[x]

A chance secondI lie awake, staring at the cornices.
3AM: my fingers worry at the corners of my sheet.
My anxiety worries at the corners of my rib.
I bite and tug and huff out my misery
As the silence keeps me awake.
I lay with pressure of your absence
Pressing down over my nose and mouth.
A soft asphixiation of the heart, of the sanity.
It is a hot grey night in London.

You are awake, startled by the sunlight.
7AM: you can't lift your weighty skull from the sheet.
The day sirens, but you stay, settled,
Under the weight of your shroud, your loss,
Only the silence keeps you awake.
Unknowingly, for the first time in weeks
We are unintentionally in sync;
Laid

In absence of a poem.I chewed my pen to the nib
and swallowed the ink thoughtlessly,
but no matter how long I thought,
I couldn't say what you mean to me.

I tried, I tried and I tested,
every word in my diminutive range,
but I screwed up more pieces of paper
and happened upon something strange;

I noticed words, which have served me,
for all of my formative years,
had no power to convey my gratitude
for the times that you dried my tears.

Whenever I doubt myself (often),
You're the one who tells me I'm wrong
You lift up my chin and remind me, wait
for the good things that will come along.

I can't find a way to express how
you are the saving grace in my head.
So

HAIKUWRIMOCOMPLETE 2013

February 28th, 2013

Dire desperation
A feeble whimper for help;
roar of these raw times.

February 27th, 2013

Gluttonous ash cloud
sucks the moon's blood
and swallows the night.

February 26th, 2013

Bark! An explosion!
Angry bodies escape the
network of lung cells.

February 25th, 2013

Silently cloning,
multiplying, honing in,
determined to kill.

February 24th, 2013

Tea and sympathy
readily available
for my dear sister.

February 23rd, 2013

I will hold my breath
as the north wind does the same
waiting for your love.

February 22nd, 2013

He hovers behind;
Hamletian apparition.
Always following.

February 21st, 2013

A lo

Of Nuisance LeavesHear me read it!

Leaves clutch their ropy fingers around the tree's limbs. The zesty leeches bloom, crack open overnight and slip silently up the nearest oak or maple. They pierce the crunch of bark and penetrate deep into the rubbery veins.

They feed. They pauperize plum and peach until they are heavy and brown; heavy laden with the stolen sap.

When at last they reach their fill the tree can finally shake them off emphatically, desperately, until at last it is clean again. The tree reaches its black bones to the sky in praise and as a new year begins vows never again to be the victim of leaves.

Finding Neverlove - Draft OneHear me read it

I have never loved you.
I did not love you since the day we met,
I did not love you the moment
I looked into your beautiful eyes.

I have never loved your soft voice
As it whispers my name in adoration
And I have never loved the look in your eyes
When you look at me.

I don't love your hair,
Or the way you look in the morning,
Half asleep and vulnerable and shy.
I do not love you.

I did not love you at the first touch,
At the first kiss.
I did not love you the first time,
Or the second time,
Or the last time;
Not even then.

Listen to me carefully -
I have never loved you.
I will never love you.
I will not love you until my

Star-writHear me read it!

It is nebulonic fate that we should dance
together in this burning bald ballroom
as the flames lick up the sepiatic walls
and drip curled paper down upon us.

It is our right to spin each other here
in the torrentous reign of flames and ash
as the chandelier, already hanging,
spits and sparks at us, trying to take us too;

and as everything we ever loved or cherished
in porcelain veneer or hand-crafted sycamore
crumbles to a close, still the thought remains-
that it is our star-writ fate to dance on.

I will remember for youDo you remember;
It was September and I was seventeen.
I was gnarled into the corner of a bus
Mithering away at my gloomy mood;
Trying to shake the oppressive landscape in my mind.

It was unexpected.
A blow,
A shock.
It was unexpected to see you there.

You were folded primly onto a bus shelters seat
With her hand enveloped in yours
You both lifted your other hands, synchronised,
And waved to me with your familiar smiles.

I was surprised.
Was stunned.
Was overjoyed,
I was surprised to see you there.

Your grey hat tipped so rain slipped off
And her glasses whitening with the steam of her laugh
I just looked at you, gluttonous,
I absorbed ev

The White ThingsNothing is as far away as a minute ago.
No matter how hard you row against the tide
we can never reach it, never return there.

It's hard to sleep in the light of my regrets
that creeps through curtain and barriers
to rot away and bleach all things white.

It's hard to sleep knowing that no distance
is as far away as sixty small seconds ago.
Immalleable, we rot, and things turn white.

ShockwaveFoetal
Trying to fold the pain up
To trap it between the paper cut limbs.
Curled up
Protective
But the shockwaves come
Pulsing from inside
Destroying cells
Radiocactive
Curled up
To trap it between the paper cut limbs.
Trying to fold the pain up.
Foetal.

BathAn untidy circle of golden peaks
with shimmering gems tumbling down
that thrum through with shafts of sun.
How welcomed I feel when I see
the emerald shrug draped about
your fine matriarchal shoulders
reaching out to draw me close.
The sapphiric glint in your eye,
you invite me in and give me shelter.
All through your house you're present
every corner shines antique brass
and the small blemishes I see
only endear you to me further.
Settled on your asparagus bedding,
with the sweep of ruralesque tones
down the front of your stately dress,
Austen's own, I desire you.
I want to steal you.
Pluck you from your landlocked throne
and throw you hard

In The StarsIn the stab of the night,
when there is no moon
or modern light to guide you -
there will be stars.

They will burn themselves out
with the vehemence with which
they shine for you.
They will desperately radiate
their message to you
across lightyears of dead air,
they are full with it.

They are children
holding their breath
until you beg them to stop.

They are waiting for you
to be ready to hear them.

In the ache of the night,
when there are no whispers
or echoes to guide you -
there will be stars;

and those stars will be couriers
baring these words to you
emblazoned with their royal seal.
They will be eternally pressed

Framed[ I met him at the county fair.
It wasn't like the songs predicted;
I had mud up my shins and he
had grass in his hair. What a mess. ]

[ I kissed him at my grandma's house.
He swallowed me and digested me;
I became a part of his simmering self.
We fused together, and I died. ]

[ I married him in a triangular church,
When I turned up in white he grinned
and whispered "what, no muddy knees?".
I put a leaf from my bouquet in his hair. ]

[ He kissed her at my grandma's house.
She had left it to us when she passed.
In the house where I'd learned about love
he taught me all I know about betrayal. ]

[ He left me at the train station.
I'd helped

At Least Your Body Doesn't LieClandestine kisses, of peaches and pearls
with half written romance by half witted girls.
Your tongue tells a tale as strong as the liquor
each passing heartbeat taints my heart bitter.

Your inaccurate adaption of saccharine truth,
whispered affections with the afflictions of youth.
You lie with your eyes and deceive with your hips;
I die in your arms and taste death on your lips.

Liar boy, lover boy, whom I love the most,
lift up your glass for a seraphim toast.
You lie when you speak but can't lie what you feel,
I know what you moan to my teeth is all real.

AfterIt follows me.
My silver skeined ghost.

An almost imperceptible thread;
only visible when you shine light
directly upon it.
It follows me.

It rides the underground.
It hides under bridges,
Under trains.
It is woven into the spools of tar
that form the roads between.

Inevitably if I walk too fast
it reminds me -
Like the tug of stitches in your cheek
that reminds you; you have lost your wisdom.
It reminds me.

It trips me in doorways,
when my mind is elsewhere.
If I look away from it -
- it slips round my neck.
Another knot to throw over the beams
it mauls me without a fair chance.

I tried to sever it. I can't.

The Food ChainCherish swam through the ocean sleepily, her eyelids bobbing over the dark orbs on either side of her narrow face. She exhaled bodily, her fins expanding and then slowly contracting in time with the water rushing in through the minute slashes that ran down her sides. Her fingernail sized heart trembled vivaciously, on the edge of a violent flurry as she skirted past a Dorado unnoticed. Her mind was elsewhere, circling, circling, like a Sprat in a see-through spherical piece of coral. She slipped down through the seams holding the ocean together, down to the ocean floor. Here, far from the noise of the surface dwellers, she could forget. She c

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Wish you were... - 300 Word Prompt - Draft OneIt burrowed into my organs at a young age. Grew there, sucking vitality out of my anaemic thought processes. It grew to be bigger than I. This little squirming, burning, dis-cordial guest.

It became a nuisance. It would wake me, and I would be flush again. I would throw down the cards and then slip back into oblivion. It haunted me. It nibbled on my memories, my feelings, my imagination.. my ovaries. It chewed. It ground its teeth and it tasted every secret iota of Bad left in me. It absorbed it all.

It grew a voice. A gravelly but child-like voice. As I grew, it did too. Parasitical. Paradoxical, it deserted me when my throat closed up. I

These Days - 300 Word Prompt - Draft OneIt was one of those days where the rain hit the top of my head and eroded my mood until it slipped out of my skin and puddled in my lakely shoes. I tumbled onto a bench and let my eyes rest on the slate being flooded clean, watched Mother Nature sweep and sweep until the remnants of cider and young ideals were cast into cast iron drains. The rain eased off, its patriotic protest made, and still I sat. I sat and I dripped. I dripped and I drooped, limbs heavy with the sombre dregs of a mood long since passed.

He was a taser gun. A sharp, caustic shock to my nervous system, nervous as it was. He exploded in front of me, a sudden, full, sensory

Riverside - 300 Word Prompt - Draft OneI fled from that place, that place of apple tinted sunlight and the streamers trailing from the willow branches. I didn't want to smell your cologne again. I didn't want to taste strawberries, or climb trees, or hear the low gossip of the watching bee's, who got flustered when we kissed. I ran from it.

I ran down to the river, where the light never quite reaches after midday, and in the thin film between evening and night I disappeared. I heard you calling for me as I wriggled down into the grass bed and conversed with the worms. They offered me tea, and I, their mighty overlord, offered them mercy; for a while.

I slept in the shadows and t

Twitterpated - Draft OneHe is talking to himself in a white room,
Rambling through a jumbled skyscape
Dutifully ignoring the mirrors that follow him.

The woman paces to and fro, and she's muttering.
She wails and storms and crashes into the sea;
Tumbling into a portrait of the young artist.

Another He, similarly, skims past on ice,
Fluidly mobile he slides right past the point.
Fumbling, the original He finds his stride

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He equivocates "as a means for talking."
Carriage return. "Which does us no merit
Unless there is method for listening as well".

The Killers - Draft TwoSmile like a scythe grins grimly into the forest
As the roaches roll and writhe in the underbelly.
A jackknife cry; the predatory owl encircles the trees
and presses in close, closing off the air ways.

Choking - smoking - the ferns expelling fog in fear
and it wriggles and worms over the clinging mud.
It claims boots for a moment, an experimental suckle -
It spits us out and we trudge forwards, breath baited.

Perfectly baited for the hostile world around us.
We clamour, collapse, wheeze and sneeze and sob
Through gaps between trunks, find the spaces and aim:
Ready, aim, fire - into the fearsome night air.

A flurry! An overexcited

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Sometimes, it's the little things.

by `KathrynODriscoll, Feb 9, 2013, 2:12:08 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Concrete Poetry

He always told me I was deep.
An unfiltered distillation of a humanitarian ocean.

He accepted me, gills and all -
He knew that I needed my eccentricities to breathe
under the seascrapers of pollution
that hung over my head.
Or he said he did.

At the end of it all,
he tugged the gills open to expose me;
my innards trailed across the coral reef
as I swam trustingly forward, hoping for the best.
I tried to believe.

I believed him, gills and all -
But eventually, he left me, with holes in my sides
Where he had spooned out my intestines
To tether them to a boulder.
I tried to breathe.

He always told me I was deep.
It must have been a surprise to read:

Death by puddle.

Sometimes, it's the little things.by `KathrynODriscoll

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Concrete Poetry

©2013 `KathrynODriscoll

It's the little things.

Full credit to =Deathbypuddle whos name inspired me to write today.

*glossolalias rocks my life <3

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~domsaverem May 15, 2013

I love "He knew that I needed my eccentricities to breathe/under the seascrapers of pollution..." Utterly fantastic work Kathryn!

Reply

`KathrynODriscoll May 16, 2013 Student Writer

Aw! thank you so much!

Reply

~HumanScolopendra Apr 28, 2013 New member

I love the metaphores in it.

Reply

~vog112 Mar 7, 2013

Hi, Kate, I like this poem and others of you. Be yourself, dear. I' m also eccentric, so I know what is feeling.
Hugs

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`KathrynODriscoll Mar 7, 2013 Student Writer

_{Smiles, thank you !}

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~KuraiTenshiV Feb 13, 2013 Hobbyist

its good and im always glad to see you write

Reply

`KathrynODriscoll Feb 15, 2013 Student Writer

Reply

~KuraiTenshiV Feb 15, 2013 Hobbyist

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~Story-of-a-Mind Feb 11, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I love the unfiltered distillation. I adore I needed my eccentricities to breathe and the idea of leaving holes in the sides where those eccentricities had been when leaving. The whole concept of dying of shallowness fascinates me.
But I can't help it, I just feel your title is to weak. It does not do your powerful poem justice yet.

Reply

`KathrynODriscoll Feb 11, 2013 Student Writer

I think thats because the title is to explain the concept. To explain to the person its about that the little thing broke me way more than the original issues.

Shrugs. Its personal. I dunno. I dont want to look at it right now let alone edit it lol

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