[x]

for exit 165.in the outstretched wingspan of
tuesday night you'll find them:
the foothills slumbering jagged under
sixteen inches of loose sand and
the city hushed and glowing, lines
of porchlights strung together in suburban rows like
beads on a chain

your house was cavernous hollow like a lung
the colors were dim and
jaundiced, a quiet rush of tepid water
bent the silence while thirty years of
smoking hung ownerless
in the air like the cling of a dead moths to a wall

you tell me of a dream that's vague like
clouds in the sky like
clouds in the sink with
your body limp and damp like
hot tea bags and
your face like spilled milk
a

31:12N, 121:30Emy Dear i just noticed
my balcony is shaped
like wings

and the wind is billowing
the moon up, up to-night
in her dusty purple garb

and i think
no Dear i do not want
to leave here: where men

build bridges over oceans
and live inside of mountains
like river dragons

where the sun shines
not at all at noon but gleams
like an orange at sundown

where the moon walks home
surefooted to where my neck
cannot crane

leavetakingi.
the world is brighter where
dregs of strangers' revels remain --
i keep this half-light for my own.

ii.
i'll stay until the wind sighs a scotch-and-smoke
cliché, til the Muscadet's slipped from the lip
of my wayward
hello.(i know you're there before you do.)
iii.
your night is told in
patchouli-pulse wanders; mine,
in whorls of liqueur-breath. come
close and i'll find the warp
through the weft, the trails telling tales
in synaesthesia --
Platinum Blonde's been 'round and gone.

iv.
(-- closer, find syllables strewn
in an exhale's wake; stolen from my throat-
ful of careless farewells, spin and sway

petrichorNiobe weeps.

gold scattered rough across
cracked earth and the last
remains of summer - they fell
like leaves in the arms of the wind.

some scents cannot be captured.
the gods bleed onto rock,
and the stone sends her prayers
in return: petrichor.

listen - the heavy thud of
rain on parched ground;
the monsoon sealing life back in;
the sky bows and kisses earth.

Niobe weeps.

Morning - for Carl SandburgThe morning erupts
on little cat feet
A flick of the tail
a breath exhaled
too fast at the end of a leap
and then

A paw,
placed on lid's soft fan of lash
breath whirring, throaty, warm
nose
to
nose

eyes still closed

Then open

Thwack –
A stunning velvet attack
innocent lids unwarned
warm sheets no safe haven

The morning erupts
on little cat feet.

Of Half-Filled WordsShe is not a flutterbird.
Her fingers are skittish,
her smile is not.
Do not fear that you will
drive it away.

Sadness is her fumbling limb.
It is unwanted, yet
necessary.

When it is January
she will tell you,
"I am still struggling.
And I am becoming so many people
all at once.

A conglomeration of beauty that
I have managed to mangle.
Please, do not be sad for me."

Sometimes her sorrow is
meant for you. But mostly her.

Those specks and spots
of ocean storm lulls
reveal her truths:
ones she does not want
to extract from herself.

Her heart is not a rabbit.

When it beats
faster, faster, faster,
you need not
run harder

The HologramsBefore Casper we were a quantum band,
an act that only happened when unobserved.
Our drummer maintained we'd split
the world, then took a full-time position
in PR. Auditioning his replacement
round our Crouch End front room,
with his white vest, buffed All-Stars
and holographic principle patter,
Casper shone. 'These,' he said,
nodding at his drumheads,
'are my event horizons;
it's where the beat really happens.'
To prove it, he worked up an almighty storm,
while we puffed on our cigarettes.
Short of a singer, Casper made a call.
Yume Shirakawa, he explained,
would beam in her performance. Jay,
sliding milk down his

The Farmers SonWe sat sipping grappa as the storm clouds rolled in from the ridges
like the smoke from some great unseen inferno,
the wood walls and shingles of the house complained to us
in low groans,
of the wind coming up hard, through the valley,

and there was flickering light from a candle,
and she told me how light from a prism dissects into different colours that correspond
in some way to our bodies and that all of life was a rhythm

and I believed that part,

and I believed there were stars beyond the sight of man on any grey day
and that they might hold some greater secret than prisms or rhythms
or any question a farmers son could ever

BrackishAfter the wet season, before
the midsummer night's drought,
I flight for the floodplains, where
the northern downpour bleeds out
and sweeps its love to the mouth
of my lungs. I sleep in the crux
of an oxbow, let my dreams flux
and flow fractured, deltaic. For this
is the way I piece myself apart,
a resolution, my absolution
in a new avulsion.

During the day, I move south
towards the river mouth, picking
pebbles, coral fangs from the riverbed.
A loose tooth is a common truth
in these parts. Bones are febrile,
eyelashes are made of chalk, salt.
Tears turn brackish. They cake
and crack on the flats of my hands.

This is my Pang

SubductionWe drip into October
with the silence of spiders
heavy in our chests,

our hearts curling in
on themselves like
leaves in autumn.

Lungs unfurl into the
stillness;
there is a breath, a whisper--

This dying wind whistles
through empty throats,
as if to murmur a warning,
perhaps, that we threaten
to become
earthquakes
along our hipbones.

blue sluicecast off care like blue
snowfields into rigid water,
and wash with mud the thrust
of earth, our skin soft as salt mines.
built you are
of bitch and buttercream,
of soured elements in the blue
dot of a pin-prick spotlight
and windowed skull.

we can watch the fire fade
into a black rat canvas,
into blue gates that tumble up
and loose finger grooves,
smear eyes across your face like warpaint,
faster and faster,
momentum in the race to nowhere.

and once done, we turn,
we go aground and push
up the lines of blue backs
orbiting the moons of that
rising ass, around corners,
a shattered life in starshine,
the masks
beneath the

Fold Overi.

across the vaults estimated by every milky tone
the curious whirl in old friends gather a surface
wholly between each divide of behavioral light
cones bend to placate our amass combustion

that is

until her legs uncrossed absolving my repetitive
nature to forget what conditions a truth has also
to submerge and share in upholding closely
the uniqueness of love we each must extinguish

our self

to then

ii.

across
the vaults

estimated by every
milky tone

the curious
whirl in

old friends
gather

a surface
wholly

between each
divide

of behavioral
light

cones bend to
placate

our amass combustion
that is

unti

Yesterday.You used to show me your
skeleton, the secrets inside
of you, your marrow. You

run, you shut your eyes, now.
You shut your eyes at the color
of the flowers, the leaves, everything
is orange. I am gathering

acorns. I am wearing your mask.

291010early autumn is spreading her legs for winter and
my breath reaches the stale air

like celtic knots, writhing in shapes of
fetus dreams
there are subtle clouds

shrouding the sky
and hushed rosemary wind

time spent on wondering which words exist,
peach blossom in a sky of tapering velvet

we both look above
in search of a god, or stars which belong on your teeth

she was is could be a sunset and
he is the sunrise

blissful history, sheltered and surreal
a spine which kisses shower

pupils like a eclipsed moon
arrowed by cupid,
bleeding

misanthropic and so sudden,
can you talk without it breaking glass?

soothed and sullen cheek

Even ThoughThere will be no caged fingers,
no tendons finely tuned to A from tension.

There will be no clenched teeth, gritting rosin,
to make the final singing note growl.

There will be unwinding bed-sheets,
hands slowly releasing the tuning pegs.

There will be slowly sliding scales
as the four limbs loosen past playing.

There will be a simple, quiet exit,
not to ovation, but to a hushed audience
who anticipate an encore,
even though it is uncertain.

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an already weakened soul.will you, elena asked, do something
for me? will you do just one thing? and
you couldn't say yes fast enough.

because no is not a word that belongs
in hospital beds with ninety-year-olds, no
is not a word that should be allowed to
spend the night between pristine white
sheets next to blue-veined legs in cotton
shifts. no has no home here.

elena still says things like girlie and sonny
boy and wheat thresher, because she grew up
a million years ago on a farm in illinois or
iowa or one of those i states. she still
remembers people like martin luther king and
"little jack kennedy" before somebody shot them.

heavens to betsy, el

if she did not have a trach.she is the loveliest eighty-ninth fracture in
your hollowed, lonely skull. she has stumbled
into your life and so carelessly and therefore
cannot possibly be forgotten or tossed aside.

you know that she names trees after people and
oversalted food and that her favourite flavours are
caramel and mint, that she eats skittles only after
they have been sorted by colour, and the ratios
cannot be uneven. you carefully took note,
documented these idiosyncrasies, and then asked
god to engrave them somewhere, anyplace
permanent enough to stand the test of her will.

your heart was conveniently close.

she takes showers in water hot enou

no eye on the sparrow.virginia dreams about things like artificial
sweetener and environmentally-friendly
ghosts. her friends are sharpie markers
and her eyes candy wrappers because she
dreams about being many different people today.

virginia does not know about chemistry or synthetic
division but she does know about dying and
leaving people behind. she could not balance
an equation but she can pack up a dirt-spattered
truck and vanish from an apartment complex in
under twenty minutes, and that's something.

virginia never graduated from college but most
people her age do not know the things that virginia
knows. she knows, for example, that if you

stars on kitestrings.i.

there can be nothing more strangely beautiful
than stars on strings, held gently in child eyes
wide. wonder and youth in capacity. fairy lust
and wanderdust on either side whisper sweet
everylittlethings in delicately curved ears. i suppose
you could say i live in dreaming, or that i make
sure to be a little bit irrational, just to make you
smile. i don't think you could ever, ever know.

iii.

beautiful number nine, so forlorn in disappearing,

i hope you have the sweetest dreams tonight.

acronyms could never give you enough credit.

v.

you are oddly wonderful, something far more lovely
than a nymph unfolding her grace lim

letters to cleo.(and other assorted finland code names)

dear prince charming,

so i guess what i'm trying to tell you is
this is hard, this is hard, this is hard.
i got dolled up and i wore mismatched
purple socks and pear-scented perfume
and a little bit of pathological bereavement.
i know that i curled my hair and that i am
neurotic and helpless but i want you to
know that i am handling things. i am
taking care of myself, if you cared at all.

i could not tell you whether or not i am
heartbroken but the way this is going

i am falling
i have fallen
i fell.

dear prince charming,

i could not find the courage to speak,
to get my words ou

cadenza.i.

i held ice cubes and salt in my hands. squeezing tight they fused together.
thinking of us i left them in a potted plant so the aphids could freeze, leaving ladybugs to starve.
i never wanted lightning storms but after the rain you skipped out and we’d grow tulips in cardboard boxes.

you always found my irregular pulse the scariest part of leaning closer. arias in minor keys lit flames
underneath cold violin strings and the pale ivory of your favourite piano.
bold words were written on my fingernails,
breathing june and sunshine daffodils. i’ve been thinking that lately you seem to have become
cracked, dry. like t

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city drowned clean

by ~anyimacielgray, Aug 28, 2011, 12:06:24 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

birds fly bluer before a hurricane,
wings sharper, the bricks neater.
one train is always longer than the
other. i cried about it. the saturated
city, droplets of colour caught on
tape & rewinding, cups me in its
palms, i am a bug on its window,
imagining all of it underwater &
people clapping in a silent film,
the last dying bubbles curtsying
on their lips, for their marble town
the white skied & terrible atlantis.

city drowned cleanby ~anyimacielgray

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

_{what a bath
i don't know i don't know

anyway thank all of you lovelies for my recent gift
most especially to =zebrazebrazebra & to ^nycterent
for their love & consideration (:
i love all of you very dearly}

Daily Deviation

Given 2011-12-11

city drowned clean by *iLISI ( Featured by $wreckling )

~SunkistTar Dec 11, 2011

Wow, I like this a lot. Pretty deep. Well done.

~anyimacielgray May 28, 2012

thank you so much!(:

*ohsostarryeyed Dec 11, 2011

RAH RAH BBY CONGRATS <333

~anyimacielgray May 28, 2012

AAAAH dis was crazy

~AmyATOMIC-x Dec 11, 2011 Hobbyist General Artist

This is gorgeous, congrats on the DD!

AA<3.

~anyimacielgray May 28, 2012

thank you <33

~AmyATOMIC-x Jun 19, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Welcome!

AA<3.

~Amika-Crystacia Dec 11, 2011 Hobbyist General Artist

Really interesting piece, you have some really nice, vivid images here.
I enjoyed reading this.
Congratulations on the DD.

~anyimacielgray May 28, 2012

thank you so much for reading& commenting(:

~Amika-Crystacia May 29, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

No problem ^_^

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city drowned clean

city drowned cleanby ~anyimacielgray

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