[x]

Whale Songs of the PacificListen, the girls swallowed by whales are the ones that grow up lucky.

Listen, no one will warn you about the little boys with the magpie eyes and the fists swinging splinters of glass. No one will warn you that their smiles are sweeter than their words are sweeter than their souls are sweeter than their intentions. No one will warn you of the sheer weight of the world.

Listen, sometimes girls are fragile. Sometimes girls are frothy. Sometimes girls let boys nuzzle "I love you"s into their necks and sometimes girls drink the wine of believing them.

Listen, sometimes the boys really are sweet, and little girls' tart puckered mouths can't ta

GolemWe remember when you dug us from the riverbank, but we forgive you. The water was cold and the people had need of us.

We remember when you divided and shaped us, but we forgive you. We were without form and the people had need of us.

We remember when you put us in flames, but we forgive you. We were soft and the people had need of us.

We recall the day when you sent us against swords. This we forgive. The people had need of us: we would not desert them when foes were near.

We remember when you broke us with hammers. Even this we forgive. The battle was won, and the people had no more need of us.

But though shattered, we remained on the h

the hungry look...the hungry look,

the wolves
weaving through
and around
the gully of your throat like wraiths,

we can feel you rusting, lost one;

i know that drainpipes and fenders
begin to crackle after winter wet

and that there’s a touch of snow
in all of us,

but no one,
no one could hold you as tightly as you do,
your whole body, bloodless in this arrest,

and if you will not let your fetters show
i will show you
there’s a place for going, and you haven’t gone there yet;

where quantum particles, once in contact, can retain a connection
even when separated

where you
wander up to a stranger
with your shirt inside-out
and say &lsq

starspunobserving the romanticism
of hooded cemetery kids,
smoking cigarettes pretending
they are not dead.

you were always so sure
about my uncertainty,
you watched
all my pick up lines
drop things.

we built the heat
of the evening from the solidity
of starlight,

pretended
that two teens at the park
at midnight
is the stuff of teen novels
(cliches dim on
our leaf-gold horizon)

your eyes darted
from the gray expanse
of the churchyard & wandered
in thoughtful
paths.

i wanted to ask you
if i could follow. shove
the words aside &
remember that i came here alone.

i remember our innocence
in the static b e t w e e n
stars

tree, fiddler crabIt took days to hollow out the soft parts
of the trunk, dig out the tree-flesh and sap,
polish the raw wood so that when he sat,
there would be no splinters. He carved his name
into the side, like a blessing, a declaration
of good fortune, and stowed his forest inside.

A Night at Pinetop's TavernSomewhere in the back alleys of the city's older section there was a crumbling brick building that had been around since before ragtime music was popular. Hanging above a faded green door that led down to the building's cellar was a wooden sign, and despite the peeling paint, you could still make out the bar's name: Pinetop's Tavern. Nobody really knew when Pinetop's first opened; local folks would tell you it had been there since time began, and the world had grown up around it. It was one of those places where the lighting was always dim and the cigarette smoke never dissipated and the cloud you were breathing now had probably been around

a ribcage drenched in dust i have your ribcage, you said.
what should i put in it?

i told you i'd always wanted a fire,
the kind that would fill my eyes with starlight
and pump my blood full of passion, but

you're made of wildflowers, you said.
a fire would burn you to ash.

you wanted to fill my chest with
the sound of a train, whistling
far away in the night;
with the sound of rain smacking leaves;
with the sound the wind makes
when it seems like it's trying to speak

and you wanted to throw in the
smell of midnight in august
and the feeling of sand being
sucked out from under your feet
when the ocean inhales,
and the strange little moment of
bitter

A Love Story in Four Actsi.
     I loved a blacksmith once, back when the sand still clogged up my soul. It was only far after that I began to love the desert too.
ii.
     Underneath the casual noise--glass on wood, heat-smothered conversation, worn cards slapped down in careful triumph--there was this low, thrumming quiet that wouldn't be broken. He spoke in sepia undertones. "We're getting out."
iii.
     Hot iron smells like hot blood, like blood that's been poured out under the white Arizona sun. It's something you don't forget easy, like the taste of whiskey or the plasma patterns left on your eyelids after watching fire all night. It sticks.
v.
      My childhood was fed on medical books, and I've got this pain right behind my eyes and I wonder if this is what it feels like being lobotomized. Of course the brain has no nerve endings, but the hurt has to manifest itself somewhere.

The Importance of Gold FlecksHereditary.

I learned the meaning of the word when I was young on a summer afternoon. Too hot to play outside, I was sitting with my dad on our blue couch with the small white polka dot fabric. In retrospect, it was probably a tacky piece of furniture, but love is unconditional when you are small, and I sure did love that couch. I remember my dad watching Winnie the Pooh with me every Saturday morning on its spotted cushions. That day, though, we had a conversation about eyes that I never forgot, and even then, its deeper meaning was not lost on me.

"Daddy, your eyes are green like a cat's," I said.
He smiled, and told me t

Sharing Communion Amongst Creation -DFC Day 30I.
The sun stretches her caressing hands.
Balancing on the horizon, it seems.
Last rays of day scatter across the lands.

As through a glacier, the light gleams
Over meadows and memories past,
Dripping off cardinal's wings into azure streams.

Galloping alongside stallions unsurpassed,
Golden beams falling with prancing leaves
And slipping into cracks of canyons vast.

Shadow wraps around illumination like sleeves.
Billows as smoldering incense in sacred art.
The day has left, has hastened like ghosts and thieves.

Shade stands resolute and rampart.
Rapt with the veiled, vanquished moon.
Hidden in devious clouds, the waves devoid o

despondenti.

"are you sleepy today?"
"yes."
"but you were sleepy yesterday."
"i know."

ii.

she stirs her pomegranate green-tea until it turns from clear to purple
setting it on her bedside table and climbing back into bed again.
her fingers follow the bluer-than-usual constellation veins on her wrists and down
to the freckle on her forearm and then the scar on the inside of her elbow
crossing the tendon as if it were crux.
and then she remembered that God hasn't been with her lately.

iii.

today is long and sunny but when she steps outside the humidity creaks her bones
and her skin starts to inflame.
she assumes that if getting the mail

A Pocket Full of SkyWhen I was young, my father would take me to the highest tower of Notre Dame precisely once a year. It would be cold. Freezing. But we'd stand there, and take deep breaths of air, and peer down, towards the tiny ants of people below. Down, towards the sprawling city beneath us. It was always winter, when we'd go. Always cold. Freezing, freezing. But however cold it was, and however dull and bleary the weather, my father would ask one thing, and one thing only: that we adhered to tradition.

"Lucie," he would say, with the fond smile and kind eyes I always remember. "Lucie, my peach. Whatever you become, and wherever your heart and mind leads

Nonno's GardenIt’s strange to think that you’re not here anymore.

I remember when we were younger and we’d arrive to see you. The first place we’d go was to the window, pressing our faces against the glass to try and catch a glimpse of you. We’d look out, and you’d be there. Like you always were. In the garden.

Each trip was different, an adventure. There were rows of neatly sown lettuce seeds, bean stalks twice as tall as we were, ripe strawberries just waiting to be found by our greedy little fingers. Tomatoes would be taken and made into sauce, lemons would be squeezed to create limoncello, grapes transformed into

EurydiceHis voice enveloped me, and I became
Myself again--I heard it in the song:
A mordent on a note he held too long;
A stutter in his voice. I heard my name
In these and felt a happiness the same
As when I saw him first. Oh, I had longed
To hear him sing again, but this last song--
It was so beautiful. And it remains
The best of human works, though none shall hear
Its sorrowed notes; the lyre's meand'ring tune
Through vast arpeggios and Death's expanse
Except the dead. It will not disappear
'Till all the world's destroyed, and hell's exhumed--
Such music must be worth a backwards glance.

Star SwallowerShe's
an enigma.
her head, a stadium drowning with applause.
yet its seats are empty like the notebooks
where armies of words should be marching.
instead she dismantles clocks
thinking she can play with time.
behind the mountains lurks a darker reasoning
a twisted labyrinth of rationalizations
hidden from the suns brilliance.

Years alone beneath the bleached fluorescent
reading those already dancing in the moonlight.
she is living a literary half-life through them
hiding from the symmetry of the writer.
licking salty rocks of excuses.
saving her secrets for posthumous excavation.
decades of productivity left for moths to chew.
you're throw

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your song reminds me of swimmingslipping into the cool cerulean blue
shedding layers
unwrapping myself in this  u n d e r w a t e r  world
until I am mentally naked

beneath the liquid ceiling
my mask  m    e        l             t                  s  away
sugar      and      spices      and      ever

I swallow the sound, and it swallows me whole. The church bells are echoing in my head, their clangs in my heart, shaking me, reaching into my thoughts and rendering me speechless. Your Lolita, your Rosita, a Maria. I want to be all of them for you. The idea frightens me, and the cold fingers of fear clamp around the beating organ beneath my breasts and squeeze, and again all words leave me. Years of ingrained love of tradition and devotion to conservatism beat against my brow, and the threat of discovery and migraines plague my mind. Moths pester me, tickling the walls of my stomach; and coals burn slowly beneath, Hell's Gate, II, simmering. I apply my cherr

Dear ,        Dear $@&&$@,
         I am disgusted by my longing for you. It revolts me, repulses me. My craving for someone to openly feel affection for me transforms me into a twisted, hideous beast; a manipulative, whiny bitch; and a petty, simpering airhead. I despise myself. I detest what I've mutated into, this sick creature. You could have loved me once, but these rusted knives of sentences, covered in my blood and vomit, have warned you away. Beware: Keep fleeing.
         For I long to be your little snowflake girl

no, pleaseI think, despite all the objections against love that I so boastfully proclaim, what I crave most is for someone to steal away my gaze, hold me softly by the shoulders, silence me, and tell me quite seriously that they love me.

oceanThe Ocean's tides flow and ebb like the moon's,
Waxing and waning, never sleeping, no,
Thinking they can tame her, foolish buffoons,
Tried to control her, she dealt the death blow.

Drowning in her fury, unwise sailors,
Thought they could rule her, break her, chain her,
Murdered with a vengeance, curse'd horrors,
Their corpses lost, no killer much crueler.

Volatile, barbaric in nature,
Deceptively sweet, secretly sour,
Seemingly benign, not one may conquer,
Poise'd to pounce, waiting to devour.

Violent, unrestrained creature this,
None can resist her luring, deadly kiss.

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my howls are silent

by ~running-in-the-rain, Oct 16, 2012, 4:37:04 PM
Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / Letters

_{I, too, see the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. We are decomposing too early, our souls dying before our bodies can catch up. We are silently ravenous, a quiet craze in our hearts, not quite the same as your generation, Ginsberg. We do not shriek "Holy! Holy! Holy!" as we burn. We drown soundlessly.

The overeducated, proud products of postmodernism dissolve in a lukewarm soup of ennui, bored balloons filled with hubris rather than helium. Fragile dolls with flaking bones and hair and skin like flowers wilting, weighed down by indomitable wills and insecurities... these plastic girls starve to death and diabetes in the car beside me, fantasizing about food in the passenger seat. Former nymphets gouge symbols into themselves, the bleeding crags physical outlets for the demonic depression, for the memories of beloved older brothers molesting them in the living room, while her mother sits at a hospital bedside beside a fading father.

I see the most remarkable minds crippled by their religion of cleanliness, an all-consuming and greedy need for order, for control; certainty the god of their lives. Cultural expectations stifle other saplings, weeds wrapping around the fledgling faunlet stems and strangling them so slowly. There is the slew of abusive lovers and parents, Little Boys and Fat Men demolishing my peers. Some could fill swimming pools with their vomit, puking to the tune of "I'm a failure; I'm worthless; I'm nothing." Others, irresponsibly hedonistic, toss themselves into that loud ravine, belly flopping into that notorious stream overflowing with vodka and heroin, rum and ecstasy, emerging with mutated morals and faces and futures.

Disillusioned, emotionally stunted cripples rise from the wreckage, tethered to this Earth by cowardly consciences. I sit beside a modern Morningstar, his lungs bleeding as I pen this, and I understand your anger, Howler, your sorrow and your fear. My rage stills me, flooding through my veins and entombing me. My fear robs me of direction, my ennui of ambition. I grieve for my generation, too, Ginsberg; but my howls are silent.}

my howls are silentby ~running-in-the-rain

Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / Letters

Daily Deviation

Given 2013-02-07

my howls are silent by ~running-in-the-rain is a "tribute to the Beat Generation" (suggester's words). ( Suggested by =SilverInkblot and Featured by ^neurotype )

love 1 1

joy 1 1

wow 5 5

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~cordaicor Apr 3, 2013

I love this piece or writing. Cheers!

~running-in-the-rain Apr 8, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

_{thank you very much! Cheers!}

*xlntwtch Feb 13, 2013 Writer

May I please use the title of this piece (which will be featured) for *disrhythmic's "found poetry," all from title on dA?

~running-in-the-rain Feb 13, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

_certainly

*xlntwtch Feb 14, 2013 Writer

_{thank you}

*PursuingTheCerberus Feb 9, 2013 Professional Writer

FANTASTIC.

You've nailed the plight of the modern youth....you should consider going further with this

Normally, I would frown upon using a masterwork such as HOWL, I've probably read through a hundred times, as a stepping stone for new work, but you've done this well. Greatly executed. I think Mr. Ginsberg would have approved of this....

Congrats on the DD!!

~running-in-the-rain Feb 9, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

_{Thank you! That's truly kind of you to say so.
I actually had no idea I received a DD on this until I read your comment!}

*PursuingTheCerberus Feb 10, 2013 Professional Writer

I'm honored that I was the one to break the great news to you! I got a DD a few days ago and found out similarly to you, through a comment from a random, fellow deviant!

Congrats again! I've been looking through your gallery and am very impressed! I look forward to conversing with you!!

~AviAngel-Flycir Feb 7, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Help...my goodness this is too perfect

~running-in-the-rain Feb 9, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

_{Oh, thank you!:3}

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