i said to myself as i stared at her silently.
"i don't fucking know," i said.
she sat up in her chair, refusing to slump back down,
upright,
like her father's demeanor
or the libido of her ex-boyfriend, who still drunk-texts her at three in the morning.
"i'm a bad idea and

fletchingi.
undertow
as though the anchors
exit arrows

pooled lapse
in proper carry
vast

narrow as
the chance

split infinites
rift and whistle
through the sands

ii.
lace banded
like the last few
fleeting

curt vanes
swung seething

pursed purple
with a greedy gurgle

breathing
wasn't meant
to stay the seizing

iii.
squeezing lungs
like
the last rung
dangled

or the fulldrawn string's
plunge angled

UnsatisfiedHere I lie -
One vulnerable ear
to the marble silk of galaxies.

Even though
Your figure is an act
of miracle meteors
raining on the soft,
shocked retina,

the valleys
between your eyes and mouth
a dazzling constellation,

Your lullaby voice
a play of centered orbits
carved around me,

Even though the slow breath of you
is the many pulsing
gases, bright beyond
the fire of any human glint,

I am, firstly,
a sacred satellite
for the cosmic murmurs
of something grander.

Of solace sleeping in today was the essence,
waking up the process of becoming singular

.

I want to end it
but I can't stop associating you with these images—
: a season being flung onto the ocean, making a mess of color

.

there's an insect caught in my poetry,
trying to mend its broken wing

.

Your reminder:
the exhaustion's relative & it never comes too late

.

: blinks of cartoon sunrises & twenty-pointed, starry eyelashes

.

m

Witches MarketMidnight fell like an old black bird;
I meant to wait for you.

There were tables rich with
amethyst and pearls,
and fragrance by the fistful,
mint and petrichor.
I meant to wait for you.

You were gliding through the haze
with your knotted bag half full-
shadows flicked their tongues
above your knees;
you meant to look for me.

Moments ran like mice;
a silver pot, a cup of tea.

She stank of vinegar and thyme-
the hand was hers, the heart was mine.
Her iron eyes reflected flame;
she took my lungs, she took my name,
though you had meant to look for me,
and I had to meant to wait for you
amid the black salt and the brew.

Ash

UnlayeringThere are words queuing in line
 for the page, simple words, trite
 words, words of circumstance, words
 the world could have never gone on
 without their repeating; as day and night and fear,
 the kind of words you never wanted from me,
 void of Eutony, a simple psalm
 of sound rhythm, but—

  they cannot go unspoken any longer:

  My heart unfolds like an infinite peel,
 an onion pulled fresh from damp earth
 that has forgotten it was once fertile.
 You wash away packed dirt and tear
 roots with your fingernails. The inside
 of y

coffee painti watch the coffee pot do cannonballs
through the air and bellyflop into the
kitchen wall-
glass licks the air in cartwheel spins
and coffee stains melt down the paint and boil
into the wood of the cutting board like
liquid sandpaper
and i think to myself-
this is better than a picasso.

Magic of the TreesWe walked, painting footprints in the dirt,
reminders to recall trails blazed.
We peered up at the sky,
squinting against the sour lemon sun,
flickering down between dream catcher leaves,
and we made wishes come true.
The trees stood tall as giants,
supporting our spines, improving our posture,
for kisses that smelled of woods and tasted of sap.
And woodland creatures sang songs,
songs of love pushed to limits,
whispering careful reminders in our ears.
We tried each one out,
the big and little trees, the fat and skinny ones,
needing to know which one felt best,
when our lips pressed together.
And pictures only we would see we

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VisotactileI thought
I felt the river-mouth
pulling lightly
at my sleeves.
From the cuff,
every stitch of me
wanted to swim.

My mind is full
of salt and vagrancy,
but I swear I saw
an abyss
forming impatient
in the after-light of evening
my oddness.

I was Odin
for a spell
until I wasn't.

I still hear the roaring
water, cascading
off the empty air.

By the Things We Don't Yet KnowThe first wall was built
with stones and mud
and the energy required
to fix them in place.
Sun and strength
of muscle, and time.

Faith
that some things can be more.

The first song was sung
with words and wonder
unaware of what would follow.
Softness of souls
arranged in silhouettes of sound
filling voids not yet discovered
to be empty.

Forever changed.

IfWe can
draw lines and give them names
like elements
as they are discovered

Or etch into our skins
this soloecal desire
until it is impossible to tell
where words stop
and life begins.

I would

Find a common rhythm that includes
you in my arms, my hands
and lungs and thoughts
tracing the outline of you
entangled with me
colliding like two lost particles
locked in a shared gravity
drifting through the vacuum
of space.

I could.

Exhale, and
remember
sentence structure.

Stay SanguineI watch the obstacle
of space
and try
to rip water from language
frantic
like the blood could barely live
dry of you.

I need you fast
before the dawn takes the marrow
from deep in my bones
and I am unable
to replenish.

StargazingStargazing
with
the early wintertime air
nipping at my ears.

I slept through summer,
spent from the every-day
insignificance.
Developed wanderlust
and wrote out the fall
on coffee-table napkins.

Now I'm basking
in the far-traveled light;
hoping I can be
an astronaut, someday.

Storm ChasersThe tornado stands
on tip-toe
tilting over the valley
with an eye for destruction.

Lives are lived
with no consideration.
In weak houses,
they rest
unable to predict
the weather.

Sleep soundly,
unaware
of the howling wind.
Dream of me,
my love
in the home that we built
with our bare hands.

The tongue descends
touching fiercely down
on the doorstep.

And I will dream of you

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Quake the Earth

by *nawkaman, Jan 2, 2013, 1:06:50 AM
Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

You were
drinking
from the rust-rim
galaxy
in quick sips and swallowed stars,
like those remembered
at the bottom of the glass.

I slept
drunk
from the orogeny
of your subduction,
dreaming
of your skin sliding to a fit
against mine
and the tremors we could make.

Quake the Earthby *nawkaman

Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

©2013 *nawkaman

I do so very much love language. Every once in a while it just seems to fit perfectly together.

I think I'll take a look at this again in the morning to see if I can revise and make it stronger.

It's late and I'm not sure how well I accomplished the effect I wanted in the second stanza, and the meaning of the first might be a bit too hidden.

*rlkirkland Feb 4, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Well now, a DLD for your fine efforts.

Congratulations!

Reply

*nawkaman Feb 4, 2013

Thank you! My first DLD

Reply

=Sammur-amat Feb 5, 2013 General Artist

Very well deserved, too!

Congratulations, sugar!

Reply

*nawkaman Feb 5, 2013

Thank you, dear. You are far too kind

Reply

=Sammur-amat Feb 5, 2013 General Artist

Only because, again, you are most deserving. (:

Reply

*xlntwtch Feb 3, 2013 Writer

Congratulations on the DLD feature! I hope you leave this pretty much as it is.
I like it, especially the second strophe. Thank you.

Reply

*nawkaman Feb 4, 2013

Thank you so much! It's my first DLD and I'm quite proud. I am fairly sure I will leave everything just as it is, it seems my initial concerns were unfounded given the reception I've gotten with this one.

Reply

*xlntwtch Feb 4, 2013 Writer

...and you should be very proud.

Reply

=DailyLitDeviations Feb 3, 2013

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by DLD (Daily Literature Deviations) 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.

Reply

=LadyofGaerdon Jan 20, 2013 Professional Writer

So beautiful and resonant.

Reply

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