bars hold until the clock strikes midnight.
the lion released after a year’s starvation,
wild-eyed search for the weakest prey.
the old ones.
the sick.
the lion’s sick with a darkness that stays
inside and around.
the night lasts as long as the lion lingers,
night like his cloak, night like his choking collar.
night like the last night the lion ran you circles
around the house
the lights came
the lights left
and you were left feeling light-headed,
afraid of your own skin. your own blood and bones.
the lion never really left. the bars open. the feast continues.
son of someone by FallingAsleepTonight, literature
Literature
son of someone
bukowski doesn't do it for me anymore
and I don't want to say it's like
losing a father.
my father would repeat the same advice to me
without my asking:
if you can read and write and think,
you have everything
always hike with more water
than you believe you'll need
chase after love before
you grow old.
I do not believe I was
the son he expected, but nonetheless
I am his son
and it feels good
to be the son of someone.
charles chinaski, henry bukowski
fermented in wine and himself.
preserved in a jar.
I have wept at the faintness
of my bluebird, I have taken
my necktie from this rotten axis.
who here now is waiting to die?
my fathe
No sour note, but the aftertaste by aMidnightMasquerade, literature
Literature
No sour note, but the aftertaste
She carved made-up symbols into her blue guitar, blue like the sky right before the stars break through, blue like the dark piece of sea-glass she found as a child running feral along the Gulf shores. She played every night until her fingers fell limply away from the frets and she crumpled sideways into her autumn rainbow dream-colored blankets.
The song never sounded the same, nor did it have a real pattern. Her fingers found all the notes that matched the noises and hums in her head. Just short, faltering melodies that strung together as clumsily as the thoughts she could not untangle.
The demons who crowded outside would stop prying ope
Outside the record store the snowflakes fall down like outstretched hands reaching for the frozen ground, wide-palmed & glittering. Inside, we shuffle through the P’s with thawing hands in our wet shoes standing as close together as we can without touching & you smell like wood-smoke & sweat & I don’t even register the titles I’m pretending to read, too focused on our breathing, warm & harmonized.
When we leave you ask me if I’d like to go on an adventure & I don’t think twice though I am cold & wearing the wrong shoes & no gloves & we walk, bodies close & braced against the wind, shoes buried deep in the fresh
I am not asking for a life of flowers
but maybe one with less screaming.
like half a bottle gone
or an empty wallet
or something less than your woman
with himalayan conviction
saying you won't
treat her
right
or can't.
I have seen the great wall
of china, but only in pictures
including one of the edge
in a sad attempt to
bisect the pacific.
here the only boundary
is the edge of the photo.
if I were a flower I would
be a plum blossom
blooming in winter
and never having to think.
even the pictures of them
look pretty.
can you feel all the ocean
crash against a wall of stone?
I can't
not here.
not this one a.m. carving
rectangles on