[x]

the cricket and sailour.there lives a man in a desert
with cracked skull and lips.

he is broken and feeble hands;
his back where the deer-antlers
roam to graze.

with the winter winds he is

calm. the sea foam swelling around
his ankles feel like honey, and he is
dragged. dragged through the sand,
dragged until he is salt. salt in a

swollen geography.

the clouds give way to bitter ships.

fatefatalism stalks me.
its chalky finger-bones
scrabble at my windows,
greedy to pry panes
and rend gaps—
mouth agape
to vent its algid breath.

conjured,
like a voodoo zombie
of the bayou,
by pious disciples
to the temple of matter.

they strain to evade
the burden of their choices,
worrying at the knots of destiny
and scattering dust
to fill in our footprints.

in a sly reversal of legerdemain,
they entice hands from rudders,
with their relentless mantra:
"free will is illusion!"

but illusion is smoke,
and stars still burn in my chest.
not nebulae, but hard points and brilliant.
I pass through them,
burning the fog

mother, can you mendi.

Mother wished
for those freckles to glide down
the bridge of her nose and
into a generation of fresh sunspots,
but the daughters got the sun's affection
through their hair, one wheaten braid
over another, sometimes
under the needle's eye of the wind

and sometimes split ends
were all there was to mend.

and mother tried to reteach
her Indian braids unity
on young heads,
she tried to get her worn moccasins
to move too-small feet into dance,
but they ran through rivers
rather than around them
and too often had they sinned
before the hands

trampled azaleas under bare soles
and petals between toes

but sometimes the land
w

27               [I]

    arthur boyd:

she cried 'transubstantiation' -

why don't you eat dirt and
    feel closer to Earth !(?)

i slipped ,jointlessly, seemless
quicksilver ,going downdown
until I wrapped my serptentine form
around the core
                     , a cold static stone

Transcendental Meditation.Your walrus came to mind, and so did
her deathbed, with the rainbow over it.
Green horses and stars come to mind.
I felt a twitching in my face and
dreamed up yoga poses. Backbends

and handstands make me feel great,
but if I could just inject the thc
straight into my veins..

One hundred percent
bioavailability
baby.

Your walrus came to mind and so did she,
dancing in a pink tutu in a pink room,
and in graveyards and penitentiaries.

Studies on the brain show that
a religious experience can be had
simply by denying certain senses
for long periods of time. Studies

on the heart show that dysfunction
gro

for exit 165.in the outstretched wingspan of
tuesday night you'll find them:
the foothills slumbering jagged under
sixteen inches of loose sand and
the city hushed and glowing, lines
of porchlights strung together in suburban rows like
beads on a chain

your house was cavernous hollow like a lung
the colors were dim and
jaundiced, a quiet rush of tepid water
bent the silence while thirty years of
smoking hung ownerless
in the air like the cling of a dead moths to a wall

you tell me of a dream that's vague like
clouds in the sky like
clouds in the sink with
your body limp and damp like
hot tea bags and
your face like spilled milk
a

The Post*
The blue mail-satchel bumps and sways, brings them in,
rigid with the weight of promise;

envelopes, dessert-colored, a delicacy,
the brittle folds filled with scent,
a creme transfer over time, to me.

I open each with the reverence
of seashells and oceanic loves.

I cut apart the shore that separates us
with a letter-opener, the sound of water.

You have arrived
before your body.

I settle into my pulse
and the resounding ambiance of my privacy
while your words touch my lips.
*

I.
We stand in our reamed maze of consent--
faces, throats thrumming
on parallel shoulders;

a doorway, at dusk;
a barefoot dance sung over by bird

Late Afternoon, DublinKingdom

I sit on the slippery stone steps,
at the gates of my Father's heaven.

My back to the cold wall enough,
that men in dusty pants and
mud-laden boots can thump past,
their tired, weary legs fly fast
across my freckled face.

Father inside, far end,
a stool-throned King, his face not fat
but swollen,

and sometimes our eyes meet
through cloud and darkness,
when the door swings open
to let another thirsty angel in or out,

for

in this chamber, the trip from Hell to Heaven
is measured only
by the length of a glass of dark ale
or a honey coloured shot of sour whiskey.

Outside

Angie skips back and forth
across the

RooibosIf under mulch she sang a rotten
wood-like note with quiver
Nostalgic for her days alive
Surely they could forgive her

Most days it's quiet (these days it's cold)
Her bones observe the soil
But Spring is pulsing warm and gold
Teasing memories to boil

Like heated milk the liquid smell
of evening drips in branches
A honeybee who suffocates
falls near her musing ashes

"Is it wine or light strawberry?"
She asks him of the sky
Though his dead ears don't hear her query
The answer is "Like dye"

Just under mulch I hear a rotten
wood-like note with quiver
Flushing young in days alive
Of course I can f

Cretaceous YardThe call came in at 1500 hours, exactly twenty minutes after Leviner returned from his break. He picked up the phone and listened.

"We'll be there right away, sir."

On the other side of the desk, his partner looked at him. "A homicide?"

"If only we could be so lucky," Leviner snorted, making Ellsie wince.

It was just another case of illegal dumping. Once the 'cera crew had cleared away the overgrowth of ferns, Leviner stalked his way in. "What do you see?" Ellsie called. Although the entrance to the small shed was large enough to easily accommodate Leviner, there was no way Ellsie was fitting inside. Not that it was her fault. Maiasaurs w

When God Sleeps.I. So it comes to this: pangea tearing itself raw
from our throats to pour into squares of newly open sky
where the stars grew aches and darkened lakewater
once bloomed into bruised winters. Somewhere
beyond the thick of snow, prayers are strung
on moon-rattled winds
and birds' teeth tear apart the poetry
of our hands. They will raise something beautiful
from these ruined words.

Continents shift slowly. They are
dirt-bound titans, these beasts;
rootless giants that mold themselves
to fit the vision we hold inside our heads. Oceans sigh
and their tides crawl ever upward.

II. Our shadows become umbilical
in certain light. Unknown children cas

my sacramenti come to you
a tin drum, bare-
legged and echoing,

to tell the dark
of a fettered glory,
the least part

of what i ought to
be.

mine is a god
of carrion: hungers,
impossibly unclean--i hate

with the skin
of my thighs, acres
of dull uncaring white;

the aching peace
of you, in sleep;
the dumb wax of me

chattering again
like animal's
teeth.

love, that heavy light,
still so unborn:
limbless, crashing
at my gates--

begging,
stormbound,
for exile.

i said, "it's alright, i stillTo know completely in yourself
that you have love inside of
you like a clamorous reservoir-

and to know the pressure of
inner space reluctant to
explode like light from
1941-

to know the only neck
your fingers will ever
articulate with is
that of a
bottle;

I will reside inside of your
boyishness like an ever
darkening sea ready to
coagulate like the
blood that stirs
within my guilt.

AntesWe are We, the Hunters of greatest knowledge and spell-blood. We use spell-words to hunt and to Change our bodies to rocks or trees. It has long been forbidden to Change to other Hunters or Hunted, or to kill others of We; yet it happened, and without it We would not be living.

This is that tale.

This is a tale from before the Fire, before the Dark, when the world was still green and the sky was still blue.

We had a Pack in the north, running free under the moon. The hunt was good. The Pack was strong and the prey was weak. The prey was a Hunter, a small running-Hunter; and so he turned, hissing spell-words, but he was claw- and tooth-stro

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.

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out of Gardenwhat sea
how it is welling your eyes a wet mess

what tide
where urchins of the ocean will spill to howl their elegy
where mermaids will turn widows
once brine has swallowed whole their sailor babes

stewarding the land instead
is why i never set sail with you

but to lay in gardens, oh…

a bed sheet rotten by the ultraviolet
and our laps full of stars

what black soil will pervert your knees there
where moonlight will mirror out from your teeth
to run fanatic toward cosmic space
after bathing in the space among us

where walking air pushes every dust

one of sun-dried butterflies
one of beaten rug with broom
one of hone

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memories, making glorious mud

by ~getbeneathmebird, Feb 29, 2008, 10:23:16 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

his memories are making a glorious mud

i.

it is a lumberjack's wife whose veins are budding twigs,
arms feeble as every dried branch to soak a shining star.

it is her who bares such troubled wrists for oven mitts,
so ardently delivers her hoggish assembly some hulking bird
whose body cavity is crammed tight to the sphincter
with a spiced bread. instinctively, she goes for the knife.
there is some raucous applause as she serrates

its oiled, peppered and flightless skin and on
into its succulent chest meat as every spectator
dreams of flying. her blade burrows farther in
and under enough to dredge up a pinkish marrow,

where she stops, lets the carver out
to start again from the beginning...

no lumberjack lives here,
no whiskered axe-man wakes to the rooster.
a daring cedar deadened him flat as toads who nap
beneath some winter stones. his brain was stapled to earth
with a mighty red branch and there have spread rumors.
the truth? his memories are making a glorious mud.

ii.

years ago, the wife recalls, someone invented a camera,
she says, just so that pictures of him living, at snarl, his foot upon
his victim's chest, could be placed in shoe boxes,
later made to drape each hallway
as posters to the past.

peach cobbler is served behind the bird and people embrace
each other for the first time in years. they begin to consider
what the names of their children mean. someone mentions olivia,
a name not one of them would think to name anyone,
symbolizes peace. olivia, of all names, they say.

there is a whispered conversation, some low giggles,
about the casket being constructed of wood.
what else could be done?
nothing.
isn't it hilarious, though?
a casket made of wood?
for a lumberjack!

iii.

i, i cannot believe he... where is my camera?

iv.

several drinks are served. see, an esophagus
becomes a straw when people celebrate death
and i know that trees will eventually fall
on those that fell them.

it is only sensible—we drink to forget

and a man that has killed a thousand trees
is meant to be buried by one.

memories, making glorious mudby ~getbeneathmebird

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

i was going to say a lot here, but now i don't feel like it.

Daily Deviation

Given 2011-01-03

Elegant and powerful in its simplicity, his memories are making a glorious mud by ~getbeneathmebird is worth a second read. And a third. ( Featured by `nycterent )

~substanceabuse Jan 10, 2013

God damn you for always making me feel like I should stop even trying to think I can write.

I miss you, and everyone, I feel so completely
out of touch.

~WrittenRevolt May 13, 2011

Hey, congratulations on being in $Moonbeam13's Pimps & Whoas!

You've been featured in #theWrittenRevolution – check it out here.

~RequiemsandReveries Jan 10, 2011

Wow, really powerful the way you did the line breaks and the italics all for emphasis. I like the ending. I think it's funny and ironic. Nice job

~fantasmorte Jan 3, 2011

wow, I love the imagery here. great job, well worth a dd

~kmotsko Jan 3, 2011 Hobbyist Photographer

You have quite a way with words. I like the irony and the little repetition you use here. Part i. in particular was really thought-provoking. Thanks for sharing this!

`AbCat Jan 3, 2011 Writer

I really like the stuffed bird analogy, not only does it give me a craving for kentucky fried bird, but it's a neat and image-laden way in to the funeral wake. The smartarse in me is fighting to mention that whole chicken/turkey/duck/ostrich is not usually served at these occasions, and it is also harbouring a thought that most coffins are made of wood; this strengthens the inanity of the chatter at the end of ii but takes away from the close.

Totally loving the last stanza of i. The title phrase is some really sick and disturbing gore, yessir.

~NonieR Jan 3, 2011

And are you overloaded with people correcting "It is her" to "It is she"?

~SymphonyInWilde Jan 3, 2011 Student Writer

Out of curiosity, and because loads of poets on here seem to make this choice: why no capitals and yet punctuation? And why do you split it into sections, "i," "ii," etc.? It's really popular on here right now and it's beyond me why - but in this piece it looks like it might mean something, so I thought I'd go ahead and ask.

Flagged as Spam

*Lit-Twitter Jan 3, 2011

Chirp, congrats on the DD, it's been twittered. [link]

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