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The First Time I Cried...The First Time I Cried While Reading Poetry

You asked if a soul can ache,
watched the tears slide toward
the hollow place in our bed.

I wondered if little girls in Thailand
sleeping in servitude and blameless sin
believe God loves them.

You reached across the sheets,
pressed the pad of your left thumb into my hip,
and impaled miracles on dull words:

"look at us, all agony and grace."

Then rolled away, content to sleep
breathing synced to my sobs.
I kissed your palms, closed my eyes

knew love to be a rabid dog.

The first time I cried
while reading a poem,
you smiled and asked

"does the world make more sense
when it's blurry?

I Took the Blue BusYou didn't put the phone back, left your pills on the table
I went thirty minutes without thinking of her
You made cookies I didn't eat, watched movies I didn't see
I went thirty minutes without thinking of her
You talked, then you didn't, then you talked some more
I went thirty minutes without thinking of her

You took the elevator, she took the stairway to the stars
I went thirty minutes without thinking of her
You swept out memories, wrote a manuscript of dreams
I went thirty minutes without thinking of her
I had coffee and cigarettes alone at four AM
I went thirty minutes without thinking of her

She took the stairway to the stars
I took

To My Younger SelfDear Little Lili,

Never try to cut your own hair. God or genetics or the fates (whatever we'll eventually prefer) blessed us with many skills, but coordination is not one of them. For this reason avoid any sport that requires contact with others. You'll save a few broken bones.

Read everything. Books will be better friends to you than most people, but that is because they are humanity distilled - all of the beauty and none of the beast. Love them accordingly.

Touch the barbs of velvet-petal roses before you inhale their perfume. Get used to the way blood wells, then rolls across the ridges in your skin. Emotions are not so different. You c

May you find silence in every stormReflection is a clingy whore, and September
is an incoherent borderline who flees
courageously from permanent stories.
I have not forgotten how to suck
the charcoal clouds out of the sky,
how to dream fevers out of lullaby,
or how to force the synapses of spirits.
On the way home, I stopped to consider the music of the rustling fountain
and the leaves shooting water in the breeze.

And I knew love by the pitch of the owl's hoot,
I knew soul by the order of the hornet's stripe.

They wanted an apology from her.
Shannon, they said, you broke the fucking universe.
And before I could stop twitching electricity
from spitting neutrinos

LivingSudden and, well, supernatural,
you're with me when light's

with me; you're lying on the grass
with me in August—look, the morning

rises from the pages of the book
you lent me, wooden senryu, tanka

bound by string so sweet, a relic,
so delicate: your mouth forms copper words

that melt your eyes that pull my hands
out of my wrists that take them

that speak the language of silence;
I can barely hear your voice over the crickets,

over the river that runs through spiderwebs
we watch the patterns tear the water clear

I know you now, so let the stars vaporize
into the morning air.

Bring me alive.
Our footprints, I remember, gl

luhv --verbAs a small child, love was not a word bound by definition. Love was not a word at all. It was my father sitting beside my bed, and our nightly exchange:

"Papa, read me a bedtime story."

"Alright," he replied, opening his hands like a book. He pretended to scan the contents of his palm. My face split into a grin, knowing the next words before they came. "Once upon a time," he began, his tenor voice filled with drama. Already I was giggling. Then he closed his hands with a soft clap. "The end!"

"No!" I squealed. "A real story, Papa!"

Afterward, Papa pressed his whiskery face to my forehead, whispered the same prayer he whispered over all hi

7.34mmA simple measurement
can make a man
lose himself; a blurring, no more
than a grainy smudge

a scant 7.34mm long
this rice-grain, seven weeks old
with one hundred and twenty nine
heartbeats per minute

—all this, from a mere sesame-seed of a heart

cyclic motioni. every sad story starts with love.

ii. there is you sprawled across the bed
with your ankles tangled in cotton covers
and the golden waves of sunlight
breaking themselves through fissured glass
to drip into your hair like bright honey,
your hands reaching upward
as if they were young birds waiting on wings.

you wept for those flightless, wet-beaked children
anchored helplessly to your wrists
but their hearts were not as weak
as the foreign fist beating in your chest. they collapsed
and only left behind
the impressions of dying constellations
they had scratched beneath your eyelids.

iii. at dusk i watched the night take you in waves, glo

Water For TeaHe was glossy with sweat,
he was streaked brown.
He was unexpected.
Something simmered on the stove-
I turned it down for he was there,
in the half-light by the door;
I think it was water for tea.
The air went thick and fathom blue.
There were fingers in dark curls,
there was wet and bubbling warm,
there was bread with butter for tea.
He grew like mystery, like turgid weather.
I drank him like hope, he left pearls on my lips.
There were fingers in dark curls,
there was water for tea.

The Farmers SonWe sat sipping grappa as the storm clouds rolled in from the ridges
like the smoke from some great unseen inferno,
the wood walls and shingles of the house complained to us
in low groans,
of the wind coming up hard, through the valley,

and there was flickering light from a candle,
and she told me how light from a prism dissects into different colours that correspond
in some way to our bodies and that all of life was a rhythm

and I believed that part,

and I believed there were stars beyond the sight of man on any grey day
and that they might hold some greater secret than prisms or rhythms
or any question a farmers son could ever

Seasons of RealityWhen I was young
we based wishes
on catching leaves torn
from their branches,
falling.
It seemed that
strong winds and
autumn afternoons
were more reliable
than the souls of falling stars.
Stardust never graced our town.
We were the ordinary children
whose pants were too short
and whose noses always ran.
Like the April buds we had seen
before October was a glimmer
in our minds,
we would outgrow our lives
on the tree that bore us,
and when we turned,
we longed to throw ourselves
from the branches of the neighborhood
and drift further than our dreams
could carry us.
Some will be caught
in the child-like palms of fate

ersatzyour wake is the warm
languid whorl of a sachet-latté
morning after,
gone when six a.m. rain swirls
pavement scents of whiskeysmoke
& a careless caress away
under cinnamon-sugar grace --
and it was only ever this:
you were lovely
by trembled halflight, when you almost had
my summer-boy's eyes.

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Submitted: August 1, 2011
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Birth of Poetry

by `Kneeling-Glory, Aug 1, 2011, 3:30:27 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I tangled my fingers in the curls of the universe,
pulled. The earth fell out: round, warm, spinning.

Awkward and shy, she wondered how she got here; how
a rock that got wet and grew moss could be significant.

So I scooped her up in my fingers, breathed her scent:

(lilies and oceans and ozone and forests and fish and birds
and whales and rain and the empty elegance in wolf howls)

death and life. I found chaos
and knew beauty.

Birth of Poetryby `Kneeling-Glory

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Just an idea that popped into my head while I was trying to imagine what poetry would think if it were a person.

Updated - changed some punctuation. Too many commas at first.

love 1 1

~~joy 0 0~~

wow 1 1

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

=Sammur-amat Nov 10, 2012 General Artist

My goodness miss Lili!

`Kneeling-Glory Nov 30, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

=Sammur-amat Nov 30, 2012 General Artist

=awaicu Aug 24, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Why didn't I see this before? It's so elegant in style and flows so beautifully! You know, it almost speaks to me as an invocation of sorts, as if you're talking about of all the things in this world that inspire your writing! That's at least how I interpret it. . C:
But thank you for sharing this wonderful piece of literature, you certainly have a way with words! <3

`Kneeling-Glory Aug 27, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I guess I sort of was. Existence itself inspires a lot of what I write.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

=awaicu Aug 27, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Yes, existence is quite a stunning thing. . It's amazing how fragile and unlikely life is, and yet it exists anyway. You're welcome, I am always interested in people's literature! I have a soft spot for amazing writing <333

`Kneeling-Glory Sep 9, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Well then if you haven't been introduced, I highly recommend the writing of `YouInventedMe, *brassteeth, `queenhrosie, and =SilverInkblot...to get you started.

=awaicu Sep 11, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

Wow, thank you so so much for showing me all of these amazing writers! Of course, I haven't gotten the chance to read all of their works yet, but wow, I just skimmed a few and they are so awesome! I will be watching all of them for more awesomesauce writing

`Kneeling-Glory Sep 12, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Happy to spread the great writing!

*Selunia Aug 21, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Very beautiful

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Birth of Poetryby `Kneeling-Glory

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