[x]

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

DormantWinter is a blank slate,
but not like Rousseau's—
it cleanses
sucking out warmth like poison
leaving only windburnt frost
tacked to the window pane

all we remember
is the numbness
the shuddering
skittish steps across the ice
snowflakes pasted to our faces
smoke rising from our lips
dragged across bleak clouds

winter has us captured
bound by fur and walls
drifting in our eggshelled silence

bone cold until we birth ourselves by warmth
emerge from our shells wet and heaving
uncurl our fingers one by one
joints crackling like fire at our backs

until spring comes
drip by tender drip
old wounds thaw
we are found raw,

relearning i. stardust scatters with the
direction of my pupils –
maybe secretly i am an
astrology teacher, waiting
for a sign to wink
happily at me.

ii. excuse the rambling
nature of forgotten question
marks, but tell me:
would you like to be the
object of handwritten clichés
would you like to whisper
secrets in my palm
and would you
like to be the possibility

iii. air brushes against my
skin like the torn petals
of a flower still standing.
[ hold your head up high, honey,
and tell tomorrow to wait just
a while,

iv. so you can figure out
the difference between
patience and having all the

crystallophonethere is a punchcard sin
like a queen of spades smoldering in an alley.

Engine,
you hear how the gears churn,
singing faster than we did before
back when black magic dropped like a
pair of socks from the sky with supplies
taped to a note that said
(oh, look at you now)
'U.S.A.,
freedom.'

such a beautiful brain:
what
what girl
runs on gasoline?

have a gallon
or we can call it a balloon,
and a new pair of glasses
for your tapered eyes
(you peel the bark back on the logs,
darling,
but you're not sure what you see),
and life says,
either nail jello to a tree,
successfully,

or keep your
icicles hanging from the eaves,
ca

RatsWhen I was a little girl, I went to church. Our church was an illegal one: the building was unregistered.

We would sit on the benches made from stolen floorboards and listen to a man dressed in black as he read us tales of angels coming to save righteous men from evil, their swords clean and their trumpets blaring.

The man dressed in black was old. He was sick. His Bible was missing pages.

One day in March, my mother turned to me and said clearly, "Masha, I want you to remember something for when you grow up." Maybe she knew she was dying. "God loves murderers."

I just looked up at her, thumb in my mouth. My mother was still a beautiful w

darwin's revengein the embryo of the city
in their cage
they paint their nails not
knowing

that the sun is watching
from his trap door
in the cloud ceiling where
whales can't swim but go

to dream
and drop down their weight in rain
not measured in pints
but lives overflowed

in lost archipelagos full
of automatic islands
that catch the eyes like needles
when viewed from further away

than the end of the world

What I Know of MadridI dream of Madrid
Because I know nearly nothing about it

Except that the heat is tangible
And sits in a layer beneath the skin
And the sweat of the heat is silk
I imagine it tastes of honey and wine

Except that the churches are tall
And God still has a fist of gold
Just as he has a palm of silver
Shaded in the vaulted arches of another age
The cheekbones of giants holding up the world
There the air smells of musk and incense
That has long since been swept away
By the wings of the doves that dance where the choirs sang.

Except that the nights are long
And the golden lights filter across the water
Like a sunset sleeps on the sil

grassy field with rustgrassy field with rust
--------------------------

I'd heard about the old car, three miles out of town and all alone. I just had to see it. It was time. School was over for the summer, my friends were at camp, and I was bored. I set out Thursday morning for a hike, following directions that Uncle Will had given me. As the heat was still growing with the climb of the sun, I found the field and wandered around looking, and looking some more, trying not to be distracted by bees buzzing in the flowers, and butterflies and baby mice. Then it was there, just a bit upslope from the bottom of a natural swale, and just below the sky at th

A ParenthesisYou were (a parenthesis, that paused
the daily, mundane stuff
of life;
a bundled breath
of fresh joy,
and borne in the wonder
of love.

Gasping and grasping,
'til in quiet you laid
still;
and I, my Child,
lie in quiet, still
tears).

And now, that is all you are,
and still so much more.

I Of YouI want you to break
and never bend for me,

see my history
spiderweb your brilliance
till you belong to me
(and I, to you)
utterly and forever

and know
you cannot stop this.

Across the Sea and Around the KotatsuSpring

Taco Rice

Mom starts with rice. Japanese rice, one, two, three Japanese cup-fulls of rice grains into the cooker, because Sis eats a lot of this stuff. It's one of her favorite dishes, taco rice, and Mom's always happy to make it for her because it's the only way Sis will eat her tomatoes. But back to the rice. "You want to rinse at least three or four times, until the water's kind of clear," Mom says as she cups her hand under the cooker pot, letting the cloudy water wash over her hand.

Rice cooking's easy though – just fill enough water to the point the rice's covered, punch in a time (or set it to "Quick Cook," which with our cre

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 look...the hungry look,

the wolves
weaving through
and around
the gully of your throat like wraiths,

we can feel you rusting, lost one;

i know that drainpipes and fenders
begin to crackle after winter wet

and that there’s a touch of snow
in all of us,

but no one,
no one could hold you as tightly as you do,
your whole body, bloodless in this arrest,

and if you will not let your fetters show
i will show you
there’s a place for going, and you haven’t gone there yet;

where quantum particles, once in contact, can retain a connection
even when separated

where you
wander up to a stranger
with your shirt inside-out
and say &lsq

I Took To Howling With YouI was shy at first, timid in my dealings,
I laced the trap against my throat,
sang sparing, tip-toed
around your poems.

The tone, the slow vibrating
from the shoots of my shoulders
to the gleam of polished talons,
it purred around inside me.

Oh the song, Coyote,
the same resigned call, it
paled before you, swallowed down its insides,
wept.

I took your little hand in my big hand,
flew out towards Crow, and for a while
My Love, there were poems
and the world was enough.

I took to howling with you,
down from the branches, safe
womb of the tree, I spread
dirt between my toes, sang happy,

sang the song of free,
your wild howl

SomedayJane and Ellis floated parallel to one another across the vast canvas of space, eyeing the marble-like planets that slowly crept past them. Their skin reflected the starlight with a dull orange sheen. Ellis had called it 'planet gazing,' an activity he apparently thought suitable for a date.

"Do you see that one below us?" Ellis said, pointing to a round blue mass.

Jane shrugged.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asked. "I'll bet it's beautiful on the surface, too. Like the way the dust begins to spiral when a star is forming."

"Something like that," Jane said. She didn't understand his excitement. Planets were nothing interesting. They were just

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FootprintsTheir nine lives spent,
the old cats have faded
along with their coffee-tone
portraits of
brass flashes and black
skin on ivory.
Those breezes peculiar and particular to night
still blow,
blue and humid,
but it ain't so common anymore to see
soul and study elope mid-swing
in the limelight
to whip that old wind into
tempest.
Sure,
the shrines with all their psalmbooks
remain---brickwise, inkwise---and
the shriveled minstrels strum on,
ceaselessly retelling stories
soaked through with wine and
rosewater,
but our shoes look so very
small
when trying to fill the
footprints of giants.
The old cats are dead and gone,
and there ain't no home for jazz
in this dog-eat-dog world.

This poem is not about sparrows.Birds just don't fall this hard.
You have slashed your pillows,
scooped up the feather entrails
and glued them in grotesque clumps
to your bruised skin,
and like some failed experiment
you sit in the darkest corner of your room
muttering, whimpering half-thoughts and
dark, terribly frayed strands of melody,
but still your bones won't break,
no matter how many times you
jump from your nest.
...
It's time to wash away the ink
you've been rubbing into your papercuts;
It's time to stop writing about
sparrows.
...
I remember:
(That broken, bleeding beak
uttered no cry of self-pity
when I tucked it into a plastic bag
and crushed it with my shovel.)

Apples and OrangesThough they try, they can't
put stickers on our cheeks to
tell us who we are.

JaundiceThese knots that bind us
will be our undoing;
These knots we tie with
steady, steady hands
while brows tremble
and eyes burn and shift
like tectonic plates,
These knots whose likeness
brew poison within our innards
and bring froth to our lips
until words dissolve,
foam hit with the tide,
These knots that clutch our
warm bodies in suspended,
maddening embrace,
while the ground between
you and I
stretches, cracks with cold
and sprouts weeds,
And the knots tied with old white ribbon
bind cheeks to eyelids;
Still we run, ever inadvertently toward
that red, dying star.
We are children,
seeking solace in the dark.

The Joyful Art of PresenceWhen your spirit lifts like shutters
out through your pores
or sinks behind your eyelids
into your inner beach chair,
all is shadow,
all is shapeless, phantasmic,
soft imp children of memory and speculation
that wander without path
and whose feet
flatten no grass.
But,
when your spirit runs the length of your
skin like fire through gasoline
and pokes the tips of your fingers and toes
with tiny white-hot stars,
the world is before you always,
and the true soul of the Earth
shines through in beautiful, painful
shape and light,
wood and water,
and
the unseen spirits
make their presence known
in love.

DecathectShall weary leaves at last give in
to shorter days, September songs;
or shall they fight their fortunes
for dreams of falling with rain?
Shall I fly now, now with the wind
that numbs what once hummed
watermelon hymns
in breath so warm, so long...
...or shall I wait?

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Submitted: March 27, 2012
Submitted with: Sta.sh Writer

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Whitman

by ~AMWeitz, Mar 27, 2012, 1:00:46 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I am all that grows from me
and all that grows from me is sacred—
              my hair, dirty roots reaching towards sky,
fed by sky, shifted by its undulating currents
              my fingers, spiders, crescents, twigs,
gaunt, blunt, probing, inquisitive...prurient
              my ears, awkward conch shells jammed on as if by mistake,
rigid and ridged, elven,
innocent like unexplored caves for children to bound gaily into
resounding with echoed cheers of courage wanting
as if a dozen more children waited within, fearless guides;
              my nose, obdurate.

The reach of my eyes knows no bounds;
what walls are there to throw my body against?
and my soul?

I dig
            my toes
into the ground,
stretch them.

                        All that touches me takes part of me,
                        all that is a part of me is me,
                        is holy;
                        all dies.

My nails scrape the elemental cadavers of brethren,
the callused pads of my big toes
nudge my boundless, shapeless lineage,
dirt runs through my veins
and dirt has tickled my toes
and in that instant I am all,
and haven’t we all?

                        All that touches me takes part of me,
                        I am divine,
                        I live;
                        all lives.

(air is solid and omnipresent;
we are all touching)

(air is solid and omnipresent,
yet our vegetable bodies' roots know no inhibition)

We must learn the art of growing hands from our eyes and ears,

and ears and eyes from our hands,

so that we may hear the drum circle

that fills our own silences

like the ringing in our ears

Whitmanby ~AMWeitz

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

---

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-11

Whitman has almost a surreal feel to it of how vulnerable yet invincible one feels writes the suggester, who continues, saying that the deviant's gallery is also full of many good deviations as well. Indeed, ~AMWeitz has an amazing gallery of literature that is not to miss. Also suggested by =Vigilo ( Suggested by ~reflectionsinwater and Featured by ^NicSwaner )

~~love 0 0~~

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~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

*12who Jan 11, 2013 Hobbyist

_{Congrats on your Daily Deviation!}

~AMWeitz Jan 12, 2013 Student Writer

Thanks!!

~girl-withagun Jan 11, 2013 Professional Digital Artist

...you made me cry, for I felt as if you reached within me and said everything I am feeling, but in a way so powerful and profound as to make it what I wish I could say. thank you.

~AMWeitz Jan 12, 2013 Student Writer

It means a lot to me that this touched you and that you felt the need to tell me. Thank you for taking the time to read it.

~girl-withagun Feb 10, 2013 Professional Digital Artist

~SergeantLuke Jan 11, 2013

Daily Deviation! Con-freaking-gratulations, Andrew! None of your work deserved it more than this one!

~AMWeitz Jan 12, 2013 Student Writer

Hahaha, thanks Luke!!

~nikan2 Jan 11, 2013

"Air is solid and omnipresent"..

"So that we may hear the drum circle
that fills our own silences.."

You manage to convey these paradoxical phrases so elegantly.
This is splendid!

~AMWeitz Jan 11, 2013 Student Writer

Thank you so, so much!

*Vigilo Jan 11, 2013 Student Writer

Congratulations!

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