[x]

The Fourth Wishi.
She's an ocean-eyed dreamer who could fit the skies of a thousand worlds into her mayfly heart. She's got an angel face and a nasty little smile, and she knows all the secrets in her world. All she wants is to carry on dreaming, so she wishes for dragonfly wings and bottled summer nights – and sleep that doesn't have to end. That insidious smile lingers, and she won't surrender her dreams even when her life support stumbles and dies.

ii.
He's a romantic with an acoustic soul and steel string scars on his fingertips. He's saving his lovesongs for a perfect girl with summer rolling off her skin and winter in her eyes, and he's never

addictionthere was a time
when your baby blue eyes
weren't sewn in place
by red spider-legs;
when your hands and tongue weren't
cracked and shaking
with the frantic beating of your
caged-animal heart.
and there was a time--
you can barely remember--
when your twisted red hair
wasn't all spackled down
with honest-to-god sweat and blood.
your fingers weren't
bitten down to the knuckles
and the sheets weren't dry with vomit.
so?
was there ever a time
when you didn't want this?
the toxic liquid snake
carving tunnels through your veins;
making clouds in your eyes?
the smell of burning metal?
the black, cloying claws
at the back of

Forget"I wanted you to be real."

She was tree leaves glistening with fresh summer rain and the sound of crumbling, soft dirt. She smelled like cherries and secrets and cotton t-shirts. And when she looked at him, he felt like he could make things work.
Because if you want something bad enough, that should be enough.
It's never enough.

"I wanted you to see me."

He was charming yet uncomfortably real, a harbinger of truth and silence in the face of all of the glittering, fluttering nonsense of day-to-day relations. He spoke like a poet, in stanzas and iambic pentameter. And when she held his hand, she felt like she had never known a better frien

Belonging.crushed antlers and pierced wings
your palms dirtied over my spine

you sat on the hood of my car
a cigarette trapped between your teeth
and i turned on my windshield wipers
as i pulled out of park
and you smirked

'he hurt you.'
'so did everyone else.'
'but not like he did.'

your gaze lingers on my heart without sadness.

my nails in your wrist
and the way you laugh on the couch

i sat on the edge of your bed
a pencil soft behind your ear
and you turned on jazz music
as you pulled out my notebook
and i smirked

'fuck.'

and your brilliant smile wakes mine still.

Memories of You(I)

Summer's heat clung to us
like guilty secrets,
so at odds with our childish delight.
We never kept track of the time,
but we knew that we'd been out too long
when our heavy limbs were patterned
with grass and freckles.

I told you that freckles were sun kisses,
and you said that you weren't the jealous type,
but you didn't act like it, did you?
(II)

We combined good posture with slouchy clothes
and found comfort in straight-backed iron chairs.
We rode public buses until midnight
and picked our favourite cafés
based on the songs they played,
thinking that music and food were equal
to our ideas of lo

Sticks and bonesshe

is fragility.
There are snowflakes
in her eyes;

she's the type of girl
who keeps her secrets
between the ridges
of her vertebrae,
threaded amongst

the nerves. One
gasp after another,
buttercup-
petal skin is

s t r e t c h e d
over her (sparrow's)
skeleton.

[she couldn't bring herself to
fly.]

Phenomenatricsi. Boy meets girl.
{and it's not love but it isn't science either, it's cicada song alchemy at a summer storm epicentre. It's skirls of brittle-bright hummingbird laughter; it's midnight fairground phosphorescence and ether-flavoured ferris-wheel thrills.}

ii. He obviously worships her, and she's got it just as bad.
{and maybe that's true, but it's so much more than their condescending venus flytrap smiles will ever understand. It's solstice prayers by touch and unsanctioned bareskin baptisms in lakes of ink and glowflies.}

iii. It's like they can read each other's minds.
{it's not like that at all. She reads riptide chronicles in t

paper promises.paper birds and paper promises
both fly away some time.
breaking glass cages.
and breaking my stone heart.

please be careful.

because my ribs are cracking and my hair is fraying
because i don't like to be left alone.
when my lips are trying because my arms stop holding
i'm as fragile as my bones.

the water crashes around me
and flows in through my ears
and my skull fills up with sea.
and out come all my fears.

crying girl she makes me obvious.
words walk their legs away.
crushing small pieces .
taking all my thoughts apart

cigarette smoke rises and coils
and blocks your face from me.
but anyone can look at us.
and see

an elegythe last time I saw you was soaked in summer and
sweat: four-square and hop-scotch abandoned on the
blacktop.

we wearied too quickly of childhood games.

your good-bye was drenched in distraction
and heat,
a long drawn-out lullaby
withering on unsteady wings.

I tried to say it simply, but my poetry got in the way.

I tried to evolve into the dust between your
eyelashes,
so that maybe a part of you would come to be
encased within my ribs.

I never could let go.

your smile faltered into the most beautiful
decay
I have ever known.

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry

and now that summer has
faded
into an elegiac autumn,
I still cannot

Wind In Your HairDancing in the cool grass on a moonlit night
With the howling wind in your hair,
Twirling, shining in the silver light,
Though the chill bites we do not care.
Such moments of revelry and joyous sight.
Watching the fast paced dance unaware
Of the world around, no thought of worry or plight.
Smoke and embers high in the air,
The reddest fire can only excite.
Such moments are so rare,
To lose yourself from what is wrong and right.
To continually dance without a care.
To give yourself up to the joy of the night.
Others can only sit and stare.
A hedonistic rite.

november.the day i was born was not a day of sparkling stars and soft-spoken lullabies, of rose-colored memories and warm autumn hearts. time did not stand still, but instead slipped between shrill cries and bitter words. but i would not know; i was not there. i cannot remember my first breath, and i cannot remember what i saw the first time i opened my eyes. but perhaps i never really learned to breathe – perhaps my eyes never opened after all.

when i turned five, i discovered the art of being alone.
i learned that there is no celebration song when you are twenty-three hundred miles from where you belong and your family has fluttered off into

starcrossedand we sailed

in sinking ships

on borrowed tides

'neath starless skies

[i wonder, love,
why we never made it home.]

Ancient Americanto my lips the stars.
chanting at the shore
breathing becomes secondary to rhythm

as pulse meets pulse,
wave and heart,

tones of night
throat-deep
moon-thrown

music
like sadness
turned to ecstasy

little blossoms
of lit blackness

studding dance
over sand and water,

spheres
collapse
and emerge;

we are still
being born.

december in the woodsand the pinecones
like a poverty of redness
unfurl in scales.

snow falls
in piano-shaped
flourishes
that surpass
music.

the cones hang like imperfect wooden fish
from limp green limbs,
winter-ridden, blow-glazed,

reminding me
of the separation
between tree and forest,

between
life
of decades
and the life
of dreams.

we have brought the ashes
and the urn,
of a shape
compensating with color and line
for holding less life
than the comical unmeted seedpods
of evergreens.

in the woods
the silence of birds
is all we think about.

the music is outside the season.
it is a wave,
a spine made of smoke
and light;

and

sepia-soakedearly morning sunshine,
bug bitten knees,
snapshot of a
boy and a girl.
a summer breeze
tangles around their
shoes, scuffing the
pavement as
paralysis slides
down numb limbs.
she aches to hold him,
let her fear rush away
on the tide of her
affection, but she cannot
bring herself to even
raise her dazed eyes.
messy hair and a crooked smile,
she let happiness
rush right on by.

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Submitted: August 15, 2010
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Heartland

by ~requiem-san, Aug 15, 2010, 1:11:55 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

_{tonight I will fall
asleep in the vineyard while
my hair is still damp
from kissing you in
the river.

The Rhine: 'I want to
swim down the center of it
and not know if the
water I'm drinking is französisch
or allemande'
you stated.

I don't write about
you to stop from glorifying you.
the way you laugh
when my hands start shaking.

I tell you how fond I am of empires.

I want you to baptize
me king in the red and white
wines of the coronation fountain.

we don't have a language.

we are a language.

'knight' is a synonym
for 'always drowning'

and when I come to
bed I breathe in wheat
instead of grapes from you.

tonight I will fall
asleep in the vineyard while
my hair is still damp
from kissing you in
the river
to the gentle thrum of
the sparrows under my
nails.}

Heartlandby ~requiem-san

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

_{For the Project Evolution contest. Prompt was 'world fusion'.

Any prompt writing I do you can never tell what the prompt was... Ah well...}

*beeinthebottle Sep 23, 2010 Writer

This piece is brilliant; totally original. And that's tough considering how many "love poems" have been written...and continue to be written. I especially love the line: " 'I want to / swim down the center of it / and not know if the water I'm drinking is französisch / or allemande'. " French for "German" and German for "French" -- perfect in this context. Great work.

~requiem-san Oct 10, 2010

Ah, I'm sorry its taken me so long to reply to this. But thank you very much for the kind words. I think 'original' is the most flattering comment a writer can receive.

*beeinthebottle Oct 10, 2010 Writer

No problem as far as timing.

Lovely work.

~TheDownpour Sep 23, 2010

Very captivating, although I'd agree with your artist comments that it's hard to see the influence of the prompt - that's not necessarily a criticism, it does make your interpretation very original. Good work, and good luck

~requiem-san Sep 23, 2010

Thank you~

~TheDownpour Sep 23, 2010

You're welcome

~ArchangelAki Sep 23, 2010

This poem is currently up for voting. The session will end Sept 25th. Best of luck to you [=

~PlayinTheDead Sep 15, 2010

'I want to
swim down the center of it
and not know if the
water I'm drinking is französisch
or allemande'
This is by far one of the most beautiful descriptions of a swim I've ever read. Also, for all that I have no idea what the "world fusion" prompt was about, I think the poem does convey this very feeling of each thing flowing into another - languages, border waters, the lovers. Not sure I'm making any sense, but find it lovely nonetheless

~requiem-san Sep 15, 2010

You make perfect sense and you are far too kind~

And thank you once again for the fave.

The 'world fusion' prompt is from a multi-literary group contest that's currently being held and that I technically wrote the piece for.

~PlayinTheDead Sep 16, 2010

Ohh, that explains it! Best of luck with the contest then

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