Everyone Needs An Awesome Space

untitled

eyes as flat as dirty pennies,
    wandering fingers
    a stained mattress
    you offered me a glass of water
    and expected my body in return
    paid $50 for the privilege
    i wondered
    when i'd
    get the chance
    to do my 
    homework.

~ Ravenari

burn

the honey soft of your sticky skin,
apricot sweat and ache in the wrist.
you undulate, compelled by thick liquid pulse,
staccato heart - the mezzo-forte and forte 
of your gasps, and, I, push for fortissimo
hungry and crude cliche; breathing with your breath. 
goal in sight, a piston in the engine of you,
one cog in the heart of you,
slick, sore, a spark in the furnace determined
to set you alight.

~ Ravenari

09052013

a dim attic light
limns a frail girl, hunched over,
mocked by winter's chill.
hail hammers at frozen soil.
inside, her heart ices shut.

~ Ravenari

things i cannot stop doing:

wishing for rain.
checking the bureau's radar for rain.
emailing. 
losing my keys.
writing and reading fanfiction.
slurping the dregs of a drink
just once because it's rude and
i'm a slight rebel
(and a detective's daughter).
taking my meds everyday.
therapy.
breaking the 'ing' rule in poetry.
trying to get better
while slipping backards,
and lurching towards the horizon
while trying to stand still.
flashbacking.
fangirling.
fighting demons and wishing 
they were actual demons 
and i, an actual superhero.
trying to accept myself.
trying. trying. trying.
until the word loses all meaning.
thinking of you, and you, and you,
and the cats.

wishing for rain. 

*

Because when you’re going to break a poetry rule you might as well reallybreak it.

Also this is the summer that will never fucking end. And hottest April ever. And oh god Perth, WHY.

(It’s not a rule anyway, it’s more like… just really frowned upon. It’s not even frowned upon everywhere! Whatever, the point is a poem every day, right?)

an everyday otherworld

we slip musked and muddy
into the mundane,
our bodies - fleshy and soft - 
appear as containers
but they are not. 
you may accept or reject us,
we will press wet noses or beaks 
or whiskers (and more) into the 
palms of hands,
or we snuffle on, untouched.

we wild things persist,
with our claws and wings and fire,
but we do not wait.
we fall back into shadow
enveloped in the feral,
eyes a noctilucent gleam and promise.
we embrace the land, dirt, bones
and
other wild things.

reductive

a bird
once 
reduced me
to lines and colours
with the limited spectrum
of their sight.
no mantis shrimp capacity
to see the whole.
a bird once sang a pretty song
and
couldn't have got it
more wrong.

slipstreams

i ran hungry fingers through
rabbit fur hair,
mapped the 14 freckles
on your left arm,
named them Icarus
as i flew too close to the sun 
kissing each one.
i pressed fingernails 
into the space between 
the fragile bumps of your bowed spine
and marked half-moon crescents
as you waxed full.
i tasted your love of citrus
in each of your pores,
bitter cologne hid the truth
of you until i licked you clean.
gifts of salt sweat
made me an ocean of open want. 
i turned into your lips and-

-the bus slowed,
huffed a weary sigh.
i got off, sounded almost the same.
later,
in class,
    i will find you 
amongst red starbursts behind closed eyelids.

body & soul

i have junkyard flesh.
everything rotted and rusted,
thrown away and picked through,
splits of dried rubber,
refuse of gristle and chyme.

i have a loyal junkyard dog.
not enough bones,
not enough sinew, marrow
on the bones i throw him.
what is faith but staying on a heavy chain,
wasting away,
waiting at the forgotten gate,
patrolling the chain-link fence
like this junkyard flesh
is some palace
and you the Royal Guard?