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Cirrus' poetry thread

NATURAL

solar kisses on my neck, my parched back
to my origins. i've turned to face the moon
and her herd of grey-eyed stars, sent to me
in a tight parcel, laced with your unspoken promises.
you should have used real paper.

ice-speak, i've learnt to talk
it to startling levels. you give it in sickly layers
covered with sweet-smelling soil, makes me dark
with all the dirt, softened with misunderstandings.
i need an escape from you, and your heart.

paper flowers line those fields now,
like vigilantes, perhaps from another time.
desperate, i clutch at the ground, i rip your soil
emblazoned still, with the sun
my fingers dig, i reach through the earth,
i want to understand it like you do,
please teach me
teach it to me until you've forgotten it all
i can tell you now, i found a pair of wings
underneath all of that sad, sad soil,
spattered with tears, as i stare to my new tourniquets
my hands around it all, shaking,
my face is stretched in victory.

Written with the prompt "wings". Please see how it's meant to look! I know just how messy, unstructured and silly it is, but what's new?
 
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TREMOR

the many shining strings that adorn your arms
and legs which you use to walk, though once shaken
to a slurring standstill. the pearl of an ear
which you use to listen - "to your heart
and lungs, which beat for your life." but i disagree
with what they have said to you, but i disagree
about how you remember, because, because memories deceive
even my heartfelt descent, cannot be played again
even by a gifted musician. but the instrument knows more
by keeping that which no false, or pure, or true, player has
been able to find. the instrument has her memories
which are corrupted, perhaps, but written forever
upon her disused keys and strings and hearts and nodes.

BURGUNDY

and as you climb up with the sky
i begin to very softly start to cry
and call, "come back to me"—


i don't think you hear
because you're made of shining, stretching plastic.
i've been told this!
you don't have ears, i've seen you all, i would have noticed, noticed
i'm the blindest.

left to fend, and you, as my gentlest friend
my arm stretched to hold you, i pin you to the earth

the moment falls around me, a single trip
just a switch
a turn
i do turn, my hand uncurls, you are free
free, free

i watch, it hits, i realise
what i have lost in you - god, i remember the day
as only we could have remembered

and as you climb up with the sky
i begin to very softly start to cry
and call, "come back to me"—

you don't look back. you fly
into clouds and atmosphere and space, a new world—

Original format of Burgundy.
 
Oh, I don't know.

CHRYSOLITE

there is an archway
made of pots and pans, and two wooden spoons.
to cause trouble, with a hinge heart
is to wonder

why is it when you sit there, bird,
(surrounded by the ripe and willing)
you look over to another garden? be satisfied,
bird, when your sickly children have died,
in winder's cradle.
aren't you a selfish creature?

hinge heart, you open at touch
you are full of stark hesitancy.
disillusionment, in a crystal clearing
touch trees' branches, feel real, please?
sharp sounds
like little alarm-bells, to tell a story
to calmly tell the story
far above this woodland.
 
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what is this!

(UNTITLED)

When I return, will you hold it against me, I wonder,
and think I am ready, but then I hear feet move behind me
There is a flower up to my hair.

Step out, against the pavement, and there are stars
that shine somewhere under the sun-glare path.
High above this careful place I cannot be still,
Step out, across, and I know you will not follow (I don't mind that much) –
you let me have this one alone.

We think like soldiers, dreaming of home
(you are in my lap now, between thoughts and sleep
as I stroke your hair with my absent, absent mind)

In the middle of running, and flying, and falling
and lost under new faces to miss in the morning
(though none more than yours, I want you to know) is this

This is my love poem.
Not always folded away in between scraps and dreams,
Or books and memories (which are real anyway?), but sometimes
Lying bold atop them all, and I want you to pick it up,
and I want it to be forgotten – but please, never torn
and maybe read, definitely not said
but maybe thought, and I suppose
it shouldn't be known
so this is the sort of poem I shall never show you
and this is why it won't have a proper ending,
a bit like you and I.
 
What Chief Zackrai said. It would be very much thematically appropriate.

I really like it. Some people flounder in free verse but you manage it masterfully. Kudos.
 
is the title of that last one "(Untitled)"? If not, you could call it "My Love Poem". I think it would be appropriate.

Probably! I couldn't work out whether that made it seem like I see it as an actual love poem, though. Whatever that is.

Thank you, TES. <3

I haven't been able to write much for a while, but this is a small thing I scribbled a while back with the prompt being the title.

ROSE

a rose slithers across the path
and melts at my step into fragrant nothingness
and the path yields to my touch.
everything; the stage is set.
gently I lay the baby down
it does not soak into the fray but is at one
with the briar, like a heron—
I think it’s still there, waiting in a terrible silence ...

I too was born in the quiet
and now I have taken silence as my lover
and the sounds are jealous.
everything; the stage is set.
the stream lies across me, or my way (it’s hard)
(to tell which) and hisses in anger
can I give my hand to it, like a branch—
I think it’s still there, waiting in a terrible silence ...
 
Ooh, that one gave me shivers. Seriously. "A rose slithers across the path". Shivers. Down my spine, Cirrus, down my goddamn spine.

The only thing I would change is instead of having "it's hard" and "to tell which" in separate parentheses, just let them share the same pair, though that's a more stylistic preference than anything.

EDIT: Am I the only one who gets a somewhat Plathian feel from Cirrus's poetry or is that just a superficial similarity in the disjointed voice that I'm taking too much notice of?
 
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EXTINCTION

Those skies were a far-fetched blue,
some which fell, some which drew,
some were lit by impossible histories, bred soft hail,
and then we'd call it a day,

But the nights were the true births,
they'd come around, they'd come alive,
and tell us fantastical stories, I never believed,
you should have heard them,

All the owls would sing in chorus
Every one, I mean it,
It was definitely a herald—
do you think they meant it that way?

It was the sun which whispered,
look at them, look at this,
looked until my eyes blinked, flicker smile kid
said he'd seen it before,
shot in the dawn,

One more face I can't remember
The light, I mean it,
It was too much to bear—
you would have kissed it, wouldn't you?

You've seen some of this, I know,
but I forget which parts, and I just want to be safe
they say being sorry is twice unlucky,
and that's when I knew you must regret it
I never laughed at God before today

Yours was a single colour extinction,
a silver fissure, a copper cleft,
a pressure, snaking, snuck through all of the cracks,
until the clouds met and burst all the way over,
that landscape
of yours
 
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