CREATIVE WRITING
This is where I'll be uploading any creative writing, mostly poetry, I feel may be good enough for review. Enjoy!
THE WORLD IS A SKY (11/12/15)
The world is a sky,
Each day painted in emotions, pinpointed with colors
Like the cracks of memories in our hands, finite items in an infinite universe.
We humans dance beneath the light,
Subterranean creatures looming in the shadows, ready to swallow up the earth
In this maw of selfish need.
But there are some who see the color for color, not color for greed
Their spines hang from the moon.
They collect stars in baskets of woven time
And touch empty space and leave nebulas in their wake,
A mantle of luminaries at their collarbones,
A coronet of wishes rimmed around their eyes
As they look down at the snarling mass below and whisper.
These are the dreamers.
These are the souls untouched.
The flowers that bloom under an unforgiving sun and burn brighter because of it.
They do have darkness in them, but it serves as a
Palette for the imagination to balance itself with,
Pale milk in dark coffee as it slowly spins
And we spin
And the world spins on and on
Until we have forgotten it and they have remembered the stories,
And written them across the galaxies so that when we look up,
We see ourselves not as we are,
But as we should be.
COLORS (9/17/15)
White.
It is the amalgamation of every color, atoms refracted through the
Prisms of mind, bending under the touches of elemental pressure.
It is the cold scorch of sunlight, cresting over snowed mountains that have
Waited for decades, standing sentries over centuries,
Pristine and inhuman and magnificent.
It is the chill of predawn light, seeping through the blinds
As you cling to dreams that flit away like winking stars,
Never quite close enough to catch in the palm of your hand,
Merely placed to observe, to wonder, and to admire.
It is the constellation never quite connected.
It is pain.
It is complete.
It is final.
Yellow.
It is the gentle flicker of incandescent bulbs popping overhead,
Pale popcorn crackling through dark theaters.
It is anticipation; it is the passing of time,
From midmorning kisses to sunset caresses.
It is the softest petal of the flower curled toward the warmth of life,
Dancers stretching and extending and preserving the line of their bodies,
Of such grace it cannot be named except through fallen tears and whispered smiles.
It is gentle.
It is kind.
It is fleeting.
Green.
It is the scent of soil just pressed with gentle afternoon rain,
Mist sewing lace across tree limbs, embroidered with dew drops that drip
Ever so slowly, to the ground below.
It is the breath of wind across a summer field, carrying promises of tomorrow,
Singing into your ear every memory of beauty and life and elegance.
It is the subtle shift in a woman’s dress, the elusive curve of a knowing smile
Just before love comes unannounced, the delicate scent of pine on her skin.
It is beautiful.
It is potent.
It is breakable.
Orange.
It is the feeling of liquid rolling across your fingers, sweet and succulent
And the last embrace of day before it slips from your hands into the unknown.
It is the crack of pumpkin seeds between your teeth, bittersweet like falling leaves.
It is sand through a sieve, heat in the cracks of your palms,
More sensitive than flame, but somehow more abrasive,
A desert swirling through your birdcage of your body.
It is closure.
It is misinterpreted.
It is progression.
Violet.
It is the richness of wine settled on your tongue, heavy and smooth
As the velvet that is draped across wall panels, known and unknown.
It is memory, balloons lost and flowers plucked from mother’s gardens.
It is the cadences sung at twilight, the solemn melodies murmured at close of day,
As lightning pierces the sky and thunder tumbles after the illumination,
The two constantly chasing one another, a restless love torn across the clouds.
It is shared love and bodies and thoughts, swirled into rich swaths of imagination.
It is wealth.
It is poignant.
It is unappreciated.
Blue.
It is the ripple in a sea of constants, a change that bends the laws of normalcy,
Whether for benefit or detriment undetermined.
It is the air exhaled beneath the surface of a clear lake,
Bubbles gliding past your cheeks to tickle your nose and lips and eyes.
It is the feeling of doubt, talons that coil around your ankles to pull you deeper
Into the dark web of a mind so terribly beautiful.
It is the canvas that presents the heavens, dangling comets and universes
That you used to name as a child while cicadas sang to one another in perfect harmony.
It is blamed.
It is hated.
It is loved.
Red.
It is the cackle of fireplaces threatening to burn beyond their limits,
Conflagrations churning within iron latticework, clawing toward freedom.
It is the passion of stolen secrets, the thrill of exploration across the
Maps of another’s skin, cartography drafted in its most basic composition.
It is a symphony never quite balanced between euphony and cacophony,
Cellos, flutes, and trumpets, in battle of a tempo growing ever faster.
It is a heartbeat, the blood rushing through the atriums of life,
Soaring until they shatter to the ground, casualties scattered around a body
That once thought it could fly, only to find its wings melting away
With whatever love remained in a rose that has withered to ashed embers.
It is hunger.
It is exhilaration.
It is destruction.
Black.
It is feared, the monster under the bed as a closet door creaks, ever so slightly,
Open, only to have the absence of visual danger be far more frightening.
It is superstition and isolation and sorrow.
It is unfeeling, unwelcoming, yet somehow you are drawn to it, constantly,
Like a moth to a flame that does not dance with color.
It is enigmatic and charmed and forbidden.
It is an addiction that consumes, smoke billowing between lips as organs are
Painted in darker shades, and cities burn and fall and are rebuilt.
It is the darkness of humanity, unhindered by deception or manipulation.
It is uniformity.
It is everything.
It is nothing.
And with it, we are invincible and we fade,
A single glimmer sparked across the sky in memoriam,
As we sink into the great unknown.
CALLA LILLIES (7/14/15)
Did you know that we bury the dead six feet under
Because we wanted to stop the spread of infection in 1665?
We thought that putting a fathom between ourselves and those who left
Would make a barrier between the sick and the healthy, the rational and the insane
But really it was to shut out the fear;
The fear of the unknown
The fear of the damned
The fear that makes our hearts beat faster and faster
Because what if they can hear our breathing? What if they can hear our pulse?
What if what we have forgotten has never forgotten us?
What comes next and what will it do to us?
I buried you long ago
I buried my insecurity and doubt and loss and pain through shovels and spades
And the sod that I laid
To keep you from getting to me
Because I couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear the pain of seeing you there
And thinking some stone with chiseled letters faded by the rain could sum up your life
Like some hackneyed phrase
I placed calla lilies at your grave because you liked them best
I dug out the soil to place the bulbs in until the dirt
Cracked under my fingernails and made my fingers grow thorns
And my lips whisper poison to any who came near
Because if I didn’t let the rage attack you, it would drown me
Ripping out my lungs, tearing at my flesh inch by inch
As grief swallowed me up and spat me out in mangled, mutilated lies
That I spun for myself so I could look in my eyes
And not see the monster that put my own mother in the grave
Because my lifeline was frayed out longer than hers in tatters I didn’t care to save
I think about you at night, ripping my bedsheets, scalding tears kissing my cheeks
As I desperately try to sleep, to soak out the noise and not hear the screams
The screams of the empty, the screams of the lost,
Because the dead are the lucky ones, the dead are just fine
And I didn’t plant those lilies for you, they were for me
So that I could grow my armor, so that I’m plain to see
But inside I hold the storm, a hurricane of nothing and infinity
Curled into one improbability
Because we bury six feet under not because we fear the dead
But because the dead fear us
We are like raindrops of acid through their cemetery plates
Hoping one day to see the marble gates
Because that’s what we think we are entitled to
What we are owed
And just because my sheets are ripped and just because my cheeks are wet
Does not mean I cannot learn to sew, does not mean I cannot wipe away the salt
Because we are seas shifting on turbulent tides
Waiting, waiting to die
And until we secure what we think we know, anyone who stands in our way
Means nothing but body and blood
Splattered across the white petals of a snowdrift grave
And we realize too late why the dead fear us, fear our kind from whatever lays next
Because it is not them who bear plague,
But us.
BLISTERING (6/21/15)
You were like sugarcane on a hot summer day. Raw and sweet and unrefined by anyone but yourself. I would stand under your shadow as the breeze made you sway to the rhythm of the world. You held me, protected me, made me feel at home within your tangled, twisted, labyrinthine loops of branches expanding to the very tips of the universe. But the sun made your skin bitter and crack with the weight of protecting everything beautiful inside of yourself. You became blistered under mounds of dirt and grime that pressed and pulled and pushed its way into you. And then you just couldn’t bear to see yourself; you crumpled back to the earth that fed you, nourished you, and withered under the brittle sun painted sky. When they picked up your body, so broken and bent, they split you open and told me there was nothing left within but cinders and smoke.
BREATHE... (5/24/15)
It is 2:27am and I am crying because I don’t want this anymore,
This feeling of incompleteness, levity of life drowned out by the destruction of death.
This feeling of inadequacy, reaching up hands like golden doves,
Sacrosanct as if heaven were embedded in the cracks of holy palms,
Only to be banished because they are too stained in sin.
It is 2:27am and I am crying because it feels like I am ripping apart.
It feels as though my ribcage is contracting, muscles spinning and tangling up
Like time when it has too many things wrapped in its knarled fingers.
It feels like my body is breaking, my lungs collapsing, my blood freezing
And all I can think about is how little I have done and how much I have demanded
From a world that never wanted me, never needed me.
It is 2:27am and I am crying because I will never be good enough,
And I want to say that it’s okay, that there will be rain and storm clouds and
I will breathe in the salt-spun air and it will run like glass shards down my throat
But I will be okay, I will be okay because I love and people love me,
But I cannot say that.
Because it is 2:27am and I am crying, and I do not hear a sound.
Because it is 2:27am and I am crying, and I do not hear another’s voice, only the Sound of my slowing heartbeat, drawn on lonely puppet strings
Plucked against their will, when all I want is for them to stop and
For the world to be still, so I can just
breathe
Breathe and love and cry for everything that I have done and everything I have lost,
For the world to tilt into the void, for the sounds to shrivel into silence,
For the flowers to wilt into the beautiful ground, youth sunken into decadence
Because the flowers will grow again, brighter and more beautiful than before
Because the sounds will again be joyous someday
Because the world will go on spinning,
Will kiss constellations and hold stars in its palm like trinkets from a lover
Because this, too, shall come to pass, until there is nothing but darkness,
And it is 2:27am and I am crying because the salt of my tears must return to the sea
And the iron of my bones must return to the soil
And the oxygen of my lungs must be breathed by another, by someone better than I
And it is beautiful.
BEAUTIFUL (12/13/14)
The first time you told me I was beautiful,
You took my hand, laid my bones in perfect sync with yours, and
Led me into the backyard hung beneath stars dangling on comet tails
That peppered the sky in pinpricks of brilliance.
But you weren’t looking at them, no, you were looking at me.
As I was staring up at a wasteland of dust, shadow, and gas,
You were memorizing the curve of my neck,
The small dimple in my left cheek
The slight curls of the soft hair at the nape of my neck
As if you could drink them up like lemonade on a summer day,
Etching them in crisp, perfect memories before they fade away
And when I finally noticed, you told me that I was beautiful.
The second time you told me I was beautiful,
Was the first time I believed you.
I had let you seep into my body, let you slip into my oxygen so that
Every breath was joined between us, four lungs, two hearts,
Pumping in the universe, something that makes us so very small
So that maybe we could touch those stars, or at least reach a little closer
On a lattice built by the crown of your fingers caught in my hair
Or the curve of your lips ever so slightly uneven from left to right
As you looked at me, so tangled up in one another,
And told me that I was beautiful.
The third time you told me I was beautiful,
I felt the first seed of doubt.
It is a vile thing, something that sprouts like weeds between fingertips
And briars around skin to pierce out any emotion, to run feelings in crimson ink
Down the palette of skin.
I was stained by the idea of jealousy, by the idea of losing the one person
Who made me feel special, who made me shed the past and step into the light
Because when you told me that you loved me,
It was caught between a prison of teeth, the words half-formed and
Bitter and broken and blistered under a need for something unattainable, intangible
And you told me that I was beautiful
Because beauty was the only thing that made you stay.
The fourth time you told me I was beautiful,
I covered my ears to keep the sound out.
Your words had become something of dread, of shame, of empty promises
The galaxies we had watched had become embedded in the marrow of my bones
But when they wanted to expand, to touch everything new and unknown
You pulled and pinched and pressed me into a shape more manageable for you
To play with, thinking that I was a slab of clay to be molded to your idea of
Perfection so that you could name me, claim me, and waste me
I had become a prisoner within my own body,
My cheekbones, collarbones, hipbones crawling out of my skin
As I tried to empty myself of you
Because when you told me I was beautiful,
I couldn’t help but wonder if it was ever true
The fifth time you told me I was beautiful,
I ran.
I ran as fast as my splintered legs would take me, pulling in air untainted by you
Breathing in the world, the galaxy, the universe
All in a pair of lungs bursting with nascent power
Because every time I let you call me beautiful, I wasn’t saying it to myself
Because every time I let you call me yours, I locked myself in another set of chains
Because beauty is a socially constructed prison to mask the emptiness of a life unlived
In favor of chasing a dream that will never be reached,
To curl further within yourself as the nebulas inside begin to wither under pressure
Into the stardust the next girl will look up to and try to touch.
I am not beautiful.
I am not yours.
I am the universe.
And I won’t let myself be darkened ever again.
TEACUPS (8/11/15)
You were like a china teacup,
Printed in cobalt all the places you wanted to go,
Designs scratched into the surface of your skin, tattooed in a permanent dream
When you would sweat, the ink looked like a city after rain,
Cool and crisp and delicate and untouchable by anything but the sun
Hands would wrap around you, touch your uneven lips and bring them to their own
Drinking up everything inside of you as if they could hold some of the
Brilliance within and share it, linked, between the two of you
But one day, you were broken
It wasn’t as if you fell to pieces like eggshells strewn across hardwood floor,
No, you cracked, ever so slightly, a chip in your façade
That brilliance leaked out, in tears, in streams of words unmeant,
And for every sentence, the fissure deepened,
Ran through the cities and broke buildings in two, fracturing a future so
Perfectly planned until all that remained was the rubble of letters and syllables
Hopelessly left in a moonscape of ember and ash
I found you on the floor, brushed under the counter, forgotten and silent under
The pressure of a world uncaring, unloving, despite its claims of grandeur
I picked you up, held you gently, laid you out piece by piece and
Threaded you back together with iron and gold
I gave you armor without a single chink, each seam perfectly bound to your
Porcelain skin to hold everything within, to never let the ground swallow you again
But it takes four limbs to stay afloat, and you still lay scattered inside yourself
Shards cluttered between your ribs, piercing your lungs, your throat, your voice
And I gave you the tools to never be hurt again, to never let your light be dimmed,
But there was no light left to give
And even with your faults mended, you would never again
Hold the warmth of freshly brewed kisses,
Feel the press and prime of the earth bleeding into your soul,
Know the chill of clean water running across every contour, every angle of you
Because you wouldn’t bear to let yourself be touched
I won’t pretend I knew you, I only knew of you and what I thought you could be
Someone had tread thin ice, spidering out in webs across your body, so broken
But you were the one who split yourself in two
And lit the kiln to melt away your memories, drip, drip, dripping into the
Ink of another cup yet to be drawn.
SONGBIRD (12/31/14)
When I was young, my mother told me that
I was her lark, that I was a songbird given to her with a kiss and a whispered blessing
And that I sang every night in the sweetest tones,
Mellifluous notes carried from the burgeoning dawn to the crisp night.
But as I grew older, I realized what these words truly meant.
A lark, as any bird, is beautiful in its prime,
Tawny wings pulsing against the smooth currents of air,
But every bird must eventually land, and for some,
There are always hands to catch them,
To drag them back to a gold plated cage of wonderful captivity.
My body matured, as did my mind,
And I understood that to be a songbird means to be
Bound by another person’s will, by another person’s wants
That my song would only be heard if it was desired by someone else,
That if I chose to bare beauty to the world,
No one would care to listen.
And I realized too late that I was
Ensnared by a dozen nets, entwined in a hundred chains
And that my voice was worn ragged, that my wings needed an
Aerie not forced by the lock and key of another,
But at the time I had no notion of such a place
I am a song without my melody.
I am a bird without my wings.
I am a soul without my mind.
I will no longer be a songbird.
I will no longer be my mother’s lark.
I will no longer be bound to a life I did not choose for myself.
I will find the aerie, a place that may or may not exist,
But to find it will be my duty, my right in sentiency
I am no songbird, I am a human with independent will.
And this is what it means to be a woman.