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The poem tips nothing.The poem tips nothing. Perfectly
balanced,
it nods with curt politeness at
me,

the waitress with the emblazoned
name tag reading I
am just trying to get out of here too,
and it does
not pick at my bones (polite).

The poem tips nothing. When it gets up
and leaves,
it leaves exact change, stacked silver
balanced on the blank plate,
enough to rework my lungs
and pewter heart

for when it comes back
again.
CurlsI       brushed my hair     this
morning       like always three
heart-attack strokes   jerking
strands    into place   trekked
to school after and   dreamed
through    class     nightmares
all shot       through with gaps
like this   poem       which you
thought had       a point but is
too   sick stuffed  with     holy
to be worth anything  at    all.
summergirlNow read aloud over here. Do give it a listen, won't you?
     i. summergirl,
you are crowthroated and tumbling
through the aspen grove
hair on fire with sunrise, lungs
full of sky.
eyelashes like wildflowers
and every morning brings
a new spray of freckles
and a sharper curve to your collarbones.
the cornfields hold no shadows
for your lighthouse eyes
and there are no endings in that
surefooted smile.
     ii. you have grown
so fast.
autumn finds you with broken ankles
leaning on an oak branch
and watching the skies.
crow to sparrow--you are quiet.
summergirl, there is peace in silence,
perched treetop,
fallen antlers in your hands.
you will come to mourn your deer.
keep them close.
     iii. by winter you have paled,
and like the streams 
your eyes have frosted over.
you feel the chill--
there is no need for sight.
summergirl, th
with thanks to salingerAudio version.
it's on those cold mornings
when you are nothing but indrawn breath
swirling and knitted up inside too-big
skin and weightless bones--
when the horizon arches up against
the half-thawed tendrils of sunrise
and smiles
with golden teeth,
and smiling, begs--
it's on those cold mornings
when leaving is easiest.
the car will be cold, and you will
shiver, and the engine,
much too loud,
will smack of blasphemy
but you will find peace in the steady roll
of tarmac and the yellowing light
spilling across it,
with dust motes kicked up and carried
like fish in the undertow.
when you come to that first
crossroads, it will shock you:
the way the decision hangs there
trembling and desperate--
but there are no right answers and you will not
hesitate. and each successive choice
will be made of its own accord,
and you will roll the windows down,
and draw down the scent of ear
systemhe said that one day I,
who have grown accustomed
to accumulating moons,
drawn like moths
to my Venus-brightness,
would meet my match.

he told me I would be
captured by the brilliance
of a star,
a Betelgeuse, a behemoth:
supergiant turned supernova turned
supermassive black hole.

he informed me, peeking out
from under my gravity,
his erratic elliptical orbit,
that one day I would be
swallowed up

and that it would be poetic justice.
Cochineal and Beetle WingsI don’t love you
anymore.

I was going to lead up to this. Maybe claim
there was something caught in my throat
about beetle wings, cochineal – you know,
they make that stuff out of flight. Lipstick, I mean.
I mean the truth is

I can only smile like an inferno because
something else isn’t going to be flying away.
And I was going to say I’m sorry but I’m not.

I was going to lie to you like you needed me to,
but pray tell me how to grace through three weeks I hoped  
for some kind(ness) of hurricane, so we could recalculate
in the aftermath, and nobody would blame me then for judging
that we came up empty.
that's okayLace Madonna says it’s okay for her baby to die.
She says, “Wrap him in my weeping veil and bite at him with
science
forever. 
And heaven forbid a loose-lipped unzipped whirlwind
breathes him back to life.”
But he was born that I could rip transcendence to shreds
and hang on his arm playing the goddess I always knew I was.
I dream in flappers and rags, the flush of imperfection
and my mother's words above my womb of covers
the immaculate conception of "rise and be."
If I love him, are we eternal?
Earth sways as we call for him from heaven and hell.
His mother bares her teeth at me, guarding her Christ,
her baby, her four oh merit scholar scientist martyr savior of her race
“I raised a sacrifice for my bad teeth and irritability,
and I loved him
first.”
But, Holy Mother, I soothe him with my tongue.
I’ll be his Mary, don’t you worry.
They only call me Magdalene for my demons.
I hope it’s not a crime that I burned myself out of history
Depression.To be depressed is
to carry every unwashed thing
in your life in your
arms.

The dishes you
couldn't clean pile
up with your innards,
jostling for space
amongst the lungs you've
smoked black and the
heart you've loved
thin.

Your unwashed sheets
hang around your shoulders,
gathering dead skin cells and
catching hair you habitually
tear from your skull, a
nervous twitch you never
quite shook.

You wake up one morning
and find that your hands are
still stained with dirt
from that time you buried
your lover in the backyard,

wanting to let go
but discovering that letting
go feels a lot like
giving up and
you're not rea
Sad is such a small word.Sad
is such
a small word.

Pedants try to
expand it. To
puff
up
their
sadness
with crammed letters; lugubrious,
melancholy.

But sad
is such
a small word.
You
could slip it
in your pocket.
You
could slip me
in your pocket too,
something else
to be
forgotten.
TitanicSo you've decided to be a shipwreck
just to taste the Atlantic open
between your lips
and soak your lungs in saltwater
until your limbs turn to bones
and grow their own crust,

a new orphanage
for the school striving
in the depths of the underworld.
shhhwe are lurking too close to jesus,
on the empty edge of a lightless stage,
curved nails digging into the skin of our pale palms.

he asks as an afterthought
do you believe in something holy? and i think yes,
i think this is what i believe in.
Whistle+++
i am the wicked edge of ricochet,
the asphyxiation of dust
in a hummingbird's bones. skeleton,
i am silver, grass torn hollow
by a child's breath. corkscrewing,
my veins etch true reflections
on time's skin:

a cardigan crumpled
like a child. Blue
and torn in half.
---
I Only KnowThere are at least
thirty-seven thousand ways
to get from here to there.

here,
where your body fits
next to my body, your breaths
match my breaths; your
escape-
paradise, sanctuary, utopia-
surrounds my escape.

there,
where you and I are not
the same; where your edges
break against my smooth,
your rises coalesce with
my falls, your
 d i s t a n c e s
clatter against my presence.

thirty-seven thousand ways
at least,
but I only know one.

I only know the way the thumping
of your heart leads to the pressing
of our lips-
I only know the here and there that
pales, insignificant
to

the you and me.
caring for p(o)etsscribbling down vicious verses on
tissue napkins while seated at
the corner of a sidewalk cafe is
about as romantic, raw and
honest a p(o)et
  -outside of the four corners of your bedpost-
can get

if you've got that person dreading over
drafts and dreams on end
  -of you, for you-
consider yourself a new owner
it is now time to
tame this p(o)et's perverse mane
you've got your hands on
a fragile purebred
which can be very tricky for
first timers
Browse More Like This

More from ~winterkate

Monsters3:28 AM
and again she can't sleep. It's the sadness,
she thinks, the memories like bad pennies
that keep turning up, burying her
under all of the debts she will never repay.
At times she tastes tears, alone in the darkness,
when the world refracts blearily
and the last of the light warps and
slips away. Sometimes, in these times,
she laughs like spent soda cans,
hollow and grating, waiting for recollection
to crush her and bend her and tear her inside.
Sometimes, in these times, she screams frightening things
all of the words that she never did say.
Stop no, please get off, please just
go away. The letters, the syllables,
what if this was the song of myself?1. god laced your eyes with opium
stitched them shut with cotton fog. wake, love – cough
like a gunshot, breathe
like the blood eagle
has been carved into you. time didn't mean
to blind the moon's great eye, to
collapse it into the static horizon.
my lips can no longer pronounce the word mercy. wake,
love. please.
just breathe.

2. the days crack like porcelain dolls
under my father's boots. there are skulls
hidden in the cabinets, & shadows too, hung in the closet
like thin-pressed coats.
like suicide.

3. razor, rohypnol, rope. bathroom,
bedroom,
basement. if i touch all three
before i leave
i won't pick one up

Featured in Groups

:iconpoetry-book: :iconthescribblists: :iconinsomnia-artists: :iconso-often-bled: :iconthe-poetry-cafe: :iconprosepoetry-elegance: :icontalentedwritersguild: :iconpaint-with-words:
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Wyatt

:iconwinterkate:

White-knuckled as water
hemlock hanging
onto Queen Anne's
lace perception,

you waver like a screen door, rusty
springs all choked, twisted
inside you. Roughhewn son

of bluegrass summer, flutter forth
on rotten wood heels. Eye
the thin-thin creek so nervous,
while poison wires you

ripe to run.

225

22 34 2
:iconwinterkate:

Wyattby ~winterkate

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I am sad.
©2013 ~winterkate
Category: Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

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January 11
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:iconthemadmulatto:
*TheMadMulatto Mar 16, 2013
Was shown this piece by a fellow writer, :icongypsy-knight:
Like your refreshing use of words quite a lot. :tribute:
Reply
:iconbeeinthebottle:
*beeinthebottle Mar 6, 2013   Writer
I love the language and flow of this.
Reply
:iconbloodawni:
*bloodawni Feb 17, 2013  Hobbyist General Artist
Lovely, really lovely.
Reply
:iconwinterkate:
~winterkate Feb 23, 2013  Student Writer
Thank you so much :D
Reply
:iconbloodawni:
*bloodawni Feb 23, 2013  Hobbyist General Artist
You're welcome. :)
Reply
:iconrobostorm:
Mood: Adoration =robostorm Jan 22, 2013  Hobbyist Writer
This is simply beautiful. Your use of enjambment was spot on. It worked improved the aesthetics and the overall flow so this is amazingly done technically speaking. Personally (and this is simply personal preference, I would capitalize each line but really that is just me.

I'm wondering about the line "the thinthin creek so nervous,". Is it supposed to be thinthin or is it supposed to be thin? If you do mean thinthin and it isn't a name of something I would suggest writing thin-thin (if you are using it as one adjective) or thin, thin (if you were trying to add emphasis to the notion that it is thin).

Overall this was very good. So good in fact that I (upon reading it) immediately had to fave it, which is a compliment in itself since I rarely fave literature, especially poetry. There is something uber special about this piece although I haven't yet been able to put my finger on what it is... perhaps that is it (a paradox, I know)... maybe it is the fact that I find myself intrigued by it and want to keep rereading it until I figure out what is is that is so special and that is what makes it special (if that made sense).

Wow, you most certainly are a thousand times the poet I am... very rad.


(Ps. I tend to write comments as I think them through so if it doesn't seem that... coherent, logical, linear... that is why :) )
Reply
:iconwinterkate:
~winterkate Jan 23, 2013  Student Writer
Hey, this was actually an excellent critique! I'm definitely going to change the thinthin to thin-thin, that makes more sense and I like to use the visual sharpness of the - sometimes. The specific reason, actually, that I don't capitalize every line is because when I see it it makes me divide every line rhythmically in my head. In a piece with, as you've noted, a lot of enjambment, that sometimes doesn't work as well. Many of the breaks are rhythmic rather than significant. I actually really like your poetry, don't sell yourself short! :) Thank you for the fantastic compliments, though - this was an amazing critique.
Reply
:iconpoet-of-the-north:
~Poet-of-the-North Jan 21, 2013
Sorry for ur sadness... Trust me, ive been there. Oh and good poem
Reply
:iconwinterkate:
~winterkate Jan 21, 2013  Student Writer
Thanks
Reply
:iconpoet-of-the-north:
~Poet-of-the-North Jan 21, 2013
Yep
Reply
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