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Left UnsungHe has a pretty tune in his heart
With the lyrics plastered
On strips of delicate, ashen paper
That crumble at the slightest touch.

They hang against the
Edges of his lips,
Trying to pour out,
But ever uncertain
Of whether the wind will carry their weight.
Facing the Edge Unasked For"Kill me gently,"
You said.
And handed me the blade
Made out of all the things
We said we would do
Some day.

Some day was soon,
And then,
It was yesterday.

We have wasted
All of our "tomorrow"s;
I fear that, now,
As we face the edge
Of this universe,
We do not have the strength
To reach the next.

"You'll come with me,
Right?"

Staring at the bottomless pit,

I need to stay here
And day-dream a little longer
About each one of
Our
"What if"s
And
"We will"s.

I can pretend,
Just for a moment,
That we have happy memories,
Instead of
Simply swallowing my heartache.

Your assisted suicide
Will have
Insomnia and Body PartsThere were
Timeless moments spent between us,
In those instants and hours before dawn;

That time when we traversed
So far away from this
Wretched house and into
The most delicious darkness
Of Andromeda-

That time before our tidal waves
Came crashing down on us again.

I would do anything to
Drown with you.

The softness of the flesh
Between your knuckles, the
Exquisite map of
Leigh-lines
On your palms;

They were like a lullaby
To my sleepy fingertips.

You used
The breath of your mouth
To teach me to close my eyes
And fall asleep.

Your contented whispers and
Observations of the sky
Showed me then how to dream.

I had no id
Spontaneous CombustionIt's silly to make masks out of porcelain, I know
But it has become like a filthy habit. (Where's the broom?)
I keep
Turning to dust in the middle of the night, and I always
End up with a broken mask and a dirty, fake smile to show for all the hard work I did
Picking myself up.
My soul feels empty, and my lungs feel full of ash, I'm smouldering inside-
I await the day my rib cage
Finally catches fire.
If it turn to smoke, I hope that I at least get to travel a little, maybe drift high enough into the sky that I could chase a comet or two.
I have always fancied that they see the most lovely parts of this universe.
TerminalSometimes I feel as though I could drown staring up at the sky.
The rain would fill me up, and maybe the words that pour from my mouth
Could be meaningful.
I used to think I was a caged bird,
Before I realized that I was just stupid enough to be collecting feathers.
My wings are gone: I gave them away to someone who can fly much better than me.
(He's still trying to figure out how to get off the ground.
He'll get it one day.)
I traded this pulsing thing in my chest (I'm not sure what it's for, exactly) away to a boy who promised he'd love me in the wintertime; I
Await the snowfall with baited breath.
Laying in the bathtub, I wonder
What it's like at the center of a nebula, to watch stardust beget stardust,
Until the water is too cold.
He's got
A shipwreck smile and thunderclap heartbeats
(I break a little bit each time).
Nobody ever told me it was like a disease.
Two Cents and Mirror ShardsShe wears her worth around her neck
In the form of
A penny
From ninety-three years ago
And rusty locks,
Strung on an iron chain,
Along with broken
Keys that go to
Nothing
She knows of
Any longer.

She finds them, on
Street corners and in forgotten,
Lonely places,
Treating them like
Precious treasures
And long-lost friends;
She hangs them near her core
To try and remember
Where all the pieces go,
Where they all come from.
Maybe one day.

Her window
Is made of a shattered mirror
In the hopes of
Being able to see
Something that isn't on the outside.
She is not sure
Exactly what that is
Yet.

None
FragilityHer bones
Are made of bullet-proof
Glass,
Latticed with cracks
And held together
By the darkening memories
From a thousand lives
Unlived.

Slowly, she
Is splintering.

Slips of paper-
The words she is supposed
To be able to say-
Turn to dust against her teeth
And float harmlessly
Between her ribs.

Blind eye sockets
Drift across her form
In the mirror,
Searching for something
That is less
Hollow
And transparent.

Each evening,
Her vertebrae fall apart,
Scattering,
One by one,
Across the floor

And she follows soon after.

Maybe
Tomorrow,
She will
Be able to stomach
Picking them up again.

And,
Whimsy and SuicideFor ages, we were
Trapped between the pages of
A tattered, paperback book- simply
Gathering the dusts
Of all the lifetimes we never
Dared to dream for.
I can see their reflections
In the galaxies escaping our mouths:
You were right about the light.
It is so much prettier from far away.
Last night, I dreamt of darkness
And suffocating. You
Took my hand and told me thickly
That everything was going to be alright
And I didn't have to remember
How to breathe anymore.
Things of FaerietaleThere is a boundless ocean
Located
Just under her sternum.

There is every universe,
Known and unknown,
Within her pupils;

Don't blink, dearest,
Lest they should fade.
AbsurdityTo ponder upon pretty insignificancies
In the stead of heartfelt thunderstorms and
The castaways between tired brain cells
Seems to somehow
Make this ocean a little less daunting.
I've discovered that
The chemical nature of
Willow tree kisses in the wintertime
Is identical to that of
Cloud-watching in spring. It's silly to think
That there is such a thing as inspiration
Located in the spaces between his fingers
Or in the dance steps the wind must take
Over the hills and far away.
I've got
An ache behind my sternum, like
Some horrible, nameless disease, just as the mourners
Who walk the rows of gravestones
After twilight. Though, I cannot
Fill the stagnant air with the scent of rose petals
And corpses as they can. They sometimes
Appear to me as angels
Who have been caught in nooses
Made from petty,
Worldly desires. While they choke
Under the weight of their own bodies, I
Forget how to make his lungs work
And then my heart stops beating.
I think that the
Expanse between the back of my mi
DisintegratingI was never one of the birds,
Just silly enough to look into the sky
And pretend.
There's a man I know; he's forgotten a piece of himself, I think.
He says he can't fold the butterflies anymore.
He's lying, I promise
And I love him anyway.
I never understood him when he said I was made of soot.
The hurricane boy's at my window again. He
Comes to me late at night and taps on the glass.
"The weather is so lovely this evening," he tells me.
I go outside and he trades me his rainwater tears
For all the beats my heart has skipped.
He keeps them in manilla envelopes and hides them
Under his bed.
I've become addicted to the dreaming, to make-believing I'm blind and deaf for a little while.
It's starting to be too difficult for me to tell which is waking
And which is sleeping any longer.
My chronic day-dreaming
Is getting worse. I can't even remember them, and I'm losing track
Of the days.
Maybe if I close me eyes
For just a few minutes more.
Water SolubleThere's little pieces of him lodged in my lungs. I'm not sure how they got there, but I can't get them out now.
I'm not sure if they're supposed to come out.
Surely, he'll need them back sometime. I fear that I will fall apart when at last he takes them away.
At some point, I was so stupefied, that I believed I could outrun the sky, out-run the storm and manage to dance between the raindrops.
I was struck in the back of the head
By a snowflake that weighed ten thousand pounds.
I've got his fingerprints on the roof of my mouth, a complete set of filthy reminders to let me know just how
Dusty and decayed I've become in the past months.
They taste of a different time, one far more
Sick and sugary than this.
I wonder how much acid will come
When I
Can vomit again.
DistancesThere's a little girl made of glass with
Purgatory eyes. She
Can't seem to remember where
She's misplaced all those lovely words.
The mockingbirds and stellar jays, they
Cry out, "Little one,
You can't even recall the color of your
Chrysanthemums.
You've sharks' teeth in your blood and
Sewing pins in between your collarbones-
What do you know of
This world, anyhow?
Perhaps you are simply
Always asleep."
They watch her; she trades butterflies and
Midnight love letters for the
Ability to look without seeing anything.
She gives them one of her ribs
Every afternoon; they can
Use them much better
Than she ever will.
Promises, PromisesWe were bleeding out, into wine glasses for each other to consume last night. I've still got
Bodily fluids pouring from my mouth. It was given unto us, this strange
Almost wicked ability of infecting one another's dreams.
I see you walk on clouds where I only fall through.
"Come and join me." It pains me deep
In the pit of my stomach to say that I can't.
One day, you're going to discover that those wings of yours are good for one thing, and that's flying;
The anchors tied to my ankles are only good
For sinking.
By the time you reach the sun, once you have learned
To enter the skies for something
Much more beautiful than I, I will have
Reached the bottom of the ocean. I could
Drown forever in the darkest confides of the Mariana
Trench if I knew
You were coming back for me.
I beg of you, please,
Don't forget.
Phantasmal ExistenceHe bides his time between
Teaching little girls to smile and
Showing the sleepless
What nightmares are.
 
When he was a boy,
He was under the impression
That he had wings;
 
His naivete led him to believe
He could fly.
 
Spending the eternities before sunsets
Gathering imaginary feathers
And weightless syllables
Seems to mend the ageless wounds.
 
He is like a crescendo, the
Very crest of a wave as
The ocean swallows it up.
 
Writing pretty messages
On the inside of his mouth-
I try to tell him that he can't sing
With his tongue in his cheek.
 
There is a music box in his pocket,
To remind him of all the
Nonsense daydreams and
Meaningless lullabies he had once endured,
Over
And over again.
 
My arms and legs are scraped raw
From diving to catch his words
That just needed a push in the
Proper direction
In order to float.
 
I don't mind the aches;
A little blood
Never hurt anyone.
 
He has a way of
Leaving pieces behind,
Mindlessly lodging the
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More from *SomethingOnceSacred

ApparitionLittle girl,
You have out-grown
Yourself, and these
Childish notions of
Monsters in the closet.

Each morning,
She holds her breath
Until the sun rises,
Because no one taught her
How to sleep
With her eyes closed.

There is this
Delusion about you;
A belief that if
You stay awake,
There will be no darkness.

It is damaging you.

She lays,
Cold and silent,
With her darkened fantasies,

And remembers a time
When she was not-so-
Softly breaking
Into unrecognizable shards.

Careless drifter,
You have found your only
Escape
From all the lifetimes
You were
Too fearful to live.

Rest now,
Frightened child,
Insomnia and Body PartsThere were
Timeless moments spent between us,
In those instants and hours before dawn;

That time when we traversed
So far away from this
Wretched house and into
The most delicious darkness
Of Andromeda-

That time before our tidal waves
Came crashing down on us again.

I would do anything to
Drown with you.

The softness of the flesh
Between your knuckles, the
Exquisite map of
Leigh-lines
On your palms;

They were like a lullaby
To my sleepy fingertips.

You used
The breath of your mouth
To teach me to close my eyes
And fall asleep.

Your contented whispers and
Observations of the sky
Showed me then how to dream.

I had no id
Nine Times Nine Times NinePretty boy,
With golden eyes,
Keeps fallen stars
And beautiful words
Inside of glass bottles.
He hangs these
Lost eternities,
Unmade wishes,
From the ceiling, on
Ropes
Twisted into nooses.
A menagerie
Of tears
Made from silver and gold,
Joy and sorrow,
Crowd littered corners in their jars,
Gathering merciful dusts.
Black cat takes a photograph
Of another life to live,
Crossing the paths of
Mortals,
Adding their years to his collection.
Pretty boy,
With golden eyes,
Sleeps near his treasures
In shadowed,
High places,
Protecting his stolen ages.
Decades pass
In his ninety-nine
Generations;
He grows younger
And wiser
To the greedy games of men.
He ties birdsong and
Decaying leaves
In between his fingers
And pins snowflakes along
With sweet, warm breezes
To his palms.
Black cat
Takes ninety-nine
Snapshots
Of smothered weeping,
Bliss gone unsung,
And captures moments
(infinities)
Between the points of
Sewing needles
And the creaks in floorboards.
Pretty boy,
With empty eyes,
Leads th
Never AfterWhen they buried you,
It was face-down,
With your
Arms over your head.

I want to make-believe
I'm just hiding
Under the covers.

Don't worry-
I'll make them all
Go away.

You and I
Stood on the roof
During thunderstorms,
With mason jars,
Telling the heavens how sorry we were.

We have to make the angels
Stop crying.

I have fifty-four jars
Of dirty rainwater.

Every night,
Complaints of monsters
In the closet.

Each time I shut the door,
You stared into the mirror.

I can still see them.

That evening,
I walked you to the dock
And helped you
Find sea glass and
Pretty stones

To fill your pockets.
We ti
Lacklustre StardustPaint something with
Words
That hang just at
The tip of your tongue,

And cross the gaps
Between galaxies
With your fingertips,

The way you used to do,

Before the stars fell
And your bones turned to ash.

There used to be solar flares
In your breath, and
An icy vacuum,
Longing to warm,
Behind your eyes,

Before you fell into
That super-
Massive
Blackhole
That stole your light.

You traverse
Across the nothing
And everything
Of the cosmos,
Searching for what
You claimed to have
Never lost,

For the purpose of
Living in your past
(Before your stars fell).
This way,
No one will see
That the stars
Between Two States of Being"Look," you said.

And I saw
The gap between the worlds,
One above, and one
Below the clouds.

The separation is slender,
But untouchable,
Uncrossable,
And even when I stand
At my highest point,
I can only ever hope
To receive
The slightest brush of water vapor.

Those below
Make the rain acidic
And then wonder why it burns them.

I have found a place higher
Than the tainted rain,
And yet,
I cannot reach the sun.

When you stood at
That peak beside me,
I watched
As you closed your eyes
And jumped
With such grace and faith;
I was almost startled
To see the ground rush up to meet you.

"Join me,"
You be

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October 8, 2012
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[x]

The Caged Bird's Lullaby

:iconsomethingoncesacred:

Sit and stay a spell,
Before life takes you
Away.
I am going to write a love story
Across your lungs
So you can exhale
Sweet things
When you can't
Find the words.

Sing to me
That pretty,
Tragic little song.
The one about how
She broke your name
And took your bones.
I will find each fragmented piece
And clean out
All the maggots.

My dearest,
Your windows are broken,
Cracked and tear-streaked.
Allow me to mend you;
Stained glass
Is far more beautiful
That just a pair of
Empty eyes.

Come outside
And we will dance
In the freezing rain.
We can help each other
Wash off all the poisons
Left clinging
To the backs of our minds
And the insides
Of our mouths.

Sleep now,
Lovely birds.
And cease
Flying in circles.
Tomorrow
I will take you past
The farthest horizons,
Where no cages will
Ever
Keep you again.
:iconsomethingoncesacred:
About my dear friends. I love you all more than I could ever hope to express.

--

-Do you feel anything when you read this piece? If so, what?

-What did you like about it?

-What did you dislike about it?

It'd be wonderful if you could let me know what you think, dears!









© *Cugra
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:iconlauras45:
~LauraS45 Oct 10, 2012
ever so lovely :)
Reply
:iconsomethingoncesacred:
*SomethingOnceSacred Oct 10, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Thanks very much, dear!
Reply
:icon0hgravity:
*0hgravity Oct 10, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
lovely piece. read like quiet encouragement.
Reply
:iconsomethingoncesacred:
*SomethingOnceSacred Oct 10, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Thank you very much, sugar ^^ I'm so glad you enjoyed it.
Reply
:iconyogateacher:
~YogaTeacher Oct 10, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
I felt it, calm hope brushing off ruin. The imagery is fragile and beautiful, and it's very well written.
Reply
:iconsomethingoncesacred:
*SomethingOnceSacred Oct 10, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Oh, my XD;

Thank you, so much! I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me, dear. And I'm so very glad you enjoyed it. ^^
Reply
:iconjuniorel:
~juniorel Oct 9, 2012   Writer
Sing to me
That pretty,
Tragic little song.
The one about how
She broke your name
And took your bones.

That right there. That's my favorite part. That part is haunting. I love the way you traded name and bones from the verbs that would normally go with them. It was just jarring enough to induce thought. Got me asking questions of the piece and reading it more closely to try and discover the answers.
Reply
:iconsomethingoncesacred:
*SomethingOnceSacred Oct 9, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Oh, gosh XD;

Thanks, so very much, dear! I'm really glad you liked it so well. ^^

Originally, I had written it in the reversed order, the one that you would think it would be written in, but it didn't quite seem to fit the meaning I was trying to go for. So, I switched them, and it made much more sense... At least, to me lol

Thank you for sharing that with me, though! I love being able to read other people's thoughts and perspectives that way. ^^
Reply
:iconanonymous-yet-again:
~anonymous-yet-again Oct 8, 2012   Writer
this is really good. it's kind of scary at the same time as it's comforting, like i thought being taken past the farthest horizons would have to be being killed; i mean how else does a caged bird escape? but it's a nice thing; like gentle murder?
but also it doesn't have to be read that way. and it's nice because the speaker is like comforting by asking to be sung songs, like making the other feel more important or something.

this is a very vague comment but so are my thoughts.
Reply
:iconsomethingoncesacred:
*SomethingOnceSacred Oct 9, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
It's not vague at all! Hahah, what a very unique way of looking at it; thanks for sharing that with me. ^^ I love hearing about different perspectives like that, so this, being so strikingly different from my own thoughts, was a real treat for me, thank you!
Reply
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