[x]

tree, fiddler crabIt took days to hollow out the soft parts
of the trunk, dig out the tree-flesh and sap,
polish the raw wood so that when he sat,
there would be no splinters. He carved his name
into the side, like a blessing, a declaration
of good fortune, and stowed his forest inside.

WaitingWe are still waiting for the thunder from the distant stars,
The echo of mortality,
the whispers of a storm, half-remembered,
in sepia-coloured hallways in buildings that smell like books.
Time gets slow in waiting,
ghosts are formed from the wanting,
taking shape in the spaces where sunlight,
or moonlight doesn't touch.
The stars shake from the vibration,
and the ghosts shimmer in anticipation,
but we can't hear your voice in the dead of the night.

silkwormthe morning brazen with
work, clambering from our beds
still pulling out of dreamtime
hypnosis; the shiver, backbone rumble
leaden work of unintellectual nature
how do you dream without success?
cream molding coffee groaning
jerking out of stasis
work a lifetime away
every monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday

all my diplomas are unwritten
murmuring lullabies of grand grab bags
sickening amounts of cash
spindles in the head of massive
debt consolidation one fucking big weight
chest exhaling invisible depressive
napalm of a meta-catastrophy
sunken into little corners
of an apartment disorder

little silk threads are fallin

the day we diedIt started when space imploded
you pulled me back, landed me on the moon,
so we could sit in the vacuum silence
and watch suns spiral down to hell.

You radiated, my minuscule flare,
your worn heat baked my bones brittle,
but it somehow made me stronger.

-

It ended when your eyes slid lateral,
fractured feelings leaking out in tears;
it was the first and last thing
I ever saw again.

This ridiculous happenstance,
simple in its impossibility,
was what broke us apart:

While solar light is beautiful,
it blinds when reflected by
automobile metal.

inhalethe cavalry have forgotten
their men in the mud
and i fear we are
running out of ammunition,
ambition,
i mean
we never had much
to begin with
we've not got the fire of a
thousand horses but maybe
two.
sometimes
two will do.

The Importance of Gold FlecksHereditary.

I learned the meaning of the word when I was young on a summer afternoon. Too hot to play outside, I was sitting with my dad on our blue couch with the small white polka dot fabric. In retrospect, it was probably a tacky piece of furniture, but love is unconditional when you are small, and I sure did love that couch. I remember my dad watching Winnie the Pooh with me every Saturday morning on its spotted cushions. That day, though, we had a conversation about eyes that I never forgot, and even then, its deeper meaning was not lost on me.

"Daddy, your eyes are green like a cat's," I said.
He smiled, and told me t

the hungry look...the hungry look,

the wolves
weaving through
and around
the gully of your throat like wraiths,

we can feel you rusting, lost one;

i know that drainpipes and fenders
begin to crackle after winter wet

and that there’s a touch of snow
in all of us,

but no one,
no one could hold you as tightly as you do,
your whole body, bloodless in this arrest,

and if you will not let your fetters show
i will show you
there’s a place for going, and you haven’t gone there yet;

where quantum particles, once in contact, can retain a connection
even when separated

where you
wander up to a stranger
with your shirt inside-out
and say &lsq

SomedayJane and Ellis floated parallel to one another across the vast canvas of space, eyeing the marble-like planets that slowly crept past them. Their skin reflected the starlight with a dull orange sheen. Ellis had called it 'planet gazing,' an activity he apparently thought suitable for a date.

"Do you see that one below us?" Ellis said, pointing to a round blue mass.

Jane shrugged.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asked. "I'll bet it's beautiful on the surface, too. Like the way the dust begins to spiral when a star is forming."

"Something like that," Jane said. She didn't understand his excitement. Planets were nothing interesting. They were just

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and WaitI don't know when we first went underground. I don't even know if it was one mass exodus, a swarm of mankind trickling through the earth's crust so vehement we carved our own caverns by the force of trampling feet, or whether it was a gradual process, perhaps even a repetitive one, a family here, a neighborhood there. For all I know, the echo of the damp subterranean machine has always reverberated off the cave walls, created long past by the Angels, who think of our well-being even while they shake their heads helplessly at our flaws.

They say that those who remained on the surface were raptured away in a great flash of light, like a millio

StillHe was waking or he was falling asleep, neither, both at once. This was a dream. This was the only thing he had ever known. It made no difference, he trailed his own body like ripples after a rock, smoothing and breaking and smoothing again.

His feet moved tirelessly, without thought. No longer human, only the Walk was real. For minutes, or for months; time was fluid and distant. Walk.

He broke and a low mountain pulled him forward. Smoothed. Broke into flatlands, into shallow water. Into the evening, into the weak dawn.

Smoothed, back into the soft yellow lights behind his eyes. Walk.

****

He was not alone. This thought came from his bo

The Substitution ParadigmThe Substitution Paradigm

Ramu came up to our table. Glaring at me, he said, “You either order something or get out.”
I glanced away from the threat, and turned to Raghav. A single drop of sweat was running down his brow. Ramu saw that too and identifying his prey, he sprung.

Swinging around, he faced Raghav, “Order something or get out.”

Then Ramu just stood there. It was not as if we had rehearsed it before hand, but he knew. He knew that my co-occupants generally folded in the first round. Only the stout made it to second level, but they too buckled under Ramu’s relentless gaze.

I always had a policy of n

cosmic background radiationThey say that the big bang was not an actual "bang". It was really just static. Static, like the interference of radio waves. Of course, the universe did not happen instantaneously. The big bang took 760,000 years to happen. 760,000 years of static, and bang, the universe happened.

I get myself together and actually go out. I go to see the New York Philharmonic perform the works of John Cage at Lincoln Center. I walk out during the second movement of 4'33". There's a very small difference between life and death. I walk home, my chin pulled down against my neck. I hum a constant note, providing myself with my own tinnitus.

I focus on this no

rootslike drowned men who have lost their
clothes and faces, they lay suspended
facing the sun and grinning without
eyes through the ripples of the water.

those passing by wonder how they got here,
these homeless men without fingers or toes
long spindly stumps twisting into lost roots:

reaching to the east, to the south,
to the homes they have forgotten.

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

on commuting with no hurrythere you go
lighting matches in the rain,
walking with two feet
that the gods gave you
because they cannot walk,

heading home as if with news
of some miraculous disaster,

counting the steps between yourself
and the clouds that disappeared
behind the grey veil of October.

thunder and lightning unfold
so close above

and you dream of a destination
somewhere in the south

where birds and stormy weather coexist.

behind you there is nothing,
running water will erase
every footprint you have left
on the dark sand of this metropolis.

before you there is distance,
enough to live your life
in a constant state of travel,

but not n

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Bus Stopher hand felt a mixture of old and new
tiny and overflowing
as time seemed to escape wistfully
walking hand in hand
my fingers wrapped gingerly around hers
my soul smiling
my heart aching
proud parent
of a girl growing up too fast

--
8/18/2011

Dear JenDear Jen,

I've been wanting to talk to you for quite awhile,
to get this to sink in.
To make you understand,
this life you think you living.

You blame it on your ADD.
You blame it on your troubles.
But the truth of the matter is,
you're only making those problems double.

You weren't moving on,
the way you thought you could.
But now that you realize the truth,
I really wish that you would.

So please stop dicking around,
and falling into patterns.
Get your life back on track,
that's what really matters.

Now I know I haven't said a thing,
you didn't already know.
But perhaps seeing this written out,
is what will help you grow

exaggeratedover lips parted slightly, letting it in,
its sweetness poured over my tongue,
then swirled around inside me;
dear lord, what have I begun?

words came out in blurs,
with my vision to match.
why couldn't I have knocked myself out,
so sentences wouldn't catch?

too fast in my hands, holding on tight,
my system slow to catch up, then BAM!
too much inside me, magic working fast,
another empty glass, turned this lion to a lamb.

--
8/15/2011

She Pulled"She said, 'Don't worry, I'm not going to pull a Keri on you.'"

Somewhere in the darkness I was surrounded by,
a light bulb lit up so bright it shattered,
and feelings I reserved for blissful times,
dissolved into the night sky.

So that's how it works,
when your girl's family doesn't approve--
When you've got the one,
There's nothing you won't do.

"She's the one for me, Jen.
I know it for sure.
None of her family will talk to her now.
'It's not easy but I chose you over them.' she assured."

And I'm left confused;
all this time I knew what we had was true.
If I really meant that much to you,
why is my ego and heart so bruised?

To Be FreeI wished the breeze to sweep me clean,
to banish the darkness,
and all that's unseen.

Spread my arms wide as a bird,
hoping to be baptized,
in every meaning of the word.

I willed it to be lost,
taken away on the wind,
stripped at any cost.

I was willing to sacrifice, willing to hurt,
willing to bare myself naked,
and present myself as your dessert.

But it was me that made these things wrong,
it was I that kept my wounds fresh,
stringing myself along.

The last days I set my eyes on you,
grey halo of death you'd found,
not realizing it was you in that queue.

Death brought cruel relief,
false liberation on a breeze,
drowning

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Plow

by *BeyondJen, Jan 20, 2012, 1:44:14 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

It's finally snowing again,
blankets of peace falling
with a freshness that lacks innocence.

Nearly forgotten, they're here as expected,
clearing the streets,
trying to push aside all the worry
that makes things unsafe, but

the steel mouth askew grates against my heart;
its thick bass scrape pushing more than piles of white aside,
it pushes my blood aside too,
piling it up in the corner of this pumping vessel that falters,
ice-caked and bitten, stiffened,
and keeps faltering,
again,
and again,
and again,
until the air is silent
and the street no longer shivers in torture.

The only evidence is the blanket of white
that keeps falling,
like fluffy stuffing that's been yanked out.

All is silent,
except the fond memories that peel away
from my heart in little shreds,
and the plows, scraping fresh wounds again.

--
^{1/20/2012, 1/22/2012

Copyright © 2012 Jen Fowler
All Rights Reserved}

Plowby *BeyondJen

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

12/28/2012: I'm honored to have had this featured as a DD. Thanks so much to ^NicSwaner for suggesting and featuring it.

12/22/2012: The wonderful =SilverInkblot recorded a reading of my lil' ol' poem and posted it on the Elocutionists' WordPress site, as well as on #Elocutionists. Go check out the group!

From the "Winter was [never] our season" file.

^{This was our season
and you scraped it clear.
I like the summers better again.}

^{Edit 1/20/2012: Tweaked a few lines, adding a lil' something}
^{Edit 1/22/2012: Removed the hokey parts and added the tiniest bit more. It feels complete now.}

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-12-28

A phenomenal poem with a chilling metaphor. Plow is by ~BeyondJen ( Featured by ^NicSwaner )

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~alexcinderpelt Feb 21, 2013

huh true story stupid city government and their snow plows always messing up the perfect snow day. it's good reminds me of something i wrote a while back

~ZombieToofer Dec 29, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Lovely. Really captures that loneliness of roadways completely buried beneath a big snowstorm.

*BeyondJen Dec 30, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you.

~xBehindBlueEyes Dec 28, 2012 Student Traditional Artist

Wonderfully written. Definitely deserved the DD

*BeyondJen Dec 28, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thanks so much! I really appreciate that!

=SilverInkblot Dec 28, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Also, featured in my showcase of 100 pieces of 2012 literature: [link]

*BeyondJen Dec 28, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

How much more wonderful can you be?!
I'll be sure to check that out soon! Thank youuuu!

~Karinta Dec 28, 2012 Student General Artist

It is complete now... and perfect. It's almost like prose in that it's very readable, and moves you onward with every word, but has the nuances and meter of poetry.

*BeyondJen Dec 28, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Oh gosh, that's a lovely comment. Thank you so much for that. I truly appreciate it.

~Karinta Dec 29, 2012 Student General Artist

Awww. You're very welcome. And, well, it's true!

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