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Escape VelocityF = G(m1m2)/r2

Black – true black – is the absence of light. Darkness is defined by what it is not, by the lack of something else. When we say a black hole, we truly mean that; black. Blacker than black. An absence of not only light, but of time, distance, anything.

The night was scary when I was little. I hated the dark, but couldn’t bear to sleep so long as the light was on, any light, burning on the other side of my eyelids. I used to have nightmares about dark things in dark corners, shadowy figures with shadowy fingers trailing along my spine. I always woke up cold and fumbling frantically for the lamp, but the aura o

Your Daughter has Sold Hundreds of Local PapersBut listen to me: I will tell you
how to love a bedspread;
a car seat; a sun dress
that you cleaned two months ago.

and should they find her
in the breast of a riverbank
or a cabinet,

I will tell you
facts about scavenger birds;
kettles, wakes and how to chair a committee
with a body on your desk,

as scavenger birds do.

Counting the Ringsi

near my sick bed
he murmurs of how he's crumbling
but I'm still here
I've fought so long, I'm here
for a while I trust
I believe this, I must
even when it's bad, because
his faith alone is not enough

my random thoughts of how long
I have, and his thoughts of
"will she be able to outlive me" -
even at moments like this
it happens that
we hold on and speak of a future

ii

rolling restless this early morn'
you exhausted and I
drying up from a virus

spying through the shredding
of 250-thread count bedding,
between the hillocks of your shoulders

we never can sleep
in anticipation for what's to come

to plant the seed and watch it grow

loose lips sink shipsan ocean has been thrown wide open over your head,
and remarkably you, too, are sinkable–

every verbal, every vocal, is dogged by the epiphany:
an ocean has been thrown wide open over your head

and all bodies wreck, ships and submarines.
and remarkably you, too, are sinkable.

Twenty: I'm afraid I'm growing oldi.
Coupons and sales magazines
have become more than just junk mail
and the holes in my pants
seem more patchable
and I wonder just how much
my sparse jewelry would fetch
if I said I saw the face of Jesus
in the glimmer of my pearls.

ii.
I am beginning to miss the sea I grew up on
so much that I will read bad poetry
just for the mention of a salty ocean breeze.
I feel landlocked and sometimes I'm afraid
that I will never see the world
until I have retired from it.

iii.
Faith says her life is full of asking.
I wish mine were full of answers,
but I too have many questions
and only Time will answer them for me.

iv.
My mothe

The Cat on the PorchYou asked me why I do not believe in ghosts,
celestial at four in the morning.
It becomes the common hour,
not a biting static shock in the eye veins like I anticipated
but dangerously vogue and precious
like a real diamond ring or sapphires on your breast.
No wood pecking or oil teasing or misshapen duck bills bleating
just clay, but lighter, lightest
and bright
seductive and crestfallen.

They bled Peter and Pangloss over a river.
I was wearing white for the funeral
humming 'home', the matronly letters
soothe me
clotheshorses and moonlight,
Mayan jewellery in my cabinet
the mother tongue kissing my molars better

But then there

6.12There are days when I recall the litany of your kisses over my shoulders and I wonder, numbly disconsolate, how I ever maintained my disbelief in god, when your movements over me were so profoundly biblical, when my name filtering between the fog of our joined breaths was so much like a prayer - when I would think, for those minutes or hours or days we spent locked in the grip of fever, unaware of the movement of those heavenly bodies outside the reach of our bed, that there was hope for me after all. That I could be saved.

I remember so clearly the feeling of loving you and I wonder at what point, when it was, the exact moment, when that lo

Liquid Cityhere, at the bottom - lovers.
there are lovers disassembling
themselveslost in and to the
desperate motion in
of - waves.

- did you think the continents
moved themselves? see them slip,

in an open sleep. less go, come.
come and, and - again. trembling

here, at the bottom - their eyes
are lightless. hollow bodies left
restless,

the sea does not sleep.

Five Seasons (Alternate) There was this moment, early last May, when I could have glanced up from the book I was reading at the breakfast table.
I could look out my window and see you standing on my lawn, this waif in a windbreaker grinning at a daydream you're probably too old for. I could bring you an umbrella. I could invite you in for coffee, and we could lose the whole day debating questionable Scrabble plays. We could take to the streets after dark and try to find an all-night diner that will feed us both for less than fifteen dollars. I could fall in love with you.
But I don't.
...spring
You go home with nothing but a story about how springtime leaves you feeling lonely. Your roommate blows off a dinner date to take you out for drinks. You send a Chardonnay up to the stage between sets and the singer takes you home.
The new girl at work works up the nerve to ask me out.
I don't have a reason to say no.
Your

bitter hug of mortalityso you sit there,
your awkward little hands folding awkward little birds,
as if you could inhale your own paper wings.
so you sit there,
and you think
about you watching the people and the people
not watching you.
and i whisper darling,
darling the only thing you're good for
is reading walt whitman out loud
to your used-to-be-white walls
until your throat chips, and your eyes dust over.
and you just shift your weight
and shake your head
like something
buzzed in your ear.

magnolia nights and ivory starsi.
i threw the stars out into the cosmos & used my fish hooks to hang the moon too; hide the sun from wanting eyes beneath the zaffre mountains (look how they sleep) painting the night (wisteria) with such grace.

ii.
for who could know the wonder growing a pair of antlers can bring for a small child. time to decorate [find what you can]: shattered compasses, gears [never do they turn], maybe glitter. look how pretty she is with her elegant horns- all isabelline white & with its specks of fallow & teeth splashed with honeydew [no makeup] & a compass too many to show her the many ways to make mistakes.

iii.
has anyone ever wondered how a but

The art of blacking outHow I wish I could say strangers

crept inward, night by night,

stealing my medication and

rearranging my furniture.

But I know it's not true.

There are holes inside

my head. Oxidation.

No one unlocks this door

but me. I am just

forgetting.

starspunobserving the romanticism
of hooded cemetery kids,
smoking cigarettes pretending
they are not dead.

you were always so sure
about my uncertainty,
you watched
all my pick up lines
drop things.

we built the heat
of the evening from the solidity
of starlight,

pretended
that two teens at the park
at midnight
is the stuff of teen novels
(cliches dim on
our leaf-gold horizon)

your eyes darted
from the gray expanse
of the churchyard & wandered
in thoughtful
paths.

i wanted to ask you
if i could follow. shove
the words aside &
remember that i came here alone.

i remember our innocence
in the static b e t w e e n
stars

no wonder it took him 1455 pageswhen i was seven years old, a group of kids in my grade threw rocks at me for liking neopets more than webkinz. from then on, i was convinced i knew what hatred meant. but i don’t know how to describe it to the little girl who sits in the corner of my womb and in ten years might call me mommy and ask for help on dividing the world into black and white.

would i point to the churches with their bigotry? to the cotton fields of the south in the 1800s? to the classrooms of modern day america? would i tell her about how the jews stood in straight lines, waiting to die, with fear in their eyes and faith in their hearts? or would i try and de

sea featherin the breaking of the morning we tore apart our ivory shells
our blood-red hearts are saturated in spume & sea spells
with the ache from the brine gathering around you
your ankles slippery, your mouth
moving liquid through
mine
i had never seen a more beautiful shoreline

gunmetal breaths
on shivering, silver shores

you were ebbing to my flowing
you were coming; i was going

i wrote in the sand that i was yours

on the coast i could feel
salt on my tongue - dew from the
ocean in my lungs
& i was your pearl
latched from the inside to keep everyone out
speaking in rhymes, & cotton tides

this is when you pull my body fro

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More from `LiliWrites

For Beauty's Sake?Is it for vanity's sake we remake
ourselves in the next generation's face?
Do eyes and lips and hair a full soul make,
or do conscience and mores also share place?
The legacy left behind lies ahead:
not in DNA strands, replicated
rather in kindnesses easily shed
and big ideas, praising words quickly said.
The world weeps with children aplenty,
hungry, enslaved, pitiful in the streets.
What use to them, rigid identity,
who, in seeking food, often find defeat?
Beauty resides not in a comely face
but in our ardor for this human race.

What's LeftThey found him hung like meat
waiting to be salted.

Accidental suicide the paper read.
Thirty-two and drunk, foolish
and wasted: A portrait strangers
might examine for poems about life
and death and the unsubstantiated
point to everything.

And we are wordless, mindless,
awed by the severity of grief;
each alone in a cavity
of communal questions.

_Un_Expected& it broke my heart so
I chose boiled broccoli
over apples, preferring
a sulfurous stench
to the perfume
of your favored fruit.

Between swallows,
I contemplated clichés.

BoyMany women will write poetry
from you. They will translate
your nose into an apostrophe
your smile to the front side
of a parentheses, the back
to tears only once admitted.

They will filter your father's ashes
into adverbs that define your fingers
quaking along skin and sin
toward fibrous paper.

They will dismiss your flaws
as improperly placed commas
or periods born before their time.
They will inspect, perfect
& infect you with emotions
you never learned to muster.

But none of them will know
you as I did: a boy, bent
beneath the waves of love
and glad for it.

Death to the ConspiratorI harbor a foolish hope that sensation might flee my body, though I know it cannot be so.

The guards surround me and make an awful commotion - boots clicking sharply against cobblestone floors, guns and belts rattling with each stride. I feel the vibrations in my teeth. A minister walking just ahead snorts loudly every third or fourth step, as though trying to clear his nostrils of the prison's stench.

I had forgotten the scent of a warm summer morning. We leave the gates and stone walls behind and step into the sun. It washes my vision in creamy white. Someone unfolds a black umbrella. My vision returns. There is green grass - rich, moist,

The First Time I Cried...The First Time I Cried While Reading Poetry

You asked if a soul can ache,
watched the tears slide toward
the hollow place in our bed.

I wondered if little girls in Thailand
sleeping in servitude and blameless sin
believe God loves them.

You reached across the sheets,
pressed the pad of your left thumb into my hip,
and impaled miracles on dull words:

"look at us, all agony and grace."

Then rolled away, content to sleep
breathing synced to my sobs.
I kissed your palms, closed my eyes

knew love to be a rabid dog.

The first time I cried
while reading a poem,
you smiled and asked

"does the world make more sense
when it's blurry?

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Gulls Say It Bestby `LiliWrites

Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / Biography & Memoir / Stories & Vignettes

©2011-2013 `LiliWrites

You know, I do love my country. I just don't like the direction it's headed.

1-5-13: Added a few more memories.

5-22-13: Belated thanks to ^neurotype and =doughboycafe for the DD!!

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Given 2013-04-16

Gulls Say It Best is a meditation on America by `Kneeling-Glory. ( Suggested by =doughboycafe and Featured by ^neurotype )

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=julietcaesar 2 days ago Hobbyist Writer

The last one about Seattle was the one that resonated with me most, although I still dig the rest of the imagery.

I'm going to have to explain why in person.

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`LiliWrites 1 day ago Hobbyist Writer

You'll be able to do that soon.

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~PhoenixScribe Apr 22, 2013 Student Writer

Your piece was made most beautiful by the comment that you made. I completely agree with you.

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`LiliWrites 2 days ago Hobbyist Writer

Thank you.

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*thesquareroot Apr 19, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

superb

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`LiliWrites 2 days ago Hobbyist Writer

Thanks very much!

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*spraypaintking Apr 18, 2013 Student Artist

Montana's description amazes me.

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`LiliWrites 2 days ago Hobbyist Writer

Thank you!

It was the first bit I wrote.

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~ellesea Apr 18, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

_{Sweet glory this is gorgeous.}

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`LiliWrites 2 days ago Hobbyist Writer

Thank you!

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