[x]

selfishearthen toes, he says
the branches to his soles
blistering clefts
in his bones

sun's blare to corneas
i am the you
searching for you,
so turn me away

rip me out of
soiled claws

for you

in blueblinking eyes,
why can't i have all the smiles
of dustened piano keys
breathing roses and parting lips,

the closing me with the folds
of the blues in concave,
rocking eyes and cradled
chests

you are the burning touch,
the burn to the touch
when you're under my skin

show me,
i don't know what beautiful
means anymore, what beautiful
is anymore

because art won't take me back, i say
it drowns me under covers and sheets
and burns my fingertips with all of
the magazine covers, pillows and mourning
and leaves your coffee-stained skin

everything on my tonguethere are ghosts on my lips-

sweet smelling, they are
like sugar. a vulgar, sweet
sugar.

not really kisses, i know,
but bitter as kisses, i think,
coffee and eyes on eyes
trailing like cities,

caffeine on the folding sheets
rapping to our corneas,
dilating. craving to skin.

but sweet they are

like drifting fingers
on sailing nails.

but this lying- it brings
bitter salts under my tongue
and the inner folds of my lips
when i speak.
it puts the saltiest of oceans
to shame.

i know, i say. i know.
her, she says, no. no.

they are only ghosts.

don't make me writein a world where
the world is but wind

i am the writer,
my fingers eating at
the words,

and you are the paperweight
holding my drunk hands down

hollowfalling in love
is like plucking ribs, and
each time you've fallen
you're another bone closer
to cardiac arrest

-

tomorrowbreathing.

binding ropes, pointed sheets
and careful skies- i have all the oceans,
new days, richest nights and brightest
mornings

when i have the feeling
of the roughest rocks
under the soles of my feet-
the wood and splinters in my toes,
the cold metal to my arms,
the most frozen of fingers
pressed to my back.

arms are poison when they're numb;
ever is different when you can feel.

leaning, i have the air against my skin,
the deepest of skies breathing down my neck,
the poison of cradling eyes.

maybe being human is knowing how to feel alive;
maybe being human is knowing when to be alive.

black and white, knight eyes,

last night, she saidthe television falls quiet
and i am entangled in you.

veins creep
elbows
sunlit, on fire;
i am winding my way,
a vine,
round your body.

the uncertainty of our static,
fire from bodies,
still i am not afraid-

you tell me i am beautiful
and my nakedness
cannot change this.
i am holding in my breath
and stomach as i watch my
shirt fall, but you
are so warm that
you make me feel
okay.

without cotton barriers,
skin presses to skin,
more contact for more
feeling(s).

sleep fades to waking
your fingers are still
on my skin
and my hands are still
on your chest.

tell me love is worth nothingbelieve me

i'm a doctor,
and i'm telling you
it's okay,

and all you have to do
is just believe me,

just run under my skin,
dream of me when you're
awake, when you manage
to sleep,

and believe
it won't hurt much
because it's my promise.

just let me eat
at the back of your mind,
be that drum to the beat
of your heart, the whisk
to the rising blood under
your skin, the whine of
your breath, the cry
that pulls your heart down,
that makes your insides turn,

because sleeping is overrated
anyway, and the clefts
in our hands and harsh
grasps are what we've
always needed to survive,

and being in love is the time
when

printblue windows, he says
why can't i have all the blinds,
choosy birds and clouded eyes

too wide open, he knows
but the winged fingers, beaked lips
and beaming eyes
are all too tempting-

why can't he have it all,
the rivered skies and blurred
whites, the flaking palms and
kaleidoscope eyes, branched feet
and lipped suns,

but the newsprint says no,

too far from glass it says, and he knows,
but blue windows lie.

the killersdresses like city lights,
burning coals on night-

stars are not lively enough

when there's crawling appendages
over manifestos of shoulder straps,
eager, smokey eyes-

carbons eating skin

and shells hiding in the crevices of flesh,
the beating humans in our chest,
cradles

killing the machine.

in general anaestheticsyou are the you i want with hipster lips,
the type with snakes in her bones and
crystalline between all the pinks of her tongue,
the type with all the right secrets in
the crooks of her pockets and neck,
the type with the golden weights
creeping up the sides of her thighs
and back.

there's something about injustice that makes me want.

there's something about
the type of bitter sex on the radio tunes stuck
in all the right parts of her dilated corneas,
the type with short eyes and far ears and
a liberal face, filled with all the best rat-hands
and poor words that makes us bold in all the right places.

and i know there's somet

immurei know lips don't live

they dance,
and i know

burning,
your lips living
would make me speak
not hum
into ash

as we don't argue
or banter

but boats
we wander, we rock
on seas of one another

and we are the uncaged
naked birds
making up lips

helplesswhen we kiss, you breathe
nostalgia through the cracks
and i find myself empty

the girl with love in her bonesHer lips are a smoky color—the type of chapped things with paled, cracked edges and words hanging off, clothed by the least incessant whines and the most liberating cries. They're somewhat extended and exemplified through the cigarette in her mouth—a thin figure held between the sticks of her fingers with filtered lips of its own, ashing edge, a paled body, and a slow burning with every breath. The grayed portions fall off in a dirty, snow rubble on the sidewalk, burning into it, leaving small holes by her feet.

"I don't understand," I say.

She sighs, breath coming out white, warm in the icy air. "It's a human thing." Her eyes are

break me purpleyou are the drunken waves
to the earthen ocean
under my soles,
the sick backbone-ache
for the weak

the cage
and the unshed shell
for safe eyes, shattered dams

as i weep

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More from =back-bones

salutations, my spring.in the common we are
in each other's arms,
the widows of our eyes
closed, lashes to the
brine of our shoulders

albeit the dust of lastnights
and the mornings of our ghosting bones
the size of graying tree arms,
a forest outside the forest awash
our window

we exist in the world of me & you,
you & me, i & you,
you & i

a silence decor only with
your breath on mine, a slow, slow,
forthcoming rain.

if this were true,i did not hear the wet-sounding sobs
in the bathroom while i sat
by the crack between the floor
and the door, watching the dimmed light
that spill into the wooden panels, a girl
drowning under her own drowning knees.

i did not see a face
of a girl under that same dimmed light,
saturated eyes the color of half-relinquished suns,
lashes metallic chains of black saltwater
over cheeks of snow-parlor-- breathing lips
drawn chapped and in a thin, pink o.
not like oh, my god. but oh.

that type of face you made
when you were a child who traveled a bit too far
into the deep end of your aunt's pool,
and the floor disappears from your to

he is here.where i sleep
there is the shoulder-scent
of your body deep
in teenage sorrow,

pillow lips hugging my temple,
feathers running through hair
estranged fingers-

there is a dusk under my eyelids
dampening my joints, a cold blue

and frozen air to the skin,
making it rise with little moons
over the halves of nails, with the slow fall
of the dawn outside bleeding red
into the own blues of the sky

and the cobalt rain a tap on the glass
of my window

a transparent whisper.

there are galaxies in the morose of his skin.sometimes, before i go to sleep, i let myself lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling.

when i was five, i'd look up and see my mother staring back, her voice dropping to a whisper on my cheek, low enough to be swallowed by the breath of night around us: the cars speeding down the highway, the crickets in the neighbor's brush, the crying of the baby next door, april's distant violin i close my eyes to. it tickles my eyelashes, and i drift.

when i turn eleven, there's an emptiness about me. i hear nothing but my own breath, a thing i cling to in the darkness of night, the winter calm of snow falling outside my window. the blankets i have are

but i do breathe, i do.my mother used to tell me
a breath of a boy lives
at the mouth, a chain of skin under
your rib cage, grinding like teeth
to the rhythm of organs beating like stage drums
to the breath of summer and the naked
vernacular of lovely bones.

but i am searching, and i find no such breath with mine.
there is only a faintness-
a cool touch to the neck. a pull. my hair stands on its end,
and i'm down, drowning.

i look up
and i find myself
between his legs.

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cancer hands

by =back-bones, Jul 2, 2011, 5:14:50 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

honey, you should have known
i'm one of those tasteful girls
with all those tongues hidden
in her bones

and not one of those watered down ones
wasting their time with fake, ersatz tastes,
but the pilled, the ones that can be
choked,

beds,
lips,
words,

and can't kill
with cancer hands

cancer handsby =back-bones

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

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~JustAnotherMudblood Feb 19, 2012

this is awesome , I love it. I'm doing a project for class where I have to find poems and I was wondering if I could use this? You would get full credit and everything. I understand if you say no. Thanks