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Indian SummerThe Texas autumn froths
in shades of taupe and cinnamon
and lemon-scented yucca blooms -
waxen belles amid the spikes,
thickets of Jumano spears.

The Texas autumn ravages
the sunscorched clay with burning winds
that chew the live oaks all to shreds
and turn mesquites to kindling.
Wildfire breath.

The Texas autumn ticks along
in desiccated deer
yearning for a sip of winter
to ease their cracking riverbeds.

The Texas autumn flows
in rivers of molten tar
along the curbs, beneath the cars,
inexorable.

The Texas autumn breathes hard
like a woman in labor
and clings to the sun
with gifts of fiery fiddle strings
and a prayer f
Of treesDeep ghost-groves of freckled aspen
burn white beneath the winter sun,
whisper hoary adulation,
canticles for the Holy One.
And in the trees, the spirits dance
betwixt the motes of starry snow
illuminated by the lance
of lightning flash and candle glow.
All lights within this place combine,
reflect in splendour, white on white,
and mingle in a trance sublime
that breathes in peace through winter night.

The lofty heads of stately pine
rear up and brush the lowered sky
as if they could, by straightened spine,
so please the God who built them high.
Their incense needles, fragrant, fall
in silence to the chapel floor
and still a
Cry outPoets find your presence in the fire and the storm.
They seek you in majesty.
They look at mountains and see the ridges of your thumbprint.
They cry your praise when you paint the autumn.
They throw open their hearts to the sun.
They marvel as the cold kernel stirs to life.

But you are in the bitter days as well,
the afternoons so dull I could weep.
You are the maker of anthills as well as mountains,
and the stately wake of the single crackled leaf.
You drew the colour from the sunset and breathed grey fog.
You kill some seeds, barren rocks that litter the ground and will never grow.

You are in despair as well as in triumph -- per
Morning VerseThe morning makes me reckless
with the smell of coffee curling
through my veins in electric
tendrils,
and the pen betwixt my fingertips
shooting feelers through my brain,
and a single dying star
burning in the dawn-green
East.
The morning makes me restless
with the promise of the day
and the breath of open windows
and the smooth relief of
ink;
so in the morning, like a child
celebrating life
I turn my words in dances.
SacrificeYou are gone
 but I remain
 alone and mourning
   impotent.
I would devour the earth
I would drink the seas dry
I would burn the sky
 and boil all human tears to nothing
I would put out the stars
I would spit on the sun
 and salt my wounded eyes
to touch your hand once more.

But I am a servant
 the lowest
 a child of dust
 with no power to touch the sky.
So I will touch my heart instead
 and since you cannot come back to me,
 I will go to you, my hope
 touch my heart and still it,
   and I will come to you.
Where We MetPlace your ear on the shell of me.
Hear the crashing waves of the sea.
There's a storm in every heart beat.
This rising tide helps her sleep.

Place your eyes on the empty face
Of a broken promise or a hopeful dream.
This mask you kiss can't feel the embrace.
This mask you kiss is no longer me.

Just listen because it's now how I say it.
"I love you" said in waning conviction.
Just listen because I hate this.
There's another half, something missing.

We can't leave it all unsaid.
But I never say what I intend.
To lose my love, to lose my friend.
Find me at the place where we met.
Sacrifice Returns the SoulCrying inside,
Begging to know
The secrets that possess you,
The thoughts behind your eyes
The locks to the happenings
Inside your mind.

But not daring to ask,
Out of fear.
Fear that you wouldn't say,
Or worse, that
You would blame
All this heartbreak on me.

Knowing in my heart
That maybe,
Just maybe,
I am to blame
For this bedraggled version
Of the person you used to be.

And those beautiful eyes,
Cocoa- colored eyes,
Stare blankly ahead
Through the cracked windshield
Which is all I can offer,
Because its all I've ever had.

I can feel it,
Slowly, surely seeping away.
The emotion, the feeling
The soul in your body,
I Watch You Blow AwayI just want to know you're there
To know your skin is still in sight
The way you rest your head in hand
and the way you smile goodnight

I need to see you happy
To breathe and know you're gone
The morning brings your droopy eyes
and I know you're not alone

You speak in riddles and secret grins
Your hair is just a mess
I see you in my dreams some nights
Though I hope for nothing less

Our whispered words have faded
Wounds all healed to scars
Though my life is just a little better
for once knowing everything was ours
BUTTERFLY WINGS AND WILDFLOWERSYou are the tongue of blushing oleanders
licking the silences between my heartbeats,
the pause of raw pink scars contemplating
another laceration over my ivory notions,
but my mind is a fragile thing that still
licks the blood from congealing breakfast
over your fingertips, and my consciousness
is shaped by the uncanny tripping of fears
that seduce me open like coffee shop reveries
and sugarless nocturnes, how do I escape
this place feeling so wrong it feels good?
I search for a melody to replace the mad
malady that clutters my skin with another
carmine slice deeper than the bloody last.

I can't help but admit to myself that som
Shyi. You say that there's nothing to see, no story behind your walls of whitewash. You tell me everything without saying anything, because we never speak.

ii. You never stop running, and your floor will never be my ceiling. Anyway, you'd never fall through. (They say I'm a little too good at this. I mean, I'm terrible at letting go. Maybe it's best I'll never catch you.) It's such a shame, seeing as I've been practicing.

iii. This is simple, unadulterated observation. I watch, you move. My gaze is objective; you're a work of art. (Or is it piece of work?)

iv. They say you're scarred but you hardly seem the broken type. They say you'd let me
Constructive Crush
Constructive Crush
  or  we are as ether

Are we as poisons
coalesce, nourished; fuels transfix, extinguished?
No. We are as soldiers
march, skimmed by nimble fingers on behemoth fist.

Are we as voltage
bolts right through, croaked; once newly shocked, set aglow?
No. We are as ether
is breathed clearly, black in the panoramic choke.

Are we as the snow
in diving ices life; ripe by the slake of spring?
No. We are as one cell
splits, birthed; en masse, a cancer trampling everything.
A Retake On AnatomyI am not a novel anymore
I don’t see myself written on pages
I don’t see the drawings, the words, the letters anymore
Instead I see myself in some sort of abstraction, such a pleasing mystery
 
I would rather now wade in something elusive
A cloud, maybe, and take to the sky or dance in the tide
Swimming in my mind, gliding downstream
Learn to breathe in the fulfilling, freeing gasps of water
 
I’ve weed whacked the grassy maze to discover sky below my feet
There is no reaching for stars when they’ve been orbiting you always
I lean on earth with my palms to the grass
Swallowing the wind like I’ve never tasted it before
 
I have finally let my heart escape my lips
Grasped onto each passing whim with stunned fascination
Finding solace in the stillness of sincerity
Finding solace in the reckless care of chaos
 
I have found the glorious blessing of mystery
By looking into separate eyes
By clutching onto the strongest reality known to m
The Bottom of the Candleshe took
by surprise
all of the all
and gave many thoughts
to my crippled origami
she said,
"do you love?"
i aimed for the lies
in the back of
my selfless
and crooked eyes

of course i didn't,
but these things
would scar her arms
and make them bleed
i knew to bite my tongue
and make my words
glow rather than fade away.

she showed me her garden
in the middle of the night
beautiful and dying for acceptance

there was nothing to be done
but to do what i didn't want to
shamefully, so i gave
gave it to save
my brain from the guilt,
i gave it early on just so
there would be no tears
soaked by my empty void

eventually she
SynesthesiaI fell in love with a pianist's hands.

They danced across my skin in minuets, his fingers tripping cadenzas up and down my spine. He brushed sonatas through my hair and across my shoulders, pianissimo. I trembled beneath his trills. The primal, earnest rage of Bach swelled in hot crescendos along my throat, beneath my ribs, guided by his hands --- Mozart, coolly logical, raised goosebumps down my arms --- Chopin soothed the fire and finally calmed my hammering heart.

I fell in love with a pianist's hands, listening from the back of the coffee shop while my lungs fought for breath, making wishes until he was gone.
The Lions' Den - II have no wish to chronicle the events of that first year. Much of it I spent sunk in a mindless and fluid dreamlike state, aware of but unable to control my actions. I passed, drifted, from town to town through the country, killing by night while by day I haunted the crossroads and squares like a vagrant. In some places, the people pitied me, and I slept warm for an hour or two before some peasant's fire until my fragmented mind again drove me into the cold, or my altered flesh again drove me to kill. Never did I cease to move across the landscape, always fleeing the grief and horror that sprung up in my wake. Never did I speak to a soul, th
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More from =QuiEstInLiteris

Pirate MoonA bloody moon rose, hungry, through the mist
to wash his crimson glow across the waves
and froth the surging whitecaps with the kiss
that sent ten thousand sailors to their graves.

Beneath that vicious moon, a sail was set –
as was the fate of some poor, hapless crew
oblivious to the impending threat
that drifted ever closer through the blue.

The moon smiled sweetly, bathing naked steel,
as cannon shuddered through the velvet night
to rend the sodden trader, hull and keel
and put an end to her frenetic flight.

The captain's grin shone redder than his sword
As he o'ersaw the booty brought aboard.
VampireI never could refuse a drop of red
to wash down evenings thick with stress and strife -
I never did believe that love is dead,
but love can never quench my thirst for life.
Warm lips are fine, and roving, needy hands;
there's satisfaction in a single night.
I never cared much, though, for one-night stands,
when hundreds of forevers hover right
beneath your skin. Before the sun appears,
I'll hush your frantic heart and drink your fears.
MemoryI remember you, quiet man,
plaidly relieved against a backdrop
spangled with motes of starry dust.
I remember you, blue eyes,
all black socks and white sweater,
and the way you used to eat mayonnaise.
I made fun of you for that.
I remember you smiling,
no tubes, no pumps.

And in the blue room, I played a game,
pretending I could keep you here
as long as I stayed awake, imagining
my breath sustaining you-
  in and out
     in and out
        in and out
     and once more.
But my heart cramps,
and my eyes are sore,
and this is not so much a poem
as a thinly veiled prayer
that you still guard me as I sleep,
though open
The Siren - 11Connie gnawed pieces out of the end of a ballpoint pen while Sandie tried to explain the situation.

"I mean, I just don't know what to do with him. He seems to have a thing for music, so I figure if he can figure out that guitar, I could maybe set him up with playing it somewhere, but I just can't afford to support a... someone else..."

"So it's a him, now?" Connie interjected, spitting a bit of plastic delicately into her hand. She shoved lavender fingernails through her mohawk and flipped the mass of blue-black hair to the other side of her head, making her earrings jingle.

Sandie made a face. "Well, once I tagged him with 'John Doe,' he
On -Owl-
Night-eyes are watching me,
candles in the dark,
a refractory guardian on guileless wings.
Is that the click of pearls I hear,
or enameled talons, a hungry beak?
When she primps and preens,
I sometimes find
feathers
in her hair,
sleek pinions under her dress.

Good morning, twilight lady.

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October 8, 2011
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Autumn Rains

:iconquiestinliteris:

The Texas autumn, breached,
pours forth cathartic drops,
an ecstasy of tears
to cleanse her dusty eyes of the agonizing fall.

The brow of Texas boils
in cloudy greys and thunder
amid coyote calls electric
down the city-slicker's spine
dropping low.

The breath of Texas chills -
a saw-blade through the heat -
and screams the cloud stampede
across the hills.

The voice of Texas condescends
to whisper in the huisatch
and whistle in the Spanish daggers
sparring with the mockingbird
to sing before she roars.

The mercy of Texas
is no relief -
this wild trickster goddess burns

then drowns.
:iconquiestinliteris:
We got that rain I wanted.
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:iconexquisiteoath:
~exquisiteoath Nov 28, 2011
Having never been that far south within the US I have no true knowledge, but I do feel that I know it from this poem, it's got a great sense of place and atmosphere. I particularly enjoy some of your enjambments.
Reply
:iconquiestinliteris:
=QuiEstInLiteris Nov 28, 2011  Professional Writer
It's an intense place, to be sure.
Thank you!
Reply
:iconexquisiteoath:
~exquisiteoath Nov 29, 2011
You're very welcome.
Reply
:iconthegreatspyexperim:
~TheGreatSpyExperim Nov 24, 2011  Student Writer
The second stanza.
I like it.
Reply
:iconquiestinliteris:
=QuiEstInLiteris Nov 24, 2011  Professional Writer
:heart: Thank you! I think that it's my favourite, too.
Reply
:iconkay-march:
Mood: Love ~Kay-March Nov 12, 2011
I guess, we know by now, at least you're living or loving Texas, or both...
Sometimes the burning heat seems like a living killing machine, the only thing to save me from insanity in every way it's the long expected rain
The breath of Texas chills -
a saw-blade through the heat -
and screams the cloud stampede
across the hills.
make by itself a poem on it's own
Reply
:iconquiestinliteris:
=QuiEstInLiteris Nov 12, 2011  Professional Writer
The heat really is dreadful, but the drought is worse. :( We're still in need of rain, here.
Reply
:iconkay-march:
~Kay-March Nov 12, 2011
yes... we all need the water in so many ways...
Reply
:iconforgedsignatures:
~ForgedSignatures Oct 23, 2011  Student Writer
ah! Your words are addicting to me. I'm starting to see a pattern with your word choices :) :) :) haha...it's okay, I mean we all do it, I do it, its the sort of style we stick to. I simply noticed the "electric" word used here as it was in the other poem. It's not bad, and they both fit :)

skfmslakfns I LOVE "city-slicker" god. I am so jealous. Ever since I started playing the video game Oblivion I wanted to use that phrase but I could never really fit it anywhere so it remains in my not used pile of vocabulary :( I truly believe you use words well, that its not just nonsense thrown onto paper and called a poem. I see clear thought and emotion here and I'm so happy for that.

I don' t really have any constructive feedback on this piece, I really like it as is! :floating:
Reply
:iconquiestinliteris:
=QuiEstInLiteris Oct 23, 2011  Professional Writer
Ah, thank you so much!
And I do try not to overuse my favourite words, but sometimes nothing else will do. :D
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