[x]

Real QuietThe only mystery is the echo
when a person leaves. No organ ever
detected it, the clang of one vacuum
striking another. Even when I unthought
it: the first silence, repeating like
a ghost. The end came

exactly as its beginning, discreet
and with gentle dignity (a mask of voicelessness). My
restlessness was spent on a hum
of radio, bird rush, voices. All day sounds
which were only silence. This
transmutation of energies, a cycle, a thought
that nothing has an ending: this is what
I heard. Two

weeks now and each
flashing eyed dream is shorter, at least

in my memory.

and I still keep running into parked carsMama,
your baby girl's swimming
in dead of the night
hair, scarred knees,
overgrown weeds, and
countless pairs
of shoes-
with those
orange and yellow wheels
that hug my toes
and heels

I'm running into
parked cars
trying to get
my kite to fly
and hiding under
dashboards
listening to you
fight

I'm rummaging through
boxes of secrets
that Daddy tried
to hide-
solving puzzles with pieces
I'll never uncover
in these thoughts
of you

LossKneel. Lick the salt. Pray.

There is a hole here, I say,
pressing to my breastbone.
No doctor can diagnose it.
There is no test to check
how deep you've been ingrained
in my woodwork, pumping muscles
and spitting valves.

And no scalpel can erase this.
The emptiness of unfriendship.
Cold eyes glinting black
where once they glimmered.

This is a flimsy half-light
coming from my cigarette.
Nothing good will come for years.

Kneel. Lick the salt. Pray.
You're gone.

Other Girlsit's not a simple thing
reading old magazines
like that
by yourself
like other girls
with other girls
in the same room
with the same shame
but they're not you
and they weren't there
but they know
they know

Waiting rooms that get stuck in your joints
Like screwdrivers
flat heads
how different names seem spelt now
closer to a gamble than a title
now, you're gonna have to spell
selfish
differently
closer to this hell
than hellish

your good sense
chirps in your sleep
chips at your teeth
too smart for that
right?
too determined
too you (makes sense)
to end up like other girls
who look like other girls
with other g

Polaroiddo not tell me
the caveman sought
his chilled rock cave
alone

that he
without language
passed snapshots by

no

tell me he
shouted in his thickets
crushed his silken fruit
colored red the broken birds

and grass and sky and sea

pixie dustpeter pan and i
have
some sort of understanding.

well,
he was hovering around
my bedroom window
when he saw me crying
and i said, i'm turning twelve tomorrow.

that's when he offered
his hand and a little pixie dust

his hair was wispy, his cheeks i guess
still held a little baby fat.
and i couldn't help but notice the small
tinge of regret, the sense of neglect
that no child should ever feel.

maybe his eyes held all the wisdom in the world
all the secrets of the fairies,
the pirates,
how to reel in the little boys
and girls,
how to build a family
and the terrors of being alone.

and now i'

outgrowing gillssea-cradled urchin
child has a salty heart yearnin'
for a glimpse of mother moon
tiny spiked wunderkind
punk, studded belt
you know life's answers well
shuffling through the seaweed-less halls
missing the ocean swell
tidal waves foaming at the mouth
everyone is laughing now
at the boy born on a boat one sunny afternoon
cause mama loved the sea like lovers love the sheets
landlocked kid is homesick and
sea sure, he's searching for the sea shore
life's a blur for Davy Jones at his locker
capsized by sea-legs on solid ground, he finds his seizures
and he hates his earth mother
he hates her
for falling for the ocean and
how he's rocked by the moon
how he's mesmerized by her glow
her pull on his sea-conceived cells
no
he hates her too
for the puking in the stalls
for the ridicule

swallowsswallows
ennui
we see

swallows
a sigh
to the sky

swallows
emotion
sans caution

swallows
cries
by the byes

swallows

alone

or with

swoop and dive

internalize
seem more alive

again

he swallows
his sorrow

but never

his pride

llp - aug2012 - dA - DLD-8/28/12

Wildflowers, Imperfect BirdsI breathed your name like wildflowers under vast broken skies, in wide-open spaces. The wind blowing through them spoke of dew and dirt and petrichor, and there was sunlight on the ground like a mosaic patterned by god's own hands.

I said it like a monarch claiming new land: a declaration, a butterfly breath over old earth; like it was coffee on a warm morning with the sun in my eyes, interlacing with my lashes; like it was a dream; like it was a prayer like it was a miracle wrought of air and bone and body: you, in, out, in, out, in and in and in.

I cried it out like an earthquake between lip and lip, continents that don't quite fit: your

I Had No BreathI had no breath, so I asked the wind
For a word or two, but I can't begin
To describe how much it hurt
To ask him this is the very worst of deeds
Oh, mighty Breather
Have you no life for me?

I had no heart, so I asked the moon
What gives her life in the month of June
But her smile painted darts
"My dearest child, a heart would only bleed."
But sacred Mother
The pain is life to me

note to self [narcissist].please dear
don't find yourself so fascinating
you're tripping up on your own inadequacies
as if the world's
never seen them before

please dear
you've really got to stop
this dog-and-pony show
this "welcome-to-my-personal-tragedy"
exhibition

really dear
you've done nothing but make
a damned fool
of yourself.

Hollow Memory of a Distant ShoreYou are like a long passed season.
As delicate as the footprints of sparrows in freshly fallen snow.
Intricate, yet so easily disturbed when care is not taken.
Somehow, you have managed to persist after all these years.
Residing in the same quiet place you carved into the woods so long ago..
Only a short ride from the sea.

When you cross my mind, you carry with you the scent of that shoreline.
Harsh and thick, yet somehow placating.
Though the weather was perpetually gray, misty, and cold.
Much like your heart had become..
Just before we painfully, and slowly, parted ways.

I recall with deep longing your fascination with foxes

fishing for hearts with lace and not nettingtake one - in which burned bread is beautiful

They're crumbs in the road, toast-speckles that spin and skirt and we
     drive past, like we always do, the radio          singing
white noise against my black humor and you say
   you say I'm getting better, and I think no, I am better
I am better, I say and you say        no
and I say
yes,
I'm fucking exemplary
and you ask who Exemplary is and I tell you it's me and I think
    somewhere                we got lost in the words
And I'm not all that keen on admitting to you that sure thing, dad,
    I'm fucking myself
over
and over
            but mostly I'm just fucking myself o

they can't be takentheir bleach skin caught my eye
albino white against the wild
hair like bright sky electric in the briars

haloed sister gods shot down like fawn

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archaeologytruth is under the heavy soil- anything from one millimetre to six feet under. history and facts are there, smothered by the earth, threaded through by roots, strung up for examination by the future's adventurers. by me.

i dug up our garden today. sifted through our years of lost things with the tips of my fingers. dirt cowering under my nails and in the lines in my knees, (knees which slid into the wounds i had created in the summer green) i found things. your bronzed keys, scolded by your cursing when they wandered astray. a screwdriver playing host to the algae of the underworld. an old padlock tha

LosingWe hoped clothed in secrets
And kept it from one another,
Inked wishes on the palms
Of our hands, prayers, smothered
Our elbows with things that should
Come true. I only know now.
Only know that you had hidden
What we both had needed
Between your fingers, running up
And down them, tiny spider webs
Of letters that I could only read
When you left.

Left your last breathe
On the edges of my spring planet. Left
Me embedded in the crusted
Backbone of a baby world, new place.
Traveller under the rails,
Underwater and swallowing
Down your heart. Filling filthy lungs
With the breathe of dead
Mystery and leaving me, in the
Rotting

we never even said goodbyei don't want this. the air is too heavy - pulling my lungs down into my diaphragm like millstones. i can taste it at the back of my throat, clinging to me - terrified of the atmosphere- where it has to let go and keep going- swimming in deep water. no time for doubt. it cannot let go. the sky is too light, a panic of blues and mints. bleary clouds suspended in silence. the day is hung from the sun and the edges of tomorrow are still trying to hold it back. the birds are all gone, all dead, all under the rafters clasping their children and waiting for the day to be alive and for nature to come back. for me to leave. i am not welcome among the

aliveThe rain presses on my lips like kisses and I can taste the perfection of the world
Feel the bark of trees and the gravel on furious drenched streets.
The sun is on my back, warming my damp skin, sky's joy unfurled in my spine-
Water lit like molten silver, tiny lamps pool between my toes- The beat

Of the rain breaks the captured little pieces of the things that move past
Cars blur, people swim and my own face lapses in and out. Break the mirrors.
We don't need reflections, we are perfect. Smell the rain, it screams from a sky
The cold life hits me, beats my face, drenches strands of hair, gores

The plants and drowns the roads. But ge

the peoplethe people who didn't make it
are still here. submerged by lives
they never really live. grass they
never really cut is snaring their
ankles. cutting into the thick fat
that cushions them, a terrible
blurred lens- hiding their shape and
identity. distorted. reminding
them they are old and plumped-
that their skin is engraved with
ages twisted designs:

{the critics say they are

open wide.open my mouth. pour the words out
like tea. not tea. messier. glorious
waters of language flooding the room-
violent and unnatural. careless, litres
of me spilt. i can't let go fully and it
feels like clandestine liquor, i won't
waste a drop, i won't waste a - god!

when it is pooling round my feet and
you look away, i am drowned in it.
feel the water line creep up my legs
like cold hands. touch my chin and
slide over my mouth- crawl through
tightly closed lips and into my eyes.

you do not notice-
conversation has moved on.
everybody does.

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[x]

Evening Poems

by ~a-secret-key, Apr 19, 2012, 12:07:44 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

9 o'clock and
a nightingale song

clatters forth
from a starling winged night

in perfect mimickry.
The moon and her mandrake
baby screech whites,

peel trees to bone. Blacks
shiver down.
-
The stars meet
at hush- Deaf but eternal

jury.  Atlas, stung by

each daughter: a pinhole
truth, still  naively serene

after all they've seen: from dove breath
to flame.  All
   is a curse to the lampbearers.
-
O sleep,
The moon holds court.

Great judge, her metals bleed
into radiance, cleave twilight to hill.
She bobs socketless
through aether and flame, &
to her gleaming calm

all shadows die. No  illusions survive
but reflection, who steeps wood in
moonwhites, petrifying old life into
honesty.
-

Moon, chokered-pearl
holds voice at night's throat -

pulls light through sea's veins
and tightens light's  rope,

weaving candle across
the skyline to bless
something older than memory,
more tender than breath.
-
a will o wisp promise
severs reeds,  racehorse fragile. I search

this ending place
with ghost light,

it shakes above the water, for
even the doomed fear
the heaviness of clean.

Evening Poemsby ~a-secret-key

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

i say poems because how neatly these fit together i am unsure of. but i love this one anyway.

might remove the section before last because it seems too strange set with these.

i love feedback.

~~love 0 0~~

joy 1 1

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

=Sammur-amat Nov 28, 2012 General Artist

Congratulations on the well-deserved DLD, lovely person!

~a-secret-key Dec 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you! I'm so pleased, it was a great surprise

=Sammur-amat Dec 2, 2012 General Artist

Literary surprises are of the best kind, too

~doublethefun Nov 27, 2012

Wow. Your descriptions are unconventional and stunning! I would never think of some of the amazing comparisons you imagined. Amazing work <3

~a-secret-key Dec 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you! I'm really pleased to hear that- I'm so familiar with my own head that it never feels fresh when I write it out, so I'm glad every time somebody makes a comment like that.

~doublethefun Dec 2, 2012

hahah I completely understand

=DailyLitDeviations Nov 26, 2012

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here [link]
Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by

ing the News Article.

~a-secret-key Dec 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Oh wow, thank you!

*archelyxs May 30, 2012

"Moon, chokered-pearl
holds voice at night's throat -

pulls light through sea's veins
and tightens light's rope,

weaving candle across
the skyline to bless
something older than memory,
more tender than breath."

This is really wow. I'm going out into the night now. I'm going to turn over the leaves until I find this. I need to find this.

~a-secret-key Jun 1, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

This is such a lovely comment.

It's everywhere here, and I love it.

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