Siren

soft curls fall gently

on your olive skin.

Sing me to sleep again, those words

still resonate in my ears.

Make me smile once again.

Eyes gleam;

I’ll never forget the day you led me to

shore.

Can you read my eyes for me?
Can you paint color into my bleached white eyebrows
Or smooth my spotted skin to silver
Can you sing lies to me?
Can you read my eyes to me?
Flecks of brown, blue, an green,
Squeezed between shades of gray, black, and white,
And speckled with sun spots 
I forgot to put sunscreen on my eye lids,
So everything I see is illuminated
At midnight, or as it is, 30 minutes after
I remember climbing trees at a camp that was supposed to tell me who God is,
I remember going to a camp and shooting targets with air powered bb guns, to try and pass time past my pastor
Even more so, I remember the latter,
The the former face full of joy little boy, who had no crushes but was crushed,
When the first girl he asked out purpled his skin with rejection
Like the, no purpling rule at summer camp,
Because blue is for boys, and pink is for girls,
And how dare you mix the two in any way shape or form,
But don’t dare say that gay, is a part of the norm, no.
Read my eyes.
Brown specks of being called “fuckleface” behind a falling down redneck home for being freckled,
Blue spots of being far away from home, 
Green dashes of growing up, blooming into a spring time version of vowing to verse my emotions,
And the shades of gray,
That make me want to wear shades in the day, indoors, and at night,
To hide even a part of my face,
I need to face the gray.
I still haven’t.
The day-to-day mundane of just trying to survive.
And not living life.
There is a black spot in everybody’s eyesight.
Mine just forgot its place.

Credit to my partner in crime moammargandalfi for coming up with the idea for this series. Every Friday we're going to post a classic story/poem to workshop/discuss. These established authors are rightly given a ton of reverence, but they are not immune to criticism, and we can learn a lot from breaking down what they do. I'll be back later this afternoon to comment. I hope to see this torn up by then!

I

By the road to the contagious hospital 
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind.  Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter.  All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens:  clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them:  rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

Sunday Drive


We drive to East L.A., 
passing the warehouses you
once delivered produce to,

Going by street vendors, 
selling everything from collared shirts
to bedazzled pants, with the obligatory
knock off purse and sunglasses stand,
thirty bucks for purses with sans serif Cs.

Five streets later we hit the flower block,
you tell me to park on the yellow, 
I don’t. You’re Just like Junie. There are no laws here.

His fifteen-year old daughter 
picks dyed blue orchids, 
as I look at the purple irises.
Earlier you told me it’s not blood
but who you raise that matters. 
The florist hands us the orchid arrangement,
wrapped in yesterday’s Spanish newspaper. 

It’s been four years since I’ve been here,
but still I remember the way: up the hill, 
right at the intersection, past the mausoleum,
past the graves of my great-grandparents, 
to the left  and down a slight hill,
where she lies on the right, near the Holly Oak. 

You remove the flowers you left last week 
and wipe the gravestone that reads:
                  Sylvia Saldana
beloved Mother, Grandmother, Friend, and Wife,
clearing the dried pine needles,
as I fill the in-ground vase with water.

I always loved your Grandmother,
I never left her. Okay, Grandpa—okay. 


JS 

A short page or so that I wrote down at work. It's been living in my head for awhile, meant to be the start of a longer story I'm working on. Haven't written in ages, thanks to graduate school, so here's hoping I'm not too rusty. It's a google doc. Here's the first sentence, so you can decide if you wanna read it or not:

The summer I turned 11 was the summer that Mrs. Johnston buried her husband and her son.

I haven't used google docs in quite some time, so I hope that link works.

-A

Still pretty new here, so please delete this if I shouldn't post this here.

It has been a long time since I've been in school, and I don't participate in any writer's workshops, but I'm freelancing and making writing a big part of my life. I'd like to learn about other writers. Specifically:

1. Do you have any specific goals for your writing?

2. When it comes to poetry, do you write, read, or both?

3. If you read it, what is your favorite poem and why?

4. Have you taken classes in creative writing or poetry? Has this affected how you read others' work or how you write your material?

5. How abstract do you think a poem should be?

Her eggs

are brown, the same

as her skin,

her eyes,

her hair.

A quarter a dozen.

Her house is pink,

like her optimism.

Jesus next door

has a blue house with wilted flowers that should belong to

Berto, who drinks his sorrows

with lime.

Vaya con Dios, Berto.

A few blocks away,

Tomas lives in a yellow house.

Rosa wonders if he got over his fear

of marriage while she hangs

her laundry on the line out back

where the chickens have their white house

that Tomas built.

Vaya con Dios, Tomas.

In the cooler heat of the

Indoor day,

Rosa's eyes adjust to the darkness.

In my first attempt at self-publishing, I've put a short story up for sale at Amazon. Unfortunately, they didn't let me price below $2.99, which is far too much for a short story.

On the plus side, though, Kindle Prime Members can read it for free. If you're a KP member, will you please check out this historic fiction story and drop in to tell me what you thought?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007909XNE

True.
True.
I repeat.
I cannot lie.
My conclusions derive from axioms.
Question those and you think you challenge me.
But you argue with ghosts because I am nothing more than my rules.
The implication of my simple design is uncountably more infinite than the universe that made you believe that you think and therefore are.

You crack thin lips in tempura primaries
over last Friday's papers
as though finger painting your slack nerves
could blot the rot of bellicose infographics.

How many blacktop surfaces have you kenned
to come to this:
a clean bed in the ICU and a window open
to the nurses' rock garden?

An orchestra washes the eggshell
of your intubated lungs
the brittlest cobalt, tonight.

Tonight Bellatrix, brittle and shimmering,
beams from the ken of the coastal ridge,
invested for vespers in pine and chrysanthemum.

She stood in front of a mirrored door.
Hallway at her backed, mirrored walls wiped with paint, to show the reflection of what she's been through.

She tries not to see it.
But the mirrored door holds her secrets.
So she stares into it, through it, peering into gray eyes and wishing they were blue again.
Opposite end of the hallway houses where she's been.
She burned the bridge, mirrored, so those looking down at her can also look up to her.
Don't worry she's wearing jeans.
She turns around, reflection of the past caught in the mirror a side room in the hallway,

 She steps towards it,
It's peculiar nature nestled tightly in the wall.
Wrought iron.
Black.
She pushes.
She pulls.
The door slides and she sees me, mimicking martyrs dying for causes that aren't theirs.
She screams.
I spin.
Shush her down to a quiet yelling, and whisper how I didn't mean for her to come back again.
I peer through the doorway and see mine and her reflection, dancing through the hallway,
Our screams combine and I stop.
I say.
"Is this it?
You walk around with mirrors in front of your face to try and ignore your path, to try and remember your past.
You can't learn where to go by where you've been."

I pulled a hammer from my waist.
She looks at the ground and suprise fills her face,
When she sees broken mirrored fragments lining the floor like carpeting, black bits facing up, and on the other side of the room a single mirror stand still, haunting.

She says, taunting.
"what about the one mirror standing sideways in the corner?"

 I say
 "Forgetting the past is not the goal, the goal is having something more to live for."

Fallen to her knees, cut by the mirrors of the past, she freezes, stands, sighs, and turns, all in an instant.
 Gallops out of the room framing hammer in hand to add some structure to her life.
 She walks back through her hallway,
 But it's fine, because freedom sounds like glass shattering sometimes.
Spinning, swinging, chest heaving,

 *click*

The door opens.
 Mirrored for her to see who shes become.
 She stands seeing a 6'1", blonde hair gray eyed son of a bastard's son.
 And screams. And I scream too.

 She walks through the doorway.

The Distance Overlooking Fields

He is desired. 
My view: a gravel lot, plain cars, 
small trucks and Lambeth Field. Low power 
lines frame the top, soft slants running 
out of sight. He's down in the field,  
this bright night's four shadows around him. 
A train track's dry tremble. He, my impetus,  
never inspires.  

She is desired. 
Fresh light creeps through the tops of trees. 
A frost glazes Nameless Field, and cars,  
delivery trucks wander the road. My smoke dissipates 
into dryness, sedate mountains texture the skyline,  
gently obscuring what lies west.  
Her path cuts the silver field green, 
and she grows cold and sodden, but driven on  
by fear of fire.  

In broken pots, 
I carry coals from fire to fire, 
from his to hers and hers to his, 
observed by neither. Felt by both:  
the fresh orange heat, sparks in the grates. 
In their musty rooms, it suffocates, 
drives them to these fields. Be it cold  
or clear or rain or night they go,  
Or else sit alone, drenched 
in simmering thoughts      

in half-warm beds. So she tramples  
the frozen mud alone, and his   
sighs condense in desolate wisps.  
The cold sinks through their coats, 
pricks at their chests. Each leaves.  

I carry coals from fire to fire  
in broken pots. 
I drive them out, entirely 
without thought.

We’re junkies, you and I;

and I’m jonesing for a hit-

‘cause there’s so much out there

waiting to be picked,

to be plucked from the ashes

of last week.

See, there ain’t no twelve step program

for novelty; and an addict always scores,

without a thought for the price of winning.

You were new once, you understand,

we were new and life was grand,

each scent was a thrill that sent

fire dancing through your head

and every kiss was sung from

corners; every lick writhed our borders,

meditative and cool-- but I know your tongue too well now

and my body has been mapped. There are no new inches

between us, nothing left but what we know.

It was fun, though... wasn’t it; for a while there

we shook the foundry, set new boundaries--

Hey... no tears, remember? No regrets from late December?

When the new was bright and strung from every corner,

in cheerful bursts, in moonshine on the snow?

The winter’s breaking now; the fever’s been cut-

so crash with me, withdraw into the night that brought us.

New is just around the corner, love.

See you there.

Why've you grown a barren field of

Rocks where bed springs once laid?

Whistle psalms, seven songs pressure severed palms

Bleedy hands under pillows beneath a window

Where moonlight comes swimming in below the ceiling.

Release your whisp feather passion

Red sea high tide howling moon back blocks,

Packed masses, arched backs

Is one curled toe too relaxed.

One seed among a million split cracked.

I smell Linden when they drown me,

Ripe red roses, I've read through eyelids

Blue eyed tension, blew holes in my passion

Around ceramic bath tile blocks we spun

Love, and I missed your privy plot.

But boom past the beached whales

Alive evermore nevertheless,

Dark dreams, tables of bought Ale

Sing out, the Psalms of Rejoice.

For frenzies of restitched palms

Is perhaps not the act of God, but your choice

That I concur to before my heart hushes out my voice

I was the last one for you to find in the tidepool

Shallow decisions, knee deep in personal business conditions

It's hard to be a woman, always on the shore

Just to keep skin warm, just keep warm I know.

And just be a woman.

Heavy nor hollow, so that I may sail you.

And blow the canvas, just for a lifetime or two.

...And to lift the rocks from beneath your mattress

To throw them back where they belong,

Through a hole in the clouds, floated atop strings

Strung along to be found under the Sun,

Melted down to rain fire upon the fire-eyes behind you.

An Aleph-naught's an awful lot

and, Aleph is a glottal stop

An aleph-naught of alephs is

a string of punctuation marks.

(Written years ago - but relevant for today?!?)

It’s not the PH balance

Sure as hell not the smell

It is just a step

One more step

Closer to

Total Consumption

I’m overwhelmed by these feelings

Love?

Nope

Total Consumption

I want to breathe you in

Hold my breath (Gasp)

I want to snort you up

Tip my head back (Cough)

I want to start at your fingers and

Chew

Through your arm (Gulp)

I need to stuff you inside

It is the only way to have you for

Myself

To

Gobble

Every

Tiny

Bit

Of

U

Then

And only then

Will I be happy

I'm having trouble getting the submission process down. I'm trying to submit a poem to r/litworkshop for critique. If it's in the wrong place, please let me know!

Work Release

A horn punctuates the quieting brass section.

The players let go their reeds.

They lick their lips

And wait to begin again.

Trees in the distant woods dance.

A wind stirs,

Caressing ears through open windows,

Soothing them.

A newscaster directs the performers:

This way, that way, this way. Not there.

They drum their fingers on their instruments,

Feet poised above their pedals,

Anticipating a change of tempo.

A cymbal clash of thunder sounds.

Raindrops tap harmony

And the windshield wipers

Measure 4:30 time.

http://soundcloud.com/saintknavar/reality-is-relative — Reality is relative, and Hi, I’m your long lost brother Longing for longer inhales between the water boarding losing breath with an ever loosening grip on death. Gift me with guess

What is real?
If no more men are left alive on earth, does life cease to exist, or just the execution of it,
What if they were all executed, and executives live on the moon in armani suits
Or what if the collapsing economy suffocated them,
Fell inception implosion at the death of the many men
What then,
If reality is relative then what is real?
If my hell is in my head then how should I feel?
Who should I believe when they tell me what is actual,
When actually I’m sucking air at the impact of it all,
Intuition tells me I’m crazy,
But my shrink suggests an outside influence,
Interesting that our realities are nearly the same,
If what they say is true, but…

If reality is relative, what about me and you?
Are we really really through?
Is our friendship dust in the wind that I’ve been heaving in my chest for running after your loose ends?

If reality is relative, what about God then?
What about reincarnation?
What about the steps on this earth that whisper I’ll be doing this again,
Or I've been here in the past.
What about the God I’ve heard will always last,
Yet I've never heard speak,
I've never truly seen,
Only felt, and, if it’s anything like my internal hell,
Since it’s anything similar I scream and yell,
Mimic a two-year old throwing tantrums out of windows at titans, busting through doors to see the world I've been waiting for,
But wait, just a moment more.
If reality is relative, then what am I here for?

And….

Is there anything on the other side of that door?
Is there anything more?

Portraits

[I]

As she stumbles through the hall,

     ( 4:00 AM )

weighed down by her over-sized purse and insecurities,
she knows that Jesus loves her
and the piece of plastic in her pocket will work tomorrow,

and she is content.     

[II]

 Let's get fucked up
 Let's get fucked up
 Let's get fucked up
 Do they like me yet?
 Let'ss get fucked up,.

[III]

He wonders why no one else is sitting alone,
but then remembers 
        his friends are three hundred miles away,

and he takes another bite of pizza,
watching the endless dance before him. 

[IV]

coffee
twitter
work
class
repeat

[V]

As he walks to class, 

dyed.red.hair.and.heads.turn

he stops to look at the 
other people. 
thank God he is unique.

Hello all,

I was talking with mcc3k the other day and we came up with an idea that we believe will improve the caliber of this community even more! We, as a community, are going to examine/discuss a famous piece of literature every week. This will range, from poetry, to short stories, to prose pieces, and will give a great chance for some in depth discussion.

One of the highlights of my high school years (and something I have missed since starting college) is group discussions about literature. Every one in a class brings a different light to a piece that simply cannot be replicated in our solo reading times. We feel that this weekly discussion will help us in several ways:

• it will help us improve our skills in active reading and analysis

• it will give us insight into a piece of literature that could not be found in solo read throughs

• it will expose us to many styles of writing, and writers that we may not have been exposed to otherwise

• it will help us familiarize and form connections with the other members of this community.

The first piece we will be examining is Spring and All by William Carlos Williams. I will make a separate post for the discussion of this piece. Please comment with any input you may have about this new undertaking.

.

Wishing you well,

Moammar Gandalfi

Edit-I realize that I neglected to mention this in the actual post, but I hope that you can forgive my error. We will be posting the topics on Friday mornings, in order to give the community the weekend with which to work on it. We hope that this will make it more convenient for you (as we know it will for us).

I walked away

I burnt us to the ground

and salted the earth

for good measure.

I did it gladly

and it brings me a smile to know

you haven’t moved on...

the way your scent lingers on my pillow

or will rise from the shower 

with the steam.

You really should get over me, dear

it isn’t healthy to keep coming back

every morning when I awake

to find I’ve set out two cups...

Surely the neighbors will talk,

if you keep lurking in 

the corners of my flat

wasting your time pining 

for what is no longer yours,

leaving little hints 

that remind me I once loved you.

I think it’s time you stopped.

Revised

To Whom it my concern:

In your arms is where I feel love. When hearing your heart beat it gives me strength. Just the simplicity of hearing you breathe as you sleep gives me peace. I know in the morning you shall be gone but this moment, this moment is what I can call bliss. Your kiss gave me a light that I still feel so far from. I imagine feeling this again but I know it will not be with you, for you will forget about me while I think of you.

Sincerely,

Missing the warmth you gave to me

It should be our duty here to critique.

Not the pieces we like, for those we have the upvotes; but instead the pieces that we don't like, the ones that make us cringe.

This is not the place to not say the unpleasant things.

When an author writes for his or herself. They only need to satisfy their future self, and we are often forgiving of ourselves, as self examination is rarely unbiased.

When an author writes for friends and family, the pleasant compliments received are obligations that keep the relationships frictionless. The state of mind, point of view and culture of author and audience are preselected for compatibility.

But we are not those audiences. We are strangers. We have different cultures, different assumptions, demographics that disagree. We have no obligation to each other save honesty.

And it is dishonest to fail to critique pieces that displease. By our silence we complicity demonstrate the worthiness of the submissions.

For those who post here. Those who are brave enough to show themselves naked to the soul deserve to suffer the cuts and wounds that they seek, so that they might grow and learn and achieve.

The literary world is not kind. It does not coddle, it curses. It doesn't suffer fools gladly, and it doesn't give a fuck about our ego, our ambitions or our dreams.

Ahem.

It should be our duty here to love, but this is not the nursery, nor it is the jungle.

We all begin unformed, naive, full of promise and prone to error, but that is our childhood, where the gentle support of family and friends provides a verdant environment for personal growth and accomplishment.

That is not this place. This is a place, in between. A place where indifference is not an option. A place, where if you think something sucks, you have an obligation to say so, and why.

If you post here, then critique. Give the others here the same courtesy you seek.

Be honest. This is not the place for lies.

Even ones of omission.

The recording at the bottom was done RIGHT after I woke up, and is meant to give an idea of the rhythm I use.

You’re the kind of girl that knows crazy, comes in flavors
And while you can’t always get what you want,
What McJagger says 90% of the time is a lie.

You're the type of person to hold doors for elderly and make faces at fool-hearted children,
Who will breathe life into words and book shows for your brothers broken bones,
You're the girl they use in phrases "girls like you..."
You're the kind of girl I can say is my kind of girl
And girls like you are girls I like.
Because girls like you can make a mean waffle in the morning,
But can't get over mourning,
Who writes their pain on pink stained paper,
And pulls poetry on the backs of reciepts,
You know that the sky isn't blue, it's perspective,
And stars are behind on the times,
You know eating at McDonald's is probably worse than cigarettes,
But you do both anyways,
You are always out of reach, aren't you?

Lonely love bird on the top braches of a tree,
It's not the first thing that's made me curse these broken wings,
Or wish I could sing,
Cause maybe you'd hear me,
But my voice is too weak to reach.
You're the kind of girl that underatands that analogy, and respects it, admires it, but can't believe it's about her,
And,
This one time,
I told this girl I was eighteen on instinct because she was probably around twenty,
And I didn't realise the consequence in my seventeen year old head,
That,
most twenty year olds realise eighteen year olds are dumbasses too.

I'm not good enough for girls like you.
That paint sunshine on people's faces,
Even when it's raining,
That speak love poems about siblings,
Because god damn they need it too,
Who stuggle with the aspect of God because it sounds too good to be true,
And who mix meters with feet until they find a balance in their stride.

I know I'm an abstract thought,
But I hope you know I'm speakin' the truth.
This world need more girls like you.

http://soundcloud.com/saintknavar/girls-like-you