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Hubris.today
we're younger
than we're ever gonna
be.

i. and we finally did it,
drove to the mountains
watched meteors
and let the mattress
grow damp
under our love
under the stars

ii. there are things to
be reconciled

iii. my eyes sting like
chlorine, but from
crying,

I finally disappointed
them;
the highest order of shame

iv. but you cannot put
people into pockets;
good, bad
don't mix
with them

v. and I cannot choose
who I love

vi. your lenses are straight,
elite and proud
mine, open and accumulating
filth

vii. maybe
I should run away more often,
we never talk like this

viii. and you have to realise
that I live in

if only, if only.i.
we drove nowhere
and we spoke a language
that nobody understood
underneath a foreign sky
blanketed in the scent of pine.

ii.
you told me
my eyes were like envelopes—
because they were always
opening
closing
fluttering to the sound
of breaking seals
and ink stained fingertips.

iii.
i told you
we should run away
to a new land
with new faces
because
i was enamored
with people i had never encountered
and places i had never gone.

iv.
you laughed at me
and said that
if i didn't spend
so much time with my head
buried in world maps
i would realize
that i was living on one.

v.
i remember
it rained that day
and the tea went cold
but the

Reversed Singularity? but of time, i do digress
& my intentions have been writ
in sumerian, and dreamt; but

here to live obsolete:
swift swing, precarious pang
with my heart's guiltless intention
--fingernails scratch & fit

your name; tasting still
succulence, feeling still
tyranny of will, being still
drowned cortex-deep, hearing still

--the wisp of a faltered laughter
sheltered & swaying & playing

amongst the dead, the horned
honoured and torn, formed
long and forlorn'd--

oh time, my bittersweet demise
dying is no longer a sacred art
and is sincerity in its purest form
cloaked with fault & artless bourne

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.

to myself: past/present/future/fourth dimensionto the girl before speech:

you are not a prodigy,
despite talent for taking care of yourself.
understanding politics by grade school isn't worth much
being loved is.

having your hand gripped when stumbling.
playful laugh coaxed from your lungs.

bounce as much as you can.
cherish your days of knowing how to land.

to the girl with my fingers:

they aren't as beautiful as they are lost.

shaking; nerves over taken by demons
screaming in the night.
struggling to tear needle away from skin

too crooked to be melodic
not articulate enough to move masses
hoping to find north; seeking direction.

to the girl after healing:

The ElementsI.
Wine as red as stained glass
is lifted up & tilted back

Empty cups
touch wood like thunder
having given up grace

II.
Blue veins
thread across wrists & palms
spent vessels returning to the heart

Fingertips suffused with pulse
lift to lightning's loveliness

IfWe can
draw lines and give them names
like elements
as they are discovered

Or etch into our skins
this soloecal desire
until it is impossible to tell
where words stop
and life begins.

I would

Find a common rhythm that includes
you in my arms, my hands
and lungs and thoughts
tracing the outline of you
entangled with me
colliding like two lost particles
locked in a shared gravity
drifting through the vacuum
of space.

I could.

Exhale, and
remember
sentence structure.

mosaics.sometimes unique
is not loud;
or bright, alive and raging,
possessed of a hunger for the atypical,
up front and too close,
or thrice-pierced and drenched
in the rebellions
particular to the latest generation.

sometimes it is a girl with
mouse brown hair and eyes
the color of weak tea,
who stands with her schoolbooks clutched
to her chest, in uniform shades of grey-blue
like the midmorning autumn sky

who has a wide mouth prone to nervous smiles,

pale lips and pale cheeks
and words that don't always come out
the way she means

who holds the universe
in the intricacies of her fingerprints
and laughs in treble clef notes
and u

Pausing By The WineMarriage is
the frustration of reality

when the man who works the wine section
pauses in his tracks to make sure
you've found everything you "really need...are you sure?"

With a look that tells you
he finds you sort of beautiful

and you wonder how your life
might be different,

if any man other than this one
had ever looked at you like that.

I Have No Names for all My Teacup BabesI feel always like I am starting over.

As a magpie I gather trinkets under my pillow,
bay leaves and bags of herbs to bring the next lover to me,
to call the next dream-face forward—a picture
painted in the tea leaves.

But truth be told the start-again
is never clean, is never gentle,
and the sweat of all that labour
is a fire on my skin, telling me
I will never resist its wind-cry.

The moon comes when I call, to help me;
midwife, she is, and she carries into being my new selves
like the babes they are, teaches them to
fill long footsteps like hers.

Truth be told, I tire of the destiny
I was given once—I am a teacup

SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.

It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic ki

resipiscenthe was one of those dick-faced kids in shades of bright polyester salmon who seemed to always be laughing or looking at me. an ambiguous-named, feminine-famed all-school american douchebag in those quality leather sandals in the wintertime and golf-green shorts.

ta give you some background i'm about as far away on the social scale from him as one can get. you know how all the little groups overlap and flap together, pushed around in the wet sand like wave-rivulets blending little facets of stones together until it makes a dune? well our groups---they didn't even touch. i mean you could go from pop-jock to lacrosse to dipper to weed-dealer to

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

Lightning Bug CosmosI lace my skin up like a corset, peel back the blinds on my eyelids, and take a step forward, waking from the poppies to the
lightning bug glow of truth tapping on my eardrums.

In front of the mirror I stand, but what I notice is not the awkward crook of my nose or butterfly lashes. I look into the lighted mirror as if searching for answers hidden under
Ribbon-like sets of
veins, arteries and nerves.

Sometimes it all flows correctly; sometimes everything becomes
knotted up in all the wrong places. Skin toughened by beatings brought about by the

It starts with a flash-bang and a Majulahi.
June's hauled her here again and
she's tapping at my classroom window,
A gazillion tiny fingers rapping in succession
(When she said "invitation" I didn't realise she meant
soaking half the country, the spike in umbrella prices has
nothing to do with me)
What's worse than an impatient child
is one with the whole atmosphere as her battering ram
when she tries to say something the urgency brims over
and one million exclamation marks
is beginning to sound like static frazzling
out on the pavements

ii.
She is without choice: when Cloud mother tips her out
she must go, and go she will
caught in an obtuse cycle, fought over

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A bookshelf full of friends.

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a conversationby ~forshepard

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2012-2013 ~forshepard

>:l
sorry.
sorry.
sorry.
this didn't turn out right.

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-09-27

a conversation Beautiful prosepoetry from *forcopeland that speaks with exotic dialogue and a truly wonderful parting sentiment. ( Featured by ^NicSwaner )

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*Hfeather53 Sep 29, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Gorgeous.

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~forshepard Oct 14, 2012 Writer

thank you!

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~Sigma-Echo-Seven Sep 27, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Brilliant diction, excellent work.

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~forshepard Oct 14, 2012 Writer

thank you!

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Mood: Adoration

~TalentlessArtlover Sep 27, 2012

If that ain't right, what is?

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~forshepard Oct 14, 2012 Writer

C: well, thank you. i was having some troubles the time but i find myself feeling much better.

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~TalentlessArtlover Oct 22, 2012

YW

I hope you still find yourself feeling much better.

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~forshepard Oct 28, 2012 Writer

thank you.

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~TalentlessArtlover Nov 17, 2012

YW

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~Quarterhorse23 Sep 27, 2012 Hobbyist

Stunning.

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