It’s been awhile since I made any of this…

they walked for a long time in silence
under the wind
and the westward winding of the sky
and the fall
of the dying colors
the wings of words left unheard
and the sun
goes down
scattering fragments of gold
at our feet
and soaking your face
in the color of everything that
you dream about
and i think
how much
i want to go on forever
but i am always looking forward
and every time i take a step
in the quiet
and the shifting play of light
i look behind
and barely recognize
the two who are walking
in our own footsteps.

original poetry by Kiersten M. Lawrence
26 February 2013

Moor (Or, a metaphor. which rhymes.)

I'll take you as my lover, out upon the moor;
We'll dance in the turnings of unbroken skylit grey,
Safely jacketed for now in freedom's glistening allure:
Until flushing high and golden rises fiery midday.

I'll take you as my lover, in the dusk and dawn,
When the earth is in the shadows, purring lost and low,
And everyone is absent, all knowledge foregone
Until the sun sends one above and you below.

I'll take you as my lover, the arms to be my treasure
The wuthering bleakness our bed for thought
Aside I'll toss my thoughts of you, without credence whatsoever
I come to you again when all my soul's eclipsed for naught.

I'll take you as my lover, and never see another
As long as my eyes are shut fast against the wind.
Your flame that never touches me to suffer
Wreathed in mist, darkly our days forever limned.

Now I take you as my lover, out upon the moor
With the stars locked out of sight and mind
And the changeling unblue skies our only door.
And in the summer of our love, unrefined—

I'll flee you yet, my lover, for the hundredth time:
And when you see me fairly crowned on the mountain's height
Forget that what saw me through the winter cold was fine.
Hands are the sure making of both the wrong and right.

Autumn makes you still my lover, you who pose no "why?"
Your shape never falters from its tranquil, wild arts.
And the spring is cold, my lover, between you and I
No sun can draw around us, only show our frosted hearts.

- : -

  [20 January & 11 February 2012]

Many titles exist here, none of which linger long enough to be read.

      I.
I'm not there.
This, an obvious fact, I know, is.
Yet now it seems to present within its ubiquitously clarified lines
An epiphany:
(In the form of a question:)
How can I make comparisons
As if I were?
How can the handshaped hearts
Pretend machine-manufactured sameness
Of operation?

     II.
We cannot, yet
If we did not
No one would call us human.
So we say white (or invisible,
even to us) lies,
And it makes us
Good.
Because the handshaped hearts
Beat, and have aches
And growling stomachs and growing pains,
And if they had hands, we would need
To hold them once in a while.
(Or more often.)
For an even keel.

     III.
All of us know how it goes.
[Click here for personalized translation of this stanza.]

     IV.
And it is only when we need the lies most
(In context)
That we call them out.
How defeatist, how suicidally tangled
Are our inner workings
In themselves
In the best and worst of ways.
And humanity is this –

12.29.11, further musings

The drumbeat of small reminders
Is so often "the thing with feathers"
Choosing to alight on me
From across Emily Dickinson's sea
And the eclipsed gap between earth and Heaven.

.spilled earth.

Melting ice in my stomach and dying flame in my mouth.
Would that the misting warmth could excise my heart:
So unsteady, half glass and half stone
It sometimes seems…

Hunger and sickness, some vive la revolution
Cry stirs within me, but no kingsbanner
Rallies to any causal center.

Empty-handed and too-full-hearted,
I dream with bloodshot open eyes;
Watch me sleep, and raise a cup of unsweetened cocoa
To the moon that dreamed he loves me.

Even the child, growing like a flytrap
From my cardiac arteries
Thinks the woman in me, wherever she may be,
A demon of the reddest kind.

Distance yawns with me.
Pity chuffs grotesquely at my shoulder.
Sunbleached eyes see lies;
Truth seems a dull stylus tonight.

Mandos

We sit in the halls of the dead, among the mourning

Among the extinguished stars blackened by intemporality

My eyes and yours, the lanterns burning

For all that we cannot say "I love you" any longer.

Not in word, and not in deed

Because the sky has not yet forgotten us.

Others wait, and so are we chaperoned

Even as we wait for the utmost river to cover our heads.

We know there is no death as this silence.

In the moment when we are dead to memory but not yet to soul

On the cusp of terra nihilo:

I will whisper in your ear—

Vos amo, my fair one

And no one will be there to marvel at what we make in the last farewell.

Stories die to reach the halls;

But how many more begin at the coda,

Be it only the blink of my eyes, or yours?

Icarus' Uncertainty Principle

Trying to quantify uncertainty, I am;

Reinventing Daedalus' craft,

Losing oneself in a Labyrinth, and no golden clew

To show the way of escape;

Sewing zeroes onto the exponent

Like feathers onto wings

That will only fall apart when used.

Watch me collide with all I thought

I'd left far behind me.

Falling from the sun, too exhausted to be free

Under the depths, with a dead mind

That can move no wakeful limbs.

(3 July 2011.)

Merlin

Simple.
Unravel time.
And mind the moon on your way out.

A crayon in my pocket

Went through the dryer

Flung its staining spots

Over all my attire

Scrub the mistakes out

The sad little speckles

Make them like new

Erase the blue freckles!

Season's Wane (A Pessimist's Apologies)

Paper faces on parade, and all we are is phantoms in the dark.

We burn with tightly-controlled magnificence and sought-for food for pride.

Welcome to the masquerade—do you make my day or shall I make yours a misery?

The fountain of looks and laughs like a rain of fiber-optic falsity.

Throw a gaze over your shoulder; keep that eye out or someone may take it out for you.

We say nothing in forward motion; we dance in code.

Dare to breathe and only my sickly sallow jester’s face stares back.

The feathers on this mask make hidden knives:  of steel or words.

Invent my exit for you: “Bravo, bravo!” they cry, knowing not a single name.

Feet never stumbling, maverick like a thousand mavericks before us.

A highwire burdened under the weight of seven billion souls: it now sags to mere inches.

Bright gowns that cover all skin, lest my rabid acne shed the illusion.

Even the eyes that show—that summon silence—speak no words true,

Immortality gleaned from the labyrinths of a thousand star-stuffed nights.

Words fall to the floor like glass, but no slippers for Cinderella are left in their wake.

What prince, if he should exist, would seek queens as dazzling as these?

A masquerade is no pride of a fairy tale.

Paper faces, paper faces...a masquerade is no more than a parade.

Blink [intrans.] / boggle [trans.]

Untied people

Floating in an abyssal, frameless world 

Full of neon color and blank promises,

Frenzied heights and vicious depths.

I feel the peaceable embrace of my own anchor,

The warm arms and the cool breeze

Wrapped around me in a vibrant scarf of truth.

Are those who have nothing eternal to which to hold,

Lesser than me in their ignorance,

Or greater than me for all their need?

My eternity is cared for,

But even their ephemeral lives sway with the tide.

Sandwiches and wine and cayenne chocolate cake,

Do they know into what blender they toss their souls?

Untied people

Who have nothing but temporal hymns to sing,

No atonement to hold up in words,

No embrace but that will break and crumble:

A parachute that is already torn.

What eyes might I direct to the eternal?

If only courage was my squire.

Ode To a Hare

(and, by its existence, an ode to my childhood companion, Brian Jacques’ Redwall series.)

 originally composed July 12, 2007.

Oh, a perilous beast’s the hare, they say;

Not many can match one in a fight any day.

But the one single time when the scrappin’s called off

Is when a hare sees the board laid out with scoff!

There’s none as can match a hare’s lust for food,

Repast a hare once; forever keep his gratitude!

Many have tried, but their efforts proved vain;

None can outscoff a hare when the feast comes again!

A bloomin’ hare could live through a ten-season march,

But a single missed meal’d leave him right parched!

Many a leveret’s been scolded “Grubswiper!”

But lackaday, sah, food’s what keeps ‘em all hyper!

Aye, quick to go adventurin’ is every young hare,

But what brings ‘em back home is the smell o’ the fare!

If y’think to win a victualin’ race with a hare—tchah!

Then y’ll be sadly mistaken:  lackaday wot, sah!

Aye, there be few beasts that can match a hare’s paw,

But to match a hare’s stomach is a feat beyond all!

‘Ey, the meals o’ the day:  two breakfasts plus lunch,

And of course a great feastin’ dinner to munch,

With many a score of snacks in between—

A malnourished hare is infrequently seen!

Pasties, pies, flans, custards, and tarts,

Go down to a hare’s bottomless parts.

There’s many a beast that’d die, if they may,

Rather than feed a blinkin’ hare for a day!

When a bally hare starts a-feasting, sirrah, wot wot,

His jaw may run faster than his flippin’ scut!

When a hare grabs his tucker, he’ll really get going,

And never will October Ale cease flowing.

     Oh, the hare, a perilous beast he may be:

     At his face I’d swoon as an enemy,

     But I’d faint quicker when I see a hare

     Catchin’ sight o’ my luncheon fare!

Many beasts love their books, their swords or their brood,

But a hare’s ardor is reserved for his food!

Aye, a hare’s a hare—while beakers plenty of mint tea he’ll quaff

You can bet his mind’s on his blinkin’ flippin’ bloomin’, bally good scoff!

(Apologies for the odd combination of rhyme and inconsistent meter.)

A poem I wrote and liked, but which has no relevance to my life whatsoever.

Uncover my skin.  What do you see?  

The scars left by your silence, 

By my silence.

I would rather scars made by words.

But there have been none of those 

In the folds of the years.

The bald patches under my hat:

Places where dreams used to sit. 

Time has torn them away.

All I’m left with are blue bags under my eyes

From a century of sleepless nights.

Do you remember the sun in the sky

When we used to make promises with red hearts?

Then, we held hands

Without touching.

Now we touch without feeling.

Have the years so dimmed 

The way we breathe?

It’s only regulation love.

I see the same stripes on your back.

But I have no tears, no blood.

Not anymore.

Only deaf feathers are stitched in our sky

To fall like dry rain.

And I sit back to back with you.

When was the last time I heard my name?

Our autumn was so swift

After we thought summer would last forever.

And now we won’t live

To see the world even in green again.

I remember when I was your moon

And you, my dazzling sun.

But we have both faded into mere eyes in the darkness:

There was no supernova.

Only negligence.

  25 September 2010

Bonjour Déraison

Hello Insanity

Wereling:

Long veiled in the guise of opportunity

While opportunity masquerades as you

When did you begin to haunt me?

Dare you come any closer,

Prying into my fevered mind

With grasping, tickling fingertips?

Leaving you behind, I am nothing—

Yet, to embrace you is dereliction?

Prancing, preening, prattling poster

Of my face scrawled in scarlet ink

And “WANTED Dead Or Alive

But Preferably Halfway There”

Branded over my unseeing eyes.

Hello Insanity

Obdurate stalker,

Domestic partner to insomnia:

The floor is freshly waxed.

Shall we dance?

written 11 June 2010

no title for this 1:27 a.m. poem about metalcore

pulse

pounding, making room inside

my skull

until I feel it can blow out 

all of me

So I can find myself

In the space behind the notes

and I go swimming in

the meteoric, supersonic

eternity 

and I watch you

burn down my terrors

in a dream too loud

to die

tonight

I drink the human voice

and all the sounds

our fingers make

like a starving

pretty

drowning at her first taste

of human heaven

a drug in

my blood

a shriek in my 

ears

a pulse in 

my bones

And I muse of being manic

like they are

inside of me

my skull, my limbs

open wide

even with it

pressing in

On a white line

neverforever

the music is mine

for one

night

an ungelded sky

31 august 2010

kiersten m. lawrence

If You Wouldn't Mind Unsaddling That Tree

Rereading old books

Smelling the sunshine

It's too vivid an afternoon to...

Singing with the British ukelele player

Dreaming in M&Ms

It's too lucid an afternoon to...

Scrubbing printed glass

Making ape impressions

It's too bright an afternoon to...

Sitting outside of time

Seeming alive without moving

It's too perfect an afternoon to

Make

important

choices.

Hymn (an attempt at one.)

If I should flee this place You’ve made

And run to shadows deeply hidden,

If I should hide my face from You

Would You yet watch o’er me unbidden? 

Under seas, where darkness dwells

Should here I choose to live anew

Or in skies too vast to see—

Nowhere can I fly from You.

In deepest hell, still You descend

Seeking Your lost lamb awry;

No matter the retreat I choose,

Never far from You am I.

Under throes of nightmares,

Or dreams alight with ecstasy

Here You come to twilight’s lines

T’ light new love astir in me.

In the depths of my own black soul

Here I find You still pursue:

Outside all time, in all the world

I find my heart seeks only You.