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SouvenirsWhen her mom went to check the mail at breakfast, she returned with a thin box in her arms.

It was a package from her father.

Her dad was sort of like a traveler... at least, that was what she assumed he was. His job always had him jumping from city to city, country to country. He'd been to almost everywhere around the world, and every few weeks, he would send her a letter with a little souvenir from his stay. This time, it was a miniature Eiffel Tower.

So he's in France again, she mused, studying the two-foot tall replica. A small chuckle escaped her lips. It was about time he remembered to get it for her! He really should've thought of b
The Price of Dying“I want to be interred after I die,” Mr. Peters said. He made that clear to his family while he was still lucid, before old age and illness rendered him unintelligible. Seventy wasn’t that old, but he recognized the symptoms that were creeping up on his ailing body – the aches, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness and despair. Despite his daughter’s attempts to assuage his concerns, he sensed his own mortality.
The worst part about dying, Mr. Peters thought, was what happened afterwards. Even since he was a small boy, he had been afraid of fire. He could never forget the scorching heat of the orange flames searing his skin, the dark billowing smoke entering his nostrils. The time that his house burned down, the fire almost took him with it. How ironic then, to escape the fire only to be fed into it after death.
So one day, he sat his son and daughter down after dinner. “I want to be buried whole,” he said, emphasizing the
Ottumwa ShamanIn Iowa, weeping willows dream of
Tigers, born in pagan fog, their
Coat of stripes singing shaman
Songs; shrill symphonies of grief.
Heaven tilts, crashes, and we race
The dirt to get away. We drink the
Earth with bullets of air and grow
Dizzy, light-headed from breathing
Some far off flame. Perhaps a poet
Who braved the fog of Ottumwa, and
Caught fire. Every cowboy has his
Six chances before high noon, before
The fog forms wispy jackals to take
Them home again. Every son inherits
An empty gun, six voids to fill with
Answers, skimmed and guessed from the
Covers of books their fathers used
To read. There is no other way.
In s
i think we've got it bad.the long dirty road has wheels printed into it and buildings jutting from its sides, cars stopping completely, submissive to all the too-bright light. it's freezing but i feel okay, i feel whole. i feel like i could step outside of myself and the numbness of it all wouldn't let anything touch me. the essence of me. the idea of me.

you wait for me under the street signs with your heeled shoes and too much black smeared around your eyes. it makes you look sad but maybe you want to look sad i don't really know. your hugs feel like a mother's. we're going to a party, some great musician's with golden toilets in his loft that likes prostituted gi
relearning          i. stardust scatters with the
direction of my pupils –
maybe secretly i am an
astrology teacher, waiting
for a sign to wink
happily at me.

         ii. excuse the rambling
nature of forgotten question
marks, but tell me:
would you like to be the
object of handwritten clichés
would you like to whisper
secrets in my palm
and would you
like to be the possibility

         iii. air brushes against my
skin like the torn petals
of a flower still standing.
[ hold your head up high, honey,
and tell tomorrow to wait just
a while,

         iv. so you can figure out
the difference between
patience and having all the
The Hungry SeasonThe Hungry Season
“The next season will be the hungry season.”
Moses M. Kolinmore

A stem, a leaf, a stem,
a stem again,

and the army of our bodies
hanging from the branches
of the Dahoma trees.

We come to this as moths
on Saharan winds

with no malice but the wings’
direction, our caterpillar mouths,
our waiting numbers

cocooned in dirt. We are
aching and glutted

but hungry still, even as
we strip the canopy bare of leaves
and foul each river black

with waste below us –
our gruesome chatter asking,

as we fall into the dirt
to reshape what we are,
can you imagine the hunger?

But of course you can; of c
6:30:09what i wouldn't give
to have my body sink down
into yours, cocooned
in the tumultuous quicksand
of human flesh.

i have never been so moved
as by your touch, the slinking seeping
brush. the universe dispels
and in the absence of everything,
i am less alone
than i have ever been.
Harvest MoonThree a.m. moonlight
across lazy dust motes; a
tree scrapes the window.
Your arm weighs on my hip like
whispered promises of love.
GlassI always laugh when you refer to me as glass.
Not just because of the way you say it,
(glass-as-in-gas).
Or because I know it's a crack at my fragility.

Glass is pure.
I am like granite -
my body nullified from too many clashing traits.

Glass is transparent.
I am like clay -
illegible from all the plastered smiles.

Glass is unyielding.
I am like chalk -
easily broken and scuffed away by meagre things.

Glass is hung up on walls and in great cathedrals,
tinted for enhancement, but only ever painted on by fools.

I am hidden behind keypads and camera lenses,
coated in a thick paste of deceptiveness.

No, my love,
I was never glass.  (Despite
A ParenthesisYou were (a parenthesis, that paused
the daily, mundane stuff
of life;
a bundled breath
of fresh joy,
and borne in the wonder
of love.

Gasping and grasping,
'til in quiet you laid
still;
and I, my Child,
lie in quiet, still
tears).

And now, that is all you are,
and still so much more.
This Is Why We Can't Be In LoveThe day we first met, she was naked. The empty gallery had turned the A/C off and she said, "it's hot, too hot for clothes," and she stripped down to skin. She was pink and raw from sunburn, shiny plasma peeking out of translucent cracks in her epidermis.

"How many times have you done this today?" I asked her. "Also, hello."

I know I flushed pinker than her, fully clothed in my capris and navy fingerless gloves even though it was already July-- burning for her, because she didn't seem to notice her own skin.

She smiled, asked, "Am I beautiful?"

"I don't even know you."

"Okay," she said.

"I have to go," I said.

"Okay."

 *       *  
WakeWake

to gather friends, family, and spouses
around that humble opposite of the Christmas tree,
the embalmed corpse.

It's brilliant to be there
in the first place, to acknowledge
the importance of passing -

and better still to call the thing a wake,
as though there is hope in the hollow home
and shining windows,

in the trees and the wind and the roaring night,
that something may happen
to undo slow deaths

and restore old sight.
Like petals and leavesWhen she thinks of him, she thinks of tree branches:
spindly fingers spread out, stretching
in angles wide for handfuls of sky.

And she thinks of him.

She thinks of him digging his toes
into soft, damp sand,
wading in shallow depths before
being carried by crescents of the sea.

She thinks of him in a blur of curls, in the
warmth on her waist and the coolness on her lips,

pressing the memories and the maybes
like petals and leaves
to paper.

And she thinks of him.
SolsticeOnce upon a time, when you were still sunlighthouses and shimmering existence wherever you were needed most, you found him. He was November, shaky on his first last legs, and you saw through the mind-twistings he feigned to the mind-twistings that were really there, knotted up in his dreams.

You were still birdsong then, and thunderstorms, and your bodyheat melted the frost claws that held him tight. You held onto him as his November deepened. When he howled, you howled with him, and the wind played with your voices and pressed the softness of your lungs against your cageribs—and then against each other's.

November became solstice, and
for onceCold

blackempty

like the cavern where crimson vellum once resided

Drenched in reticence,
your empty blue eyes do nothing
but freeze the blood in these veins

surrounded by phantoms,
i lie in the dark next to your fading silhouette
between sheets that hold so many memories,
they are empty,

like the chestnut eyes that bore into yours

And as the rain              falls harder
as it falls faster

washing down the streets
through deep alleys,
down endless roads,

for

once

just

once

i pray it takes me with
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More from ~Helldalgo

come backsometimes
I wish I had you tied in puppet strings
strings to flick and pull and tug
you back to me

strings to tie you down
to my bed, my chair, my heart
instead of hoping for concrete
and asphalt and rubber and steel
to bring you safely home
we sang folsom prison bluesthis bathroom is the reason
time moves forward
to leave the pink-and-green
nineteen-seventies behind

I'd rather saturate myself
in worn-out feminine soaps and smells
than watch his catheter bag
and look for blood

well lookie here, it's my favorite
my favorite eldest granddaughter

your only eldest granddaughter

how's that man of yours?
he's such a wonderful man

we prefer heaven's picture perfection
so we sing Baptist hymns and my
pasty white uncle sings
old black spirituals from his diaphragm

jubilee, jubilee, oh lordy lordy lordy

is that my son?  I think he's been drinking
I want to hear Where Will I Be

okay, dad

doorbells ring a
She will call againshe will call on Saturday
and I will understand
that her apology is buried
in the niceties
in the money
in the clothes that she will buy me
the clothes I never asked for

she will call again sometime
to call me distant, cold, and selfish
to ask for help
in the same weary, self-important breath
and I will understand
that she does not hate her daughter
but that her daughter
is the easiest to hurt

she will wear an expensive dress
and she will look her very best
at my April wedding
of which she does not approve
the eyes of babesdo you remember journals lying naked on the table
the peeling yellow pages lying naked on the table
your child's hand imprinted
with force upon the pages
do you remember blushing and burning the pages
that lay open on the table?

in the bedroom in the back you heard the sighing
of a shattered woman and her crying
collapsing in the quiet of room
in the shadows of the room
where she never thought her sobs would pierce
the saturday cartoons
that bitchin a musty thrift shop
in the darker part of town
on the busiest street in town

my first guilty, female lover
slouching at sixty-nine inches
on her size-eleven feet
buckled and strapped
in a knee-high pair of
size-eleven boots

my size-eleven boots

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December 14, 2012
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[x]

The Best is Yet to Come

:iconhelldalgo:

if we grow old
there will be a sigh
an attention to the change
as your muscles slacken underneath
your faded, favorite shirt
the one that's threadbare, "holy"
in a sense less than divine
I'll have washed it for
the thousandth time
our eyes will crinkle, wrinkle
in ways that start to match
and we'll hold hands and ask:
when did the nerves and veins
begin to let our hands get cold?
-if we grow old
:iconhelldalgo:
I appreciate the attention this has gotten. Thanks to all who have commented and favorited.
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Daily Deviation

Given 2013-01-17
The Best is Yet to Come by ~Helldalgo has a faint sense of rhyme and an illusory sense of passion. ( Featured by ^NicSwaner )
love 2 2 joy 0 0 wow 0 0 mad 0 0 sad 0 0 fear 0 0 neutral 0 0
:icon12who:
*12who Jan 21, 2013  Hobbyist
Congrats on your Daily Deviation!:squee::heart:
Reply
:iconblakecurran:
*BlakeCurran Jan 18, 2013  Student Writer
Beautiful, in a tragic kind of way, but very stirring. And congrats on the DD!!
Reply
:iconhelldalgo:
~Helldalgo Jan 18, 2013  Hobbyist General Artist
Thank you!
Reply
:iconblakecurran:
*BlakeCurran Jan 18, 2013  Student Writer
No worries :D
Reply
:iconschriftsteller:
~schriftsteller Jan 17, 2013   Writer
as your muscles slacken underneath
your faded, favorite shirt
the one that's threadbare, "holy"
in a sense less than divine
I'll have washed it for
the thousandth time

is bloody brilliant. That wordplay is delicious. The entire poem is so melancholy yet there's something inside it that brings a little warmth. I hope that made sense. Congrats on your DD!
Reply
:iconhelldalgo:
~Helldalgo Jan 18, 2013  Hobbyist General Artist
Made perfect sense. Thank you. :)
Reply
:iconschriftsteller:
~schriftsteller Jan 18, 2013   Writer
I'm glad it did. You're very welcome. :)
Reply
:iconraptordragoness:
~RaptorDragoness Jan 17, 2013  Student General Artist
wow this is really great :)
Reply
:iconladysuzaku:
~LadySuzaku Jan 17, 2013
I keep thinking of the line 'Grow old along with me' from Robert Browning's poem as I read this. It's simply introspective on, what is the surface seemingly mundane, but holds more poignant meaning for the person in the lines.

Beautifully done.
Reply
:iconhelldalgo:
~Helldalgo Jan 17, 2013  Hobbyist General Artist
That was the inspiration for the title. I'm glad you caught the reference. :) Thank you.
Reply
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