[x]

ButterBreakfast was real oatmeal
Every morning in Taos,
Served at the kitchen table
By the window. Ravens
In the courtyard.
You always put a dab of butter
In my bowl, covered it
So it would melt completely.

for S.

Counting the Ringsi

near my sick bed
he murmurs of how he's crumbling
but I'm still here
I've fought so long, I'm here
for a while I trust
I believe this, I must
even when it's bad, because
his faith alone is not enough

my random thoughts of how long
I have, and his thoughts of
"will she be able to outlive me" -
even at moments like this
it happens that
we hold on and speak of a future

ii

rolling restless this early morn'
you exhausted and I
drying up from a virus

spying through the shredding
of 250-thread count bedding,
between the hillocks of your shoulders

we never can sleep
in anticipation for what's to come

to plant the seed and watch it grow

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

Twenty: I'm afraid I'm growing oldi.
Coupons and sales magazines
have become more than just junk mail
and the holes in my pants
seem more patchable
and I wonder just how much
my sparse jewelry would fetch
if I said I saw the face of Jesus
in the glimmer of my pearls.

ii.
I am beginning to miss the sea I grew up on
so much that I will read bad poetry
just for the mention of a salty ocean breeze.
I feel landlocked and sometimes I'm afraid
that I will never see the world
until I have retired from it.

iii.
Faith says her life is full of asking.
I wish mine were full of answers,
but I too have many questions
and only Time will answer them for me.

iv.
My mothe

ChromesthesiaI
I've for long known that beauty is not a sum, where units of measurements could consist of physical attributes, or of anything that could be perceived by bodily senses. The vivid, lush green of a finally quenched apprehension is just as graceful and lovely as the wrinkled and sunburnt blues of a distant memory's wall flowers. Beauty is a spectrum of vigour, the fluctuations of ideas, concepts, actions and thoughts, which become their own purposeless musical colours and flavours. No consensus creates allure, only a great, breathless leap into the disarray of affective venture may lead the consecrated energy to emerge.

II
I have seen the li

DreamersShe reminds me that she's a dreamer

Her right hand delicately grips a pencil
as she's working equations on a TI-89 with her left
She looks up at me and smiles,
and there are stars, meteors,
spanning across the cosmos of her expression

her countenance reminds me to look up at the chalkboard
that's attempting to teach me how
to make verses sing from pages in a plain 8 by 11 notebook
and I am only armed with
a .7 pencil and a purple pen,
stolen from my older sister's pencil pouch

My hands are inches away from hers
from the desks side by side
like cars parallel parked on a side road
her equations confuse me

until she flips the

apogee"if pluto disappeared
from its orbit,
would the sun notice?" you asked,
and i said that i did not know.

i remember calling
your name, battling with
the roar of the ocean trying
to get my voice to reach your ears.
know this: i went hoarse that day;
from the cold of the spray, from the
shouts torn out of my throat, from the
feeling of having my essense
irremediably ripped from my bones.
and know that that night i tried to soothe
the ache with tea that i could not taste.

"this is no tragedy," i said to myself,
even as i recalled that there was nothing
before you; even as i realize it's
entirely possible that there will be nothi

cliffcliff
e.bojnowski

on velvet roads,
I impale a belated dawn
with my incisors and
shiver with perfect leaves-

I have no qualms
with the dark hills
that slope
and stagger into
a bed of scorched fly husks:

where
the thrum of the ground
melds
with the rapids in
my clairvoyant ears.

Lukewarm GeneticsBRASS SECTION, GO
Out of her trumpet flies a tiny whale, and the trumpeteer stealthily stuffs him into her pocket. She runs away to a dark alley, and carefully places the little whale in a dumpster where hundreds of other miniscule whales reside, swimming in a pool of water.
The mother whale swoops down from the sky and opens her mouth, letting the little whales in. SHRinks and goes through a portal in the blacktop.
In this parallel universe, the sky is the ocean and the ocean is the sky. Little birds swim through the watery sky.
One of the birds lets out the sound of a goat. The sound of a man screaming in horror. He holds the key.
To

Harvest MoonThree a.m. moonlight
across lazy dust motes; a
tree scrapes the window.
Your arm weighs on my hip like
whispered promises of love.

still,"i want grandchildren."

that car ride ruined some things
threw a wine bottle at the wall
15 years sitting
it was good enough or
it wasn't good enough

all the silence forced
my pride to jump out the window
if any rested in her
she showed it off like a speech bubble
tied it to her teeth
slammed it in the door
had it under her pillow for months
and years and years and years

there was no statement
there was no outstretched hand
just steering wheel clenching
knuckles white and jaw taut

(all because who i bed was not her mindful of
timeline perfection)

i still think i'm a tumor

--

she shows it off like a speeding ticket
i

Your Daughter has Sold Hundreds of Local PapersBut listen to me: I will tell you
how to love a bedspread;
a car seat; a sun dress
that you cleaned two months ago.

and should they find her
in the breast of a riverbank
or a cabinet,

I will tell you
facts about scavenger birds;
kettles, wakes and how to chair a committee
with a body on your desk,

as scavenger birds do.

Liquid Cityhere, at the bottom - lovers.
there are lovers disassembling
themselveslost in and to the
desperate motion in
of - waves.

- did you think the continents
moved themselves? see them slip,

in an open sleep. less go, come.
come and, and - again. trembling

here, at the bottom - their eyes
are lightless. hollow bodies left
restless,

the sea does not sleep.

BlackIt began in the quietest hours of the night. Granny was snoring up a storm, her bed creaking with each breath and twitch of her bigness. That's always the first thing I remember, thinking back. She always snored in the same way Pappy revved up the engines of his prized Cadillac. Loud, proud, and never ending.

I s'pose I should start with what happened before hand. Nothing will make sense if I don't. It don't make no sense anyhow, but the story won't be right if I don't start before everything got bad.

So we were in the market, Granny and I. We go every Sunday while my parents and siblings are at praise and worship with most of the rest of t

for onceCold

blackempty

like the cavern where crimson vellum once resided

Drenched in reticence,
your empty blue eyes do nothing
but freeze the blood in these veins

surrounded by phantoms,
i lie in the dark next to your fading silhouette
between sheets that hold so many memories,
they are empty,

like the chestnut eyes that bore into yours

And as the rain falls harder
as it falls faster

washing down the streets
through deep alleys,
down endless roads,

for

once

just

once

i pray it takes me with

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DFC 26: A RushingNight carries a
deeper sound
in this city where
bridges sprawl away,
and water-echoes
ripple from sea
to the sky,
as restless
as rain, yet more
doting: a safer
umbrella to hold
above a head than
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and do you rush? Do
you run – ? as
some river, rolling,
surging silversmooth
over your back,

or have you, too,
never felt the sea
tug at your feet;
tug at your heart – ?

DFC 2: To Davy Jones' LockerHere the men sleep away their saids and ways
in their ships of monochrome colours,
where propellers splutter salt waves,
the waves that wash over sleeping lovers.

Here where a ship drifts, she finds only that night
so deep and alone, for her brothers
will not see her trail on, in tired flight,
the waves that wash over sleeping lovers.

Here men search anxiously for sinking ships
with searchlights and boats to discover,
and swim across, at the move of their lips,
the waves that wash over sleeping lovers.

The sea snuffs out her men without a sound,
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DFC 12: MirabaiHave you heard of that dusk-coloured fellow?
News comes by that the princess has married him.
Meera, how you would laugh at those men who worship stones!

A wandering holy man would have stepped back
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have you heard of that dusk-coloured fellow?

Surely, she has been betrothed away to some prince,
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No, I know she sings and dances estranged from all family,
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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

IndiaThe sea took'd me...

And oh my country of newlywed clouds how I remember you, dust and rain
and mud and spice in air. And in summer, baking roads and hot languages; a million
dialects, or eight hundred: I never learned you, I never will. I only loved you and I think
that is not enough, perhaps it never was, but how do I know? I know loneliness,
and how can you know that? I was a child, am a child, am something less or more now –
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loose lips sink ships

by *Vigilo, Dec 23, 2012, 5:38:02 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Traditional Fixed Forms

an ocean has been thrown wide open over your head,
and remarkably you, too, are sinkable–

every verbal, every vocal, is dogged by the epiphany:
an ocean has been thrown wide open over your head

and all bodies wreck, ships and submarines.
and remarkably you, too, are sinkable.

loose lips sink shipsby *Vigilo

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Traditional Fixed Forms

©2012-2013 *Vigilo

DFC-23, '12, a cascade of couplets (i.e., ab, ca, db - for lines), using #transliterations' prompt 12 - the scene at 4:14, when we get a close-up of Ursula's mouth/profile saying "your voice", and the whole idea of voice, and this quote:

"But when I open my mouth, everything collapses."
- Isaac Marion.

Your feedback is always appreciated. Thank you.

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-04-27

loose lips sink ships by =Vigilo "is probably the most beautifully constructed cautionary tale" the suggester—and anyone else—will ever read. ( Suggested by =doughboycafe and Featured by ^neurotype )

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~ll-nerv-ll Apr 29, 2013 New member Hobbyist General Artist

So powerful and well constructed! Makes me feel all over the place when I write

Reply

*Vigilo May 4, 2013 Student Writer

Thank you so much for the wonderful words, I'm so glad you thought so!

Reply

~webmasterseb Apr 28, 2013 New member Hobbyist Writer

This is really cool.

Reply

*Vigilo Apr 29, 2013 Student Writer

I'm so glad you liked it - thank you!

Reply

~DarkTailss Apr 27, 2013 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

I don't know what all that jibba jabba in the artist's comments section means, but it doesn't take a genius to like this :]

Reply

*Vigilo May 4, 2013 Student Writer

Oh, I like that phrase - "jibba jabba" - but no worries, feel free to ignore it. I'm so glad you liked it - thank you so much for the lovely words!

Reply

*riparii Apr 27, 2013

It is remarkable, isn't it?
Beautifully done.

Reply

*Vigilo May 4, 2013 Student Writer

Rather! And - thank you so much, lovely, I'm so glad you thought so.

Reply

*xlntwtch Apr 27, 2013 Writer

..I'm so glad to see this piece featured! Even if I sink, I admire how you did this prompt. Thank you.

Reply

*Vigilo May 4, 2013 Student Writer

Thank you so much! I highly doubt you would ever sink, and I'm so glad you liked it - thank you for the lovely words.

Reply