Tag: free verse

old friend —
we walked this path before, remember?
back when the shadows that
stalked our footsteps
smiled,
and the darkness was not
swallowing,
but inviting?
do you remember
how the drip drip plunk
of water on rock stirred our stride,
how the skittering and swishing echoes
of creatures, be they mouse or mammoth-sized,
fed our hunger for
adventure?
or rather,
was it danger?
do you remember adrenaline
ripping through our limbs
as we tore ’round bends and boulders,
‘cross caverns and streams that seethed
with blind beasties
and swimming ghosts?
do you remember being
invincible,
young gods in our own
dark, unexplored domain —
yet subject to the vampires that
roosted above us and
at mercy of the
jagged, steep fall
below us?
old friend —
I remember combing through crystals
with you,
back when this path
was colored by youth.

a bittersweet
color
red is

the shade of passion
deep and drawn out as a kiss
yet fiery as the glint in your eye
the untold breath of innocence
sweet as a summer rose
and studded in thorns and sties
red as love
red as sin
red as want
red as warmth
a blush a beam a scar a slash
a goblet of wine
a brutal blood bath
a graze a grin a grief a gash
flames and fear and fondness and famine
and wanting to possess and living for desire
and gentle dear darlings and funeral pyres
and hate and healing and fury and feeling
and singing
and crying
and
living
and
dying
and

red
is
a
bittersweet
color

compartmentalized
pretty little brown boxes
straight walls and shallow stalls
same in shape
in style
in signature
just same

each brimming with diversities
trimmed into awkward unity
cardboard clipped by shears
rusty yet precise
angled and even
down to the last corner
same in fit
in mold
in make
just same

you sit here
and you stand there
no
get away
your box is over here
that’s right
good
now hold your chin high
arms tucked in tight
don’t let your elbows fly
same in stance
in structure
that’s right
just same

A foghorn cradles the morn.

It’s a forlorn sound,
the call of a bygone drifter-
a sound I recognize all too well.

Arches of water, black as bane,
rise high around me,
crumbling with thunder,
like sword against sword in
the raging war between sand and sea.
Fingers of foam bleed out from the battle,
clawing into obsidian sand that
glistens like hot coals.
I am small,
insignificant,
a grain of clay waiting to be washed by the surf,
swallowed by a sea of eternity.
My hair dances with the salt,
far freer than I will ever be,
and I am mocked
by that dark, watery line
that glimmers at the end up my fingertips,
unreachable.

It’s a heavy feeling,
the anchor between my ankles-
a feeling that’s weighed me long and well.

A foghorn cradles the morn.

I’ve been a bit inactive this past week, mostly due to the stress of school and exams and all those dismal dealings. I’m also absorbed by my current work-in-progress (just hit the halfway point!), so sorry for the lack of new content.

 I molded this poem from an old piece I had sitting around my documents. It’s a bit rough around the edges, so I might come back to it later to tweak it.

It’s all in the lighting, you know-
the contours of your jaw, the shadow beneath your nose,
the curves of your lashes and folds of your clothes-
it’s a set-up, a farce, an acted-out scene,
a play performed in the dark
but heard through the screen.

I could curse every creation that conceals and cloaks,
spit upon the powders and perfumes that choke;
I could laugh at the lighting, the biggest liar of all;
I could snicker it sideways with unabashed gall.

But then what, do you think, does that make me?
A hypocrite? A blind pharisee?
Because I don’t hate the lighting-
I hate symmetry.

It mocks me from afar, shapely and shining;
its proportionate perfection pleases to persist,
and I wonder to myself, in a manner of whining-
does absolute symmetry even exist?

Maybe it’s all in the lighting.