Huwebes, Hunyo 27, 2013
the boy who caught the moon
the victorian moon formed a broken halo
with ghostflowers scattered across the skyline
and it's as if spring was buried in a
young woman's purple smoke bruises
when she sang lullabies to the
wildflowers growing inside her
dresden porcelain lungs
she yearned to run away from her
cousin's dirty smile and her eyes
dreamed of atomic turquoise seas,
their tiger-lily waves echoing a
flawless sonnet to a particular
angle of light as the stars defied
the rebellion of evening rain
in jars made of clay
he found her near the shore in an
old fishing boat with torn clothes,
his bad boy blue eyes gazing
at her cupcake pink lips
and he couldn't help but
ask how an angel ended
up in this wasteland
when she woke up, she questioned
him why the sun hasn't died yet since
she could still taste its afterburn
radiate inside her bones
because he was the boy
who caught the moon
from her tongue
september in a bell jar
( 06.20.13 )
the toenail moon resembles a half-bitten apple that someone threw into a dumpster and the briquette stars catapult like jersey needles in the pincushion sky. though, just like the pressed flowers in handmade spiral-bound notebooks, all i have gotten left are pamphlets of yesterday's memoirs. torn up pages of my past still haunt me in my sleep because even when my origami eyes are firmly shut, i can still glimpse a miasma of ancient visions that are better left alone.
the ruins of a teenage existence are scattered through the hallways of this hospital. it hurts to breathe because of the obituaries written inside my lungs, the angry red stitches rising and falling like an ocean wave beneath my ribcage. there is a chasm of blackness behind these closed eyes. i can feel their touch, their presence, their forehead kisses that are so fragile, it's like i'm a sparrow with broken wings.
i can barely recognize the time, whether if it's day or night since they're inconspicuous in the yellow crime scene tape wrapped around these murdered moments but then, i remember. the nightmares. the seroquel pills. the overdose. how the epitaphs of dead poets burned a hole through my memory.
there is so much i recall in this atramentous cage i call a mind, this sharp twist lined with barbed wire. i am reminded of those dreams, the dreams that started out as red-brown canyons caving into each other like angled cricket legs and morphed into what hides in summer's rain shadows. i remember his green eyes sporadic as his throat constricted, and when he fell, the clouds opened up and sang a faint hosanna for him, this hymn that stretched over the mountaintops. and then, when he took his last breath, i fled.
his dying eyes flash like a silhouette behind my blackened eyelids. pain runs through my knuckles, the little gravestones lining my hand, and i don't want to see those spiderweb eyes crying out for mercy ever again. i am sinking towards the bottom, a dead weight in the sea. i can feel the sand grazing beneath my fingertips. there is a pool of fish gliding through my hair like antennae standing proudly in the air, and i feel myself drifting downwards until i feel her hand on mine. i rested in her womb for nine months. i would know her touch anywhere. and now, this ocean is stifling me, pulling me down, and i want to come back. i am swimming to the surface, windmilling as fast as i can with these flimsy arms.
so, do not let paper mache ghosts suffocate the roses that are radioactive against the pumpkin sunlight, similar to the stain of hand-picked japanese peaches. september bears a resemblance to the russet-brown leaves that fall from the umbrella trees, they lay dead and forgotten against the pavement.
the hardest part is letting go of your dreams.
antebellum ghosts
( 05.27.13 )
the cursed horizon spewed out the impish moon
and drowned its decaying silhouette in the lake,
resembling the corpse of a lady in champagne white
eternally waiting for her shipwrecked lover
as i watched the apparition from my view in the dock
while leaning on an old wooden trunk
thunder clouds, november nights
you could hear the moon's reflection slanting
across this radioactive sea,
a delirious rebel angel clothed in green
and sharp-eyed at midnight
"you found me," i could hear someone murmur
behind my ears so looked around but no one
was there and it was as if the darkness knew
my name but the wind was probably
playing tricks with my sanity
how i craved to swallow the latticework of raindrops
just to know what it feels like not to be afraid of falling
and savor the heat of lightning burned beneath my skin
because there was this melting patchwork of explosions,
a sky-garden lit up by fire-bolts and twilit sapphires
when he rippled, shimmered, then turned into a
distortion of a ghost watching this girl dressed in a
dramatic blue sweetheart sheath with such intensity
under the moonriver with a bouquet of roses
this phantom stepped on the water's edge,
cutting the sliver of moonlight in half
and when it started to vanish beneath his feet,
he touched me on the shoulder so i turned around
from where the window separated me
from this glass-tinted illusion out at sea then i saw
the flicker of recognition in his profound beach glass eyes,
could feel what ran through his twig-thin bones
when he saw that he knew this girl
this lonely cerulean woman all by herself tonight
it was under this asphyxiated crescent when the noose
of the strangled stars began to loosen and they crashed
and burned against the pages of an unfinished
urban legend while the poison trees sang
a song of sorrow when his lips eclipsed
with mine, memories catching fire
as if doused with kerosene
we were supernovas in that instant, bubbling like cheap
pink margaritas in plastic wine glasses on a saturday night--
two delirious souls alone with nothing but the
silent crescendo of a deadly star for company
i could feel the rhythm of my heart slow down
then it faded into a quiet melody that only he
could hear, echoing with the waves as i
plunged deeper into the abyss
of his seashell irises
