[x]

Automatici.
"So where are you from?" The boy leans toward me, questions swimming in his eyes. I smile.

"Oh, I'm from Boston."

"No, I mean, where are you from?" My smile falters as I realize where this is going. It's an all-too familiar conversation, one I've been having since I was old enough to reply.

"Do you mean where was I born?"

"Yeah."

"I was born in China."

"Do you speak Chinese?"

"No."

"Does your family speak Chinese?"

"No."

He looks befuddled. I sigh.

"I'm adopted."

"Oh!" I see the light bulb over his head go off in a shower of sparks. "Do you know who your real parents are? Like, your real parents?" My temper flares. I stifle th

I Of YouI want you to break
and never bend for me,

see my history
spiderweb your brilliance
till you belong to me
(and I, to you)
utterly and forever

and know
you cannot stop this.

What Soft DreamsWhat soft dreams we lay -
What soft dreams, like infants put to rest -
Frightfully bare, and compromised,
Our kisses on their breasts.

We close our eyes and trust them safe,
Kept 'til break of dawn -
Forgetting that the night is fickle,
And dutifully, as long -

It safeguards some,
Covets others,
Moved by neither coin nor threat
Nor anguished mother's cry.

When your hands can mimic birdsWhen your hands can mimic birds,
you lose the need for sound.
A flight of words that bear no chirp
are none the less profound.

They don't perch on a pitch.
They don't possess the need .
They fly until you've seen their song,
then silently recede.

No one could find more freedom than
the freedom granted flight.
No one can see more beauty than in
words passed left to right.

Like petals and leavesWhen she thinks of him, she thinks of tree branches:
spindly fingers spread out, stretching
in angles wide for handfuls of sky.

And she thinks of him.

She thinks of him digging his toes
into soft, damp sand,
wading in shallow depths before
being carried by crescents of the sea.

She thinks of him in a blur of curls, in the
warmth on her waist and the coolness on her lips,

pressing the memories and the maybes
like petals and leaves
to paper.

And she thinks of him.

I Took To Howling With YouI was shy at first, timid in my dealings,
I laced the trap against my throat,
sang sparing, tip-toed
around your poems.

The tone, the slow vibrating
from the shoots of my shoulders
to the gleam of polished talons,
it purred around inside me.

Oh the song, Coyote,
the same resigned call, it
paled before you, swallowed down its insides,
wept.

I took your little hand in my big hand,
flew out towards Crow, and for a while
My Love, there were poems
and the world was enough.

I took to howling with you,
down from the branches, safe
womb of the tree, I spread
dirt between my toes, sang happy,

sang the song of free,
your wild howl

Come Home: A PantoumYou'll always come back to me
when the lights in the far hills
are done searching. For, new beds

entice adventurers. Too,
when the lights in the far hills
come home, the homespun dream they

entice adventurers too,
but they can't. (Dream we're neither.
Come home.) The homespun dream they

turn pioneers to homebodies,
but they can't dream we're neither,
our wanderlust fit to turn

pioneers to homebodies.
We've always made love free, so
our wanderlust fit. To

turn ourselves towards our home
we've always made love. Free. So
when the last adventurers

turn themselves toward their homes
in faraway lands, I know,
when the last adv

Cheap fix, 360Unbound structure;
unhinged bones
locked together
with unsymmetrical
unfit screws.

None of these are meant to be here.
They are
cheap and shaven
and the
grooves are rusted.

There is no tool that can pull them out without breaking,
without collapsing
the planned out
unintended construction.

We had the instructions sure
and all the parts
but
in our fumble,
in the exchange of hands
of ALL the people who
intended to help us;

in all the accidents

(and

no one at fault
or
taking fault
for all our faults)

some fell beneath the table
underneath the drawer
into dark unreachable corners
so we worked with what we

Reverse Culture ShockFlying home was not flying home. Flying home meant grabbing the homing pigeon inside of me and twisting its imaginary magnet one hundred and eighty degrees to the north instead of southwards to Australia. The magnet still twitched stubbornly north even as the plane droned over Darwin, five hours before I finally reached home. Except it wasn't home. Sydney now looked as foreign as the glossy travel leaflets I grabbed from Singapore, its shine not quite matching the missing substance of my once childhood home.

"Thank you for choosing Singapore Airlines…I hope you will enjoy your stay in Sydney, or a warm welcome home."

Winter air slapped

IfWe can
draw lines and give them names
like elements
as they are discovered

Or etch into our skins
this soloecal desire
until it is impossible to tell
where words stop
and life begins.

I would

Find a common rhythm that includes
you in my arms, my hands
and lungs and thoughts
tracing the outline of you
entangled with me
colliding like two lost particles
locked in a shared gravity
drifting through the vacuum
of space.

I could.

Exhale, and
remember
sentence structure.

Send Me the Raintoday, they're all talking about the fires.
the people on TV, the voices on the radio,
the mouths that open and whisper
and softly touch tongues. even the sky is

revealing black plumes of smoke,
flaunting shameless and seductive curves.
the rain's been too dry and the lightning
isn't wet enough, panic is
rising out of control in this
burning city. that's

not all;
we have a crisis on
our hands- the balloons are
running out of air and even

the experts don't really know why,
and on top of those sinking rubber toys

my soul is losing moisture
faster than the crackling grass under the duress of flame.
i'm sta

October EyesSuch gentle colors drip across your freckled shoulder blades.
A quilt of puddled watercolors soaked in auburn shades.

Spun of golden rivulets and rinsed in autumn skies,
So many endless currents swimming through your lonesome eyes.

Brushing under fingertips and over shattered songs,
Unraveling like morning glaze against my paling palms.

With beauty like October hills and hollow as the skies,
The water drops against the earth will be our lullaby.

The SeizuresSkye has a seizure at dusk, and we're alone.
I hold her wrists
down
so she doesn't fall from her hospital bed,
turn her on her side and hit the nurse distress button
screaming for someone to help us.
She's shaking uncontrollably,
and the bracelets on her wrists move
in a discordant lullaby.
Then it's over,
and the nurses come and check her pulse,
her blood oxygen, her motor control.
She can talk again, but she's confused
and doesn't know who she is.
She can't move her legs.
I stroke her hair and tell her where she is,
help her slow her breathing, and help the nurses.
Our roommates return, and she starts seizin

la musica dulceheartbeats are psycho-
-somatic, dear;
the ocean has swallowed
me whole.

hay una guitarra bajo
mi almohada, y
sueño de música cuando
estoy solo.

you came here with
city smoke in your lungs,
and i
forgot to breathe.

if only, if only.i.
we drove nowhere
and we spoke a language
that nobody understood
underneath a foreign sky
blanketed in the scent of pine.

ii.
you told me
my eyes were like envelopes—
because they were always
opening
closing
fluttering to the sound
of breaking seals
and ink stained fingertips.

iii.
i told you
we should run away
to a new land
with new faces
because
i was enamored
with people i had never encountered
and places i had never gone.

iv.
you laughed at me
and said that
if i didn't spend
so much time with my head
buried in world maps
i would realize
that i was living on one.

v.
i remember
it rained that day
and the tea went cold
but the

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More from ~InkatMidnight

postmarked:Dear God:
     Here is a picture of us conquering Rome.
     That's me in the white hat, I know you
     haven't seen me in about eight years
     since that time you got mad and didn't listen
     since that time that you showed me and my brothers
     your back

     I've aged and this smile you gave
     me and my knees (for bowing) are
     slinking toward the ground. Those

sleeping coals.I assembled them, arranged them in our stone ring
before the sun was off work, before he was fading
donning his pajamas
while he was still up watching the 6o'clock news, I was
making charcoal patterns, flowers, squares,
stars and hearts, preparing for the sun to yawn
nod off and leave us to our living
My hands, powdered and gloved in coaldust,
are a testament to the way I want to
invigorate you with my drowsy dollface
and the midnight fire reflecting from my eyes.

You're the type of person I dream about in history class,
when everything seems laid out like a doctor's diagnosis: you're picturesque
despite your halfjoking hopeless

goals.It will be release when magenta petals scream, plucked by the roots
as they whisper my name

I will be fulfilled on the night ashes fall from our frontlawn cottonwood at the sound
of my beseeching soft footfalls

The end is when the rag-polished sky splits at my forefinger's stabbing and lightning is at
my fingertips because who holds the keys of eternity?

Dear Lord.If I am a wildflower, give me the widest purplest wings

If I am a knockout, let my smile really pack a punch

I work too hard, God.
It's funny how you hold
together the universe
and spinning Saturn and
Pluto never gives you
breakdowns

But here I am, scratching at dust,
sweating to cultivate a mindgarden
where even Yahweh treads lightly
and here is nightdark and failure
and a shortage of time

If my life is shorter than the du

twelve a.m.garrett on a springfever day is
the flipside of the coin as

i was yours and your fear was your getaway car,
you were just a child

i emptied my pockets of snot-soiled tissues
dropped my dauntless drops, my tears
which burned right through the front cover of your lifehistory
wrinkled the pages, it sits unevenly
awkwardly on your memoryshelf,
poor, poor boy
it cracked his reputation when he read (peepholes into the Lost behind his
afterschool barbell war muscles)
it ripped the roof from his stormshelter,
it slit a hole in his trashbag, his baggage, his waste
but he couldn't resist tearing through the
pages of Always Lost, and he

exhibit.Nanny thinks the carpet is too soft
to be my torturecage

and the sofa and endtables are poor
jailbars, but we

are feline and we're too tough to care
bigsister and littlesister are lioncubs today
baby lionesses, authentically,
we even lap milk from
ceramic bowls, bellies swollen from
the orders we give: 'emily, you're the

zookeeper.
Get us more milk.'

She hates serving us, she's only four
but she's getting strong and someday
she'll earn predator status.
(give thanks that we do not consume you, emily,
your fingers peek through the cagebars and
they are white and young and blood
is sweeter than breastmilk)

Roar. We are learni

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Submitted: October 12, 2012
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minister

by ~InkatMidnight, Oct 12, 2012, 11:35:06 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

'good morning,' the reverend bellows
'what a lovely collection of idols
we have gathered today'
they're a spectacle of a scatter plot on the pews

the bronzed hypocrisy of saved men sitting still,
saints on the neutral ground of benches
is an inconsistency i'll struggle
to reconcile with the jacob's ladders of rough-hewn grace
swooping in on souls or spirits
which have proven to be untouchable
not for sale in even the blackest of markets

speak, preacher. preach. i've always listened piously
and i'm not yet thinking of sunday dinner:
will the chicken be hot will the apple crisp burn

i mimic transcendence of the physical
i, being the gatherer, have bypassed the stone age
for lyres and flutes and lips; our white robes-
i suppose they suit me.
i imagine my forehead set in the grave constitution
of a saint who worries not about the anticlimactic
pressure of dry, even lips
contrasting my graphic fire-fantasies,
devil's work unfit for a faithful child

preacher, name your text.
i'm not a salem girl but i'm afflicted
the opposite of love's indifference
i savor every word i steal
i speak with proud, rounded lips
and there are spectres in my storage tunnels
who still care, who still wail
will we stumble before we're blessed with means to soar

who, pray tell, is the evil one?
how do i know, how do i know
i'll start over and start over and start over
and say, thank you god, i've emerged wiser
but presently, watch me fall from grace
watch me file out, i'll shuffle away
from a dire warning of a benediction,
an empty jar of clay
burning for reconciliation:

you are your body
you are your soul

i cannot live for a god defined as paradox.

ministerby ~InkatMidnight

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

deep thinking
age-old beliefs
paradox as truth?

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-11-20

minister by ~InkatMidnight ( Suggested by *UnspecifiedUnknown and Featured by `thorns )

~~love 0 0~~

joy 1 1

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

*tulinuotio Dec 26, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

This is great.

Makes me think of the time when I still tried to be Christian...

~InkatMidnight Dec 29, 2012 Student Writer

and how did that work out?

*tulinuotio Jan 6, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Quite badly, the self-condemning part made me miserable. Nowadays Christianity reminds me of a cruel angel with a sword of fire - haunting images.

~InkatMidnight Jan 6, 2013 Student Writer

that's exactly what bothers me about it... that confused people ruin a beautiful message and make it repulsive to so many people.

*tulinuotio Jan 7, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Yeah...

~InkatMidnight Jan 7, 2013 Student Writer

yeah?

*tulinuotio Jan 7, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Well, I sort of agree. I think Christianity teaches valuable things about for example modesty and self-sacrifice for the good of others, and interpreted by a humane priest or by a person who is not too zealous, it has a special aura. Distinguishing neighborly love from co-dependency can be hard, though. However, nowadays I prefer not to be affiliated with any single religion, I think different faiths lead to the divine in their own way.

~InkatMidnight Jan 10, 2013 Student Writer

and what exactly is the divine?

(1 Reply)

*archelyxs Nov 21, 2012

You are beautiful, and this is beautiful.

I find that there's a lot of physical space between the surface of your text and the internal fire that fuels it. You have this profound curiosity, and your words are this searching, this beautiful searching, sometimes scratchy and winding like searching tends to be, but descriptive of the journey you are on, and beautiful enough to give the journey its own meaning.

I want you to read these:
[link]
These fragments are very important to me and I hope you find dearness in them. This is my favorite translation, (Please excuse the comic sans...please.)

I think that as you go on in your discovery you will start to see this distance close in on itself, get absolved into the brightness of your being, and starting from this point of so much talent that you start from, you will get to use the words that write galactically with the appropriate success and gentleness.

Belated congrats on the (another?) DD, and I love you.

~InkatMidnight Nov 30, 2012 Student Writer

what does this distance sound like?

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