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MiracleYou were blinking in morse code,
something along the lines of
"I need help and I don't know how to cry."

And you said it wasn't the first time,
but that he'd never actually said...
he'd never actually...
he didn't ever put it like this.

He
He
He
He wanted out,
and maybe finding different homes
was a metaphor for loading
an imaginary bullet in that nonexistent gun,
that he swore he'd use if he didn't...
if he didn't love you so much.

You, the steadfast second son,
you the last handhold,
you were the twenty year old parent
to a fifty year old child
who lives hand to bottle
bottle to mouth
starting at eight in the mornin
HeartI imagine you're a child on a swing,
legs pumping wildly as you call to me, shouting:
"Look, no hands!"
You stick your tongue at fate
and blow rasberries at common sense
before you hurtle into the dirt.

Little thing,
your lower lip trembles
at this new, familiar hurt.
I'm sympathetic,
but I let you cry there.
You've done this to yourself.

Maybe this time
marked your ninety-eighth fall, but
each bruise is different
and deserves tears of its own.
You reach for me to pick you up.
I always oblige.

I understand that part of your charm
lies in how you'll squirm from my arms--
always so anxious to get out again,
forgetting yo
More Than KismetThe world was a quilt
and we matched corners.
Somewhere in our patchwork
was the same thread,
woven.
It did not matter
that we weren't quite complimentary colors...
border to border we matched
and that was all we needed.
HeavyWhen you let me go
by the side of the road,
please remember the string
that you tied to my soul.
I'm the balloon you inflated
just to let go;
the night is too cold
and I'm sinking so slowly down.

Why'd you have to cut this
delicate cord,
the thin wire trailing
from my heartbeat to yours?
Remember the science of
the desolate sky,
because the night is too cold
and I'm sinking so slowly down.
Ninety-nineIt probably feels like a broken sigh,
witnessing a century of repetition and change,
becoming a testament to human tenacity,
and watching too many wars on television.

The nursing home is too sterile for you,
but as your children near sixty,
with problems of their own,
you have no place in their houses.
While everybody visits,
they never stay for long enough.
you are lonely.

Your daydreams are like old jazz records--
sometimes you confuse them with memory.
Were you really such a beauty on your suburb streets?
Did you really love that boy so completely?

Perhaps you have forgotten.
Exiting DreamsSome mornings my eyes shoot open,
and I am left gasping because
I have fallen sudden out of dreaming
and didn't expect to land so hard.

With the way my hair splays out,
jigsaw curls twisting this way and that,
I wonder if I passed through lightning
on my way down.

Why else would I wake  electrified?
Pulse racing,
eyes blue and dialating,
grinning at the sun even though
sleep is freedom,
so the daylight's my jailor.

Or maybe it's my savior because
I have heard that if you die in dreams
you won't wake in this world either.
And how many times have I gotten caught by the ankle,
running from a faceless nightmare
only to up and
The First Thunder of JuneI could tell from the way
the truck barreled down the road,
how its motor revved and caught on the air,
that a storm was coming.

The dog shook,
his twelve-year hips aching with the effort
of tucking his tail between his legs
in the hope that such displays of submission
would appease the weather.
They did not.

The sky turned feral and spat on the house.
While my old-hound panted
with his panic-wide eyes,
mine filled with awe and lightning.
Half-Past a Different Kind of BrokenTrauma looks like my kitchen clock.
The hours,
minutes,
they are dead
and the second hand stutters,
heartbroken.
I imagine every inconsequential twitch
is a plea for the freedom
it will never see again.
When its futile heart finally gives out,
I won't try to fix the timepiece
because after all its wasted sufferings,
allowing again such a disjointed tic
would be a deeper level of cruelty.
07.07.12Maybe it's the music,
or how I'm sitting cross-legged
with my soul like a bird on my shoulder;
the way my hair sits loose in a messy bun,
face devoid of makeup
and heart full of words too big
for pocket-change emotions.

For reasons I can't understand,
(that's forever never knowing,
or at least not for a while,)
I feel beautiful.
Love is a BattlefieldI wonder if this is how a landmine feels
before detonation.
Is there that same metallic exhilaration?
Does the shrapnel twist into a grin,
false as the leaden skin that coats
its ticking spine?
Oh, but if only it had a backbone.

There's a countdown in your eyes
and mine,
but we stare past each other
like shells in the dust.

Three.
Two.
One.
I go off.

All my mind is a fireball,
and I see nothing but hollow wreckage.
I name it "past"
and move on,
our questions turned to casualties
in the twisting smoke.
Ebb and FlowWhen I lose myself
it's as if I'm slowly stepping down into a river;
feet sinking past the round and weathered stones
as I become the sand.

My spirit eddies,
tied to nothing,
and every breath becomes
inconsequential.

Soul unfurled,
my eyes are the water
and I move with the moment,
unhindered.

I draw out my words with a bucket,
skip rocks across stanzas,
and smile as the ripples grow.
Morning PerspectiveNothing registered until
I heard a wet crack on the honey-toned floor.
Looking down,
I had dropped the egg and
only two thoughts cycled through my mind;
"that's a metaphor for a broken heart"
and
"damn, ain't that a mess."

These are interchangeable.

But it's too early in the morning
for thinking deep,
so I drank coffee and watched
the dogs eat the yolk instead;
all the while reaching for another egg,
saying,
"And here's my metaphor for moving on."
Empty LettersI know I'll find nothing,
but it's worth hoping that
somehow I'll hear from you
though it can't be good for me.
Every day I spend my thoughts
on a hope as false as wooden bones
that you'll take it on yourself
to remember how to talk to me.
We were friends once.
My arms will never tire
of throwing water on this bridge
you've set alight,
but my heart is burnt
and becoming exhausted.
ShiverYou take twelve steps;
the thirteenth becomes a spiderweb.
Its voice cracks out through the winter,
A death rattle.

Shiver.

If you pivot towards the shore,
it'd witness nothing more than
the hopeless groan that leaves your throat
when you recognize futility.

Remember what your father said--
about laying down on ice
like you were a sheet.
He neglected to mention
how frigid the bed.

Shiver.

A beat--you start to move,
trembling like the skeleton trees.
And oh!
How evil the water leers.

Each moment a torment
as you slowly kneel,
the fire in your knees giving way
like your footing.

Your breath comes short
in smoke-signal
It'll Never Happen, but I Can Write Like it WouldI want to know you,
understand every gap in your smile and
kink in your hair and
listen to your syncopated laugh
counter every beat of the songs you showed me.
Forget summer romance,
let's create our own season
where midnight never comes and
we can keep singing our brown-sugar harmonies,
since we are dark and sweet.
I know that you would melt in my mouth
if we stopped debating long enough
to let our lips swap philosophies.
But with each wandering daydream
comes the unspoken reality that
you will quote Shakespeare like the gospel,
melt me like one of his long-burning candles,
but my heart alone is in the words you read.
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More from *callerofcrows

Welcome TomorrowTug the sun into your window;
Fill your mug with its light.
Close your eyes,
and sip tomorrow as it steams off the rim.
Savor the taste of new mistakes;
you will sample them often.
Revel in the flavor of friendships made;
you will cherish them always.

As for me,
every morning is tea in my mug,
the dawn, a smile on my lips.
September Whispers InAutumn's blowing in;
it cuts through the warm-butter sun
with winter on its breath.
Were my mind a siren,
it'd be screaming,
warning me of colder days to come.
AgedThere's a picture of you
in your tuxedo,
new wife on your arm and
you're only nineteen and
I am ashamed but
I wonder if she's pregnant.

And you are twenty two,
clothed in your bridal halo,
with a new-found surname
I can't pronounce.
We don't talk much but
I am happy for you.

You are headed towards fatherhood
and I've never met the mother, but
once you took me for a date and
things didn't click.
I can't help but wonder
if things were different,
if I  would be
staring down that plus sign,
asking what the hell I was going to do
with two lives.

Even I am moving forward,
one year closer to the real world and
Silence in an Empty BedAll parts of my soul are unbraided;
I yearn for you.
In the softness of the evening,
by the stillness in the snowfall,
I hear your breathing
in an empty bed.
It's as if these fingers
twisted in my hair are yours,
though my own hand lies there,
tangled.
I myself am knotted up in you,
your absence,
these whispering sheets
your voice when I'm alone.
I close my eyes
to the darkness of the room,
imagining your scent on my pillow,
your lips on my shoulder,
how we would lay hip to hip.
I await the mornings
when you hiss at the cold of the floor on your feet,
eyes half open;
where we glow over breakfast
and speak in gla
Alternative RealitiesI can see my alternate selves
closing their eyes with the pain
of understanding they had died.

In another world,
they are waking while
I myself go under.
I contemplate this
with the girl in the mirror,
guessing that she is
the result of each ignored action.

Our palms touch.
She is cold,
leaving her frosted handprint
on my side of the world.
We will never speak,
and I wonder whether
she curses my decisions
or is grateful.

Unseen are the selves
that died in infancy,
left with strangers,
drowned in oceans,
completed suicides.
I shiver at their faces.

Every instant holds these, murdered;
The moments unfulfilled,
The
Empty HymnsHow cold the sky
that strikes me blind--
I look into the grey
and it devours me.
If I could wrench heaven
from behind that concrete palisade,
would it fall too fast
and crush me?

I prayed for rain;
imagining they're pieces of grace,
torn from the hem of God.
I'd give my soul to drown in them,
to open my lungs and drown in them.
O Lord, flood me!

Where is my faith,
that I call to God for such an end?
My hope is washed away,
leaves on a river,
bleached of color.

Tear from my throat
this wordless despair,
cast it down from me,
wrest it from my chest--
it throttles my conviction.

For all the dreams I've had,
they ren

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July 5, 2012
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[x]

And It Broke My Heart

:iconcallerofcrows:

And it broke my heart,
so I turned down all the pictures
and I tried to forget
where I put your necklace but
it's still reflected in the mirror,
lurking behind my jewelry box.

And it broke my heart
when I took the yearbook from the shelf
and stumbled on your picture
not so accidentally,
right before your scrawled
"Forever yours."

And how to regain composure
when turning down the sheets,
when lying on the bed,
while thinking of all the alternate worlds
where my hand is in your hand, but...

that's before I changed the pictures
and let tarnish choke that silver charm
and put the yearbook in the attic
next to the music that you wrote.

And, don't you know,
It felt so good
to spray my bed with my perfume;
to willfully forget
you ever smiled there.
:iconcallerofcrows:
A poem trend started by *vespera that I was invited to jump in on! Got plenty of lines for heartache, but I try not to put it here if I can help it. XD
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:iconmrs-freestar-bul:
*Mrs-Freestar-Bul Jul 21, 2012   Writer
Love it. I imagined the whole thing very clearly, I could even imagine the look in the woman's eyes and her broken look. Fantastic.
Reply
:iconcallerofcrows:
*callerofcrows Jul 21, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Glad that you liked it and could visualize it so clearly! Thank you. :heart:
Reply
:iconriotsong:
~RiotSong Jul 17, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
this is great! i really enjoyed the last few sentences ....it's very visual, and i can kind of imagine this actually happening as i read it...kind of like something out of a book!
again, good stuff :) very emotional
Reply
:iconcallerofcrows:
*callerofcrows Jul 21, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Thank you very much! I'm always happy when my imagery hits home!!! :D
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:iconriotsong:
~RiotSong Jul 23, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
youre very welcome! i'm always happy when i get to read great writing ;) :)
Reply
:icontonepainter:
=tonepainter Jul 8, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
"& let tarnish choke that silver charm"

Great line. I've been letting a few things tarnish... it's a very healthy thing to do sometimes. :D
Reply
:iconcallerofcrows:
*callerofcrows Jul 8, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Thank you!

Mmm, isn't it a good feeling every once in a while? :heart: I hope that brings whatever healing and closure you need.
Reply
:icontonepainter:
=tonepainter Jul 8, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
Thanks... I'm getting there. :heart: And I hope likewise for you.
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:iconcallerofcrows:
*callerofcrows Jul 8, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Thank you. I heal a little more every day, and I hope you do as well. :heart:

I'm finally ready for love again, though, which is a fantastic sign! :D Almost completely over him.
Reply
:icontonepainter:
=tonepainter Jul 8, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
3 years after my divorce, I'm finally beginning to feel that way, too. It's a surprise, because I wasn't sure it was ever going to happen. But it's a great feeling! :D
Reply
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