SolarThe light breaks into
your house, where you sit facing
east. In the sky, a
dragon rises, flaming, and
gives birth to a golden sun.

ForwordI have not become stronger
in the broken places.

Bones ache of age
of misuse
of disuse
and each cracking joint
is an audible reminder
of missteps
of misjudgments
of paths walked too long
and of steps
that should have been,
but were never taken.

Bent fingers jut
from palms of sandpaper,
calloused and crinkled,
they cannot grip
with that same eager desperation
of a child seeking comfort.

Black becomes gray
at the gates
of troubled temples and
dreams,
once saliently sweet,
decay on the tongue
like the sound
of necessary words produced,
but never employed.

I have not become stronger in the broken places

Linoleumwe are pondering
silence,
needle/thimble/tremble. i stitch
us a home in awkward conversations.

this is the great city,
dim lights to give us
sidewalk halos. we are inconvenience
stores, bubble gum kleptos,
and that's how we know
none of this is a dream.
it burns too real, leaves fingerprints
on our sight. this is dusty
and stale.

this is life,
magnified.

Tending our gardenTending our garden
I pull apple blossoms
From your hair

white noiseThe only thing that seems to keep the world out of my head these days
is white noise
it's a rush of excitedly flapping wings
it's nothing you could grasp but a sound and a colour that is none
I try to keep the world out
(she is playing her music too loud too much these days)
and I think of you, ears buzzing with white noises until they ache.
And I catch myself thinking
I wish you were my white noise -
the sound in between my heartbeats,
the same words whispered so close to my ear they sound like beautiful little secrets,
the rock I cling to when the waves crash violently all around me to keep from drowning, I wish you were
my home, my favourite pair of arms, my heart, my safe place, the one to soothe my mind.
I wish you were so many more things
than just far away and as impossible to touch
as white noise.

so here's the thing:i feel like a tired little
skeleton wearing the
same shirt 1, 2,
3 days in a row, knuckles
drumming along the knobs
of my spine and fingers
digging in
   be twe  en the      rib         bones
that flash in the sun and create
shadows on my skin

and listen, everybody wants to be
skinny but i want to sleep and it's funny
, i don't want my bones to
skick out at
                   odd
      angles
but my stomach

4pmtired from counting all my stolen stars, tremble love, hard
to be branded skinny when your scale keeps jumpin' murder

thunder like sweet hot tea, raining down inside my ribs
beating like hard bass, vibrations through my sneakers,
tastes like Wednesday night full of pretend, treadmills until
I taste size zero, icing on top (buttercream)

pink lotion that smells like raspberry waste, soak into my skin
so I feel like pretty, enough to stand out in
the sugary sun and gleam like vintage fog, scarlet-letter phantom,
prozac tainted girl, baked with allspice and cloves
ginger-bread ideas

if we all shared my concept of beauty,
the streets w

Haiku Ika-Unom

the morning mist fades
a golden sun revealed
her eyes kept westward

FisheyeYour honest words perch upon brash lips,
teetering on thoughtful intentions; a super hero's cape
embroidered with moth holes, gossamered secret identity
shielding the crestfallen heart you disguise as armor,
forgotten about with a forced amnesia
until its lonely beating rips a hole
through your defenses.

I'm your kryptonite and your sunshine—
the thing that makes you human, and weak,
and untouchable,
and mighty,
and a villain to the unloved,
and my savior.

I'm the have and have-not,
the desired and the disdained—
for your every rib aches to feel the pressure of my palms
and the tangle of my fingers witching for you

TodayToday the sun shone brightly, as though the months of darkness were only a bad joke.
I walked out to see the world again, the cracked pavement, the slush, the green dumpster for dreams (full again).
Still, there was a warmth in the old bricks which had been lost. Cars and trucks made music on the wet asphalt.
My head opened up to let dreams in again. Binge and purge, the day won't last long.
Tomorrow or the next day the darkness will return, blowing snow and foul bitter winds through my clothes.
Tomorrow the ghosts will whisper again in my ears, calling, cajoling, saying "Join us."
Tomorrow maybe I will, but today the sun is bright, and love

Dead Bird HeartI never noticed the way ash looks like feathers.

I become aware of the shores where my body
folds to meet itself, doubles over so that my hair
seems to grow like roots into the ground

keeping me from ever lifting my head again.

Of all the things she told me, she missed this one:
what to do with the ashes.

Hers is a dead bird heart—
grey-haired and grey-feathered.
She is paler than she has any right to be,
ashen—

But her eyes are open, and she can see the sky
where a roof once was.

dawnin a quiet tangle
of young bamboo
bound
with a silken web,
dawn shimmers
in a dew drop—
and the spider hurries
to capture the sun

ThursdayRumors of tumors, chatty neighbors, the grateful dead
A broken swing on a deserted playground
And bones; oh, the bones that pile up, more everyday
Thursday I had nothing to say

A weak and pale moon glares down at the snow, impotent
Stars in motion whisper my star-name, calling
Tiny spiders build homes in my beer-soaked brain
Thursday I had nothing to say

Pizza or Chinese for dinner? I can't hold a thought
Craftsmanship went out on a three-hour cruise
Through the swamplands of South Carolina in the rain
Thursday I had nothing to say

A brass-toothed journeyer shines a light in dark corners
Nudges and pokes at the beasts sleeping t

RestlessI’ve been living in the same breathy dream
for too many days now; I’m bed-ridden and
stale and I reek of those moments that come
full throttle like a car crash on a winter night

   this is evolution where weak hearts
   are afraid of the shadows and where
   everything changes,
   an apologetic wind births no remorse;
   he will move on—anchored ship
   set sail, I am the sunken wreckage
   that never learned how to swim.
   he will move on, Darwin says
   I never had a chance

I wish I were the textbook sadness,
symptom and solution and endurance
but I’ve spent too long sleeping on the

Hollow Memory of a Distant ShoreYou are like a long passed season.
As delicate as the footprints of sparrows in freshly fallen snow.
Intricate, yet so easily disturbed when care is not taken.
Somehow, you have managed to persist after all these years.
Residing in the same quiet place you carved into the woods so long ago..
Only a short ride from the sea.

When you cross my mind, you carry with you the scent of that shoreline.
Harsh and thick, yet somehow placating.
Though the weather was perpetually gray, misty, and cold.
Much like your heart had become..
Just before we painfully, and slowly, parted ways.

I recall with deep longing your fascination with foxes

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Catatonic CatalepsyAn(other) awakening
in silence; alone, and
fearful of the heartbeats that
shatter brittle bones: ground to dust
and scattered to the dead air
as ash; a sacrifice to the ghosts
that haunt my memories.

It's a supplication:
Motes are caught in the wan light
and glitter - for a moment -
like stellar fields, before winking
out before and behind my eyes.

Night returns:
This darkened room is a living tomb
and I am the mummy, sightless and
bound to the insanity of the search
for reality to end this calamity-

And it's a crisis
in the heads & hearts
of the lonely; tired, and tied
to funerary pyres.

The night is a mine-field
and I

An Autumnal Tale in BlackDarkness descends upon
black capillary byways;
collapsing networks grid-
locked beneath clouds
and the ceaseless rain:
there's no peace tonight,

As the rush-hour beckons
with red lights that bleed
into this nocturnal diorama
of choking car engines that
snake toward zero: It's an
Autumnal tale in black.

Trapped in the confines
of an elephantine interior
and lit by the sickly glow
of digits, I reside: bound
to this infernal machinery
as the gears grind onward

To their empty destination.
Without is the chaos whilst
within I wonder what led to
our loss before a lifeless
creation: this cold city of
automation.

DisintegrationDisintegration:
it's a bloom in
efflorescense;
a mitochondrial
malediction of
sharp spirals
to nadir
in the blink of
bloodshot eyes.

It begins
with a string of words;
a litany of syllables
and spittle
that distort my dreams
one scene at a time.

- It's like an unravelling
of film from stricken reels -

Colours unwind,
and become searing
pointillist scars
in my vision;
blots of migraine-bright
light which grinds black
like a negative of
failure-stacked
Roscharch tests:

Mental markers
of clarity, coalesced
to calamity.

Disintegration:
the resolution
of a whole into
bleeding holes;

And the lights
that once marked

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Fugitive

by ^arctoa, Jan 3, 2010, 6:55:54 PM
Literature / Poetry / Horror / Free Verse

^{It's the end of the line:
twine torn thin between
rotten railway sides
and the trains
that slide
in and out of light
like my tunnel-sight:
shackled to life
(and the line)
in Noir.

Time unwinds
behind thine eyes:
A broken reel run-away
whose frames flicker
and skip
and stick
like a flip-book,
pages carved into flight
from a steam locomotive
streaming on by.

Smoke and pulp conspire
in the spiral skies,
delicately deconstructing
dreamscape deaths
in the mire:
reversing chase patterns
pulled from plans
and pursuers in blotted
black and white

-- and blood
caked upon canvas:
causality cracks
against crimson tides,
tearing tension
cables along a track
caught alight

-- and eyes
that burn open,
bleary at midnight.}

257

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Fugitiveby ^arctoa

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^{Updated: 04/01/2010 @ 02:55
Project2010: 005 of 375 (January 3rd)

A piece about a dream I had last night which stuck in my consciousness; something that is rather rare, for me. To condense the story, I was on the run in Russia from the mob or Mafia, who were remarkably eager to kill me. However, I had the ability to slow time to such an extent that I could escape their immediate clutches, but never enough to free myself of them entirely. It all came to a head in a train station before I awoke with the story, inevitably, incomplete.

The last stanza feels somewhat unnecessary: thoughts? Additionally, I can only apologise for my unerring tendency to shoe-horn as much alliteration into any given piece as is humanly possible. That said, don't expect it to end any time soon. Ahaha.}

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Submitted on: January 3, 2010
File Size: 1.0 KB

Views: 257
Favourites: 10 (who?)
Comments: 15
Downloads: 4

*xlntwtch Jan 3, 2013 Writer

I'm 'past midnight' where I am now and thinking about staying up 'til dawn, editing stuff. I really feel this piece now. Thank you. Congrats on the DLD.

^arctoa Jan 3, 2013 Student Photographer

^{Thank-you kindly, it was a huge surprise to see that I had been featured!}

*xlntwtch Jan 3, 2013 Writer

=DailyLitDeviations Jan 2, 2013

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by =DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here: [link]

Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by

ing the News Article. Keep writing and keep creating.

^arctoa Jan 3, 2013 Student Photographer

^{Ah, this is a surprise! My literary work usually gets entirely neglected so this is great news. Thank-you kindly, I appreciate it greatly.}

*blueviolette Jan 2, 2013 Professional Photographer

I do have a special place for these in my ExtremeBW group. I do hope you will submit and/or allow them in said galerie.

^arctoa Jan 3, 2013 Student Photographer

^{Of course; and thank-you.}

`limnides Jan 8, 2010 Artist

It works well with the abrupt ending. It creates a feeling of waking up in a fit of sweat from a nightmare.
The atmosphere and imagery are intense.

^arctoa Jan 9, 2010 Student Photographer

^{a) Which was my intention.
b) Which is my apparent speciality. ;)}

~corvidophiliac Jan 8, 2010

I like the last bit. Maybe it is unnecessary, but I'm not particularly bothered by that.

Thought: This piece is one that (I think) would present better as lyrics than as a written piece. The alliteration (and some rhyming, I saw!) seem a bit thick and rather stout for visual impact, yet the piece as a whole seems like it would sing perfection if woven in music.

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Fugitive

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Fugitiveby ^arctoa

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