girl-aflame's Diaryland Diary

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Opinions Needed

I need your help with something, lovelies. I found a poetry contest open to people attending a school in South Carolina (this circus disguised as a state that I live in), and I need to choose two entries out of 13 poems of mine that I think are "contest matierial". I trust you all as much as anyone, if not more than most, and so if you could please leave me a guestbook entry, a note, an email, etc letting me know which of these you think might stand a breath of a chance in the competition, I will love you forever. No, that's incorrect.. I'm already going to love you forever. I'd just really appreciate it :) ��� Also, if you could suggest a title for some of them that are untitled, it would be of great service too.

#1 - Untitled

When Paradise burned, it melted.
When hidden, it was submerged.
And all that remains of Eden
Is here
In these oynx-throated sleepers,
That slide by unaware
They own what the whole world is seeking;
They are the children of Eve.

#2 - Escaping Eden

How many serpents did Eve turn away,
Before taking her first bite of truth?
Did she see the shadow creeping,
Winding its coil of mortality around her
Perfect ivory waist,
A mother with hips wide enough
To birth the world,
Did she hunger for a home beyond the garden,
And spread her lips willingly
In order to exchange fortitude for fate,
To hold her husband close,
Was the thought of sleep and death inescapable
For full appreciation of life?

#3 - Untitled

In my mind we are dancers,
Liquid presence on life's stage;
In my mind we are seduction,
Strangers bound igniting
On a flame-licked bed of coal.
To me you are the innocent,
Tortured sweetness of a lonely pulse,
And I the serephim in divine silk
Stretching forth out of the heavenlies
To stroke your star-crossed skin.
For my eyes you are the dragon,
A puff of eastern mystery
Exhaled from western lungs;
The convergence of gods and gargoyels
At a yawning open road.
Together we make the rocking craddle,
The boat upon the sea,
Tangoing sexually to oblivion,
And back before day break.

#4 - Crysallis

I can't imagine the darkness
You slept in;
I can't imagine the lonely days
The echo of your voice in the emptiness
Reminded you of;
I don't know the slow pending formation
Of the moment upon moment mortar,
When everything seems to encase you,
To question your value to the outside world,
To bind your heart and close your eyes.
But I do know that the wall of stone
You threw yourself against
Was soft with pink womb flesh;
And in the beat of a Mother's heart,
In the palm of a Father's hand,
The curtain of sinew tears tenderly away,
To reveal the magic of crysallis,
A winged creature where once
The pained crawling belly
Could only dream...

#5 - Untitled

I am of that delicate breed,
That fragile sapling on which is hung
The hope of the world.
I am the echo of Eden;
Carrying fruits some Adam will crave,
But hesitate to swallow.
The hurricanes of angry truth
Beat at my branches till they
Rattle like bones,
And the gift of my harvest, misunderstood,
Cloaks me in wisdom's skin.
So rise up, all you people
That would tilt your chins
And cluck your tongues.
Rise up and behold the woman
Your repressions only renew.

#6 - Fantacide

A dream came to haunt Tantulus
As he fell weary from his post;
It was all of fruit, orchards and orchards,
The ripe armies of virgin Eden
Rising to meet his grasp.

Orpheus in sullen slumber
Saw Hades weep a flood
For the serenade that told of lost love,
And this time patience won.
In the arms of reverie he held her,
But woke to find himself alone,
And the next day went to join her.

Lot remembered Gomorrah
As the city of his wife's birth.
He dwelled in sin to collect memories
And left on his hands and knees.
In his mind forever after
She was eternally bringing her demise,
As the reflection of flames
Flickered first from her dark pupils,
Then against a mountain of white.

I could never understand the practice
Of murdering your dreams.
But now I know why
People shut their eyes so tightly;
It is not to keep out the darkness,
But to prevent the light from getting in.

#7 - Full Throttle

I want to live my life at full throttle,
A bumpy carriage ride
Through brambles,
Accepting that there are no brakes.

The summer is losing
Her breath,
It slips away in gusts of heat
And circumstance,
And unavoidable sacrifice,
My time will come to make.

One day these starry
Dreamer oracles will blink,
And shake away the sand of sleep,
And I will step from between curtains,
A woman with a job to do.

And then will the rivers
Bade farewell,
Will they remember all the wild
Soulful things that moulded me,
And taught me how to breathe
In harmony with the dust?

Just to have a well source
To draw from fertile ground,
I may have to be led by forces
More powerful than myself,
May have to be guided by dragons
Just to learn to fly.

#8 - Immortal

Its on nights like these
When Time's whir no longer sounds
As an incessant insect god,
But blurs to our eternal orchastra
Moving ever to celebrate our love,
I begin to think that just maybe
We will live forever,
And death is for those
That have never been marooned
On this island of you.

#9 - Losing A Continent

Deep soft ground,
I write of you,
But I lie, lie and imagine
Your older than time firment
Would yield to a young girl's weight
Who has yet to learn the metric system.

Brown gold flutter
I have not known
In American autumns past,
For you lived and you died
On unclassified branches,
But now you flood my dreams.

White fox of winter
In your evergreen keep,
Flirting with the tundra,
Grinning at all the sleepless prey
Of the long and darkened months,
I too am stalked by you.

Tremulous plates whose
Fathomless groans
Can only be sensed by omniscience
Of a perfectly erect spine,
Will your contemplative language
Ever reach my ears?

You are lost to me,
Ancient spirits,
Your tides and moonbeams,
Your flattery and intrigue,
Your great heart and soul
Are altogether lost.

Goodbye!

#10 - Marriage of the Seasons

The bride of spring
Bedecks her love
In trails of merrygold mirth;
Her warm tapered fingers of breeze
Nimbly tug at forest velvet
That clothes her husband's limbs.
On his weathered skin her jasmine scent,
In his sturdy heart the sweet pale vestige
Of amorous stirrings anew.

The bride of summer
Has eyes of flame;
Sticky musk and milken foam
Slickens heated flesh,
And nights so graced in opulent shadow lust
That even the moon descends;
A voluptuous lover desiring a bed
Among flourishing wild flowers,
Tangled hair of tawny sun
And crashing bursts of unbridled storm.

The bride of autumn
Is sweet with spite,
Swinging the scythe that slices ripe bounty
And her darling's masculine pride.
With colored plume he seeks to lure
Her tenderness from the black,
But her tongue is crisp
And her passions cooled,
And his pounding veins are put to sleep.
In stark nakedness he stands the weather
And braves his ills alone.

The bride of winter
Makes blind her groom
By cloaking her age in white;
Virginal purity covers dull strangled seeds
Clutched to a sighing breast,
And icy fury against obsidian light
Rolls cold tears over frozen cheeks
Of a man for his barren home.

#11 - Quoting T.S. Eliot

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality." - T.S. Eliot

I cannot measure my merits
By another man's words,
No matter how hot their fires burn,
No matter how quick the path was run
From heart to tongue and back.
Perhaps the pillar of greatness
Was not meant for me,
For my ascent from the whispering arms
Of a lapse into lost flowing years
Which take but a second to remember
And a lifetime to forget.
But as I sit beneath this evening veil
And feel kinship to a river tamed,
I know that I am a poet:
Who stands alone among laughter,
Who hungers always to be revealed,
Who looks upon a fresh peeled onion
And sees the face of God.

#12 - Reason and Passion

Reason and Passion,
Two birds sitting atop the fenceposts
Of my perfectly far off dream.
Each one chirps assuringly,
Singing me to their case;
Bidding me to wear their tailfeathers
And take flight in Love's wild wind.

Reason is a penguin,
Who never saw a shade of gray;
With wings estranged from wilken's kisses,
Long forsaken by the sky,
But with every quill well ordered,
Preened with the oil of intellegence
That could fuel a thousand fires.

Passion is a pheonix,
Drenched rainbow to the bone.
Ever humming with heavenly chorus,
Ever boiling to be set free.
Restless talons hop unsated,
Forever underfed,
Blown away by the slightest of maelstroms,
But ascending all the more invincible
To the lofty throne of God.

What can a heart so blood filled
Do to reconcile the mind?
Nothing save surrender
To Fate's unfailing rule,
And kill two birds with a single
Liberating stone.

#13 - Untitled

How can I forget you?
Your history cries like rising mist
From the sightless moors unreachable,
To my heart in ceaseless echo
Of a language deep instilled.
How can I forsake you?
When the clamor of cobblestone venders
Goes clattering through my memory,
Always with their ageless wares,
Parting torrent veil of centuries,
Staying my passage to sleep?
I have been on this ship for years.
Your beckoning towers shine like beacons
To this architect of dreams,
And though all of time be against us,
Every ocean has its shore.
If I can be patient with my destiny,
I know you too can abide.
Wait for me, Europe--
I have not abandoned you yet.

3:37 p.m. - Thursday, Jul. 31, 2003

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