Sta.sh
ing this article and
The Fourth Annual Poetry Screams Prompt Contest is officially open!
Year II - Issue XXIV
Volume LXXVI
Friday Night Features is a weekly feature designed to showcase
a cross section of the most striking, entertaining and powerful
literature, photography and artwork on deviantART.
Show your support by faving this article and checking out
these amazing pieces. You're bound to find something
that speaks to you, sticks with you and pulls you in.
Kill the GodsForgotten gods cluster together like constellations of post-mortem scars forming,
crystallised ocean remnants,
salt pressed and tattooed on the skin of human history
composing salt crystals and fingerprints and decomposing like dying cells and skeleton leaves.
The tides of us, washed and blurred at the edges,
smoothed like fossilised wood and glass pebbles littering waves of resurrections
reborn and torn asunder
the thunder of their hearts silenced as they
sleep (if gods sleep at all)
in infinity with the fishes on the ocean bed
(the quiet ocean death) of humanity’s collective
consciousness.
I wonder where the ghosts of gods go
where
Waiting HiccoughsThree am,
your voice hiccoughing pain
over phone static.
Woes drowned in ice cream
and almost-too-loud Counting Crows
and me,
holding back a grin
because your heartache
means I still have a chance.
--
Three am,
full circle
at the end of a rocky road.
Hot chocolate mustaches
and I Will Always Love You on repeat
and me,
pushing your hair
from tear-stained cheeks
and telling myself,
"Not now,
not now,
just wait."
--
Three am,
cicadas buzzing
outside an open window.
Thin sheet
tucked like comfort under your chin
and me,
wide-eyed
and watching you,
still waiting for my chance
to be the Prince.
--
Three am,
you in the arms
of some guy you
i could be nothingsome days you look at me as if i am
worth remembering,
glances studying my face like a road map.
but mostly, i find your eyes stuck in the static
of the pavement, or lost
in the clouds
gathering before lightning.
and we never promise anything, just share the air like strangers
when we don't know what to say.
(it always ends with a silence more desolate
than broken trust.)
you said this is the calm before the storm
but what if
it never slows down
enough for me to notice
that there are days when we can exist
without doubting every second. you have a tendency to whisper
too quietly, leaving room for me to imagi
mental [profound i you]i would love to fill in the blank spots
with more metaphors
and back teeth grins
but i just can't figure out how
how you do it
you built a world with wild eyes and
whispered a foreign conversation
yelled at the back of your neck
padded a dance around the fire without ever
straightening your knees
it's evident
it's all there and just look at us:
a spectrum of delicacies and intentions
resting on at our fingertips
handwriting's a dialect
because your hands are different
from my hands
and the rise and fall of
one's tongue
one's hands
changes as the c is sharped
liarmy mouth opens to the glow of the moon.
i can feel your hands on the back of my neck,
guiding the solar systems in motions so small
i stopped blaming you for the turn of the tides
and the sadness of gravity so long ago.
the past burns under your skin and you think
it’s your fault. anything to stop this, you think.
this is too close, too much. let me take off the edge.
anything to stop myself. hinder myself. slowly commit.
you pace. the thoughts consume you. meanwhile,
so do i, hungrily. greedily.
swallowing is easy. i took the bottle of pills
in two, another handful making three, the fogginess
in my brain already thick enough to tilt
Of Sex and SnowIt's screaming freshness when it falls
Along with fleeting blinks of before
Bringing a virgin gasp to all
A new sheet never written more
To kiss a moistened forehead slight
And fade at the heat of moments peak
Now leave us sweet throughout the night
Cover me in natures weak.
what you write when your fire spills its darkbundle it up, lift it,
this sticky sweetness
of being; lift, grapple,
sway; these
are your arms, something
they are worth; now spilling,
now song, an infinity
of notes, of sweating marble bones--
listen. i am calling up names
to the witness stand of my disassembly.
speak now. gather up these fistfuls
of sonorous unease, this tipped vase
of unbecoming: exhale. cradle
your mouth until it blooms.
(we are here at the back of the raft
and kicking. bruises floating
off our feet like god.)
Frozen by Firei
A star goes super nova—
a blinding explosion
of fire and ice,
diamond matter
shattering and scattering
across an unknown galaxy—
and spreads the seeds
for new life.
As the star gasps
its last breath,
the tears fall from her eyes,
and she doesn't know why.
ii
Her feet sink into the earth
while her eyes are cast
toward the sky.
Her hands reach and stretch
and ache
to hold that one star,
to guard its fragility
close against her heart.
She forgets
in her sorrow
the star will burn
its most fierce
when it's about to die.
It holds no fear,
and it doesn't cry.
The star is strong
knowing that from its ashes
Idylliche always spoke of the romantic stance in a smoker
whose every gasp was like a suicidal swansong, he
wrapped himself up so tightly in unwarranted wishing, when
they stripped him free, he then stumbled into the sunlight
and burnt [out]
no one laced his pillows with lavender and moonbeams
and all the other things that call dreams out from
hiding; but he still prayed upside-down overdone
every evening for a falling star to find its way
back home.
instead, they surrounded him with [a grain of]
salt circles like curses to draw out the weaknesses
temptation had embedded in him, because
nothing beautiful was ever built atop a rotten
SeptemberSeptember
She rises on the cusp of autumn
and I remember her,
the woman dressed in gold;
for she descended onto me like wind
that comes later in the season.
5.08
I will always remember September,
how the dust found the cracks between our toes
and locks were cut, that
allowed love to take root
and multiply inside me like a child.
15.08
Because I cannot control the rush of hair
and the innocence that crashes
against the handlebars of my bike,
when I realize what has come to fruition;
the first time is easy.
28.10
I first made love in September,
with a boy who kissed my shoulder
and tried to make me surrender old memories
A Bumblebee Among The PoemsA pale hand's reach
for long forgotten poets
unearths
dust soaked wings
sewn
on a stripped jacket.
Snown by ashen rays,
they soar towards
their birthplace.
Even my lantern
does not uncloud
the ash they long for.
They are looking
for their flower.
Not the sun.
repetition was always a filthy lover,repetition was always special to him.
he treated repetition like a
best friend
told him all his secrets
and got used again
and again
and again
and again
he repeated everything
he repeated everything
fell in love with the same boys
the same heartbreak
over and
over and
over and
over.
so one day he told repetition to
get lost
take a hike
stay away
and he did
and all the familiar walls peeled back
to show the factory called sadness
that he'd been manufactured in
and repetition published his secrets
into a new york times best-selling novel
and he realised that repetition
wasn't the problem
just a girlimagine hearing the yowl
of a door hinge in the gloom of
the night.
you break free
from the sugary brain syrup
of your dream to see
him standing there, haloed by
the moon like a hideous angel,
wheezing and smoking a cigarette.
he blows a smoke ring and
displays his crumbling teeth
in a beastly parody of a grin.
alcohol hovers in a cloud around
his head. you feel an electric
spider of fear dance up your spine.
like a lion, he moves in
for the kill.
he is already hard.
he yanks back the covers,
a moth-eaten blanket that smells
of semen and mould,
parts your legs with ease and
invades your warmth like a
battering ram.
Dire ContrastsA countess in regality,
A pauper left to starve to death,
She bathes in love, in luxury,
And as the other's choking breath
Is strangled from her whittled form,
Amidst the comfort, always warm,
The tears, the fears that mar her face,
Shall never touch exalted grace.
Expunge It starts like the bristling detachment of Velcro or the arrogant snap of a rubber band on your wrist. The cringing, ripping sound, the reflexive quick sting, ringing vibrantly on in the moments after. Like a bell that tolls a beat of hours that is overlooked in the passing, then counted by recalling rhythm afterwards. Instinctually, you want to keep going, keep climbing, over rubble and debris. The day has long since ended as you move through stark jagged blackness. You check the breast pocket of your jacket for a match. You strike the little brown line, once, twice, three times and light the now apparent hallway. The match burns down t
anomicForgetting you isn't a matter of just forgetting your name. If that were true, Juliet would have dived head-first into Romeo's arms and never looked back on her castle. If that were true, I'd be able to cross-out every occurance of your name in every poem I've ever written and then you would only be some faceless, nameless representation of this uncontrollable fear and love inside me that rises at the smell of cinnamon or sound of bass guitar.
And even if it were as easy as forgetting your name, you know I'd be lost in a sea of searching for it for the next hundred years. Aphasia is one of my weakest points - and you are the weakest of them
Suggestions are welcome and encouraged. Send in your suggestions
for feature by noting them to `dreamsinstatic
love 2
2
joy 3
3
wow 0
0
mad 0
0
sad 0
0
fear 0
0
neutral 0
0
Absolutely amazing selections 
