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The Cello's LamentThey call me brute.
I'm permitted to chant,
   but they won't let me Sing.

They've confused non-agility for
   inflexibility—
        my belly enfolds the earth;
        my throat trills at the stars;
        my eyes embrace the cays
           of the sea.

I am an omnivore,
   yet they will only feed me leaves.

runoffchemicals course through my
veins and
seep out
slowly, from underneath my fingernails

from my eyes

from out of my
mouth

geronimo

Rebound or TurnaroundFour months ago you worked across the room from me
six hours a day
five days a week
and I thought, "I'd like a man like that."

Except I already had one nothing like you,
and integrity trumps all.

Two weeks ago
it all changed.
Suddenly I was by myself in the bigger picture,
and with you in the smaller one--
across a table for yet another friendly lunch,
another forty minutes of secretly feeling sixteen.

I watched your shy eyes smile in that different way
and wondered if it was moving fast
or just moving closer to home.

Comfortable silences
and real laughter combine
to make unfamiliar deja vu.
I remember this,
or at least rem

eucalyptusthey tell me i am writing confessional
poetry and i tell them, no, i am not,
i am writing my world.

i did not burrow in guilt's throat
and choose to spell out the softness,
no, i screamed out my soul and it was then
that i remembered how i used to pray.

i wanted to tell stories
but instead i sat and wrote:

about rain, and sorrow,
and the greek gods,
and pain, and the greek gods,
over and over, and dionysus, dionysus:

i plunged and dived dolphin-beaked.

*

i want you know
that death is a responsibility
and saltwater immersion
a fierce talent we cannot escape

so this is a confession for you:

i am not selfish
i am self only

The ColonyThe chimps who discovered a lemon tree
growing on the moon were made the laughingstock
and butt of every joke in religious and scientific communities.

Yet within a year there were saplings,
a small gang of lean and twisted adolescents,
digging into the moon dust.

The first perigee in a century
revealed an indisputable splotch of green.
As the splotch grew into a puddle

and the puddle grew into a lake,
a rash of suicides swept the upper echelons of NASA.

The first tourists or "lemmings" to go lemon picking in the mysterious groves
bounced in spacesuits and dropped tears
that froze before touchdown.

Sucking and squeezing lemo

Love Poem for a Man Who Doesn't Get PoetryI buy milk as if it is the
most important
thing I have ever done; come home and
lay the bag on the floor
at your feet.

The meaning is lost
on you, a man

who is a snap of clean linen;
no, you prefer strait-line
talk, full-throttle motion.

Not wavering semaphore.

I feel silly with my quiet twist of metaphor,
Darling, Buttercup, My Angry Little Arsonist,
saying your name is the breath between
the waves, your heart
the hungry mouth of the bay.

There is a curve between the me and the you
We waited too long, hoping the pause
would not last forever, but just in case,
we hold hands in the dark.

I had forgotten how to give

If We Are To Be GhostsIf we are to be ghosts then let us be good ones

Let us not rattle sorry bones across a chasm
Until one or the other
Looks up
Smiles
And sighs again

If we are to be ghosts then let us be glorious

Haunting incarnations of what could have been
What should have been

Let us cry folly across the battlefields of an ordinary life
Burning lantern bright to light the way home
Screaming sacrifice for the good
Of one
Or the other

If we are to be ghosts then let us be gentle

Let us whisper words half heard on empty nights
Cold comfort in the absence of warmth
Silent strength reflected from the ether

If we are to be ghosts, then let us b

I Want to be ReadI don't want confinement
behind strict white
cut to fit a traveller's pocket,
squeezed in on myself
where you peer around folds
to glimpse a meaning.

I don't want to be
recorded, sorted and optimised,
placed against the others waiting
to be discovered
or left preserved
or maybe lost.

Take me from them premature,
toss me to survive
and see myself reflected
many times a different angle
in prismatic clarity
though from uncertain origins.

Tear me from my bounds to share,
transpose me to your breath.
Prop me up
so that I may see myself live
in thought and speech and action
of the everyday.

Don't let me be another one of them;
I'm not content w

The Taste of YoungSucculents are a freak of nature.
Come here, boy. Let me tell you
about real plants, waving, twining,
root deep, reach-for-the-stars frond tips.
They'll change your skinny life.
Come, boy, down to the hardwoods
wearing their summer green.
Slip yourself through the tangle of underbrush,
damp leaves clotting at your feet,
the mulch of death sucking you into its soothing bed.
Follow the stream to the west end,
where the poplars thin
and the sun begins to spread its skirt
over the fattened ground. Never mind
the thorns; the vines are not confused.
They know exactly how to please you
with their blackish seeds.
Purple your mouth he

The Hole You LeftA bizarre kind of high
is the blue depth of pain,
like the pressure in your lungs
from the clear nitrous mask
when they tear out your teeth
and you laugh through the holes
in a bruised, splintered jaw
for the tickles in your brain
and the bubbles in your blood
like a flute of champagne
at a wedding...

And the gaps left behind
in a moth-eaten soul –
like a sheet on a car
that's been out in the yard
for twenty years or so,
like a veil on a virgin
or a shroud on a corpse,
maybe coming, maybe going,
never staying very long,
like a Hallowe'en ghost –
but I digress...

No, the gaps left behind
in that sandblasted s

blood poisoningOnce you've had a baby you don't care about
people contemplating your cervix. It's waiting
for the call. Or the letter because your new phone
doesn't have voicemail. Mostly normal.

It's as good as these things get.

There was a shift change when I had my daughter
so the night nurses leaned on the wall in the back of
the cheerful room and the day nurses touched my arm,
the inside of my knee, everyone laughing and cheering
and yelling PUSH

and then there was you.

And a lot of blood, I could feel it rushing away from
my body, my host of hosts, my living flesh, the
quick stitches, the pressure worse than the contractions,
my long,

Native ArtsThe artists' study has old dust layering the floor
like shards of glass
Broken bottles tossed by ocean
scattered by wind

There are empty squares on the walls where pictures died
Small houses boarded up with stone
to keep old residents from coming back
or worse, strangers

Whiteboard is imprinted with fragments of color
Parts of a sun
that have just begun
to reappear from behind a halfmoon

Ancient artists trapped in empty lightbulbs sing
of passed days, mingling
what it was to be young
with pictures that weren't all black and white

The window blinds are kept open,
mourning light streaming in
like ghosts trying to touch everyth

7 November 2012

If you should capture
the whole of my last breath,
I will dwell in you
with contentment,

for a portion of a moment.

If you should share
the whole of your next breath,
I will dwell with you
in them, contented still,

for a portion of a moment.

If all should release
the whole of our breaths,
We will dwell everywhere
with all, more content

for all our forevers.

Browse More Like This

More from *KarlyNoelleAbreu

That KissWhen he hovered in
the air
his mouth seeming
to float,
gracelessly towards me,

I felt a revulsion,
like a wave
of bad breath
had hit me in the face,

this wasn't the case,
but the first time I felt someone so
close
I was small enough to fit in

a lap, and be given candy
on a string, and the man
was
old,
I knew it because

he was in a wheelchair.
He was sweet
and kind, and
one day he took a fancy,

to take me in his lap,
and kiss me, in a kindly way,
I thought.
Except he got confused,

somewhere on the
way
to
my
face,
as his tongue, like a newt,
crawled
into my mouth,

I barred my
teeth,
and felt
a

Outside the Toy Box The girl in the mirror
looks different than me,
look at her little hands!

That isn't me, you know.
I am Lady Macbeth,
crazed over bloodstains.

I am shelved with
the mirror and the dust
A dolly no one wants,

My hair, my eyes
my dress, my gun...
into the toybox. Forever.

I balled my fists,
those little hands,
I am not porcelain.

I am Lady Macbeth,
I smashed the mirror,
oh god, I didn't mean to.

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Daddy

by *KarlyNoelleAbreu, Jun 17, 2012, 2:52:57 AM
Literature / Poetry / Family Life / Free Verse

There was a metal door
between his office and me
and sometimes I'd drive

cars into it. It was a garage,
before. Then, filled with
communion wafers,

hidden in desk drawers
like buried treasure,
sacraments for nosy girls.

When outside he finds
the holy departed, he
calls me for a plastic bag.

He picks up my cat,
wracked with rigor mortis
Daddy gives no eulogy.

But calmly he hands us an offering,
repeating the Psalm,
"Why don't we get some ice cream?"

267

15 13 8

Daddyby *KarlyNoelleAbreu

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My Daddy is a minister. He taught us to be good.

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*leyghan Nov 17, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Those last three verses are everything!

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*KarlyNoelleAbreu Nov 17, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you.

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=Sammur-amat Nov 8, 2012 General Artist

Congratulations on the DLD, lovely! This piece was quite something special.

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*KarlyNoelleAbreu Nov 11, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thanks so much!

Reply

=Sammur-amat Nov 17, 2012 General Artist

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~Ad-Kins Nov 6, 2012

This is gorgeous. It's so strikingly different from the Sylvia Plath poem by the same name, yet none the less beautiful and haunting.

Reply

*KarlyNoelleAbreu Nov 7, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Aha, I wondered (and slightly feared) that comparison. Well, I'm no Plath, but then my father isn't either. Thank you so much.

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=DailyLitDeviations Nov 5, 2012

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by DailyLitDeviations in a news article that can be found here [link]
Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by

ing the News Article.

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*KarlyNoelleAbreu Nov 6, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you!

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~afreewaylunatic Aug 7, 2012

Wow I just love these poems. I remember the incident you are writing about, although I wasn't there. Childhood...your dad

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