[x]

OIt permeates everything
It is the cells. It is the cell
in which I am rotting.

The sheen over my eye,
the flesh I rip from the side of my nail,
the teeth I grind it with.

The tears, blood and sweat.
It is below carbon and hydrogen,
embedded in the air I breathe.

It is sleeping under my fingernails,
It is the undeniable, genetic, atomic truth.
Oh, my oxygen permeates everything.

It is the cell.

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.

BuriedUnder the paprika house,
are the bones of my father
and nestled between rib
and reason, is our love.

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

MutantHear me read it

I am a mutant.
   | My skin does not sallow in the sun
   and I do not blush jaundice through my cheeks.
   | I do not have extra fingers, or toes -
   although my spine;
      it boasts an ironic vertebrae,
      it is a long tally of the hearts I have broken
      and when I straighten my spine the bones Pop out of place.

flowerstoo long
i’ve held watch
over slovens in my chrysalis
rooting in my diaries,
in toilets
and in traffic.

i dream of razing their genitals.
if not for this ugly sycophant . . .

no,

if not for limestone
swept
into mud
how would i know
what instincts have been rewarded?

if i hadn’t made things
sacrosanct,
tree lines as noble architects,
a face, some godly panic

then i’d just see a headless corpse
some cat had torn
from shallow burrows
instead of this:

an Algernon

as still
and as holy
as
the flowers
that you left.

syracuseListen to the audio version for the full effect, pretty please.
cloudshot sky like an oil painting and i am watching the
seagulls. i--
darling, i will swim for you
and swallow every whitecap.
i will pluck myself a coat of pelican wings,
sew them up with salt and spray--
become icarus for you.
you are calling me across the waves, love--
but you pull against the ache
in my bones, the hollow--
the clawing out for unseen sunsets and unturned tides.
i hear you, love
give me time.
i will always listen.

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

settleon these nights
i seemed to bleed
something beautiful
atop of blue bird's
bones.
breathing
breaths
of
frost
lashes.
stars settling
in
eyes of spring,
budding blooms
and
sure-shell things
but heart cries
for blossoms
the fall of gentle
white
rough my bones
in winter's chill-
where my
heart
used to be
so
s t i l l

.
.
.

MatterIt is only a matter of time
until the stone lays down with the sheep
and sleeps.
Rested firmly above the holes
where our eyes used to be.

It is only a matter of matter
until epitaph and eulogy diminish to dust
and sleep
becomes the eternal home,
not where our souls used to be.

It is only a matter of fact
that our words will become reductionist, redundant,
and sleepily
the world will forget
where our words used to be.

NymphTranslucent as
a dragonfly wing—
your hair fans
in the water, and
the sun bleeds.

mitosis always broke my heartAstors of minute fortunes

b l o o m e d

when electricity created function from
an impulse.
You were an extension of me -
my only viable chromatid -
connected at our centromere
was the heart
of failure.

They progressed, those star-fire
petals, attac(k)hing us
to something more
foreign -
and on this mitotic spindle, we were
too
naive to know
this is it,
our ignored forementioned goodbyes.

We were broken at the thorax,
our H's became I's,
our union became two singular coils of
characteristics.
We were on separate poles of the
same planet
and
when
we were separated by phospholipids
and glycoproteins,
life was give

Mother EarthMy body is the earth;
See how under this bruise
A seed of malcontent sleeps.
See what grows out of each pore
As the pain pours over again.
There is rust in my fingerbeds
That poisons the roots
Of all good that hopes to grow here.
I am the convulsing, revolution
of the convoluted Earth...
I am the tectonic blades that clash
and shout when I curl up and hide.
You will feel me when I tremble,
and fear me when I explode
for under the magmanimous skin
There burns a core of hate
That can't be marred by human hand.

lukewarmshe had the kind of voice
that seemed to be stuck
in the hour of four o'clock
in the morning - soft
and tired and luring,
mumbling her way through
subways and tunnel lights
all pale yellow with noise.

there was tea and long baths
and longer absences,
hiccups of breath
the best
she could do.
long springs and
longer falls,
one equinox to the next
and still the bad
was never that bad
and the good
was never that
good,
and she continues to hum
the birds continue to sing
the apples continue to
grow and
sour and
fall,

and bury themselves
again.

virginity is like an envelopemy mother said her mother knew.
i wonder if she stumbled home like i did,
fifteen and beer-loose
tied to the door like a thunderstorm with black lips
and i wrote a story about disaster,
a quiet two sleds long.
a box full of beads, i swallowed
fifteen needles, mommy. don’t
tell me i’m not sorry.
don’t call me a whore you bag of bones
you lock-loose suitcase do you even
recognize me look at my face my toothache skin
i am not the one with the knife.

my mother never slept with a boy
who didn’t love her never let a boy
sleep on her while she lay awake beneath
the shroud of his skin breathing only
when her voice-box gathere

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with a whisper

by `KathrynODriscoll, Jan 15, 2013, 4:41:18 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

_{this is how we rule the world,
the underclassed
the uncapitalist
(uncapitalised)
the forgotten, lobotom-ised,
relics
of a long lost dystopast.

not with a SHOUT,
we do not argue.
we do not even unsheath
our mightier-than-the's.
we whisper in your children's ears
the memories of what should have been.
the life we all crave.

the death we all crave.
WE do not discriminate
or obstigate
our opinions onto others
pressing the side of the blade
down onto the flesh
until
all are bitten
with the fever of our belief.
no,
not us.

this is how we rule the world,
we tell stories,
recite,
incite.
we incite a generation
to think
to love
to breathe
with their own scar/r/ed lungs

with a whisper.}

with a whisperby `KathrynODriscoll

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2013 `KathrynODriscoll

_{Some new words for my dictionary...

underclassed; of the hidden class. often artists think of themselves as their own special class, outside of the existing class system.
uncapitalist; not capitalist, or materialistic.
dystopast; dystopic in the reflective past tense.
mightier-than-the's; pens (obviously)
obstigate; obstinately insist despite evidence

I was writing reviews for some people here on DeviantART who I think of kind of like kin. Most of them were around or had just joined when I was originally on DA so although I've been away whilst they have grown, I do still feel like I have been able to watch them grow as writers and as people - even if they aren't people who I would call my friends (because I haven't really engaged with them not because I don't like them!). I feel theres a small group of writers on DeviantART who are revolutionists... a lot of them can be identified by a tendency to use little i's... but thats not their defining feature. It's their voices.

...and I couldn't shake the feeling that this little group, including me I hope, are touching peoples lives, young people, people who are alone and in need of knowing they aren't the only person who feels the way they do... so very quietly, with a whisper, we tell the younger generations our stories and that it's okay to feel, and to live however you want to... this is how we rule the world.

To the undeniably wonderful: *DearPoetry, =TwilightPoetess, *ohsostarryeyed *0hgravity ~A-Lovely-Anxiety, *intricately-ordinary, *glossolalias, *IAmPoetry, *Scarlettletters, ~Snow-Machine and *TheAutumnCrocus. Just some of those people, quietly changing the world.}

~~joy 0 0~~

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

Mood: Love

!newcmv-x Feb 17, 2013

bEAUTIFUL POEM i LOVE IT.

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`KathrynODriscoll Feb 19, 2013 Student Writer

yay! thanks

Reply

Mood: Love

~Svartulf Feb 1, 2013 General Artist

Wonderful word rafting Kathryn

Reply

`KathrynODriscoll Feb 8, 2013 Student Writer

Gosh, thank you so much!

Reply

~Svartulf Feb 8, 2013 General Artist

My pleasure truly

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Jan 23, 2013

you are despicably lovely, my dearest <333

Reply

`KathrynODriscoll Jan 27, 2013 Student Writer

_{As are you!}

Reply

=Sammur-amat Jan 22, 2013 General Artist

Goodness this piece has quite a pretty, calm yet firm and fascinating feel to it. So many wonderful emotions in a single poem.

Reply

`KathrynODriscoll Jan 27, 2013 Student Writer

Smiles. Yay! Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Reply

=Sammur-amat Jan 28, 2013 General Artist

You are most welcome and I most certainly did!

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