[x]

Who gives this woman?No one can,
     for she was free and wild
          before she left my womb,
Said her mama.

No one can,
     for she was free and wild
          before she let go my hand,
Said her daddy.

No one can
     bind the wind that is her breath
     trap the water that is her blood
     cage the earth that is her bones
     capture the fire that is her heart
Said her granny.

No one may give wha

My Mouth, a GraveyardI buried my words
under my tongue
& turned my teeth
into tombstones.

Here lies hello,
too shy to be uttered,
just left to wither
while my fingers tapped out
its letters,

& here lies goodbye,
so scared of being alone,
it left the roads between
me and we empty.

Love died the day my
heart started beating,
when it pumped out
too much sense &
not enough courage.

Sorry was found murdered,
its meaning stolen,
the day it would have been
relevant.

I smothered help with my claims
that I didn’t need it,
then I forgot how to breathe
& no one could see it.

My mouth became a cemetery,
& I chewed on petals
to keep the smell away,
but no matter

Jazz is
the rustle
of sheets
when you
drag them
back onto
the bed;

is
the way
dust trips
the dark
fantastic on
velvet that's
been stretched
into more
than blue;

is
thick marrow
soured with
acid reflux
and a
waveless ocean
turned to
wine with
the twilight.

And tremors...
And tremors.

ZemiThings having to be returned to their transparency:

i.
/ green mist-earth / knit
atmosphere / fathomless
blue-lavender / lights
spun out from light

ii.
are recalcitrance / and you
are convergence

& - a fingernail of summer
- a melting of rain
- a crown of flowers
- a priest of sunsets

(beautiful? I love you, because. Zemi.
Zemi. are you beautiful because I love
you? Zemi? )

iii.
I imagine this is what it's like to breathe sea foam
over the Cliffs of Moher: hydration. absolution.

endingNora,

I understand now

why you held your secret alone.

Death is huge and grasping,
it rocks you, catches the end

of your laugh, turns it inside out.

Death is always secret and always
alone, though

your cello wept with your raging grief
and my words tear themselves

from my throat.

But I know now, you must learn to forgive yourself
your own simple, ugly,

inexplicable human
death,

and let go of dignity
to find peace.

JulyJuly was a month of a capella nights,
Red heliotrope scores and blanched
Methadone eyes.

A singing of nerves hewn to a cry:
Fine-tuned and skinned
To carpal ascension,

The quivers of a quaver
Due to crescendo.

I hovered, wing-like, on the husk
Of schizocarp dreams,
But sprang forth undone
By chorus and synchrony.

EntrenchmentsSomeday, we will come back

When you walk among your fields
That lay peaceful in the pink sunset
You will remember the blood
And we will be here once more

When the noonday sun
Specks the silent plow with diamonds
You shall think of bayonets
And screams that tore as they fell

When your children run among the grasses
Shining ethereal in the twilight
You shall think of ghosts
And of ghost children that never were

The world has forgotten us
The earth will not forget

In our memory, is our revenge

The swerveI tore my flesh on the corner of the lake & bled in cubes

and my best friend knew the weight of my green eyes and tried to sell them
and the spring left me heavy in my skin and the air she breathed me
tasted of umami and B12 and water. I drank it all in just like water

and began the aviary process of collecting budding groves and early springs.
you came to me with eyes like empty jars begging for sparks

and the hundred scraps of paper of pretty lies in pretty cursives,
the firefly wings and peonies and ocean salts and river rocks
and you were the first one capable of rustling the dead leaves
at the creek floor, so those went in, too.

let's pretend this never happenedbecause honestly,
i don't know you and this was
just a big mistake, she says
very softly.
the morning sun peeks in
through the curtain as she pulls
on yesterday's shirt and i catch
my last glimpse of her thin
shoulder blades, protruding like
wings about to burst out of their
seams. she won't look at me.
the floor creaks with her weight
as she gathers her things. i've
already forgotten her eyes, wide
with wonder, and her lips, her
slender jawbone. i wish she
would turn around. i try to speak,
but words don't come.
her bare feet pad across the
room and she pauses in the doorway,
head turned to the side, as if listening,
perhaps to my heavy heart beating.
the set of her shoulders, hunched like
an eagle about to take flight, makes
me think she's going to break into a
thousand pieces, and i long to catch
them all and fix her. i long to know this girl,
this girl without a name who carries
herself like a hummingbird. i want to ask
her about the tattoo that runs along her
spine, quoting

Va'eiraThis was a lesson in just how quiet it can be
when you don't make enough noise.

Me, holding a toy gun to a stranger's head
"Remember when things stopped being ridiculous?"

You, eating dandelions in a midnight field
"About the same time things stopped making sense."

A boy in church camp carved a small crucifix
for his arts and crafts project. He won the blue
ribbon and a brand new Bible. The next morning
I found it hanging over our cabin door.
A toad was nailed to the cross.
Still breathing.
Still breathing.

Sometimes we wake up early enough to hide the evil from our world.
Still breathing.

Shard 1For the heaps and heaps
I've imagined already

While dreaming in the sunlight
Or the solitude of sacred spaces

Gnawing with fervor
On the bones of the past

Hunched before this machine
Giving form to thoughts

My lips whisper them back
Slow, soft

Across delicate, empty air
Engaging slivers of new reality

Dust, gas and sleepy moons
The genesis of my glass galaxy

++++COPYRIGHT 2012 WILLIAM BARKER++++

GhostsNight time musings;
hollow-eyed and shallow-breathed,
filling the spaces between clouds.

Quivering shadow skin…

And there are voices in the dark,
lost sighs and weight upon whisper;
but, we are all whispers here.

rising from the riverit's one of the drowned days; those that drag
like hooks through a river,
turning dead things
belly-up on your shores. listen.

i am listening. to name it lover,
this ripening ache stretched
between us; to know
what it is you carry. you
are a deep silence gardened
by ghosts; hanging
from the hinges of a sprawled
elsewhere. (they are here
still, pacing the long brim
of your memory around
to the long brim of mine.)

i too have been drowning.
if not by one stone,
then another. the autumn quiet
of the body
in bed. this language named skin,
beast, temple, home. underwater,
you open your mouth; amniotic
void of unspeaking, horiz

seekerI wander much through such old country,
a ghost who's thinking of other ghosts,
missing them and their effects,
an exile from the present, and from past.

ConfessionLips met in clumsy haiku,
against each other, pressed,
the way the earth touches the sky,
soft and whimsy as the dusk.

Tongues painted passion-
          sunset colors,
          halcyon atmosphere, infused,
-upon every awaiting space offered.

Metaphors dotted the hallows of limbs and tasted like the seasons-
          a bursting and vibrant spring,
          a hot and passionate summer,

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A Biological Imperitive

by ~childwoman, Jun 15, 2012, 2:21:44 AM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

Is 60 years of sadness a year too many?
The weight of failure on shoulders feeling the steady crush of time
Too much to bear any further than the station,
            the tracks, the 21.13 to Paddington,
                                 oblivion
Dragging behind like a ball,
            a chain, a constant reminder that
                                 you'd dreamt a life greater than this?
In that moment of artificial flight
            (body in air, body on steel, accelerated to 100 miles per hour
                                 in an instant, body no longer)
is there time for thought before darkness irrevocably falls?
The shell that failed you so completely, failed to bring you happiness, success, wealth, completeness
             destroyed in an instant, unforgiven even
                                  at the last
There is no peace tonight
No comforting darkness filled with stars,
            night creatures, hope for a new dawn -
                                  only darkness in the final sense
An ending, drowned in fear and sorrow,
            punctuated by pain and then?
                                  Nothing.

A Biological Imperitiveby ~childwoman

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

After being party to the death of someone jumping in front of the train I was on, I was struck by some musing about what it might have been like for him.

EDIT 3-8-2012: Thank you so much for the interest in and support of this piece. I really appreciate it. What a lovely thing to come back to after being on holiday without the internet for a few weeks.

love 1 1

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~pinballwitch Aug 25, 2012

Congrats on DLD! Fascinating...thank you.

~childwoman Aug 26, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Thank you so much for your kind words.

=CrematedMan Aug 1, 2012 Student Writer

Certainly an emotive inspiration, I like how you've tried to enter the mind and final experiences of the poor person. Sorry you had to witness it.

~childwoman Aug 3, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

It was a really odd experience, and this really was my automatic, immediate way of dealing with my own emotional reaction to it. Thank you for your comment.

=DailyLitDeviations Aug 1, 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. Keep writing and keep creating.

~childwoman Aug 3, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Thank you so much!

*xlntwtch Jul 31, 2012 Writer

Oops. A typo... I meant the second question mark [the comment direclty below] not the first. Sorry!

*xlntwtch Jul 31, 2012 Writer

While I must admit I don't understand why the first question mark is here, I understand the rest.
The format fa_{aa_alls} rather like the subject matter, and the entire poem is both terrible in content, and terrific to read. Thank you very much. I'm sorry for your own experience with such a thing. It's a hard thing to "muse on."

~childwoman Aug 3, 2012 Hobbyist Photographer

Thank you for your comment. I think the hardest things are often the most inspiring...part of me felt bad sitting there in the darkness on the tracks writing, but there wasn't a lot that I could do to stop that flow of creativity. Part of my processing of the event, I guess.

I take your point about the question mark - I suppose it isn't clear that the thought continues on after "oblivion", but it's supposed to be part of the same indirect question that starts "The weight of failure". Does that make sense?

*xlntwtch Aug 3, 2012 Writer

I'll be back to have another say and read it again, thanks.
Right now 'club duties' are calling with literal demands...
But I'll be back, no fear (if you don't mind).

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