end.

I feel stuck. It seems strange to me that I can be so sure that I am desperately in love but at the same time feel like my bones will break if they try to move away from her. Everyday, as sure as the clouds come out when it rains, I’m there waiting for her outside the dance room my hand itching to hold hers and my eyes itching to check out her ass. I appreciate how lazy she get’s after practice and her insistence to stay in those spandex shrines to the godliness of her rear. If my love were dependent only on aesthetics we’d be fine, because surely Mia is just as beautiful as she was the very first day I saw her, tucked so small in a crowded hallway. But I feel stuck, so I owe it to myself to go over and talk to her, I just don’t know what I can get myself to say. I have to admit when she looks at me with those eyes, so big and brown and round and gorgeous, I fall in love with her again, if just for a moment. And it tugs at me in ways that don’t want to hurt her.

But I have to hurt her, if there is any way of me really ever being happy and, I think, that’s what she wants for me. Either way, I’m hating the how long these street lights take to turn red and cursing my eight year old self for never sticking to that plan to invent a super fast hover craft. I just want to get this over with and as if my piece of shit car decided that this night should get worse, it starts to over heat, a trail of dirty white smoke puffing after me until I pull into her driveway. I make sure to dim my lights so whoever is inside wont know I’m here yet, I still need to figure out what to say, how do people know what to say when doing shit like this? I wish I had a script, I wish I lived in a french film with tons of nudity but even better, some form of closure at the end. I know I’m not getting that tonight and I can’t help but feel like this is me, Jake, walking into a storm that’s been waiting to be released for months already, and I have to admit I’m fucking terrified of it and worse making my Mia cry. 

Mia is waiting in her room, lit by a lamp she had received as a gift for her fifteenth birthday. She has this unsettling feeling in her gut, wretching as if she had been riding on a rollercoaster over and over again. Somehow, Mia can’t help but know what was about to happen, though in many ways, her finger couldn’t place itself on exactly what it was. 

“Mija” Mia’s dad said, knocking on her door. 

Mia really isn’t in the mood for this. She wants to be left alone in her room with her oil pastels and long sheets of canvas. She wants to hold her paint brush firmly in her hands and trace the anxiety away, fill it in with shades of that unsettling flavor rising up her throat. She wants to spit it out and paint with it, but Jake was waiting in the living room, her dad said, and he looked like he really didn’t want to wait. Mia rolled her eyes, somehow it seemed like Jake never waited while that was all Mia ever did. She waited, for him to make up his mind and decide if he’s angry or scared or bored or completely enamored with her. As Mia reached her hand to prop herself up she felt the flames starting to rise, the calm before the chaos. She was ready to feed the flames, she just wanted to get this over with now. 

It’s really nerve wracking when you have to wait at the door of your girlfriends house. Its especially nerve wracking when you have to wait at the door of your girlfriends house right before breaking up with her. Your feet plant on the ground, cemented to the floor with fear and there’s nothing you want more than to run, but you already pushed the doorbell and don’t want to risk your girlfriend catch you running like a coward to your car, (this thought just took you twenty seconds to get through and you sure someone was just about to open the door, so it’s prolly too late to run anyway). 

This is where I am at right now, the door part, stepping through the grand wooden frame into the warm living room, with walls layered in shades of latte. Nico opened the door. He’s a nice man, not as awesome as my own dad but he’s the type of father you have when you need to be cared for in ways that require you to heal. Like Mia and everything she’s been through losing her mom and all. Shit, I can’t believe I’m doing this. Maybe, I can pretend I came just to visit, paint a smile on my face and kiss her. I still like kissing her, pressing my body against her and feeling those ballerina muscles tighten around me, wherever she can. All I have to do is ask Mia to show me how much she loves me, and she’ll roll her eyes, complain that she waited for me to call while pulling off her jeans and prying off her panties. I really could do that. I really want to do that. 

“Hey you.” Mia spoke from behind me. I can smell the colors smeared onto her hands before I turn to see her gripping the living room sofa, streaking its forest green color with bright medly of pastels. She tousles my hair and this annoys me, lately the crude cut hairdo she gave me looked stupid to me, like a curly rooster nesting on my head and I hated it. I hated Mia and how she practiced her beauty school shit on me, and how she paints pictures for me and tucks them in my locker. I hate that she bakes me cakes from scratch on my birthday and wants to hear me practice my guitar. I hate that she is so incredible and Im just some guy that can’t get myself to pass Algebra 2 and Chemistry. I hate that she does my homework to help me pass Algebra 2 and Chemistry because she thinks it’s stupid to drop out of high school. Mia’s hand rested at the nape of my neck, her fingers pressing against how tight I imagine it feels, and she slowly grazes my skin. I hate how amazing she is and I make sure to keep my back toward her.

“Mia, we need to talk.”  

So, this is my attempt at writing 1st POV and 3rd close together with one narration. I'm also attempting to keep it in the present tense. oh geez, 1st POV and present tense are the exact opposite of what i'm used to writing but it's the only way we get better at it right? it attempt to do we can't yet do? well here goes, i might add more i dunno, originally the father was part of this narrative too but i dont want it to get too "busy". Cheers!

neruda

Love for Another vs. Love of Everyday Things

An analysis and comparison of Pablo Neruda’s rhetorical approach

toward his works in Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair and Odes to Common Things

When first introduced to Pablo Neruda’s work in class this semester, I found myself suddenly in love with the impression his words left. The spell of Neruda’s choice of words has won him world wide fame as well as the respect of poets from, and long after, his time. Pablo Neruda’s celebrity is accredited to the publishing of a series of different types of writings as well as work he conducted as an influential political figure. Neruda’s love for his country and light/dark description has made him notorious in the literary world. Neruda’s efforts resulted in a Noble Prize in Literature in the year 1971. His unconventional reference to the woman’s form and variable imagery throughout his work has deemed him worthy of replication and multiple translations.

The volume Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair was the first of his written works that won him fame. Publishing it at the early age of 20 in 1924, Pablo Neruda declared his place in the literary world as one of a talented artist. This collection of poetry captures the poet’s youthful inclinations towards love, highlighting sexual explicitness through intertwining it with images from his native land, Chile. Neruda not only associates the woman’s body with nature, he glorifies the females form in comparison to the natural world of Chile, accrediting the woman as an indubitable agency of mother nature.

The poems within the collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair differ from Neruda’s other works in that they lack the scholarly, political voice that is predominantly displayed in his later pieces. The beauty of analysing Neruda’s work is that the audience can identify at which point in the poet’s life he had written it, through the discovering of the context of the poems themselves. Canto General, for example, is a poem in which Neruda discusses highly politically themed content that mirrors his involvement in political movements. He opens discussions on ideas as simple as food being a birthright for everyone rather than an item sold for labor as well as exposes his ideologies toward his own political stance.

Pablo Neruda’s Odes to Common Things is exemplary of Neruda’s attempt to connect to the common. The poems differ from the rest of his work because of it’s use of short simple language, forming odes to everyday things ranging from socks to an artichoke. The odes, written as a means to stray from the highly political and identify with the ordinary, in no way lack Neruda’s passion, but rather redefine how love can be expressed and the object in which it is expressed toward.

It is my intent to analyze  Pablo Neruda’s rhetorical attempt between his initial work Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair and later works found within his Odes to Common Things using cluster analysis, a method of criticism developed by rhetor Kenneth Burke.  Through the identification of key terms that appear either frequently or intensely within the artifact, I will discover clusters that may not have been conscious to Neruda when he wrote the poems. This finding will in turn unveil Pablo Neruda’s worldview at the time of each publication toward the referenced material and lend his audience with a wider understanding of the origins of his poems. For the purpose of this criticism, I will choose three poems from each collection, each representing different subject matter, and conduct clusters for each poem based on that content.

Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair

Tonight I can Write, I Like for You to be Still, Everyday You Play

The “I”s and “You”s

When looking at the poems I Like for You to be Still, and Everyday You Play, two terms appear frequently, those two terms are “I” and “you.” The two terms are important within each poem, not only because of the amount of times they appear within the work, but also as a means of placing importance upon the relationship between the speaker and their other. When looking at the amount of times the speaker makes reference to themselves in comparison to the other, the audience can grasp a better understanding of Neruda’s conception towards the relationship between the two, himself identifying with the speaker.

In the love poem Everyday You Play, the speaker makes reference to the “you” a total number of twenty six times from the beginning of the poem until it’s end. This amount is only six more than the twenty times the speaker refers to himself. These references are scattered throughout the poem and hold no concentration within specific areas, which would lead to the assumption that throughout the process of writing the piece, the lover’s affair was kept well within Neruda’s thoughts. Aside from being scattered throughout, the amount of the “I”s and “you”s used being so high within the piece indicates a means of excessive thought towards both. This would hint that Neruda’s view towards the “you” is a fixated one, that emanates how the speaker feels towards the object of his address: He is so in love with her, that even on a subconscious level, Neruda finds this individual more important than he.

Even though the number of “you”s within the poem unveil this mindset, the amount of “I”s  unmasks aspects of the poet that follow narcissism. Due to the fact that Neruda almost makes as much reference to “I” as he does to “you” in the poem shows how, although the other is important to the speaker, he/she is not winning by much. This mentality displays a narcissism that Neruda was notorious for sometimes having and such a personality is unintentionally confirmed by the poet.

The situation between the “I” and “you” in the poem I Like for You to Be Still is different than the poem that was previously mentioned. This poem differs from the other even though, as in Everyday You Play, the “you” is referred to the most. It is different because the speaker of the poem makes twenty one references to the you in I Like for You to Be Still and only twelve towards himself. The idea that Neruda has used so little references to the speaker lends light on how the poet sees the situation between the two lovers. Although the speaker is still very much in love with the “you,” indicated through his excessive references to her, in this poem, he feels the need to place less importance on himself. This theory would be easier to accept if the audience were to consider the foreshadowing of the failed relationship, indicted by the song of despair within the title of the collection of works. With this consideration in mind, one may conclude that perhaps the speaker has a lower opinion of himself because of the emotional toll the relationship has taken on him, or that, aware that their time is soon ending, the poet carries a desire to celebrate his love as fully as he can before he can do so no longer. In I Like for You to be Still, an analysis of the use of “I” and “you” shows it’s audience how Neruda’s expression of the relationship is one that does not involve the speaker as much as in Everyday You Play, but still lovingly places the “you” in high regard.

“You” vs. “Her”

In the song of lovers lament, Tonight I Can Write, Pablo Neruda takes an interesting turn with his word choice to display the relationship between the two lovers. The presence of the “I” is still notable and referenced a total number of twenty nine times during the poem. As mentioned previously, this would confirm that the writer has placed himself in an higher elevated state of confidence than was shown in I Like for You to Be Still. Being that this poem was one written at the end of the relationship, such an attribute would imply that the speaker has undergone some sort of change during the relationship that has regained his sense of self-admiration. This change could be deducted as either an over compensation of reference to self to aid in the speaker’s confirmation of his worth or a declaration that the speaker has regained his ego, previously crushed by his ex-lover.
What makes Neruda’s use of rhetoric in this poem interesting is the change of reference from “you” to “her” he uses when writing the song of despair Tonight I Can Write. I find this small change reveals so much about the poet’s idea towards the other, now that the relationship is over. The change from “you”, which indicates that the speaker addressing that person specifically, to “her,” referring simply to a female person, sucks away the intimacy shown in previous poems. This shift in use of words aids the audience in revealing how the speaker no longer places the other above himself. Neruda instead, creates a sense of separation through the use of a simple proposition, making the lovers strangers to one another. This sense of strange confirms for the reader that the speaker identifies with the relationship ending and has accepted letting the other go.
The use of the “I” and “you/her” within the three poems, and how frequently they were used, are a subconscious indicator of the way in which Neruda himself viewed a love affair. Although the poet carefully deliberated on which words to use in his poetry, he could not have fully been aware and in full control of the terms he used and how often he did so. It is elements like these that allow audiences to peer into the subconscious of the rhetor and identify their outlook on the situation of the material.

Odes to Common Things

Ode to the Artichoke, Ode to the Dog, Ode to a Pair of Socks

The terms clustered around the image of the dog in Neruda’s Ode to the Dog reveal fascinating ideas Neruda displays about the animal. In the poem the terms clustered around the dog image are separated into question and action words. The words that are under the question category include: question, question marks, inquiring flames, asks, why, wandering, and asks questions. These terms all in someway connected to the idea of question, being clustered around the image of the dog show the audience that Neruda most likely has an unsure relationship with the animal. Although he goes out of his way to glorify the dog and appreciate the animal, he may on some level be unsure of them. Another theory of the dog is that Neruda sees the animal, though beautiful, as a stupid one. The dog is portrayed as one that is unknowing in the eyes of the speaker, this portrayal indicates that Neruda does not see the dog as an animal that is intellectual and aware with the ways of the world, but one that is still worthy of appreciation.
When looking at the action terms surrounding the word “dog”, the audience will notice that these words, for the majority of the poem, are used in direct connection to images of the natural world. These pairings are as follows: dashes/countryside, roam/open countryside, jostling clover, chases/bees, leaps/water, pees/rock, dog/dew, and wagging its dew-wet tail. Although dogs were animals that were kept indoors as pets, Neruda glorifies the animal within a natural environment and creates a feeling where the dog is comfortable in his natural surroundings. This pairing of images surrounding the action terms indicates to Neruda’s audience that the writer considers the dog a creature that is best appreciated in a natural environment where the animal can interact with a world where he belongs. The natural images of Chile (as well as the reference to the country in the poem) confirm Neruda’s love for his country as well, and how the appreciation for the images are embedded within the poet.
The word choice used in Ode to the Artichoke is a selection that integrates ideas of war with the natural purpose of the vegetable, which is to be picked, bought and consumed. Neruda integrates these two categories of ideas throughout the poem in direct reference to the artichoke as he narrates the life of it. To the reader, the poem appears to be an entertaining image system that curiously describes the life of the vegetable from it’s beginning in the market to it’s end in the kitchen of a woman named Maria. The terms that are separated into ideas of war include: warrior suit, war, proud, marched, soldiers, warlike, officers, formation, drill sergeant’s scream, and armored. The terms that are in relation to the purpose of the vegetable as a food are: sweet, market, vegetables, egg, buys, sticks in her bag, drops it in pot, delicious flavor, devour, dough, and green heart. These terms are intertwined throughout the poem to directly describe the artichoke and it’s interaction with the world in which it exists in. The images depict a vegetable that accepts it’s fate, and dies with a sort of honor. This image system combined with images of war reveal how Neruda, although writing the odes to appeal to the common, still has strong subconscious ties with political ideas. This insight on Neruda’s political thoughts go a step further when combines with the artichokes acceptance of the fate in which he dies. These two combined together indicate that Neruda has opinions that involve those who are destined to be something, should accept that fate. This opinion was most often heavily influenced by Neruda’s affection towards Marixism. Neruda through his depiction of war images and the artichoke, reveals ideas that make the audience assume the poet had strong opinions in favor of the acceptance of one’s purpose in life, without question.
In Ode to a Pair of Socks two terms appear frequently: socks and feet. At the beginning of the poem, Neruda establishes that the socks were a gift from a woman, Maru Mori, and because he does so, rhetorically, the symbol of the sock should be in connection to the referenced woman. The foot that the rhetor is referring to the speaker’s foot, which for the sake of this criticism, will be argued as who Neruda identifies with. The terms that are clustered around the sock include: pair, soft, rabbit fur, little boxes, threads of sunset and sheepskin, outrageous, gangly, navy-blue, impaled, golden thread, giant blackbirds, cannons, heavenly, beautiful, incandescent, jungle explorers, gorgeous, wool, and good. These terms contain both good and awkward images in relation to the socks which shows Neruda’s feelings toward the woman. The poet sees the woman on a positive note, but still cannot ignore how awkward and odd she comes off. By associating such descriptive words with the gift she makes for him, Neruda exposes how his opinion of the individual bleeds into the way the speaker describes the socks.
The terms that cluster around the image of the speaker’s feet are: thrust, fish, sharks, honored, unlovable, crusty old firemen and unworthy. The speaker relates his feet as unworthy of the socks made for him by this woman. The words surrounding the speakers feet, describing them on such a note demonstrate to the reader that Neruda does not have strong opinions towards himself in relation to this woman, he most likely feels unworthy of her kind act. The concluding stanza would confirm this theory because it discusses how one should be grateful of the goodness of warm socks in the dead of winter. This feeling combined with the theory mentioned earlier strengthen the evidence toward the argument that Neruda felt ungrateful, and unworthy of the person/object on his mind during the writing of the poem.
Pablo Neruda reveals to his audiences variable opinions and worldviews within his poetry. The love poems and song of despair are conversations regarding two lovers and go not go further than their relationship infused with Chilean references. The odes are a lot more complex and communicate on ideas that concern an adult mindset which is indicative of how much the writer has matured since the publication of his first collection of works. The love poems do not focus on more than the naive connotations of love, they display a mentality of the poet that he may not have wanted to portray. As Neruda grew and his experiences led him to gain insight and opinion, so did the content of the rhetoric of the poems. The poet uses an approach that combines all his passions and stimulates discussion that involve more than a narcissistic notion of love. Neruda shows candidly through his selection of word choice in his poetry exactly where he stands in the world surrounding him, what ideas never escape the man and personal inclinations as to who he is.

Works Cited

A., Karen, and Robert Trapp. Contemporary perspectives on rhetoric. 3rd edition. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Pr Inc, 2002. 187-232. Print. - Used to gather background information on Kenneth Burke’s Rhetorical Theory.

Bogen, Don. "Selected Odes of Pable Neruda." The Nation 254.3 (27 Jan. 1992): 95.
Rpt. in Literature of Developing Nations for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context,
and Criticism on Literature of Developing Nations. Ed. Elizabeth Bellalouna, Michael
L. LaBlanc, and Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 4 Apr. 2011. - I used this source as a research aid in gathering overall background information on Neruda as well as whatever rhetorical methods he could have attempted.

Foss, Sonya. Rhetorical Criticism. Fourth ed. Long Grove Illinois: Waveland Press, 2009. 209-266. Print. - Used to gather background information on Kenneth Burke’s Rhetorical Theory and how to apply it.

Natella, Arthur A. "Ode to an Artichoke." Literary Reference Center. Literary Reference Center, Jan. 2002. Web. Feb.-Mar. 2011. <ttp://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=103331POE18950051000231&site=lrc-live>. - I used this source as a research aid in gathering overall background information on Neruda as well as whatever rhetorical methods he could have attempted within the specific Ode to the Artichoke.

"Pablo Neruda." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Web. 3 Apr. 2011. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/pablo-neruda>. - Used to gather biographical information on the poet, his works and other useful elements.

The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2003. Used to gather biographical information on the poet, his works and other useful elements.

this is hard.

i am different than others. i think in ways that don't capitalize the letter 'i' when i am referring to myself. i think faster than i could possibly ever write or type in my life. the words that come out of my mouth are, at times, defined by Mr. and Mrs. as not worth hearing but i say to them, 'i speak' and Sir, M'am i beg you to define me. give me some insight into who i am because darling i'd love to know.

she was a girl with long brown hair, she'd wear in her face. she only ever wanted to love and fell for the first time for a wrong kind and found herself lost. so she cut her hair as short as the soft fur on a puppy's back and left it that way. red, orange, pink, purple, different shades she'd wear wishing to be chameleon. she'd bend her body in different forms around boys too nice turned mean or relentlessly the bad boy itching to go good until she wants a life and to write and to escape and he wasn't confident enough, so they settled their dispute with her tears and his hands around her throat, pressing the shins of his legs hard on her chest screaming "You wanna get in my face, huh?! you wanna get in my face?!" she wants to cry but fears losing air because the white of the ceiling is looking awfully black, fading away. so she stares at the black above her head and wills it to turn white, she gasps as much as she can for those three minutes, trying to conserve her air. she is scared and in love as much as it seems wrong, sad, poor, pathetic girl who doesn't realize that she should leave because it's what's best. and yes, i suppose that would be right if it weren't for the aching truth that he had formed a sort of power over her, making her weak and scared. she danced in circles for him on tired feet and he smiled at it.
she was alone. and found that being so is better than disappointment at the ( hopefully ) expected.

[t.b.c....]

[i don't know what the fuck this is. -_- ]

Corazon

Love is romanticized by fairytales and happy endings. We grow with a notion of love that sends us off into a never-ending journey for the perfect one. The one. We don't realize that the heart conflicts with the mind which then ignores itself for the sake of the fingers who crave to linger over your lovers body. We are slaves to our bodies, and, although they serve as units of the whole we find that often our parts battle a lifelong battle to be content within themselves. And so we are before two young lovers who’s bodies are about to embark on a journey of their own.

Their lips were stained sticky and sweet with flavors of starfruit picked from the sky and still they kissed. He'd tickle the nape of her neck with the warmth of his breath as he spoke in soft  secret languages with the tiny pores of her skin. 

"Forever and ever around the moon and back." 

With that, the little hairs behind her neck would rise and dance, thin brown strands moved their hips (where hips should be) and pulled at their roots trying desperately to tangle themselves with the coarse wires growing the beard on his face. He looked at her and locked his eyes onto hers, they froze, mesmerized at the twinkles of tiny souls from thousands of past lives dancing in harmony within the ballroom of her brown corneas.  

So Marte decided to give Luna his heart for eternity.

With a blade Marte sliced open his chest, pearls of red rolled in small streams downward, bubbling from the wound, he pried open his ribcage with the tip of his blade reaching his bare hand in and removed his heart. It beat wildly in his hand flopping, disoriented, like a fish out of the sea. It wailed the cry of a newborn suddenly taken from the safe and warm feeling of the womb. Marte pet his heart, swaying its tears as he took out a locket from a small box of trinkets he kept tucked away on the mantle and placed the heart within a locket. Luna cursed as she saw the bloody mess of his chest and the gap where his heart used to be. 

"I took it out to give to you. See?" His crimson stained hand shook as he exposed the radiant heart beating on a dainty chain. It had fused with the locket, bright bubbling red with fracture thin threads of gold sewn along the edges. As Marte placed it around her neck her heart took a liking to his, presented to her as it was, and Luna’s heart embraced his.

The two lived in bliss, making love every night as they laid to rest and morning when they woke. Some days, as the summer faded into the deep reds and browns of fall, the two would find themselves tangled in time, twisted within their lust for one another, and Marte would have to force his feet from the bed and persuade his legs to walk to the window so he could see if the dim of light was in fact sunrise or sunset. They would have survived off each other if they could, collected the sweat from their bodies for drink and ravishing on one another for nourishment, but such luxuries were kept for the gods. 

So Marte left to the desert to collect tunas and water trapped in the bellies of lush nopales. As he walked in the desert night he looked up at the sky where the stars twinkled dancing amongst each other in celebration of they're blessing the world that night. Marte’s mind wandered upward the entire hunt for the desert fruit, pulling his eyes towards the stars, white beauties. 

 "You know me as a curious fool and although my heart is content next to its mate my mind still wanders, wanting more - it's never known anything other than the little it currently possesses."

 The stars began to giggle in a sweet voice, luring Marte to stand on his toes, trying to reach closer to the night sky. 

"Oh sweet Marte, to know what we know is to see what we’ve seen and with that your knowledge is indeed without knowing.” They twinkled as if winking at him and Marte was not discouraged because of this. Marte’s mind made his mouth move on. 

“Show me what you have seen you glittered glories, use my body as the bottle, leave your message in me and send me off into the sea of your night sky.” 

Flattered at hearing this, the stars began to rub themselves against each other and collapse into a fine dust and showered it over his body. Marte’s pores devoured the fine dust. He took off his clothes and rolled in it naked, the crevices in his body inhaling the soft powder. His nose scooped it into its mouth and gobbled it up as his eyes glittered. 

So Marte made his way home stumbling and still somewhat numb the next morning, his head hung low, eyes watching the floor not worthy of the morning sun. He decided he would not tell his Luna of his weakness for those celestial sluts and swore to himself it would not happen again.

The following night proved challenging for Marte as the stars peeked in through the window and called to him. 

"Mhmm Marte, come out. Let us rub ourselves all over that beautiful human body of yours. It was good, wasn't it?" 

The man tried to ignore the soft voice coming from the darkened sky, trying to focus on the sound of his heart beating next to Luna’s as she lay naked nestled in his arms. His body began to move, entranced by the promise of another numbing night, cautiously, and rolled out of bed. It tiptoed it’s way out of their small home and joined the stars.

The stars provocatively lowered themselves towards him, traveling through the atmosphere, shedding themselves of surrounding clouds, leaving themselves exposed. When they appeared before him they had transformed into a cloud of smoke and entered every orifice in his body. Marte’s mind grew enamored by the dark beauty of the stars and froze in awe of them, unable to speak or move. Marte could not tell the passing of days or hours or minutes. He could not imagine the woman he left at home, fused onto his heart. He was only aware of them, translucent and luscious in ways not human.

Luna grew worried. She paced around the kitchen, not able to stay still enough to cut onions for stew or sweep dust off the wooden floors, for the heart Marte had given her, on its chain, had started to weaken its beat. She paced the entire day and that evening as she was finishing cooking dinner, Marte walked in with an apologetic look on his face and some sad excuse she didn't bother to remember because when he held her and looked into her eyes, his heart tugged at hers and urged her to forgive him. 

While the sun was falling to sleep and day transitioned into night, the stars began to whisper in his ear enticing Marte to come into the desert with them. Marte’s heart pulled at him to stay close to Luna but his mind was hung up on the coolness of their breath and told his feet to head to the desert. 

The stars were milky in the sky and began to drip down at the sight of him. Soon his body was covered in an iridescent liquid. He began to breath in and the twinkling liquid traveled inside of him, through his veins and straight to his heart. He went cold from the inside out, each organ slowly drifted towards seductive numbness. The stars pulled at him, closer to them wrapping their silver hands around his mind, coaxing him.

  So his mind rose up toward the sky, leaving its body behind.

Luna’s heart began to weep as her mate shriveled up before her, holding on to her it’s a last loving embrace. “Oh no!” Luna sighed a painful breath, as if giving birth to the world’s sense of loss and she fell to her knees, the sharp pain within her chest holding her firm against the floor. She looked to the sky at the twinkling stars, so bright as her heart let its grip loosen from his. They looked as if they were dancing in celebration and Luna cursed them for looking so lovely that night as she cried and wondered where her Marte had gone.

It's a fairytale! I love love love em! and i want to write as many as i can along with renditions of previous myths and such. it's all very interesting to me, but for the sake of who i am and how i see the world this one was particularly special in that the body parts exist on their own! i am still a few revisions away from this being even close to submitting for publishing and wonder would it work better as a graphic novel? i need to take art classes... -_-

summer of seventeen

"I know, I know; just let it go."

i stood, outside on a hot sticky night

crimson love running down my thigh.

we were so in love.

before.

how ironic.

“I know, I know; just go home.”

it was us   you know

you and i

created on a night masked

as a goodbye.

“I know, I know; just leave me alone.”

the yellow light hangs over your door.

it mocks me. laughs and brightly

refuses to shed any light as to why

a fluid filled with parts of us

flows into my gown.

its pink flowers,

pale yellow cotton

is stained now -

a shade raging red.

reeking of it

“I know,  I know; just let it be.”

you

did not

lose

what i

did.

look back and want

obsessively

to find it

in the shower scarlet streams stain,

i stand in a red sea

with no one to part it,

to guide me.

the sea seeps

into my room and splatters

on the white wall where images

of my imagination once gathered

in countless colored crayons

where portraits of our kisses

hung happily.

i wish it never

happened

“I know, I know; just wait and see.”

the crude cut knives you fastened,

fenced around my heart.

as you sent me away,

they ruined me.

i still fake being fine

sometimes

“I know, I know; I’m sorry”

you, not there to hold me tight

as they stood, judging me

as the learning boy took his gloved hand

inside me, generically.

with my legs apart i was

a dirty dish

being scraped clean

of us      you know

you and i

“I know, I know; just let it go.”

So, dark and twisty? yes, but it was necessary for me with this poem. in workshop, I've been told it's "too much". I stand by it needs to be much, some agree, some don't. But that's the perks of being a writer, I get final call when it comes to my work. For now, it needs to be in this form with these words.