[x]

The Thin HoursI.

Those of us here in this skeleton time,
this time of the year when the nights are thin
and dark, and dark with anxiety, peeling
as layers of an oyster shell, brittle and effaced
and somehow iridescent.
When the bell tolls out the time the sound is thin
and reaches into fractured air and softly
seeks the spaces between the atoms and
misses the vital Os and CO2s in a lasting,
failed pinball. The bell sound dies in
some space between midnight and thereafter,
and each tock tock of slipping cogs is
a repeat and not a moving on.
The air is filled with each dull sound,
each tock a repeat and a repeat again. And the
slip betwee

petrichorNiobe weeps.

gold scattered rough across
cracked earth and the last
remains of summer - they fell
like leaves in the arms of the wind.

some scents cannot be captured.
the gods bleed onto rock,
and the stone sends her prayers
in return: petrichor.

listen - the heavy thud of
rain on parched ground;
the monsoon sealing life back in;
the sky bows and kisses earth.

Niobe weeps.

The SiegeThe first mile is always the easiest.
—Kyle Lynn to me, circa 2006

Tell that to the ghosts,
men soaked in sand and blood spray,
storming the shores of Normandy.

First Infantry's sprint through coastal
trenches, up bluffs, under ruptured drays.
Tell that to the ghosts

huddled in half-channeled holes,
a captain's dash through shrapnel, gray
storm on the shores of Normandy.

A German boy adrift in the compost
of his legs, his elbows' grand flail.
Tell that to the ghosts

ripped in four by mortars posted
over Omaha. Dawn's evenly keeled decay
storming the shores of Normandy

At The Old Folk's HomeThere is a chair beneath the cherry tree
velvet red upholstery peeling off the yellow foam.

There are no cherries left
and no one in the chair.

The two emptinesses commune to the sound of
the cicada reciting his mantra.

I would sit but look
the seat is wet with August rain

Old hauntsNumb fingers fumble at coppers
and a dodgy purple lighter which is unfit for purpose.

Giant splodges of stars
as if God - in a frolic of youthful exuberance –
went wild with a paintbrush.

Granite delicately held by shape and contour alone.
Slotted together: a melee of ankles, hips, spontaneous larynx.

Careless hopes, dreams wide, menthol cigarettes.
Thoughts all quiet.

Of Half-Filled WordsShe is not a flutterbird.
Her fingers are skittish,
her smile is not.
Do not fear that you will
drive it away.

Sadness is her fumbling limb.
It is unwanted, yet
necessary.

When it is January
she will tell you,
"I am still struggling.
And I am becoming so many people
all at once.

A conglomeration of beauty that
I have managed to mangle.
Please, do not be sad for me."

Sometimes her sorrow is
meant for you. But mostly her.

Those specks and spots
of ocean storm lulls
reveal her truths:
ones she does not want
to extract from herself.

Her heart is not a rabbit.

When it beats
faster, faster, faster,
you need not
run harder

Fold Overi.

across the vaults estimated by every milky tone
the curious whirl in old friends gather a surface
wholly between each divide of behavioral light
cones bend to placate our amass combustion

that is

until her legs uncrossed absolving my repetitive
nature to forget what conditions a truth has also
to submerge and share in upholding closely
the uniqueness of love we each must extinguish

our self

to then

ii.

across
the vaults

estimated by every
milky tone

the curious
whirl in

old friends
gather

a surface
wholly

between each
divide

of behavioral
light

cones bend to
placate

our amass combustion
that is

unti

The HologramsBefore Casper we were a quantum band,
an act that only happened when unobserved.
Our drummer maintained we'd split
the world, then took a full-time position
in PR. Auditioning his replacement
round our Crouch End front room,
with his white vest, buffed All-Stars
and holographic principle patter,
Casper shone. 'These,' he said,
nodding at his drumheads,
'are my event horizons;
it's where the beat really happens.'
To prove it, he worked up an almighty storm,
while we puffed on our cigarettes.
Short of a singer, Casper made a call.
Yume Shirakawa, he explained,
would beam in her performance. Jay,
sliding milk down his

city drowned cleanbirds fly bluer before a hurricane,
wings sharper, the bricks neater.
one train is always longer than the
other. i cried about it. the saturated
city, droplets of colour caught on
tape & rewinding, cups me in its
palms, i am a bug on its window,
imagining all of it underwater &
people clapping in a silent film,
the last dying bubbles curtsying
on their lips, for their marble town
the white skied & terrible atlantis.

immolatethe first step
to sadness is to
have.

[3]

poseidon
punctuates the bruised
shorelines with broken hearts and
shattered abelone
shell fragments.
sometimes the
shore creeps up, kisses
my feet. sometimes he rips through
the distance between
us, taking
what's his.

[5]

the air here
vibrates to a fire,
sparrow's heart humming in c
major. it does scare
me sometimes,
how i might love you
more than ibuprofen, or
the way the light might
oscillate
through an ether storm.

the person i am now is
not compatible
with who i
was before you. but
how do i scrape myself out
from under my own
fingernails?

[7]

we caught the
moon

BrackishAfter the wet season, before
the midsummer night's drought,
I flight for the floodplains, where
the northern downpour bleeds out
and sweeps its love to the mouth
of my lungs. I sleep in the crux
of an oxbow, let my dreams flux
and flow fractured, deltaic. For this
is the way I piece myself apart,
a resolution, my absolution
in a new avulsion.

During the day, I move south
towards the river mouth, picking
pebbles, coral fangs from the riverbed.
A loose tooth is a common truth
in these parts. Bones are febrile,
eyelashes are made of chalk, salt.
Tears turn brackish. They cake
and crack on the flats of my hands.

This is my Pang

for exit 165.in the outstretched wingspan of
tuesday night you'll find them:
the foothills slumbering jagged under
sixteen inches of loose sand and
the city hushed and glowing, lines
of porchlights strung together in suburban rows like
beads on a chain

your house was cavernous hollow like a lung
the colors were dim and
jaundiced, a quiet rush of tepid water
bent the silence while thirty years of
smoking hung ownerless
in the air like the cling of a dead moths to a wall

you tell me of a dream that's vague like
clouds in the sky like
clouds in the sink with
your body limp and damp like
hot tea bags and
your face like spilled milk
a

27               [I]

    arthur boyd:

she cried 'transubstantiation' -

why don't you eat dirt and
    feel closer to Earth !(?)

i slipped ,jointlessly, seemless
quicksilver ,going downdown
until I wrapped my serptentine form
around the core
                     , a cold static stone

It's not Rocket Science a poem for Jack Parsons

Lucifer took a hit, landed
face-down & flat-broke
back in the 40s
out on the West Coast
eyes the colour of Swarfega
teeth rotting, shoes worn through,
and dying for another high

too early for acid he takes
the mescaline trail
down into the Mojave
where the rattlesnakes are
locked in their kundalini and the
stillness flickers like god
across a lizard's eye

Lucifer hitched a ride
(another genius-bum)
over to Pasadena
to see Jack and the Rocket Boys
see what they can do
to put him back in heaven

too long in the desert
Jack's a

A Flowerwould I, I would
walk in Hiroshima, a flower
cannot say much

underneath cypress trees
we can believe

pyramid builders used stars
to map something there

sand in my hand, sand
back to where I gathered it

the cypress branches at
night canvas us like a pyramid

as it should be, with light
coming down in shafts

I'd have a flower for every
thing we ever did that needs one

that is an uncountable amount
of flowers and we

cannot count the stars
in a universe we do not understand

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He raised his voice, in order to be heard over the wild storm-wind and the din of what must be a couple of thousand wind-chimes hanging outside on the decrepit shack's porch, some made of old brass forks and bits of tin, others of bone or seashells, and most painted with the symbol of the Eye, a supposed ward against black magic.

"Ain't no treasure here, Padrick. An' this place gives me th' creeps. Feels witched, it does."

O'Malley was the second man hired to help find the rumoured loot. "I say we wai

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The Promise

in the garden she was too much work
       blackberry & poison oak
uncultivated tangle - tangelo sour
       no easy apple she
sat high on the bough - caterpillar chic
       the birds lick her sweat
black snake her heart - we understand
       she was very bad idea

(I: the promise)

I've wrapped his word in red flannel,
taken to stringing it
around my neck. To those who ask,
I explain: Oh, some old juju.

Now and forever, am I the keeper
of its unbearable weight, this
great, dead pendulu

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Ancestorsby `salshep

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2011-2013 `salshep

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a revision

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-01-14

Ancestors by `salshep ( Featured by $wreckling )

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=LadyofGaerdon Jan 31, 2012 Professional Writer

Hello! Your piece has been featured here. Kindly

the article, if you wish, to bring attention to the artwork and the contest. Thanks!

Reply

~Stefymoondust Jan 15, 2012

very vivid....so beautiful ''Tangled in these oldest nets, I breathe
my first deep ocean breath.'' i like this part

Reply

`salshep Jan 15, 2012

Thanks very much. I like that part, too.

Reply

~Alex0Jericho Jan 15, 2012

excellent.

Reply

`salshep Jan 15, 2012

Thank you.

Reply

~AmericanoHooker Jan 14, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Holy whoa. O_O Fucking amazing.

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`salshep Jan 15, 2012

Cheers, glad you liked it.

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*scatteredwords Jan 14, 2012

*Huzzah!*

This is truly breathtaking. A well-deserved DD.

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`salshep Jan 15, 2012

Thanks so much.

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*scatteredwords Mar 15, 2012

(I featured this wonderful work in a journal: [link])

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