[x]

honey, we're a couple wars spenti met a girl once
who told me she had a boy
with a war set in the crooks of his lungs
and vocal cords, the perfect mix between
a hippie and a marxist,

with fire in his eyes the size of hammers
and coal, a manifesto of cold stares and
the distant histories of hiroshimas, nagasakis
and normandys-

words stuck on the thickest
parts of his lips, sealed in the cracks
with democracy and deity, hitlers
and stalins and mussolinis,
the pawn of the highest pedigree.

but he had his own soviets, americans
and europeans, she said:
the calluses, muscles, of his own skin-
the finest of cells of the working class,

the bone and the brittl

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

if home is where the heart isoh, little birds
a heap at the pulse-

do not tread in my compass
like you do at windowsills
and boys who will break you.

wrist bones are small
in girls like me:
i do not wear bones on my sleeve
like i do in my rib cage,

i do not have breath
like i do in my lungs.

there is only wickedness- a bleeding
in parched skin

above the closets of bone.

i'd rather die than live not knowingeven in the early morning,
his eyes are the shape of dusk-
the type of thing that is
half asleep, yet so awake
in the perfection of blues
oranges and whites.

i tell him they're pretty things,
the thing i'd love to wake up to
everyday, but he sighs, and tells me
they're not the type of thing
worth remembering.

i ask why, and his lips tweak
in this sort of paled, half-mooned
shape, letting out a deep, tired sigh.
i feel them with my fingertips, i watch
the confection of his eyes moving
back and forth to the shape of my face-
the sort of dance that is done in the midst
of thinking- the kind of thoughts that are
the most worth

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

hard of hearingshe is a girl who has a mouth with flaking skin
and stupid words, who thinks she is dying
when she sleeps, who thinks she can't
breathe when she speaks, who is

a girl who misses what she once had,
with words, with hard bones, with
valiant lips

whose lungs try to choke her
when she looks at you staring back

who puts her head in her hands
because she thinks she is pathetic

who looks in the mirror
wishing her ghosts
would come back

who when she does speak
doesn't want you to
look at her like you look
at a girl who is not there
staring
back

the dearest diary9.23 - autumn has the same color as morning

she was one of those women you'd pass without much of a thought. much of a long thought, at least. she wore sweat pants every day- the same gray ones, she'd think, but they were really just the same make. she wore the same shoes, the same loose shirt. the same damn, arduous face. that kind of face that reminds her of some sort of third world country- a heart shaped, tired thing. but under that dirt and grime, there are amazing, beautiful eyes. tired eyes. human eyes.

there's something about arduous people. the same, half-mooned shape under their eyes. naked lashes, and a naked, weak face. and ther

dead things can be alive tooi have something in the deepest of cells
under the smoken crooks of my tongue, ghosts,
the teeth in my bones clicking-
grinding to the beat of your flesh on mine.

it's an aloe hello, winter feeding the goosebumps
collecting on my shoulders, wings on the freedom
of your fingertips- a tantalizing breadth.

but my organs have blood too, a beating over and
a carrying under the cages of our chests,
a living chemistry with sulfers and leds- lithiums-
oxygen.

and there are places where i'm supposed to be
where you are, and the flesh is too heavy,
a constricting in my throat, an ash in my mouth.

it hurts- a dying feeling seeping in my s

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.

'queer' for the skinfinger-tipped cigarettes,

please don't touch me.

i am only the girl next door
with coal eyes and pale lips-
the blankest of blankest lips.

i am only i am, i am only me,
i am only the sickest me without being
too much of me, the sickest me
of you and me,

i am not a god-complex with legs.
i am not the her with lying, buckled knees,
with all those smiles cutting into her skin,
i am not her- the her
with closets poison on her lips.

she is just a skin-cratered dream.

hungoverwaking up is hard when
i have you sitting on my
eyelids

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.

in retrospect love is like a damaged humanthere's something coldstone in her chest- a weeping lung.
the kind of thing she fights with in the sheets- a tangle of
black hair mane, pale clammy skin thin like paper over the
scattered fabric. she breathes

and she turns over and stares at the ceiling, her breasts poking
like ghosts through the fabric of her shirt, wet but a shelter
over her skin. goosebumps appear over the paper of her arms, a
thousand moons, and the dry looks in her eyes are like shadows when
she stares.

there are just some things not worth living, she said.

dear emmalove is a person.

he is a man with cocoa skin, writes with weak hands and a strong mind, tuned ears and speaks in a placid voice. it sounds of ivory, smells of coffee, and is music in a silent world with unmade beds and the typing of keys, the quiet hum of black and white re-runs speaking to the crook of his back.

he is a boy with fine, chapped lips and a thin cigarette between the thin cracks of his teeth, a being seen in dimmed lights and close things under stars, the ripple of cars passing by, the tapping of cooling engines. lit, green eyes under night sky hair with a starry shine.

she is a girl with fireflies to dawn skin, a burned nos

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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sleekeyes seas,
lips smoke under mine

they slither, sins
between the apples
of cheeks

setting to a kiss

my eyes clocks,
your fingers to spines
counting,
waiting,

breathing

for one more breath

what humans do0:00

she met him when she was fifteen, stupid, and willing to do anything to get out of her own head. it was winter, new snow sticking to the ground in snowbanks - like a naked blanket, cold on cold with ice. houses were lined up on the streets, chimneys blaring smoke, colors sticking out against the sky's dull grays. cars rolled by, marking the streets all with the same, parallel tracks, like fingerprints with chains attached. thick exhaust fills her senses.

he seemed weird to her. not because of his cocky, laid-back appearance, but because of the complete fresh and virgin ardor he gave her. it wasn't that kind of sense you get when you're

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

shhh.the chair i'm sitting on is hard, old and rocks under my movements like a rocking chair, except i know it's not a rocking chair, but an antique on loose heels. when i fidget, i trace my fingers through the cracks in the arms and legs, my wet, sick and clammy fingers sticking out against the mahogany.

when he talks to me, his chapped lips move with the wrinkles around his eyes, the scruff plaguing the skin around his mouth like weeds. his voice is scratchy, the smoke coming out from his nose and mouth almost too smooth against the black of his eyes. they should be watery - like mine - but they're dry, tame from the countless years of smoking.

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

hundred yearsi want to lie
with the stars
and you

drunk with the mortality
of your lips

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the kind of manifesto half the world would die forby =back-bones

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Visual & Found Poetry

©2012-2013 =back-bones

kind of missed visual poetry.

=susurrousity Feb 24, 2012 Student Writer

_{this is quite beautiful... I love it.}

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~v8tiger Feb 22, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

I didn't start loving it until I read the last line. Gorgeous. I like the atmosphere in the background as well.

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~Sayuri14 Feb 22, 2012 Student Writer

Omg, you put me to shame with that manifesto. It's amazing! and so true...

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