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hyperdontiasometimes it feels as if
I have too many milk teeth,
too many parts of me that belong
to a time when I climbed trees to touch the sky
and I swam in sunflowers
and fireflies -
to a time I have long since
painted in sepia tones,
long since pushed
to the back of my mind
with hands so tired
of being filled with splinters
- too many seeds
and not enough light.

there are too many parts of me
that I have placed underneath pillows,
that I have kept behind closed lashes,
that I have slept upon, waiting
for the morning to arrive and them
to be g o n e ,
replaced with coins that I could place
underneath the tongues of the dreams
that I could not fer

West of the SunWhen our worded train
was about to derail,
I saw 'una donna bella'
with hair as the olives
from the groves
where we trailed,
and stole kisses.
She was a more enticing read
than the one absent,
as the sweet red in her lips
was what the wine vapors
were searching for
just to make sense
once more.
Splitting from her locks,
like the grass we were picking,
were her bladed words;
splicing together
in seamless strands,
and cutting south
like flocks of birds.

The MartyrIs that you
My skin and bone stalker?
Oh, how your flesh is in want
Of a beautiful martyrdom
And our silence rectifies this.
Peeling back the ply layers
In satin-shimmering sheets
Reveals a blinding bandage wrap
And the nails in your mouth
(Sucking out the iron to fortify
The caustic, slipshod nerve
Needed to be the sacrifice)
We will use to pillow
And prop you up
Under that lineal briar crown

no crow roadit was a benign hope,
this adroit affinity
for love,
a haughty idea
that replaced old regimes
and tattered philosophies
and contradicted,
trippingly,
the hollow brevity
of life.
the shortest distance
between two points
is a straight line, straight
as the crow flies.
there are stars overhead
even on the devil's shore
if you know how to look--
between the catalyst
of indolent calm
and reluctant bliss,
where the aesthetics
of wisdom
will ruin you.
crown him with a tyranny
of mischief,
love him for it until
your heart beats sporadic
and bursts,
drowning you in prurient
scorn.
regret
the moment
you met.
there are no roads
here.
sometimes she makes
her own--
long, winding things
that spiral
sinuous and shifting
like wind chimes twisting
on the breeze.
they never end, but
merge infinitely,
a spiderweb tracery
upon her soul.
every pertinent lesson
repeats
like a cr

RestlessI’ve been living in the same breathy dream
for too many days now; I’m bed-ridden and
stale and I reek of those moments that come
full throttle like a car crash on a winter night

   this is evolution where weak hearts
   are afraid of the shadows and where
   everything changes,
   an apologetic wind births no remorse;
   he will move on—anchored ship
   set sail, I am the sunken wreckage
   that never learned how to swim.
   he will move on, Darwin says
   I never had a chance

I wish I were the textbook sadness,
symptom and solution and endurance
but I’ve spent too long sleeping on the

The Bride of AtlasShe met him when the world was new;
when wars were fought in the cosmos
and celestial beings deigned expose
and visit themselves upon the mortals.

In darkness he came to her;
somewhere between fantasy and the real,
disguised as a human, burly and firm
with want of a lover and yearning for release.

She knew him as a man
and he loved her as his wife.

A Titan he had always been
at battle with Olympians
who garnered all of humanity's love
and chose war over peace to keep it.

As lightning struck, thunder roared,
and waves destroyed the earth,
all grew quiet as Olympus rejoiced
and she knew that he had lost.

Zeus then rest upon

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.

Summers Lost god died today. or maybe it was tomorrow. i can't remember.

"ask anything."

static skies;
grizzled blue
sketching down
to sewer lines:
like a wish
on a dead star.

the feeling of gritted teeth
and fingers crossed
until they break.

shame tasted
like a scalpel
and a brick wall
against my throat.

and i was
chewing concrete
when i said,
"it's okay."

swallowing cinder blocks;
stuffing steel under skin.

sugar-sweet
on my cheek,
like book pages:

"where have you been?"

NaPoWriMo - Day 2 'The Desk Dragon'There’s a dragon on my desk.
I’ve heard his wings rustle at night like leaves of paper,
seen his eyes glint in the darkness.
I’ve seen his shadow spread across the wall,
heard his breath like wind in the air.
The floorboards creak under his weight from time to time,
and his stomach rattles like a radiator.
But I think he must be shy – he disappears when I turn on the light.

No Going BackSomething inside me halts
When I think of the
Freckles on your back.
I know each secretive location,
Each involuntary indentation.
Your skin extends where I can't see
Except imagined ecstasy.
My fingers ache
To run around you,
Above you and
Under you.
But I would settle for
Just a single, remembering
Glance at the
Freckles
On your back.

When Grabbles play ScrabbleWhen Grabbles play Scrabble,
They seem quite the rabble,
From the elderly down to the young,
Without arms or legs,
They must lower their heads,
To move letters with long, sticky tongues.

The board gets all slimy,
The letters are grimy,
And more than one piece has been eaten,
You can easily tell,
The ones who can't spell,
For they gibber and wail when they're beaten.

Those scrabbling Grabbles,
Will hoot, woot and babble,
When achieving a double word score,
But beware of the swelling,
That comes from their spelling,
And covers their tongues with word sores.

Mother of the ForestYou reigned
In a remote mountainous region
Deep in the unexplored American west
A wondrous Queen
Guarding the North Grove—
Your grove for over two-thousand years!
Tender matriarch
Three hundred foot colossus
With love in your bark and stout heartwood

Rumors of solid gold mountains,
Along with many other outlandish legends
Brought the curious to your western woods
Among them, a businessman named George Gale
Seeking to prove claims of giant trees as truth
When he saw you, he named you Mother
When he saw you, your beauty was second
To the opportunity he saw in you
For his own fame and fortune

Twenty-five days you battl

She disagreesA mesh of throbbing veins nests in the putrid den between my eyes,

A thing grown fat on sour blood and the opiate of wicked thoughts -

A thing that screams in rhythm with the grinding of nails ‘gainst the swollen

Lining of my ill-conceived liar’s skull - better used had it collapsed in the womb.

She disagrees;

Innocent, the lashed lamb reaches out for soft, withered hands,

And begs to bathe in the warmth of arms rife with unfulfilled promises.

Long-forgotten mirth clings to her lover’s ribs like torn cellophane,

Pluck’d, worthless and left to flail in the wind – tattered reminders

Of an age that never sh

glass boythe “I love you” never left my lips, for
I thought it might sound pretentious,
assuming,
desperate.

though you wouldn't have heard me,
even if those words had been said.
and even if those words had been said,
your parrot voice would have merely
returned them to me in a gentle, dumb,
answering machine welcome message.

every time we talked,
there was the fear of shattering you.

you were my glass boy, a boy who was
breakable, yet malleable to the heat
of torched pressure.

but still there was me,
foolishly following the glass boy
wherever he might go.

one day my soul slipped in your puddled irises
and when I had come to the gro

My Head Is A Prison And Nobody VisitsMy Head Is A Prison And Nobody Visits

Coerced and captured,
Tightly bound in nothingness-
I will wait for you.

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More from ~Gricken

Because I was BoredI was bored.

So I took a knife,
The one my mother uses to slice tomatoes,
And cut open my chest just to see
What it would be like to die.

It wasn't so bad.

I saw my grandfather again.
He introduced me to my
Great-grandfather,
To my great-great-grandfather
And to my great-great-great-grandfather
Who had a bridge named after him.

But hanging around with old people,
Including my great-grandmother who was quite strict
And who constantly reminded me
That children should not speak unless spoken to,
Was even more boring.

So I left the place
And woke up on the kitchen floor.

My mother saw the mess I had made
And began with a long

RoseShe is beautiful.

That is the first thing you notice about her.
And she shimmers with the innocence
Of a child learning to speak her first words.

You will fall in love with her.

But every rose has its thorn.

And you do not want to know what hers is.

For TodayI woke up today in a room
That was not mine yesterday.
It was much smaller, and smelled
Of damp laundry.
The bed I was lying on
Was much less comfortable
Than my own,
The mattress too thin,
The wooden board beneath it too evident.

I looked at my hands.
They were darker than they were supposed to be
Fingers much longer
And palms harder, as if
They've had a hard day's work everyday
For God knows how many years.

"Maria!" someone's voice said from afar.
And my body jolted into sitting position
As if it knew that it was being called.
I stood up and stepped out of the room.

"There you are, Maria."
A woman had approached,
Dresse

Twinkle, TwinkleCelebrities have taken over the country.
Pretty soon they'll take over the world.
We will all look to the stars,
And bask in their superficial light.

Actors, singers, television hosts, athletes—they're not gods.
But they're worshipped,
And they're famous.
And they're loved,
And they're famous.

I wonder what will happen to the world when a screen actor rules it,
One who was bred to play an alien cyborg in an alien cyborg movie,
And when we have famous boxers as presidents
With their gloves and their belts and their scandalous affairs.

Actors, singers, television hosts, athletes—they're not leaders.
But they're followed,

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Never Love a Mermaid

by ~Gricken, Aug 17, 2012, 8:35:24 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Traditional Fixed Forms

Never love a mermaid;
She'll rip you into two.
To great white sharks and kraken
She'll feed the lower you.
Then with her magic music
She'll lull you into sleep,
And when you wake
You'll find a tail
Instead of legs and feet.
You will never walk again
Or live again on land.
You'll follow her throughout the deep,
A slave to her demands.
And when she's bored and tired of you
She'll pull out your tail
Force it onto someone new
And leave you there to flail.
To the ocean floor you'll sink
With only half of you,
Still thinking of the mermaid
Who ripped you into two.

Never Love a Mermaidby ~Gricken

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Traditional Fixed Forms

I'm trying to get my writing groove back.

Tell me if I failed. Come and attack me with your criticism. _{But do so softly; I am fragile.}

Still, I am happy I finished writing something. I haven't been able to finish anything in months.

love 1 1

~~joy 0 0~~

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

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~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~pinballwitch Dec 10, 2012

Congrats on DLD

catchy melodious rhyme and a sad love story to boot. Nice!

I guess for whatever reason "A slave to her demands" seemed like a sort of off-line to me (even though it pairs nicely with "land")--I think the term "slave" was it (even though it makes sense context-wise and meaning-wise and all that, it's a sound thing for me). I'm not sure exactly what to do about it, but personally that was the one word that just sounded a little...out of place, sound-wise.
"And bow to her demands"? "And bow at her command"?
And then again it could just be me.

~Gricken Jan 2, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Thank you!

And thanks for the suggestion. I don't know if I'm going to change it yet; I'll have to give it some thought. (And maybe say the poem out loud for a few times.)

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