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the eyepatch and the handcuffs     his hands have promised
     to wipe off every fingerprint
     your last lover left on you

     he has sworn he will
     wear gloves, when he needs to,
     and pay attention to the instructions on the boxes

     "this side up"
     and "fragile"

     and you have sworn
     you will try to let him

     i hear your bodies whispering these things to each ot
EurydiceHis voice enveloped me, and I became
Myself again--I heard it in the song:
A mordent on a note he held too long;
A stutter in his voice. I heard my name
In these and felt a happiness the same
As when I saw him first. Oh, I had longed
To hear him sing again, but this last song--
It was so beautiful. And it remains
The best of human works, though none shall hear
Its sorrowed notes; the lyre's meand'ring tune
Through vast arpeggios and Death's expanse
Except the dead. It will not disappear
'Till all the world's destroyed, and hell's exhumed--
Such music must be worth a backwards glance.
starspunobserving the romanticism
of hooded cemetery kids,
smoking cigarettes pretending
they are not dead.

you were always so sure
about my uncertainty,
you watched
all my pick up lines
drop things.

we built the heat
of the evening from the solidity
of starlight,

pretended
that two teens at the park
at midnight
is the stuff of teen novels
(cliches dim on
our leaf-gold horizon)

your eyes darted
from the gray expanse
of the churchyard & wandered
in thoughtful
paths.

i wanted to ask you
if i could follow. shove
the words aside &
remember that i came here alone.

i remember our innocence
in the static b e t w e e n
stars
carouselwe laughed like children high on m&ms,
danced like we were carousel horses,
and jump-roped our way through obstacle courses.

I saved our footsteps in mason jars,
in case we ever needed to follow yellow brick roads
to get home.

home was an illusion:
honesty without truth,
apologies without forgiveness,
I kept home sandwiched between
"never" and "have to."

caroline, they'd say. caroline,
stop being such a dreamer. stop taking
us for granted.

I packed every apology possible
into my breath, left runaway plans lingering
in the silence between family.

when I found you dancing in the street,
I listened for merry-go-round music.

I
a second skeletoni. introduction

i was born 4425 miles away from here.
my heart still lingers there.
i don't want to have it back.

i go through the motions,
don't ask me for emotions.

i once thought i could be happy,
my mistake can be forgiven;
i was so much younger.

now i know better
than to expect anything.
because the only time you can lose,
is when you love something.

that's why i love myself.
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.
The Price of Dying“I want to be interred after I die,” Mr. Peters said. He made that clear to his family while he was still lucid, before old age and illness rendered him unintelligible. Seventy wasn’t that old, but he recognized the symptoms that were creeping up on his ailing body – the aches, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness and despair. Despite his daughter’s attempts to assuage his concerns, he sensed his own mortality.
The worst part about dying, Mr. Peters thought, was what happened afterwards. Even since he was a small boy, he had been afraid of fire. He could never forget the scorching heat of the orange flames searing his skin, the dark billowing smoke entering his nostrils. The time that his house burned down, the fire almost took him with it. How ironic then, to escape the fire only to be fed into it after death.
So one day, he sat his son and daughter down after dinner. “I want to be buried whole,” he said, emphasizing the
Star SwallowerShe's
an enigma.
her head, a stadium drowning with applause.
yet its seats are empty like the notebooks
where armies of words should be marching.
instead she dismantles clocks
thinking she can play with time.
behind the mountains lurks a darker reasoning
a twisted labyrinth of rationalizations
hidden from the suns brilliance.

Years alone beneath the bleached fluorescent
reading those already dancing in the moonlight.
she is living a literary half-life through them
hiding from the symmetry of the writer.
licking salty rocks of excuses.
saving her secrets for posthumous excavation.
decades of productivity left for moths to chew.
you're throw
The SculptorBefore he would have harvested a tree,
hacked off its limbs,
skinned it,
torn it from the earth,
shaved one by one its cells - its outer core,
until it was what he believed it was,

no more a tree.

Wiser, he walks deep in to the wood,
underneath a forest giant he stops,
looks up in to the leafy branches, sighs,
climbs and sheds his tears upon its boughs.
plumbumshe has a heart of gold
and she, a heart of lead
and she, a heart of uranium.

and they go walking sometimes, the three of them.

gold is confident in her worth,
untarnishable
bought and sold and bought and sold
the virgin whore

and lead behind,
heart heavy in her chest
guilt from bullets
and pride from pipes
and anxiety from irreparable brain damage

and somewhere off to the side treads uranium,
tumors growing,
white skin glowing,
thin frame for a dense core.
Girl, Reincarnated.Perhaps in a past life you were made of ink,
your eyes speckled like blotting paper,
complexion smooth as parchment.

And maybe your voice was storm cloud rolling
because I see your words
and they fill my heart with rain,
not the heavy kind that revels
in punching holes in butterfly wings but rather
the mist that paints the dew and
leaves the sky beautifully grey.

At the very least your soul was a mourning dove,
as there's a lilting sorrow in your words
that the air carries like a melody,
were I to speak them aloud
I would sing, hoping that my voice wouldn't shake
with your weeping.
Cheap fix, 360Unbound structure;
unhinged bones
locked together
with unsymmetrical
unfit screws.

None of these are meant to be here.
They are
cheap and shaven
and the
grooves are rusted.

There is no tool that can pull them out without breaking,
without collapsing
the planned out
unintended construction.

We had the instructions sure
and all the parts
but
in our fumble,
in the exchange of hands
of ALL the people who
intended to help us;

in all the accidents

(and

no one at fault
or
taking fault
for all our faults)

some fell beneath the table
underneath the drawer
into dark unreachable corners
so we worked with what we
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
a ribcage drenched in dust i have your ribcage, you said.
what should i put in it?

i told you i'd always wanted a fire,
the kind that would fill my eyes with starlight
and pump my blood full of passion, but

you're made of wildflowers, you said.
a fire would burn you to ash.

you wanted to fill my chest with
the sound of a train, whistling
far away in the night;
with the sound of rain smacking leaves;
with the sound the wind makes
when it seems like it's trying to speak

and you wanted to throw in the
smell of midnight in august
and the feeling of sand being
sucked out from under your feet
when the ocean inhales,
and the strange little moment of
bitter
the back of your head against my washed pillowcaseI find it
disconcerting
that
you are the King
of my own Head
& that I am
subjugated
by my own
temptation

My bones, your
welcome mats,
cushioned
to your insatiable
satisfaction

--

I find this
discomforting,
your  constant
rebirths in my
libido, despite
three years of
silent therapy,
false recovery
& worshipping
     the wrong  gods

you are the best muse
for struggling artists
everywhere & worst
case of the bubonic plague
since the bubonic plague

--

I find you
disenchanted
in the middle
of any where,
peeling flesh,
lulling  sullen
sirensongs at
3AM

I shot a flock
of  phoenixes
& ate Adam's
poison apple
Browse More Like This

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Cold mist filling my lungs, yellow rays hardly up to warm them.

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A rally on planks beneath concrete as my sticks continue tapping stretched skins. They're out of tune, anyways.

Constantly searching loud masses; where, oh where are those eyes. I need those pale eyes.

Frantic gazes cease. 'We've found her,' they whisper.

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Steps slow, eager eyes devour the passing halls.. waiting, watching. My glance slides across the floor, as new settlements bring familiar aches.

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for once

:iconjhock216:

Cold

black
empty



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

2,913

135 41 164
:iconjhock216:

for onceby ~jhock216

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let the droplets break the silence
©2010-2013 ~jhock216
Category: Literature / Poetry / Romantic / Teen / Free Verse

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August 3, 2010
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Daily Deviation

Given 2013-02-03
for once by ~jhock216 The suggester writes, "Through rich language and engaging formatting, the author pulls the reader into a brief yet poignant moment." ( Suggested by =LadyofGaerdon and Featured by `thorns )
love 1 1 joy 1 1 wow 0 0 mad 0 0 sad 0 0 fear 0 0 neutral 0 0
:iconlelvigen:
~lelvigen Feb 9, 2013
[link]
Reply
:iconkcsummerz:
~KCsummerz Feb 3, 2013  Hobbyist Digital Artist
:iconcongratsdd1plz::iconcongratsdd2plz::iconcongratsdd3plz:
Reply
:iconafterthevoid:
Mood: Love !afterthevoid Feb 3, 2013
Powerful, stacking the words cold, black, empty like that at the beginning really sets the tone for the rest of the piece :) Great work.
Reply
:iconmotion-music:
~Motion-Music Feb 3, 2013
Was this written by a 12 year old?

cold, black, empty . . . . wow . . . how original and thought provoking (sarcasm intended)
Reply
:iconaverrose:
~averrose Feb 3, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
Love your formatting! So many good poems could be great with the right layout, and the already-great ones become DD's. :) Well done!
Reply
:iconspookyboopuddleglum:
*SpookybooPuddleglum Feb 3, 2013  Student General Artist
beautiful and sad
Reply
:iconheyxitstori:
Mood: Joy =HEYxItsTori Feb 3, 2013  Student
Lovely (:
Reply
:iconomgitsgreen:
~OMGitsgreen Feb 3, 2013
Stunning :clap:
Reply
:iconohanlon:
~ohanlon Feb 3, 2013  Professional Writer
oh dear. sorry but you should have just made it crimson blood bro. and those cliffs made my eyes fall off too many times i cant take it anymore. i got to the end of this thing and all i could think was.......i was already here why did i take this 360 journey??
Reply
:iconanna-95:
~Anna-95 Feb 3, 2013  Hobbyist Digital Artist
This is like... me. Indcredibly well-written, congrats on the DD!
Reply
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