[x]

Apologies to LaoEach day is its own microstep--
since I woke from my mother's womb,
I longed to mimic new words, trammel
the sound until it blossomed

like a newborn, and oh how I birthed
stories--told them how I wanted
the author's sacrosanct title
once I've grown. But growing meant

learning the practice of citizens
and their due contribution: beast-slaying
nature of please, thank you,
an apology: sincere

or not. Then there is time--the first
breath of nine, exhalation
of five, the suffocating mandate
of overtime. You grow used to it:

the cyclical disappearance of parents,
pervasive need of sleep, a home-
cooked meal's gradual transmogrific

The Best is Yet to Comeif we grow old
there will be a sigh
an attention to the change
as your muscles slacken underneath
your faded, favorite shirt
the one that's threadbare, "holy"
in a sense less than divine
I'll have washed it for
the thousandth time
our eyes will crinkle, wrinkle
in ways that start to match
and we'll hold hands and ask:
when did the nerves and veins
begin to let our hands get cold?
-if we grow old

The Hungry SeasonThe Hungry Season
“The next season will be the hungry season.”
Moses M. Kolinmore

A stem, a leaf, a stem,
a stem again,

and the army of our bodies
hanging from the branches
of the Dahoma trees.

We come to this as moths
on Saharan winds

with no malice but the wings’
direction, our caterpillar mouths,
our waiting numbers

cocooned in dirt. We are
aching and glutted

but hungry still, even as
we strip the canopy bare of leaves
and foul each river black

with waste below us –
our gruesome chatter asking,

as we fall into the dirt
to reshape what we are,
can you imagine the hunger?

But of course you can; of c

Come Home: A PantoumYou'll always come back to me
when the lights in the far hills
are done searching. For, new beds

entice adventurers. Too,
when the lights in the far hills
come home, the homespun dream they

entice adventurers too,
but they can't. (Dream we're neither.
Come home.) The homespun dream they

turn pioneers to homebodies,
but they can't dream we're neither,
our wanderlust fit to turn

pioneers to homebodies.
We've always made love free, so
our wanderlust fit. To

turn ourselves towards our home
we've always made love. Free. So
when the last adventurers

turn themselves toward their homes
in faraway lands, I know,
when the last adv

MeanderingHardly a mountain, though on lowering days its head sits wreathed
By the mists of a passing front, aged and befogged as bygone elders
Doddering about – before there were names for the malaise
That hazed their thinking
And from this modest crown there slouched and sloped
A long shoulder, meandering down to meadows below
Pausing now and again to coddle a pleasant hollow
Casting a sloping pitch – enough to rush a torrent
After a sudden shower
Seldom pooling
Its glint and glimmer burble among the stones
To join a rill and plash and swirl and putter about a root
It's there I'm apt to wander

Not much of a path, hard passed a

What Soft DreamsWhat soft dreams we lay -
What soft dreams, like infants put to rest -
Frightfully bare, and compromised,
Our kisses on their breasts.

We close our eyes and trust them safe,
Kept 'til break of dawn -
Forgetting that the night is fickle,
And dutifully, as long -

It safeguards some,
Covets others,
Moved by neither coin nor threat
Nor anguished mother's cry.

preludesi.
blue rose into the city backdrop
like balloons, a million for the
morning sun prelude.

ii.
i've not slept a dream
but i have cried a salty face
and letters spilled like beans
into my moleskine,
almost as virgin as i once was
with few stories between my covers.

iii.
the kettle's belly boils
like my head upon a pillow.

iv.
i am guilty for rarely finishing my tea
even when i use the small mugs;
pour, rinse, repeat.

v.
perhaps today i will play dead.

vi.
perched behind my blinds
it dawns on me that i am surrounded
by walled neighbours, strangers,
they're just preludes to lovers
the way i am always
prelude to the one.

This Common BloodI am young when I first hear the word 'adoption'. I am so very young, perhaps three, maybe four. I accept it easily when my mother sits me down and explains that I did not grow beneath her heart, but rather in it. I nod my head, smile big, and ask when I'm getting a little sister. My mother kisses me on the forehead and puts her hand on my head as she stands up. "If you wish on a star, Sarah, maybe she will be here very soon." I practice my wishing until night's companions wink merrily in the sky.

Dear Anna,
I turned seventeen just recently. I thought of you when I woke up, and I wondered if you were thinking of me. I like to think that you

Nathan Turner Nathan Turner, aged thirty, was a modest earner, if nothing other. Son of no

father and a flighty mother, and raised in most part by troubled brothers, he was never

one to put his trust in those upon whom the dust of age had scarcely settled. For a time,

he had meddled, even peddled, looking for the light in his own eyes. But never enough was

it, just as well, in his own mind, for the brand of fire which he desired was the sort a

man might chase until he dies, and even at the gates of Hell, never find.

But one cool evening in July, he chanced to meet - just walking by - a woman with

an empty stroller. "Empty stroller?" he asked at on

SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and

SouvenirsWhen her mom went to check the mail at breakfast, she returned with a thin box in her arms.

It was a package from her father.

Her dad was sort of like a traveler... at least, that was what she assumed he was. His job always had him jumping from city to city, country to country. He'd been to almost everywhere around the world, and every few weeks, he would send her a letter with a little souvenir from his stay. This time, it was a miniature Eiffel Tower.

So he's in France again, she mused, studying the two-foot tall replica. A small chuckle escaped her lips. It was about time he remembered to get it for her! He really should've thought of b

Gnome Noir  "I did it for the money and I did it for the girl.
        Well, I didn't get the money – and I didn't get the girl."
::  Walter Neff - Double Indemnity
So I point the flintlock at the guy – and that's no easy thing, big musket like that on a little gnome like me – and I peer down the sight. Not many people know what it's like to stare at a man through a glass. But in those sacred moments, the whole world takes a breath and it's just you and him. I line up the shot, and I think about the girl, and--

What? That is the start. What do you want, Sheriff, my life story?

Alright, well, I'm Gniles Brody the Third – that's

The Solipsist's LotThere's something about yourself that you don't know. You probably don't remember the circumstances very well, but I do. If you enjoy things the way they are, if you revel in even the smallest speck of ignorance, you need not read ahead. I won't force you. But from what I know of you, you don't like secrets. Especially not when they are about you.

You see, when you were born, so at once was everyone else. Your mother, she sprang into existence, just like that, the instant your tiny infant brain achieved the smallest semblance of self-awareness. Woven out of the ethe

i think we've got it bad.the long dirty road has wheels printed into it and buildings jutting from its sides, cars stopping completely, submissive to all the too-bright light. it's freezing but i feel okay, i feel whole. i feel like i could step outside of myself and the numbness of it all wouldn't let anything touch me. the essence of me. the idea of me.

you wait for me under the street signs with your heeled shoes and too much black smeared around your eyes. it makes you look sad but maybe you want to look sad i don't really know. your hugs feel like a mother's. we're going to a party, some great musician's with golden toilets in his loft that likes prostituted gi

tree, fiddler crabIt took days to hollow out the soft parts
of the trunk, dig out the tree-flesh and sap,
polish the raw wood so that when he sat,
there would be no splinters. He carved his name
into the side, like a blessing, a declaration
of good fortune, and stowed his forest inside.

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An Evening TheoryOur ghosts have not come to blame us,
Rather, they are a phantom of fathom;
A watcher which invades, unwelcome,
Yet parades a lantern of knowing through
Our darkest and most porous depths,
And our painted cave walls sizzle in their
Eyes, like terrified leaves in the wind.

In the evening, feathered soothsayers
Rain fractal poetry through my window,
And as I listen with sad, open eyes,
I can hear the soft sound of leaves
Letting go; a cry of victory, every
Empty branch.

The Spine of the WorldEtches, frayed and syrup sweetened,
Vacant splotches in the window screen,
Save for a cat purring through the holes.

Young riders skirt the night past knowing,
Drinking tea of sixty symbols for warmth,
Warding off the cold of a June death.

Ours is a coast of swords, muting the liquid
Edge of some potential shared assembly,
Realized in the knell of snowy evenings.

And the willing wretch accepts his bed,
That casual winter stretching out,
That forest eager to be melted.

Inconsolable.Dirt invades and balances every clear
Thought, and we choke on the coal of a
Small someday hope. I dream of walking
Without pins and needles.

Happiness purifies, though some embers
Smolder as society breathes. Orange
Friction peels the surface, and dissolves it;
Easier to swallow, save for those who
Clutch barbed wire rosaries.

For them there is no comfort
But to chase after some imagined
Melody.

Church RaftersWhat sentimental thing lives in a locket
Left behind, or thrown away.
Though it still shines, the river Lethe has
Ferried it away from view.
As the church rafters know their own dark
Secrets, I too require no doors. Black
Crows come and go, their cloud dutiful in
Hiding the fetal coils of shame below,
Gnawing the nerves between degrees of death.

Eternity has sides,
As it wallows in the
Holy water, laughing.

Crescendo: In a Lonely PlaceIn a lonely place, we will sing,
Possessing our third person sadness.
There is no name for this;
No religion can claim what exists in
Concave sighs, between the voice and its
Crescendo.

The clock requires consent,
And every man has his devil.

In a lonely place, we will dance,
Angels on the head of a pin. We
Waste color blushing
For sewer rats; there are better altars.
Atrocity worships the coming
Renaissance.

The crow comes to end our song,
And eager are we to sing.

After White NoiseSome poems never start, rather,
They are subtle, and
Always there. An
Ending frees worms to
Go on eating dirt. Sometimes,
Men trade their insides for
Straw; they scare from
Empty fields, and share
Apples that fall from
Nearby trees.
Every journey ends without
Alarm, every blown tire
scatters a bit of ourselves
On the road. We remember
Fondly, the lost
Limbs that brought
Us home. After white noise,
I found dad in the yard,
And he shared an apple
With me.

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Ottumwa Shaman

by *MineralAccident, Apr 16, 2011, 11:15:50 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

In Iowa, weeping willows dream of
Tigers, born in pagan fog, their
Coat of stripes singing shaman
Songs; shrill symphonies of grief.
Heaven tilts, crashes, and we race
The dirt to get away. We drink the
Earth with bullets of air and grow
Dizzy, light-headed from breathing
Some far off flame. Perhaps a poet
Who braved the fog of Ottumwa, and
Caught fire. Every cowboy has his
Six chances before high noon, before
The fog forms wispy jackals to take
Them home again. Every son inherits
An empty gun, six voids to fill with
Answers, skimmed and guessed from the
Covers of books their fathers used
To read. There is no other way.
In sleeping, I have been to Iowa,
And I learned where wiccans go
To make their bed. I do not know now
If I had dreamed the weeping willow,
Or if it had bent low to dream of me.
In Iowa, there is no such truth, only
Depth, and the shaman's song of grief.

Ottumwa Shamanby *MineralAccident

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

The Ottumwa shaman's song of grief.

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-16

Ottumwa Shaman by ~MineralAccident ( Suggested by `Kneeling-Glory and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

~Karinta Apr 25, 2013 Student General Artist

Very unusual.

`Kneeling-Glory Jan 21, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Sorry I missed the day itself, but congratulations on the DD!

*12who Jan 21, 2013 Hobbyist

_{Congrats on your Daily Deviation!}

~Solaces Jan 20, 2013

Oh, this is gorgeous.

~WilliamDallwitz Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Wonderful poem!

Really reminds me of this music piece: [link].

*MineralAccident Jan 16, 2013 Student Writer

That is one of the most gorgeous guitar tracks I've heard. The sorrow in it makes my bones ring, I like it.

A track that helped influence this, and continues to influence a lot of my writing, is this one: [link]. Maybe you'll like it too.

Thank you for reading.

~WilliamDallwitz Jan 17, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

That's a wonderful piece, thank you.

~Nelfan Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Since I'm from Iowa this really connects with me. Congrats on the D.D!

*MineralAccident Jan 16, 2013 Student Writer

I'm glad to hear I didn't disgrace Iowa with this. I like to think my father helped me write it, since he was from Iowa. Thank you.

~Applepelt Jan 16, 2013 Hobbyist Digital Artist

Lovely!

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