[x]

The Death of VenusIf there lived in the world a man
as rugged and as strong as I,
who could forbear with me yet go against,
who took to the black woods and the silver hills
mostly unafraid--
who savored salt and the lay of fur
with fingertips of dirt and weather,
whose lips rolled words like smoke, like fog-
I would creep into his arms in the prologue of the night,
air sweet with the scent of new-cut hay,
alive with the nightjar's call.

hypergraphiashe writes in the empty spaces between the words
between the world,
world-weary fingers and toes and pengrips, knives
letter-opener swords, typewriter machetes

arm-wrestling with fate and the universe on a piece of paper,
computer screens painting faces with colors
stained-glass hyphenated hue-tint-shade glory
she waits.

she is patient.
she's their patient, doctors and nurses
emergency room, operating room, clinical study
stethoscope children

they wish fervently to cut her open.
her insides will be beautiful, they say,
beautiful and pink and full of words.
unwords, she says.

she writes on her skin, on napkins and paper bags
i

Of Half-Filled WordsShe is not a flutterbird.
Her fingers are skittish,
her smile is not.
Do not fear that you will
drive it away.

Sadness is her fumbling limb.
It is unwanted, yet
necessary.

When it is January
she will tell you,
"I am still struggling.
And I am becoming so many people
all at once.

A conglomeration of beauty that
I have managed to mangle.
Please, do not be sad for me."

Sometimes her sorrow is
meant for you. But mostly her.

Those specks and spots
of ocean storm lulls
reveal her truths:
ones she does not want
to extract from herself.

Her heart is not a rabbit.

When it beats
faster, faster, faster,
you need not
run harder

Working ClassSmoking is a working class disease
They said; he smiled at this.
Lean in body and broad of mind
With shirtsleeves rolled,
A modern man's philosopher
Who stuttered over the words
Like his fingers did over her chassis
Detroit rolling iron beneath his palms
Grease and lubricant under the nails.
The cigarette cherry glows in the dark
Giving him a hard edge aura
The gloaming settling into the lines
Of his work-worn face

Fingerprints and BruisesYou can't feel it, love.
          the pain that grabs onto ribs,
          flutters within a birdcage set too close to delicate vessels
          that carry the heavy memories I don't want.
You can't solve it, dear.
          the fear that settles into creases of gray sidewalk mazes,
          scatters itself like missing puzzle pieces

Harvest MoonThree a.m. moonlight
across lazy dust motes; a
tree scrapes the window.
Your arm weighs on my hip like
whispered promises of love.

MapsRed and blue and green and black veins stretch
across pages, spider-webbing out across expanses,
across golden fields, green pastures,
and evergreen blanketed hillsides
that reach towards mountain tops.
The cardinal nor the rose can claim us.
We are more free than these boundaries insist upon,
free to break through their dashed lines;
it's all just an illusion, like so much else
between destinations and dreams.

We speak of wants and desires so freely
until we submit to being folded into creases,
never neatly, and always with a struggle
to open up and expand beyond outstretched arms.
Our seams will never touch like this, never

The Thin HoursI.

Those of us here in this skeleton time,
this time of the year when the nights are thin
and dark, and dark with anxiety, peeling
as layers of an oyster shell, brittle and effaced
and somehow iridescent.
When the bell tolls out the time the sound is thin
and reaches into fractured air and softly
seeks the spaces between the atoms and
misses the vital Os and CO2s in a lasting,
failed pinball. The bell sound dies in
some space between midnight and thereafter,
and each tock tock of slipping cogs is
a repeat and not a moving on.
The air is filled with each dull sound,
each tock a repeat and a repeat again. And the
slip betwee

Desolateif you are parched tonight,
the pale of your lips cracked
with thirst for that which
will not claim you;

if you hunger -
the deep and shallow collapsing
into slivered vibrations;

if blindness rejects you, says
no, watch now.
this is the way of it;

if you are breathing the world
into cinders, inhaling each poison
on purpose, striving
toward an apocalypse
because that is chaos
we can categorize,

then you may understand.

The SiegeThe first mile is always the easiest.
—Kyle Lynn to me, circa 2006

Tell that to the ghosts,
men soaked in sand and blood spray,
storming the shores of Normandy.

First Infantry's sprint through coastal
trenches, up bluffs, under ruptured drays.
Tell that to the ghosts

huddled in half-channeled holes,
a captain's dash through shrapnel, gray
storm on the shores of Normandy.

A German boy adrift in the compost
of his legs, his elbows' grand flail.
Tell that to the ghosts

ripped in four by mortars posted
over Omaha. Dawn's evenly keeled decay
storming the shores of Normandy

LightlostHardheaded autothought
puddles the nighttime sky
though bright Arcturus sinks
to meet Capella in the east.

The moon will be new,
wreaking disorder;
all indignant ballast
as you bend compromise
around its weakest point.

Stubborn Sagittarius
pours his final summer
from a steeply tilted spout.

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.

AppetitionFingers search, tearing at my side,
desperate to intertwine with my ribs,
to fill spaces where yours belong,
hoping to forget the emptiness between them.

Vertebrae align, my spine wants to arc,
aching to remember the torque of your ratcheting tongue,
the way it stirred emotions I didn't want,
spelling out my desires.

Toes curl, a fist as if to proclaim,
sheets can't contain these dreams that dare to speak.

But eyes are closed because there's nothing to see;
nothing to orbit around,
no distant galaxies to lose myself in,
no black eyeliner to focus on.

The clock ticks a patient melody,
while my heart slows,
and eyes open to a d

AmendsThey tell me you're dying,
when you're not etching poetry
into glass.

Words as fragile as the surface they're written on,
not nearly as transparent, though.
Dotted between the lines like Morse-code,
concealed in true poetic verse.

If you want to meet a poet,
just fall and one will rise.
The ink flows deep within the lines,
we just have to die to find it.

I guess I forgot to stop breathing.

Yet I see your plead.
They tell me I should make amends,
only the forgiveness you seek
doesn't come from me.

That boy is long gone now,
and with him
any debt you owed.

Still if it helps ease your passing
I'll say the words.
Li

leavetakingi.
the world is brighter where
dregs of strangers' revels remain --
i keep this half-light for my own.

ii.
i'll stay until the wind sighs a scotch-and-smoke
cliché, til the Muscadet's slipped from the lip
of my wayward
hello.(i know you're there before you do.)
iii.
your night is told in
patchouli-pulse wanders; mine,
in whorls of liqueur-breath. come
close and i'll find the warp
through the weft, the trails telling tales
in synaesthesia --
Platinum Blonde's been 'round and gone.

iv.
(-- closer, find syllables strewn
in an exhale's wake; stolen from my throat-
ful of careless farewells, spin and sway

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You're The OneI'm a girl who can't escape her heart.

I see you in the commercial about soldiers,
and my proud heart aches.

I see you while slipping on my Chucks,
and I smile remembering your style.

I see you when our shows come on,
and I so badly want to snuggle up against you,
sharing the laughs, the suspense, and the cuddles.

My cold limbs search for your warm body,
and the memory of contentment steals my sleep.

I'm a girl who doesn't want to escape you,
no matter how much my heart hurts for you.

I miss telling you how much I love you.
I miss the feel of your touch,
your tongue,
your body in line with mine.

And I'll live with my broken he

ChokingI'm choking on these words,
these feelings,
the pain it breeds.
I'm choking on the fear
you're pushing me out of your life,
or so it seems.

I'm choking on your love
as you reach down inside of me;
pulling back everything you gave,
your heart,
my life,
the best of me.

I'm choking on the silence,
the stale air,
the distance between you and me.
I'm choking on your promises,
the hope,
the dreams you stole from me.

My heart is crushed,
while suffocating lungs,
drown on lost possibilities.
A hollow chest,
gasps for breath,
watching you destroy everything.

So fuck the world.
Just a girl and a girl,
captured in a love affair

Last NightA start to an end:

We kissed with painful passion,
between tears that couldn't wash away the hurt.

I asked you to make love to me one last time,
knowing it wasn't possible, but you tried.

You kissed my breast and collapsed,
your lips shuddering against my skin.

Holding you close to quell your quiet crying,
I cried with you, as we cried as one, for the last time.

"It's okay," was all I could manage.
And it was. Somehow, it was all I needed.

Now that lasting memory haunts me like I need it to:

with an ache I can see,
a memory I can feel,
and salty tears I can swim in.

--
2/12/2011

A Place Once Called "Us"Deep inside my chest, my heart aches with the pressure of opposing forces exerted on it. Behind its velvety façade, this chamber of heat and passion fills with your love. Matching the pounding bass of the music you listen to on those difficult and daunting days, a ritual I have taken up myself to get outta my mind, I feel each thumping beat of my heart explode throughout my being. It reverberates along each pathway; pulsing, frantic. Escape is futile and your love is contained within, where it belongs.

But on the outside of those pulsing walls, a harsh environment that buzzes enthusiastically and twitche

_untitled_I'm lost upon the path to my future,
turned around and confused.
Thought I knew which way to go,
now each step I take, I fall and bruise.

I'm scared to make a decision.
Think maybe I'll stay right here.
But the problem with freezing time,
is that time still disappears.

I only want to live my life,
with a certain happiness.
But each time I think I'm achieving that,
the picture I paint seems such a mess.

So what am I to do?
Because the truth is I only want you.
Though, the fear of failure keeps pushing me back,
and I don't think I can just wait for the chaos to ensue.

--
1/11/2011

No CompromiseI remember when it used to be,
all I felt were feelings carefree.
Now all these pained eyes see,
is heartbreak tragedy awaiting me.

I don't want to keep fooling myself,
when every time you touch me I melt.
But the truth is difficult to ignore,
something unknown's washed upon our shore.

Against my heart I open frightened eyes,
while anxiety of unwelcome endings arise.
I contemplate orchestrating our goodbyes,
but I can't because my heart's bound and tied.

A symphony of tears you've let flow,
saying you love me while pushing me out the door.
Musical notes of "can't" and "want" mock and glow,
while each of us desperately try to le

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Confession

by *BeyondJen, Dec 5, 2011, 10:23:09 PM
Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

Lips met in clumsy haiku,
against each other, pressed,
the way the earth touches the sky,
soft and whimsy as the dusk.

Tongues painted passion-
          sunset colors,
          halcyon atmosphere, infused,
-upon every awaiting space offered.

Metaphors dotted the hallows of limbs and tasted like the seasons-
          a bursting and vibrant spring,
          a hot and passionate summer,
          an adventurous and teasing autumn,
          a cozy and comfortable winter,
-all at once.

Skin smelled like Frangipani, an offering-
          blossoming with intensity as the sun draped itself in twilight's shawl,
-and felt like a brick wall crumbling beneath my fingertips.

Alliteration as loud as the evening's stars,
and whispers of sunlight's warmth,
caught in-between our breaths, blanketed the two of us.

Diction tickled my lips,
dancing like raindrops, meandered
down my spine;
an elegy of the day's worry,
an epitaph to forgetful times.

I kissed a poet once-
          long and hard,
          soft and short,
-tapping out Morse code for my soul.

The arms of a thousand lovers harnessed in us, a couplet,
held the kiss 'til morning's light.

I kissed a poet once.

--
12/3/2011

^{Copyright © 2011 Jen Fowler
All Rights Reserved}

Confessionby *BeyondJen

Literature / Poetry / Romantic / General / Free Verse

^{Edit: Received a DLD on 1/12/2012! I'm flattered.
Edit: Received a DD 1/18/2012! Again, I'm flattered and honored!}

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-01-18

Confession by *BeyondJen ( Suggested by =LadyofGaerdon and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

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~Lady-Yume Mar 28, 2013 Writer

_{Your beautiful work has been featured here: [link]}

~schriftsteller Feb 15, 2013 Writer

This is a poem I wish I had written which is the highest praise I think a poet can give a poet. You wove everything so beautifully together-- intimate is the perfect word. I feel like a voyeur in a perfect moment.

~Piscesandthediamonds Aug 23, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Divine

This is beautiful!

*BeyondJen Aug 25, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you!

~JaySpeirs Jun 24, 2012

Really nice work.

*BeyondJen Aug 25, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thanks so much! (:

~Honor2Serve May 11, 2012 Professional Digital Artist

Wow very lovely!

*BeyondJen May 15, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Oh gosh! Thanks so much!

=DailyLitDeviations May 11, 2012

We have chosen your piece to be featured in a celebratory article here: [link] Congratulations on your Daily Deviation! Please be sure to read the other work featured and

the article to show your support.

Keep writing and keep creating.

*BeyondJen May 15, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I'm a few days late on this but I thank you all the same! I really appreciate the feature!

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