(32) Handpicked: Memories and Scarlettletters

Jun 25, 201512 min read

Deviation Actions

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Published: Jun 25, 2015

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are you in a state where your life is thankfully falling into place?

here is a journal page for pieces of art that might inspire you the way they inspire me.
thank you for taking the time to bask in their beauty.

handpicked updated version by wispy-blue

Waiting for a coach
and four
that never came,
she realized
a ball gown
won't bloom
out of sackloth;
glass slippers
are not dependable
and mice
are best left
to their own devices.
Midnight was never a friend,
and under that suit
he is the same as any other
man. Snow WhiteSeven more mouths to feed
(For this you left
your father's house?),
shoes piled by the door
and grimy rucksacks
full of coal.
(He promised you a diamond)
They keep you on your toes
with their uncombed hair
and their untrimmed beards
and appetites like young bulls.
That dress of yours
has seen better days
and your hands
are worn out -
bloodied starlings in your pockets.
So you cook and clean
and sew
and wait by the window
each morning for them to leave,
polishing your apples
and dream of what the huntsman
is hiding in his box.
Hansel and GretelWhat kind of mother
sends her children out
without their shoes or coats -
nothing but a trail of crumbs
to find their way back home?
They all find their way here.
Maybe it is the scent of holidays
freshly baked inside my kitchen
or the sight of spice drops
glistering in the rampant dusk.
The children like my house -
my rich ginger carpets
so easy to get lost in
and the pink pillows
puffed and glossy with promises.
They do not notice me watching,
how my fingers slip around their wrists
to measure their meager lives
or how I can smell when
they last ate their supper.
They only smile at me
and beg for more chocolate
in greedy little voices
and ask if they can see
what's baking in my oven now. CarolineYou loved the fire
of rogues -
imperfect men who shot up
the endings of the day
and drank down
too much beauty.
And like one of them,
you bellied with rebellion,
felt his tense seed
toil where women
never worked,
and craved his notoriety.
Poor girl -
his verses won the day
and the call of words
was too fickle a lover
for any constant star.
Don't blame yourself -
sometimes sisters
are more attractive
and all poets are
mongrels
OrchestraFour a.m is uneasy -
time purloined and left
hanging on the bed posts.
You said I crowd your sleep,
feet and hands slipping cotton,
pulling dreams in paper streams
like the nest of wasps
growing restless in the tree.
Your legs make room for me,
for the sound of weather
happening on the roof,
and warm the space above us,
setting fire to the drapes again.
Just let me feel your clavicle
press under my hips
where daylight squeezes in
and hinges us.
So we both can waken slowly,
you know, like kids in summer
who long for everything to never end
and the sky to be an orchestra SurrenderI remember the colors
you made
that night on the porch
when the fireflies claimed
the air around us -
the bright blue
blazing between your fingers
as you said
breathing was a trick
of the night.
I raised your hand
to touch my face,
feeling the pink trail
of the morning
yet to come
humming on your palm
and the deep pulse
of orchid staining my mouth
in soft surrender.
WordsWords are such simple things really,
she said.
Not crowded or obtuse,
but slender sages
housed in pulpits
of wood and eventide -
graceful and deft
in the hands of children;
brave oaths and praises
among the gentle songs
of those the world forgets.
They should not grow
like vain
or boisterous chains.
Just let them be
and they will walk,
tentatively at first -
until they own the sky. RustThe dwelling rust
of Wednesday
swells this hollow garden
and somewhere in the yard
a tire swing goes flat
against the skyline.
It chokes the autumn light
left hiding
in the silo,
drowning out
the crush of
mums and ragged berries
It bubbles in the percolator
steeping still life
in the caul
of early morning -
the red-brown crumbs
of breakfast toast and jam
growing ghosts upon
the silverware
And deep inside
I still hear you waking up
the soft salute
of morning voices
stirring the wind
outside my window.

Poetrymann is one of the deviants (i look up to) whom i included in
(30) handpicked: i support #ProjectPortfolio.
i was looking for poetry about fairy tale characters, and that's how i found his gallery.
it is absolutely a beautiful experience to discover his art.
like magic. like time travels.

Victorian Desk by Poetrymann

Memories
poems inspiring me to write my own

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,
          an adventurous and teasing autumn,
          a cozy and comfortable winter,
-all at once.
Skin smelled like Frangipani, an offering-
          blossoming with intensity as the sun draped itself in twilight's shawl,
-and felt like a brick wall crumbl hypergraphiashe writes in the empty spaces between the words
between the world,
world-weary fingers and toes and pengrips, knives
letter-opener swords, typewriter machetes
arm-wrestling with fate and the universe on a piece of paper,
computer screens painting faces with colors
stained-glass hyphenated hue-tint-shade glory
she waits.
she is patient.
she's their patient, doctors and nurses
emergency room, operating room, clinical study
stethoscope children
they wish fervently to cut her open.
her insides will be beautiful, they say,
beautiful and pink and full of words.
unwords, she says.
she writes on her skin, on napkins and paper bags
inscribing fate and the universe in ink and pencil lead
sharpened down to stubs, nails bitten short
pens running out, she is falling
stable decline, not irreversable
your insides will be beautiful, they say,
let us cut you open with ornate scalpels
ritual sacrificial tools from a dead religion
and she makes mouse scratchings, cuneiform
hieroglyphics, kanji, cyrillic
Lover on top of a mountainThey who scale mountains
content themselves with the feeling
of love, not confirmed
with action. They can fly the arrow- never mistake- truer
than any romantic. But
height is a lofty mistress, and the
keenness of the wind is
ever seductive, because it whistles
the story clearly that gets
mangled below.
Who -wants- to get mangled?
We are not beasts of burden, even if
we've worn this fur for thousands of years.
To dive from the clean, clean edge into
chaos is unthinkable.
To frolic among the tumbling bodies
and risk trampling and being trampled
is enough to curl back and reach
for the highminded pleasures
of love
Oh, but such a dream
veiling a cliff's face
eventually reveals itself to
appear only to those who
fall from the sky. So the lover
spends all her time devising paths
of climbing
to those below. She braids the ropes
and drops the chains, even taking a sledgehammer
to the rocks for a perilous winding road
but the danger she
undermines, and it is
few who exceed the intimacy of
faraw scuddingI have not the strength for poetry now
and the earth is swollen today, rain-bruised, the
raw bones of its rocks gnawed out to trundle down your frostbitten hills. today
I saw one of those cardinals, all shivers and skin, he waits for the crushed sky to pass on and I
should do the same, lie over my floorboards
with the cracks sealing my spine, let the seasons fold and pass before my eyes
like the slide of your words or your hands on my waist, soft.
but I have not the strength for poetry now
RegularsJon and Carol came in as they do
every day
she clutching a bit of cloth to
her face and being unable
to give me an honest look and
Jon being overly enthusiastic about
his coming meal
(I am a goddess because I
bring them food.)
They met each
other outside the bathroom,
gazed across the table with a fifty
year old expression
and the only emotion I have
ever heard in Carol's
ancient, cracking voice
is when she calls him baby
Repeatedly I wonder, if or when
I give up my mind
to age and black eyes,
will we do this? Drink tea
with too much sugar
and have a waitress that will
be overly concerned if we
don't show our wrinkled mugs?
I prepared bags of fruit for
smoothies and watched her
spill beans and rice all
over the checkered floor-
he told her to tell us
about the mess that was made
in a vaguely apologetic
tone. She instead
asked for more vegetables
and said the
Malawisaurus
fucked it all up.
Jon told me
I'm his favorite because
I smile like a porn star or
born star- his uncertainty
of eit the art ofit was too late;
         far too late,
  by the time my gaze found his
across the dim and drunken
     tangle of a scene.
his eyes were dark, the color
  of burning wood and
dust in a foreign country, the
    kind of eyes my mother taught
  me to fear, and rightly so;
            i could already feel his
            handprints welling in a
            malady of black and
            five-o-clock blue just
            beneath my skin, bruises
            deeper than bone
as i pushed my way
  through the
intrinsic, you go unnamedthe memory of your laugh is an oral tradition
and I cannot release
the dust off my lungs
that you stirred from among long nights
and solemn books.
a philosophical question, innately unanswerable
  and just as beautiful, you are
the denouement, fractal and convoluted;
like the Arabian nights
we were once. but you moved on,
  personae, boundless

previous feature:

(31) handpicked: RussianTim

for your most pieces of art, write me a note or link me to your own creations.
i might have been missing out on them and i would appreciate that you share them with me.

© 2015 - 2024 wispy-blue

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thanks for the feature!