[x]

Cochineal and Beetle WingsI don’t love you
anymore.

I was going to lead up to this. Maybe claim
there was something caught in my throat
about beetle wings, cochineal – you know,
they make that stuff out of flight. Lipstick, I mean.
I mean the truth is

I can only smile like an inferno because
something else isn’t going to be flying away.
And I was going to say I’m sorry but I’m not.

I was going to lie to you like you needed me to,
but pray tell me how to grace through three weeks I hoped
for some kind(ness) of hurricane, so we could recalculate
in the aftermath, and nobody would blame me then for judging
that we came up empty.

Languid Epiphanymy blue-hearted lady,
why?

why let Spring
slip through your body;
to ricochet towards the end
of gravitation for dreams
to enter your lungs?

why let yourself
be battered by autumn rain;
so that the stars could
feast on what was left of you
and your dispassionate body?

why let your bones scatter
the earth; to give birth to
fireweeds and wildflowers
while the moss perforates
your marrows like river stones?

why let gods rattle
the moons at your ankles;
for the sun to scoop your spine
and drown your skin in fire?

why let your heart break loose
from your ribcage?

why run away from a house
sewn together by ancestral teeth
and blood?
a ho

Life and street corners.People I could have kissed
or killed bump elbows with loose change
and bill receipts in the pockets
of the sweater you left last
Spring.

I want to drown myself
in love for you.

PaletteThe painted lady stands,
watercoloured
and waiting for a cab.

DrizzlingThe grey glaze of a
pre-dawn chorus —
blackbirds,
and an overcast aubade.

dissipation
sometimes she wanted to tear the skin off her arms and dip the bared bones under water
and see if they still swelled and grew into logs rather than the twigs she craved.
it was as if there were little sandbags under the surface and they were delicately lined
and the water would sink inside them and grow and bulge and drag her under
(sometimes she does, sometimes she considers herself the bird in the bush:
dewy feathers doing nothing but chilling her to the bone; and she floats, head hung,
waiting for the currents to make her less than the nothing she considers herself to be)
but the weight is invisible, and despite its insistence
and the grey she feels all over, her feet won’t reach the bottom;
her toes are the only thing losing feeling--
she painted them red. cherry red like summer’s lovechild even though winter
had already found its home beneath her bed; red and quiet and refined like
the paper women she’d seen in magazines. she wore spring blouses with flowe

00I drink the sea
and drown

MizpahThe crying wind
brings a

deluge:

lost
and blurred at
the edges,
you

become

a
whisper.

Mermaid Bones - a beat poemTRIGGER WARNING: Sexual assault and eating disorders

Mermaid Bones - a beat poem.

I'm hiding an ocean of teeth under my scales
it's in the forbidden taste of salt on my tongue
the weight of the measuring tape,
of those numbers pushing bubbles through my blood and through my gums.
It's written on the circumference of my waist.
In the words cursing the ghost ship of my shape being plundered against my will.
It's spoken by the fish telling me that I have no right to fill my gills with oxygen
underneath a sea bed of regret laid heavy with the shape of a tail.
You are a whale they said
and they made me push my bones out to see the fish bones t

Wildflowers, Imperfect BirdsI breathed your name like wildflowers under vast broken skies, in wide-open spaces. The wind blowing through them spoke of dew and dirt and petrichor, and there was sunlight on the ground like a mosaic patterned by god's own hands.

I said it like a monarch claiming new land: a declaration, a butterfly breath over old earth; like it was coffee on a warm morning with the sun in my eyes, interlacing with my lashes; like it was a dream; like it was a prayer like it was a miracle wrought of air and bone and body: you, in, out, in, out, in and in and in.

I cried it out like an earthquake between lip and lip, continents that don't quite fit: your

For the love of birdsThree little birds pitch on my doorstep.
I keep them in a jar
because
nothing I have is truly mine.

I am only the lonely,
waiting for it to come back to me.

001 i am a whirlwind of
bruised knees
(purple)

an aching heart
(dark blue)

twisted guts
(red)

&
a regret that could
crumble mountains.
(green-green-green)

seductressthe ladders in my stockings
the ladders in your spine
I'm sick of all this talking
all your words are mine

you've got nothing to sell me
that I wouldn't steal
so won’t you try to tell me
just what it is you feel?

because
the flesh is weak
the flesh is strong
the mind is dead
when flesh is gone

the stitches in my dresses
the stitches in your side
my anatomy impresses
and there’s nothing you can hide

so many people sell their hearts
to purchase a cheap thrill
torn open, torn apart
this is not a drill

no
the flesh is weak
the flesh is strong
the mind is dead
when flesh is gone
mind over matter
over mind
it doesn't matter
what yo

SurrealismThree a.m., and
God is in my bathtub

again—
sipping whiskey

hallelujahs;
backlit by

a freshwater moon
in the mother-of-pearl sky.

Always hereInvisible footprints, soundless breath, unseen shadow.
One heartbeat, one life, two souls.

Cold dark sorrow fills me, but your never-dying love embraces me, protects me.
My heart keeps you near, my memories keeps you alive,
so you will never leave me, never abandon me.

I’ll never walk alone
I can’t
I won’t

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WinterbleederCurled around alpine legs and caught
within hollows and inclines of pale skin,
she carries her endless winter always.

It settles upon frosted shoulders and
caps heavy-lidded eyes, clinging close to
the darkness of each snow-flecked breath;
lingering above cracked lips and the
remnants of a long forgotten warmth.

But darling, don't we deserve each other?

(She'd been Spring's child before Winter's whispers.)

Stormingi.    Summer rain fingers
      quietly trickle down cheek
      bones and window panes.

ii.   Eyes darken into
      shadows until morning light;
      the tempest remains.

Lion HeartIt is building up deep within her fragile body like a heaving monsoon forming over the dry, cracked, heavy heat of an African savannah; an unforgiving and all-consuming storm desperately willing to drown out its less than fleeting welcome. Flickering with ceaseless coils of skin-searing energy like a grey-faced fugitive's adrenaline stricken heartbeat, it is not a bringer of life, but a threat to it—and even the most reckless are hardwired to take flight in the face of such a colossal and uncompromising foe.

Beyond these white-washed walls, the world would have her believe that she is brave, a lioness, an exception confronted

FeatheredHer angel wing hair,
splayed across her back, will catch
her as she falls (flies).

The BluesMy darling,
ghost your fingers across
those black and white bones;
then tear them out—
you won't need them
anymore.

(There's no need for sheet music here,
when we have your semibreve breaths.)

My darling,
that piano is as barren as
the one who sits before it,
and doesn't play.

SolsticeWhen winter beckons with glacial fingers
and your deciduous bones are struggling to
cling to an evergreen existence,

remember me.

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Serenissima

by *Concora, Feb 28, 2013, 10:58:52 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

Slumbering suns
take a midmorning nap;
alleyways bright with
golden ladies,

their smiles canal-deep.
Nightfall brings guides:
stone sighs and dead light,
(never so alive).

Serenissimaby *Concora

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

©2013 *Concora

One of my great loves, Venice.

-

Featured:
Here by `dreamsinstatic
Here by *imaginative-lioness
Here by ~MrSarcasticBeast
Here by *imaginative-lioness

Thank you so much!

*Leonizart Mar 20, 2013 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Never been out of Oz, Concora Paint the world in words for us....

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*Concora Mar 20, 2013 Writer

I will try my best.

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~PlayinTheDead Mar 13, 2013

I'm one of those few, crazy people who don't really like Venice all that much, but I do like the imagery in this poem a lot: particular love for the break between the stanzas, it makes the transition flow as natural as a sunset.

Reply

*Concora Mar 13, 2013 Writer

Ah, a brave confession!

Thank you, though, for such a lovely comment. I'm glad you enjoyed this!

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~DoveThunder Mar 11, 2013

...wow. And that is all. Save that you snatched my breath right out of my chest.

Reply

*Concora Mar 13, 2013 Writer

Oh.

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`vespera Mar 11, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I love the title you picked (instead of "Venice")

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*Concora Mar 11, 2013 Writer

Thank you.

Reply

*imaginative-lioness Mar 5, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I have featured this piece in my journal: [link]

♥!

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*Concora Mar 6, 2013 Writer

!

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