[x]

frozen/headlightsI am nervous

unsettled, unprepared
impressed to the point of
intoxication

perhaps I am playing the part of
a girlchild, reincarnated from something striped
hands-shaking, violin bones (high-
strung)

perhaps it is/has been/will be
you
is it cliché to make comparisons to
kryptonite, to
an envelope delivered with a
white settling of
anthrax?

your smile tangles with the
half-poetry you breathe out instinctively, sharp and
wintered

you are surprising like
frostbite. the soft teeth of morning
freeze; and I, dull, wordless,
naive and lightning-struck

I am nervous

i don't tell you enough -fair-haired child
with a hesitant touch,
how you've grown.
motherless daughter with
eyes as alive as spring
(which wish
they could forget what they've seen),
i love you.

the cars you crash into
and the scars that you carry
never keep you from sky-castles
that are far beyond your reach.
you, who vanquishes her head-foes
with the cadence of her rocking
and the rhythm of an ever-anxious heart,
are lovelier,
are braver,
are wiser than you take credit for;

because even though your heart remembers
how lovers become calloused and impatient
with your flighty soul -
you will always return to the heavens.

you will always carve your path
out of the d

The deforestation of a wild thing.You tear the curtains down
and find that I am a funeral pyre in
full swing.

You learn that loneliness is nothing like
emptiness, but a burning forest.

Brightburnflames licking up my thighs and
taking with them the kisses you lay there,
and there and there.

Will my deforestation strip my skin back to
the taste of lovers old, their touches turned Midas-gold
along the expanse of new pink skin?

The curtains haven't burnt so you pin
them back up on my collarbone wings and slide
them closed to hide the damage.

I burn the way unwanted things burn (green wood damp bark),
I don't want to go but you've shut the fire in and my skin

Going Once, Going TwiceMy heart is so worn out
it can't even break properly

swaddled in immunities built up from
dining on tetanus covered rusty
affection
hand in hand with the intent of
divide and conquer

I fell harder for you than a
woman with six inch heels drunk on the
dance-floor, but
everything ends with indifference
like kitchen appliances,

I have all the sadness
of a blender
a computer
all bladed asterisks and binary

my love
highest bidder
sold, bought, regifted
take it for what it's worth

or someone else will
just as easily

Standardsit’s okay

she whispered in the shell of your ear
and smelt salt on your cheek. oceans

that was where you spent your day.

it’s okay that you don’t come home
and it’s okay your daughter
doesn’t know your name and it’s okay
that I am shifting to the mailman for advice
it’s okay that I would move mountains for you
but you won’t even cross town for me

it’s okay

she told you she was moving over coffee
and you asked her where
not why
and she said anywhere
and you said that’s not a real answer
damn it where are you taking my daughter
and she said nothing. she placed the mug
in the sink

Springtime SwandiveI am not falling-- tumbling through
acrimonious stages of paranoia
meets depression meets all
those things I’ll never reach,

and it’s a quiet green thread that sews
these calloused palms to the gravitation
of your solidarity; dreams revolving
slowly around the circumference
of stranger stars, on their backs
sighing liquored lullabies and drifting
down to sleep.

there are few things in this life
which I know to be real when
I still cry out at night from the phantoms
tearing through my chest, but you are

the sun rising at 3 AM on a
sleepy Wednesday morning and the
last wish birthed on wanting lips and
the persistent anchor

Depression.To be depressed is
to carry every unwashed thing
in your life in your
arms.

The dishes you
couldn't clean pile
up with your innards,
jostling for space
amongst the lungs you've
smoked black and the
heart you've loved
thin.

Your unwashed sheets
hang around your shoulders,
gathering dead skin cells and
catching hair you habitually
tear from your skull, a
nervous twitch you never
quite shook.

You wake up one morning
and find that your hands are
still stained with dirt
from that time you buried
your lover in the backyard,

wanting to let go
but discovering that letting
go feels a lot like
giving up and
you're not rea

In Piecesrum-lust lips make gentle friends,
words slurred in hands blurred,
burning in between the lines to find
some
drunken concoction of wilted laughs
and heavy sighs, scented sultry
with desperation.

you are that
rasping in my throat when my voice
deteriorates and I am left breathless
and hopeless and raw, my
muscles ache in memory of the
motions to forget-
we do not let go.

and cold beds call, stability,
metal frames and sunken heads –
rest now, rest with
a prayer on your lips you don't
care to share, a dream in
your mind you'll never get back;
rest and the earth will lend you peace
and

you will stop. the rivers will cle

Ferris WheelI didn't want to die. That day
you took me to California Adventure
Park, the sucky twin
to Disneyland, place of magic
and an animatronic Abraham
Lincoln. Still,

with my face and fists
pinched up like shrunken underwear
you brought me like a load of laundry
to the Ferris Wheel, the ride
swinging in the air like a death sentence.

I wanted to go home. I wanted
cotton candy. Not this death-trap,
this winding machine of hellish
revolution. Did you see!?
One of those cars was shaking!
It's on purpose?!
Is that supposed to be fun!?

I was still small back then. Terrified
of anything faster than our Nissan Quest,
which we rode her

The Dating GameMy hands are sweating, my stomach churns
My breathing increases in pace
The insecure feeling returns
I'm in a state that's far from grace
I really shouldn't be so nervous
But I'm running out of time
Why do we do this to ourselves?
Don't think like that, it will be fine

And now I'm standing in the middle of the room
Checking on makeup that we're brainwashed to consume
Remembering those magazines that tell you that your life's a competition
That we're all fighting for someone to fight for

You better watch your back
You're a piece of meat and the dogs want more
It's time to face the fact
That you're a piece of meat and the dogs wa

Not HumanAm I human?
I'm not aren't I?
I'm a freak
A monster
I don't belong here
I belong in a circus,
or a mental asylum right?

I'm too sick in the head
Too insane to think straight
Destined to walk alone for eternity
To scare everything that crosses my path,
And ruining every little thing I touch.

No, I'm not human
Nor am I normal
I've learned to accept who I am,
though nobody else can't

Chasing me out
Breaking me apart
Beating me senseless
Just enough to drive me to the edge,
enough to make me give in....
to the disgust of life's true nature

sloppy love-poem hammeredwell I could be
in love
but there is a
distinct possibility

I am just intoxicated

I'm always getting drunk
on things that
aren't alcohol

metaphorically sloshed on
the snow, the rain,
frank sinatra songs

I got smashed on a swing-set
once
you know
limbs furiously
stabbing the sky
screaming into the
wind

the way you believe
you can fly
for an infinite split-second

anyways,
that night it was you

sometimes
perfection
hits harder than an
ice-cream
truck,
harder than a
fifth of vodka

yours absolutely
floors me

TitanicSo you've decided to be a shipwreck
just to taste the Atlantic open
between your lips
and soak your lungs in saltwater
until your limbs turn to bones
and grow their own crust,

a new orphanage
for the school striving
in the depths of the underworld.

Cruelest love.Honey,
sometimes love means
sticking your fingers
down their throat
just to keep them alive
long enough to tell them
they're an idiot.

And sometimes love
means waking up in a hospital
bed and wishing you'd turned
left instead of right that
day.

Sweet Missive

I'm sending an angel, with rust on his wings
But do not assume he is good
He's silly, a laugher
A heartless back-stabber
And he does not behave as he should, my dear
He does not behave as he should

I'm sending an angel, with blood in his soul
But do not assume it is red
It's black from the taking
Of hearts he is breaking
And his eyes are so terribly dead, my love
His eyes are so terribly dead

I'm sending an angel, as wild as Night
But do not deny him his play
He's sinning no longer
A raw, bitter hunger
For he cannot remember the day, my love
He cannot remember the day

I'm sending an angel, with salt in his w

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Upper ClassWhen I am old, I will eat
whatever I want. Cake, french fries,
cookie dough, three french hens, two turtle
doves and a
partridge in a pear tree

they will not buy me a
wheelchair
(unless I request one doused in syrup
for a light
brunch)
heavens no!, I intend to roll, like a
bowling ball with a face
down the hallways

to wherever my next meal is

I shall pass serenely
well fed and satisfied
to rest, not in a grave befitting the
plebeians

but a crater

Icarusyou are done up in
deep blues, purples
faded ocher
a nebula of bruises and
scarred tissue

cue the fade, following this eventual
realization,

life is :

letting yourself be torn in half,
reconstructed
setting fire to your prison
thirty stories of glass and concrete and
contrived combustion
wax wings soaring too close to the sun
lunging at the
chaos

eyes blazing, drunk on the mayhem
body burnt beyond recognition

Today, Death is a Musediversions silenced,
alarms set

lights off blinds drawn eyes wide

back alleyway thoughts show up again,
masked and armed
slipping in through the attic window
you've been meaning to fix

hourglasses, egg timers, second hands
thousands of six-in-the-mornings spent
fighting sleep and endings of all persuasions
drenched with inevitability

the way the sun feels
when it realizes it can't consume itself
forever

predator, prey (Protozoa in E Minor)when I could finally bring myself
to look in the mirror
I was more fascinated than shocked

wouldn't the wolf be surprised to awaken one day
a hare, instead?

while I was sleeping
or perhaps while I was looking in the fridge
a bit of classical music, a slice of leftover
ruthless detachment

the cage turned inside out and
swallowed me up,
deranged amoeba-style

(although it is possible
I had been caught in your snare
all along,

too witless to know the difference)

instincta berceuse
of sorts
(wolfcries the accompaniment)
animals, we

you worship at the altar
of my body
A juxtaposition: the difference between
being struck like a woodblock
and being played like a
Stradivarius

my skin composes arias
constellations of goosebumps
heartbeat sonnets wrapped in veins

again and again and again

regressing to instrumental
words temporarily discarded
Canis Lupus, full moon

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Spoilers For my Younger Self

by ~amy-derfer, Dec 2, 2012, 12:03:57 AM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

I.
sometimes things will make sense
but mostly they won't

and one night
when the maps give you open wounds instead of
papercuts
you will sit motionless in a parked car
baptized with safety instead of
gasoline

II.
you will wield smiles like fishhooks,
contagious and sharp
you will
waste yourself on
charlatans

you will kiss a man
who tilts your chin
and touches you slow

you
won't
feel
anything
much

III.
you will spend your whole life waiting
for something to hit you hard enough to make you
feel like you have
spent thirty years in a broom closet

you will live night daily
waiting for the sunrise
and occasionally dancing
for the stars

Spoilers For my Younger Selfby ~amy-derfer

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

for the elocutionists [link] read by: [link]

*0hgravity Jan 24, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

you will sit motionless in a parked car
baptized with safety instead of
gasoline
--I really love the whole thing but this especially.

beautiful reading too.

~amy-derfer Jan 24, 2013

thank you

I wasn't sure how I felt about my poem being read but [link] did a spectaculous job

*0hgravity Jan 24, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

welcome^^
she did

~foreverforwards Dec 5, 2012

Two is my favourite! So well written so true.. I like it

~amy-derfer Dec 5, 2012

thanks

you are too kind

~foreverforwards Dec 5, 2012

you're welcome

*Hfeather53 Dec 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

"you will wield smiles like fishhooks,
contagious and sharp
you will
waste yourself on
charlatans"

Oh so true.

~amy-derfer Dec 2, 2012

millions of frogs right? not a huge fan of princes either though

*Hfeather53 Dec 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

They tend to be full of themselves >.>;;; oh royalty~

~amy-derfer Dec 2, 2012

I actually know a prince! he's prince of this small village in India. he's a good guy actually now that I think of it. DANGIT, my theory is out the window

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