[x]

I don't masturbate to Deftones anymoreFrom injury, from careless sewing,
from an antibody birthed to kill the womb,
I've drawn along the banks of Rowlett Creek.

This glut, a vein where half life comes to wait it out
in liquiform, to waste away in algae clots and scum reliefs,
is where I spent my ounce of self, my last free will and testament.
Black moccasins gleam like sperm of the underworld,
hunger welts in slow moan songs, feral caws from acorn tombs.

This was where I could believe
in anything.

My desires became anesthetized in light between the leaves,
where colonies of ill tempered starlings shivered like mutilated limbs,
where cardinal red blots were cupped in amber,

Expectation Of An AvalancheOur emptiness, our spades and saws,
Old tools become debris,
The shattered bricks, a flayed applause
Shaking the snowy sea.
Tomorrow and the muted crawl,
The air's shock caught up, surging fall,
Tomorrow and
Tomorrow and
Beyond, until the motion stalls.

The bloodless gallop of the void
Between a dreamer's bones,
And at the foot lay there, destroyed,
Dissolving little ones -
So was it then, an elegy?
To soften their geometry,
So was it, then?
So was it then
When ice was all that I could see?

Alignment of translucent dunes,
Glass roofs but gravestones be;
Giving shelter to shedding moons
All polished perfectly.
An avalanche, as one would say,

6 Lies To Tell Yourself If ShipwreckedFish are not unlovely,
not pimples on the face of the sea,
but ornaments;
the hook that reels them
in is the hook of an earring
as it passes an earlobe.

Women aren't stranded on the sea,
denies a deep-rooted loneliness clutching
two women framed by the horizon
together but never really ever at all.
The most overwhelming thing is
too overwhelming to –

Bodily pleasures are not either,
bodily, if they happen
while out of your mind,
or pleasurable,
if they happen
in the open space out of sight.

This is one for science:
Stockholm syndrome will
not happen while utterly alone,
because the sea cannot be
– is not –
yo

having held on forever to the hope of knowingyou read arrows, archer, from some secret sage;
before the battle, my teacher took your thumb from the bow,
(sound spying, how your arrow went whistling)
recalling the rush in your five-full fist.
so I, archer became, yet you brave,
never bitter for the bow, fought the forfeit feud.
you have history’s heart: and I won a war.

NatarajThe crescent moon fell to the sound of the drum, loosely held
in hand, out of rhythm with the gentle dance, the savage dance
that first filled the earth, then weary, had it quelled.
A horse rushing through water and wind, made tense
by the perpetual motion of complex bone and svelte
muscle stopped graceless worn; the last against
the first. The crescent moon fell. We shaped and set ablaze
the fire around Shiva, the lord who dances on the dais.

XXVmy hands will immerse: settle into a new sea, dig
in to find roots that swing far and wide
and up as a banyan tree.

something that happenedmy grandfather's brother lost both of his twin daughters to suicide, one at 17, the other at 20. every year on their birthday, he used to climb this hill behind his property and tie ribbons around the two trees that stood there, that he had planted the year they were born.
i happened to be visiting on the day that would have been their 58th birthday. he had suffered a stroke during the past year, and his mobility had been weakened, so he asked me to climb the hill and tie the ribbons while he said his prayer from the foot of the hill. i can't forget the image: these two mature trees, so close their branches mingled, trunks wrapped in ribbons, most frayed and loosened by years of wind, some decades old, colorless and fallen on the dirt around the bases of the trees.
this was the first time i thought about how the years of someone's life might look when left behind. it took me forever because i was so nervous. when we walked back to his house, and he was wiping tears out of the corners o

he looked like icelandhe looked like iceland,
with those white lips of his,
those white teeth of his,
that white smile.

he felt a bit like iceland, too,
walking on the snow like the last man on earth,
picking on the stray anchovites that gladed past us,
by the shore,
snorting at the constellations.

He was like iceland because he never left footprints and he was so far away,
almost like the last standard of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
unfathomable, solemn,
circumpolar.

He was like iceland because he left my hands cold, and there was always a folk song whispering around him,
like he never did anything but speak in ancestral riddles.

But he looked the most like Icela

summergirlNow read aloud over here. Do give it a listen, won't you?
i. summergirl,
you are crowthroated and tumbling
through the aspen grove
hair on fire with sunrise, lungs
full of sky.
eyelashes like wildflowers
and every morning brings
a new spray of freckles
and a sharper curve to your collarbones.
the cornfields hold no shadows
for your lighthouse eyes
and there are no endings in that
surefooted smile.
ii. you have grown
so fast.
autumn finds you with broken ankles
leaning on an oak branch
and watching the skies.
crow to sparrow--you are quiet.
summergirl, there is peace in silence,
perched treetop,
fallen antlers in your hands.
you will come to mourn your deer.
keep them close.
iii. by winter you have paled,
and like the streams
your eyes have frosted over.
you feel the chill--
there is no need for sight.
summergirl, th

Part-Time HookerI inhale smoke and dirty thoughts

(sleeping with a waste-of-calories
with no sex appeal. her heart
doesn't beat
the volume of
smell increases as it's
getting hotter than a
fever heat
I don't mind her
cold hands around my --
burned out lights form a
silhouette; film this on
screen like a dream
you can watch or hear.
but she doesn't scream;
her bones suffocate me
as she's wrapped around
my body -
she's stiff, cold, dry.
sleeping with a waste-of-calories
with no sex appeal. her heart
doesn't beat. )

Until I can't breathe.

Approaches and DeparturesHear toxic-nebulae read it here.

When the roads took to themselves
my breath arrived from Appalachia
to Sonora before North American
westerlies and wanderlust cradle-
carried my exhalations eastward.

The southern Baptist rural sprawl,
contagious to Canadian and Pacific
railways, had approached from crosses
confiscated several centuries earlier.

Fiberglass steeples routinely fed
a broadcast of fiber optimal sermons

depart from me;

the distinction between an arrival
and an approach is who leaves who.

glass in the tidegradac, croatia; summer.

it is a town climbed up from the sea:
a salt hymn, an exhalation, a brightly calcified
spray. the houses here are overgrown
as wildflowers, paths like tiny winding veins
sprung alive between them. from my balcony i watch
the sun crest slowly into afternoon,
and mothers lead their children
down stone slopes, arterial pull
to the water. by the shore,
vendors sell bottles of olive oil, salt,
sage, gathering up anything with the taste
of what mystery inhabits the air—brimming over
the glass lips, a curving kind of joy,
the whole earth, a bowl of it.

at night, my uncle drinks beer
and i drink wine. he watches
the

To LondonGypsy hopefuls once told me,
there are flights leaving for
any destination
at any given instant

Upon sizing up our town with
a fingernail
did you realise how little
our frustrations were?

I spoke about this ineffable feeling
of stepping out of one tub
and into new water.

The hotel was done up nicely,
chandeliers and polished English accents.
Labels aside they still mixed
milk into their coffee
and had toast with jam and butter.

I was living under the impression
that most of the Internet
came from my same slice of city pie,
conveniently forgetting about
the undersea cables.

I loathed the lack of vernacular
sentence s

in 12 ways"How do you deal with your heart?"
--M.S.

1.
on bad days i take it out somewhere nice,
i eat for two
while it watches the candles burn.

i do all the drinking. even though it's wine-colored,
and it knows what the evening costs me, it just watches
the tulip of its glass flicker.

2.
sometimes i wrap it up
in dark crepe for an afternoon and let it fall asleep

with the radio buzzing peaceably
between stations,

or i walk it through the park
with it in the crook of my arms,

wandering between bird-sounds,
sitting near the duck-pond.

or i take it to the theater

where it can smell butter
and watch the backs of people's heads
wh

a streetcar to nowherei.

he must crack
when his hands are tulle:

paling dry,
rough and tearing,
bought by the yard
or cent-marked minute,

spin a skirt
that won't last a winter,

shed bohemia
and snort ballerinas,
hope he's flexible

like tulle:

thin and shimmering,
don't stay another minute,
clear the aisles and say,

halloween's over
and he must crack
when his hands are tulle:

quivering
wind-burnt dancers,
caught aflame
by a craving spark

like tulle:

crisp and seething,
acrid burning,
black waste and thin ash

ii.

"name,
like your real name or
just something i can call you,
something that won't make me

feel like i'm talking down
to you. not because
i r

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Only as Old"Frail bones predict what fragile minds can't detect,"
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Sticking to the back of my throat like a stormy syrup
I'd tried to swallow down.

I peered out the kitchen window
And caught an inklet of patched-over-grey sky;
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Impartial to the gloom outside, we stepped out onto the back porch;
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Clickety-Clackety

by ^NicSwaner, Mar 16, 2013, 10:58:48 AM
Literature / Poetry / Family Life / Traditional Fixed Forms

I know she's begging for his big brown paper bags
and to remain abstinent from his liquor cabinet
because he's coming on site with newly-sober rednecks
and preaching of becoming a sobered-enough roughneck.

I know he's tapping his grungy fingertips on tabletops
and sitting in foreign tattoo parlors talking tittery-tattery
because she disses him with friends 'It's true he's cussed
at me for no reason but I'd be lying if I say he ever swore.'

When they exchange tit for tattoo he may wring a neck-
lace; bags under her eyes beg for him to be the bigger man.
But when breakfast settles they won't be neck and neck
and she'll be the abstinent teaser and he'll have cabinet fever.

And it's a bad sign when there's a day without a diss or cuss
off the top of his head, tap water is sobering and his hat tips
lower and lower down his forehead. I remember that I swore
that freight trains should always chant 'clickety-clackety.'

Bigger beggars know bagged absinthe is not as compassionate
from tip-tap-top touches from a body that is rickety-rackety
and bottlenecked into luggage; that a mortician is a rubberneck
away from authorities who discuss statements he's forsworn.

Clickety-Clacketyby ^NicSwaner

Literature / Poetry / Family Life / Traditional Fixed Forms

Dire Straits - It Never Rains

And he's just standing in the shadows
Yes and he smile that come-on smile
Oh I can still hear you say as clear as the day
'I'd like to make it worth your while'

Oh but it's a sad reminder when your organ grinder
Has to come to you for the rent (organ flourish)
And all you've got to give him
Is the use of your side-show tent

That song, ladies and gentlemen, is probably one of the most well-composed rock songs of all-time. The lyrics are nothing short of amazing, telling the story of a woman and her descent into prostitution.

About the Poem

The poem is written in a quatrina format, which is a variant of the sestina form, but instead of six lines, there are four lines. And even then, I decided to mix things up. Here's the pattern for my "alternating quatrina"

A beg-big-bag
B abstinent-cabinet
C redneck
D roughneck

E tap-tip-top
F tittery-tattery
G diss-cuss
H for-swear

C wring a neck
A bag-beg-big
D neck and neck
B abstinent cheater cabinet fever

G diss-cuss
E top-tap-tip
H for-swear
F clickety-clackety

AB big-bag-beg/absinthe-compassionate
EF tip-top-tap/rickety-rackety
CD bottleneck/rubberneck
GH discuss/forswear

Clickety-Clackety © 2013 Nic Swaner

Critique by ~Rhetoricism Mar 16, 2013, 10:04:13 PM

First things first, I'd like to commend you on your structure. Too often the category of 'free verse' is used as an excuse to avoid the challenging (but rewarding) ropes and scaffolds of fixed-form poetry. The structure of this poem in particular is rather rigid, and as a result leads itself quite well to being read aloud. That, and the wonderful word choice throughout, are the two greatest strengths of the poem.

I'm not a fan of most poetry, and I don't have much of a taste for it either. I don't know of the myriads of forms and techniques and rules that make fixed form. What I do know, however, is that it's difficult to compose both a story and a rigid form without sacrificing one or the other.

This poem goes a lot of the way towards overcoming that obstacle. To a poetry outsider such as myself, who prefers the non-oblique phrasery of prose to the obscured hintery of poetry, the story, setting and meaning of poems can be hard to understand. The only way to overcome this is often to sacrifice form for clarity, which is basically pandering to a lower understanding. Which, needless to say, isn't desirable.

I can understand chunks of the idea behind this poem, even with its strict form and composition, and that is admirable, because I am terrible with poetry. The piece emanates a strange, quiet desperation, a gritty sort of subtle nihilism, and places and people that, if ever painted or drawn, would be done so in sepia monochrome. Well done indeed.

What do you think?

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Critique by =TristanCody Mar 16, 2013, 2:30:42 PM

Firstly, I love this piece. Secondly, I adore the use of form, structure, diction and syntax you used. Now, with that aside, let us begin with my thoughts.

Beautifully constructed. Perfect use of rhythm with words like "tittery-tattry" and others. They added character to the piece. Deep and intelligent comments used in a somewhat pungent manner. What really gets me is the attention to the sounds of your words. How the flow, how the sound when read, etc... very good. It takes a lot of observation in order to truly pull something like this off.

I will save the usual fillers of the normal categories by compacting them:

Vision - 5
Originality - 4
Technique - 5
Impact - 4

You have intrigued me, excited me, played me, won me over and achieved a new level of admiration. Fantastic, just wonderful.

What do you think?

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~RestlessSands Mar 22, 2013

interesting.. & wonderful play of words!

~ocean-whispers Mar 21, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Featured here: [link]

*brassteeth Mar 19, 2013

It's big. Like a glass of old wine, it has layers to the pallet.
It leaves me feeling sore and harvested of all tenderness, like I have to build a wall to reread it.

I once saw/heard Mark Knopfler sing this, literally in the rain. Its such a story.

^NicSwaner Mar 20, 2013 Student Writer

That sounds like an amazing story.

*brassteeth Mar 20, 2013

Well, your piece is the story. well done.

^NicSwaner Mar 20, 2013 Student Writer

~reflectionsinwater Mar 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Probably one of the poems that almost perfectly uses sound and rhythm I've ever read in my life.

I envy your use of form as well (and flexibility of it), it really fits it perfectly.

^NicSwaner Mar 16, 2013 Student Writer

Thanks Jack.

~ocean-whispers Mar 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I love the feeling this poem gave me. It put me in a memory that I have -- a barefoot-sunny-day-virginia-summer feeling.

Oof, that alliteration, personification -- the rhythm this piece gives! I can't get enough. I need to read it again!

^NicSwaner Mar 16, 2013 Student Writer

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Clickety-Clackety

Clickety-Clacketyby ^NicSwaner

Dire Straits - It Never Rains

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