Friends

I want you to lay
between me
and my thoughts,
to harbor haste
until it is needed,
divide what is unnecessary
from this confusion
for I am clumsy
and foolish

Love is awkward
and youthful
innocently inept;
as fragile
as the words I speak
(still,
I am unable to learn)

My bones
are full of rust
they strain
with every movement,
struggling to gain
a secular holiness
that would be worthy
of Beauty

But clumsy I remain
so let me sleep
a few minutes longer
and maybe a little weight
will be lifted

I want you to lay
between me
and my thoughts,
to disentangle me
from them;
to take my warmth
in return
because sometimes silence
is the most precious gift
the clumsy can confer

Temptation waits
for a ravenous heart,
lingering in this pool
of fury
hoping that lust
will not devour love
(I can not let my eyes
rest upon
these anachronistic gods
that bleed desperately
in search of recognition,
I am paralysed
but privy to perfection
and lies;
carved out of truth
so hastily

heartless hinds
hurriedly hide hurt
behind voracious visions,
disguising the disgusting
with painful elegance)

you were yesterday
so quickly archaic,
so swiftly you followed serenity
into sickness
twisting and swirling about
entwining antitheses
effortlessly
(accidentally,
it seems now)

She holds fast
to the years
which grow more and more tired
through her melancholy eyes
(like vines
embracing endless weeds
after refusing to surrender
for so long,
heavy they fall
into each others arms)

My fingers were slipping down your spine
As if they were doing the warm-up for a piano play
Your heart beat strong, you said you were all mine
And deep inside I felt that you would stay
With me this night,
Until the sun will rise again
You did forgot your pride
You said we were no longer friends
I’ve got the confidence
To take you to the stars
With zero tolerance
You’ve been caressing all my scars

i couldn't find the punctuation to finish this phrase:
"The brightest stars will soon fade
from the night sky "

There isn't enough punctuation marks in this language to write how I feel about the premature epilouge, this fucking discription of a mock poets god damn writers block.

These trees still speak with their beautifully distinct rustling dialogue, but their words fly over my head, too high to jump for.

Freight trains still awaken me from my passerby's comatose.
Startled awake by it's billion fucking tons of inertia, just to say, "catch me if you can."
Even though I'd only enjoy a kind word.

Too far over my head.

And the rain falling still sends shivers down my spine.
An unbelieveably random cadence syncing itself with heartbeats and flooding our streets.

Streets in which we wander.
Streets in which we sleep, spit upon, and never wish to see again.

I ride my bike on these streets and they punish me for it.

The soil underneath shouts to be untied from it's tarmac straight-jacket.

I'll whisper back, "I'll free you one day.
With a jackhammer and spade
stolen from the city.
I'll take their unfair advantage
and throw it to the wind,
for we could all use
a little breathing room."

This is a whole poetry book, not long (so you can easily read it), but very very good.  I'm linking this book with permission; I thought I'd share it because GOOD poetry is hard to come by nowadays.  Please read and vote on this book of poems.  This is a very good writer trying to get back on her feet in the writer's world, and her work is truly good.

The book is called Unpainted Canvas.  It is a collection of verses.

( Click for links to more of Chanctetinyea's poetry )

You taught me what it was to love
What was the real passion when the sunset came
You showed how it felt when a tender kiss was not enough
Your hands and lips were playing the exciting game
And it was funny to repent
Of all the crazy things that we had done
To feel how our happiness was coming to an end
To realize that I have missed the only one.

Rusty survival
breathes heavily
and throws up its hands
in capitulation
while needs give way
to endless wants
(reason seems
to be almost extinct,
bleeding in the streets
and on the freeways
burning with effervescence
over its suffering)

I try to think back
to when we were young
and knew that the world
was ours
and the night was a sanctuary
that could not be desecrated
by anything we said
or did
but it seems so meaningless now,
with the light of years illuminating
it seems anything but sacrosanct

So dig
beneath your thoughts,
beneath your heart,
and find some new diamond
to glitter
in imitation of your Sun
(another distraction
for your lonely eyes)

In this frozen river
of melancholy
I mend another broken bone
and send another loose thought home
I bend myself
only to break

It feels like I've been asleep
for too many months
of this year
letting my eyes be pulled shut
by heavy thoughts
and tired inadequacies
(I'm perpetually reluctant,
constantly swept away
by the force
of my own desire)

isolation dissolves
every word I spoke,
still I hunger for something more
than what I have found
but all I seem to see
in the innumerable faces
is echoes and shame,
hidden as best they can

Yet,
I cannot believe this
I find in you
something substantial
and concrete
something that doesn't end
(you gracefully bend towards
then away
from me
like a tree
in the fickle wind)
you are beautifully imperfect
and I don't know what to do
with you

there is reason
to stand tall
and reason
to fall to the earth
in tomorrow
we'll carry on
to a way out
and bury what we're worth
(bury it
beneath the weight
of our own inadequacies)

Contemplating Helen after the War



Run your fingers through the dusky wool
colored by the death of snails
combed soft and fine
that you wrap around your distaff
and pull into a fine thread
by the twirling of your golden spindle.

Royal purple, the color of congealed blood –
Do you think of him sometimes,
the beautiful man who stole you away,
and how the blood streamed down his throat
from the arrow’s flight?

Royal purple,
and as you look upon the man who would not let you go,
who turned the world upside down
for the green hills of your birth,
where he sits, content,
king of the country he received as dowry,
does the purple make you remember
the spilled blood,
the smell of fire and the sound of tears
wailed into the afterworld?

I watch your kohl-rimmed eyes,
and see your shining hair,
and your smile revealing nothing as you drop your spindle,
pull down the thread
and wonder what tale your own lips would give
if you, and not the poets,
had recorded your adventure.


(Inspired both by a scene from the Odyssey and Bettany Hughes' book Helen of Troy)