I’m a writer, and a poet. Words, The paint. Rhythm, My strokes. And for my palette As I string, each syllable, each decided ring, I hear the rustle of words breathe through my mind, and pick the ones I so align, And in that synchronisation with a sweep - I take ideas and make them real, As real as Paper, pencil Black on white Graphite scratching on parchment on and on Form To meaning Meaning to form That is my song
Stale Love • An Original Short Story
Stale Love
story by @forshewhispers
“It’s a hickey”, he pronounced.
Hands running down my neck.
No, I retort, “It’s a watermark of love.”
“And I suppose it’s inked with your blood?”
“How romantic.” He smirks.
Five shades too close to a sneer.
“Unloved women have no biographies.” I quote Fitzgerald. Solemnly.
“Quite right.” Says Anne,
“They have an actual life.”
“That’s not how it goes” I sniff, my voice spiraling a few octaves higher than comfortable.
Anne lifts an eyebrow, rolls her eyes to the moon, and snorts a little too loud.
I brace myself and face her.
This is Anne we’re talking about after all.
The Anne with her frizzy black hair stuffed with sprinklings of neon plastic clips that fail to tame her locks.
The Anne with her ears pierced to a point that you wonder where flesh ends and metal studs begin.
The Anne who paints her lips bright red and doesn’t mind if it ever becomes smeared with her constant pastry consumption.
The Anne who is smacking her lips on a gumball right now, pulling faces as her tongue licks at the sweet that’s sticking to her various rows of white, white teeth.
Your stomach lurches in protest as she pulls out another row of chocolate bars and suddenly under the limelight of a hot summer’s day you catch yourself hissing, green-eyed, striking, intending to wound.
“Spoken like a true warrior who never shaves her armpits.”
And you fling your head back, regal as a queen
as you flounce out of the room in a haze
and catch yourself falling, falling,
to the melody of sunset dreams and unsung heroes
when all the while
far-off someplace special,
a crow croons
to the reflection of
a trembling moon –
you cannot hold.
Visual Flow • A Collaboration
“Body Of A Man” (An original response poem to Pablo Neruda’s “Body Of A Woman”)
“Body of a Man”
Body of a man
Chiseled chest,
strong arms
Strength of a thousand armies
Smooth olive skin
Voice of rumbling reason
Logic, bypasses,
Emotion, felt.
Body of a man,
power in angular lines,
fists and fury.
You thrust into me,
you treat me as your sheath.
You are the single handed sword thrusting deep into what’s beneath.
But what is beneath?
Beneath my pale skin,
my firm breasts,
my rosy cheeks,
your smouldering gaze?
What is beneath?
And as you thrust, you charge on, tunnelling into the deep abyss that is me.
It hurts,
It hurts like hell but you won’t stop just as the brothers before you never stopped, crackling with intensity
you charge on and I begin to realise you never will.
You insatiable, sword plunging being!
foolish girl, I hear myself say,
Foolish girl, I hear the haunting chant, the medley to your fire,
Foolish girl, shut up and bear it, you must bear it,
you must bare it.
But I can bear it no more, this naked torture of
fierce scrutinisation
of lipstick smears and mascara tears,
I can bear it no more
and in one swift agonising lift I shift &
rise —
Howling in the pain of sisters-past
in the muffled screams of a trillion stars,
I rise.
And I cut you up, you —
body of a man
I dismember those chiseled arms and I break that violent glee from
your face
and I cut and cut & cut
until all that is left is your handsome scrunched up face,
messy hair,
sweat & tears;
Mine?
Yours?
I am not yours,
& you are not mine
but momentarily,
let me savour this liberating moment as the body of a man flowers before me
let me for once,
watch and watch and watch...
And set you in my little vase
and watch the sun
set in your eyes.
The Bookworm Babble 