There used to be poems in you
that you would beg me to read,
bending your body over me like a shell,

but, now, another tears the poems from your bones
while I still carry your sonnets on my skin
like a Rorshach test of regret.

~ Keighley Perkins

the cassandra by ness bloo

i suffer of passion.

as if i must slowly move like winter. white

going quiet, expressions; mornings so fragile, they rupture

me. i exist in you, in everywhere

else

and. .. . .

... my hand mimics yours.

a disciple for an hour.long angel

to the delirium               where

there are no angels. i am scared of everything.

and yet, it's not the cold that i fear or the hunger

of my growl, although i am a beggar at your threshold,

it's just that my fingers feel

strange.

i 

tear myself so easily, unpoemed.

to live to love you to lose me.

your eyes tucked in the dark of my belly.

i wonder at the window of the sea and if it, like we,

                         will remain foaming. 

in the flesh.roamed truth, i protect myself.

from the envious girls in corners.

i see them wearing summer's heat.

offering something more than 

handfuls; they siphon my skin's scent.

it must smell like you by now,. 

there has been much impatience in my body.

it rages on the end of a stick. 

and here i am in the birdsong,

demanding silence. my mind makes believe, 

like i know, the sounds must be of high lovers

in trees, flying and awaying from their tiny skeletons

because they must be, must be. ..

... ..sparrows that denied themselves

their own trembling souls, to slide only

undrunk, untasted, over a vulturing death,

half.stretched over half.light, half the way to eden. 

cling.

i breathe on the pillow

                                 words not yet here

i breathe on the pillow        words that could be hers 

i was the one who was dead in the waiting

water, was the one that imprinted air with my

blood. 

i trace the places you've traveled and i feel

their gravity. am i a ghost that can be smeared across

the bathroom mirror? where i watch you watch

me and what is it that makes me unlook pretty.. ... 

these things go graveling in me, you see

these insecurities tie me, to your eyes 

she whispers:::

something about moaning beasts

with great morning eyes and curves i cannot manage.

i try

i try

pushing  

i make myself a queen in a kingdom's bed;

lily to sheets, crusader to embraces, limping to martyrdom,

as if it were only a matter to gather the right flowers.

would that make me

                            the way you cannot cry?

would that make me forever?

if i died again, could i be. 

only

only

only

there

must not exist such a thing. 

i know you

are not disturbed by a woman's smell,

and you might very well love small fears;

but there are things.. ...

                                i want to hysteria

about how the seasons will change into murderers

which makes no sense, i am sure.

soon, the girl will come to a burning point

and i am afraid you will watch her burn. 

you will survive the massacre and adore the ash.

you will manifestly turn black from the beating of eyelids. 

/ 

slanted body,

as if a kiss uncrossed

and undescribable 

so soft it will destroy us.

and it isn't as if we haven't been this close.

i just need you closer,

nearer to, so you can hear, 

the maddening

this must be the reason

women moan, scrape, and arch;

we let someone speak through us. 

               possession is such as.

only

only

only 

have you heard me

yet

making myself small enough.

wild enough, and yet i still will

scry at you to see if i am

down to your bones

yet...............   

                                                    i fear you

             turning away. 

i will still find you standing

alone and surrounded                     and those girls in corners

searching for smoke                       so quiet in the disarray 

your fingers wide open in the wind                                                     and i will crush the world

i will shatter with proof.

i will go blind with ablution.

i will rush to the end.    

             writing only

of a voice, of shimmers, of loves,

of a million syllables that start

to speak but stop

afraid of losing, but writing

        only

that i counted,

barely moving my lips,

every time you might have said me

           without even knowing it; 

i must've given

more than birth

to this.               

     that is the reason for the screaming.

..nimbus. by Ness Bloo

... .now
i am in fugue
across what i'm sure
some victorian poet
called the 'salt estranging sea'.


where those things
scried are conducive to symphonies
called daybreaking; a treble note
of being light. between the taste
of dead molasses and quiet murder.


a naked woman wearing my face
turns her eyes live like
winter, like civilization,
like poverty or language.

she and i give testimony.


and after, i become natural prey
for inhumanity; like grey pornography.
my body half the scene:
sizzling, half.strapped, whipped like a snail.
all throat and lungs.


shift blades, shift skirts. ...
and i supine, all opium and the only
smoker is dementia::
forgetful goddess
in my creamfilmy noir dress; cut.
it has been my one good dress.
i could bury my children in it.
go missing for days.
why i took it off never
matters; it wears me
down
too sexennial to be a little girl.


rosarium, obscene almost
with bog violet, unbearable purposeful
amnesia.
i forget what
i came
here for.


but it smells private.

i could drag the living
over the dying, no hide nor hair for myself.
.b.l.inking back rorschach and rohypnol.


i, a trellis of this
skeleton, blooming gunbarrels: clouds
of charcoal on the carpet, burn.
my pierced and gushing madonna on the rocks.
my beloved raped and spread for the mirror.


snorted
through this
vision, i fit
smaller, deeper, insider.
staring at the birthmarking.


scavenger's daughter: i know
the orifice of illumination:.
the transient fog on the morning
where i lay in the slightest
space, less than one, more than
too often i laugh at the ways to discount
a person. ....
a pox on the polished darkness.


something must be torn.
i rise along the skellig,
ravenous on the edge, awake
and awakening to open the blind.
find me closer and teach me
closing; losing
each suffornicating word.


belonging
invisibly
in the smearing
rain of impossible

:script.

winter in the lamb's warm blood

the air in
here is tight and sore;
punctured, sudden, and punctuated
by breath.
helix.er
and pussywillows bend
towards rivers. .. frosted.
and i want the dead trees to drop your eyes
from my shearing, from my alabaster body
because i, in fear, understand how in half.truths,
one broken lamb is as good as
the broken limbs you imagine.

another kind of lovemaking is here.
love is death enough; am i even there?

in these
dim peripheral darks, we've strung out
stars and wrung our sleeves free
of string.quartered hearts....

child of vixen's woods, a lover
of poisons that are not mine own.

so i keep the whitest stain
under my tongue, where words oleander
based on the pure taste of something. .
. .nothing. .
i can bite back.

i live to love, to leave, but i never
either; one life
or the other
so swift it moves proverbially
horizontally
across my throat........ as if
it knows the boundaries of a girl
all akimbo and vertigo.

..............you know
the circumference of euthanasia.
and how quickly to let me go.
my flesh is softspoken.
....outside, i am a thousand bitten skins.. .. .
....inside, an abyss of uncivilization.. ... ...

i've asked that you seduce me
whistle.thin and hot with home.
i've written it in red like jesus.

................
......we can share
.........a mouth.




hurry, now.

bury me another
wintertime.


by ness bloo

minor deities by ness bloo

*^slam

there isn't a darker name for our kind of words:
off.kilter, sacred.shaken, blasphemous.
inevitable.
it creates a stumbling orphan,
awake at her first funeral
and who was she besides the thud
under your fist.



the smell of sabotage

standing on an apology
made of graves.
iris, iris,
what did you
see in the stare of last
lilacs


3rd attempt

that spring, he told me how.
to not fight about small things; they eventually bloom
bigger, like rosebuds, like water hitting pavement.
i said i always enjoyed storms
because they created imaginary bruises
behind eyes, like bolts of struck
lightning.

like rain on my face.


the colour black

when it did strike him, years later,
he fell down alone.
he'd been
taunting death too long,
and not only in his poems.....


that lovecraftian place

..........
i want him to not stop
.....
but if we had gone on, if we had dared,
on sheer buoyancy, we would have entered
that lovecraftian place
where stopping
only heightens the craze;
where the point
of contact shimmers
apocalyptic:
light neither of us knows is blindness.


closness

that was close.
they murmur, then count
off their small distances away from a drunk scene.
the swift electric current has seized.
the blue stones drowned them in their sockets.


RA and other small gods

thus the weeping endears her full
on his wide sly lips, helps her rise like a slain lamb
to more slaughter, next to the jackal.god, shaking
her mane of singed hair: what does he care.
******************
no....one...is aware.
as she becomes a child repeating the bad word,
and he is a god of the senses and
he wants to ruin her.
inside
the mind, a spotlight.
inside the spotlight............


trains and wreckage

we are smoke and metal, strange coils,
.. .. one of the shroud and one of the hurrying body.
this shape made by our turbulence finally is
a circle, collapsing and shrieking,
into the tunnel of vicious affliction.
we refuse to depart.

for once, if i can leave enough tracks,
i can hurt you back.. ...

:voice, God, simultaneous:


witness this

i chant...s low,
all joy and menace, closing in
on the debris, the bleak batik of bone
on one last expressionistic lipsplit.
nose to neck with viscosity.

and bumps, small
feminine circumferences, tight
and terrible; fingers to match a spider's
crawl, evil
in tint.

.................. .. .do i mirror you yet?


invoking latin

articulate fight.
unlearn every sound. soak it deeply.
every word i've swallowed grows, falters.
church is running late this eve.
mass held high.

ad Deum qui laetificat, juventutum meam.
no rest for the wicked,
from the needle.arm of twisted women.

i fear how you make me wind around the banister,
talking sepia over last suppers.
dies trae, dies illa. tantum ergo.

you bang my skull
against the rattling crib.backs.
dawn.
not even dawn will
make you fade from me, in blacking lustre;
even the ones i love,
in rosary cheeks and breastcrackedplates
just for this brief heartbeat,
..(pectoris pello pepulli pulsum es mortuus quod frendo..)
save me.
...................meus diligo
because i fear i will fade
in your hands,
die on us,
even as you recite,
in hope of resuscitation,
my actual name.

....... mary's breath, lily.of.the.valley, bleeding heart....


how to make a saint

white.throated me
thrown down
.
.
.
an army of mouths.
an array of murdered cleavage.

frightfully drawn,
towards four quarters .

there is no such thing as unmartyr'd faith;
so i pray mutely in your unrepentant ears.

listen to me.
did you. ..
.... ..... . . ...ever once hold out for my heart?

~ Ness Bloo

all you've become, a collection of songs, a playlist i only listen to somewhere after midnight, after rain, after too many glasses of wine.

("me with my red heart in the dark earth")

barefoot in the night, the coming restless stars; how, i sit with ghosts, midwinter magics, the darkening of the moon; a sacred thing.

the weight of knowing horrible things about a person so many seem to love; all the sad little reasons we endlessly tuck these things away.

a floating halo, a nimbus of fire & moonlight.

something in me is just darkened and heavy with grieving, moves with the slow meditation of waves. swollen with the ghosts of another city.

http://twitter.com/#!/undreaming

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression of something beautiful but annihilating. ~ Sylvia Plath

a deep breath from the ordinary
a starry eyed child of eden
falling in love with the magic of an innocent heart
a midsummer night's passion
resonating beauty
hidden in the crossroads of the universe

devastation is all that remains of war
& the twisted metal of one dying heart

...he remembers the rage that ruined our childhoods
dead prayer offerings in hidden hands of malice

'into the red river & under the sound' he whispered
'inversion comes full circle behind the shadows of the damned..'

through you I feel the heartbeat of the universe..

I could die tomorrow & because of love, your love, I will have known what it truly means to live..

I would wait for you on eternity's edge..

communion.

& yet.. at times I still feel helpless
childlike in rags & ruins
forgotten in the daze of existence

...he was born of silvered reveries
featherless wings of fallen angels
hellbent on living for love
...or dying

& he knows me as love
a dizzy chaotic of earth & heavens
rapture & life

he is the moth & I am fire
he is breath.less
I am.. less
less than a woman who wakes knowing this.. mortal shell is merely a soul's vessel
who knows that love saves..
& kills

that death.. is rebirth..
divinity
...sweet insanity

wasting the dawn
he leaves me fire white & breathless
with pretty insecurities
tangled in heartdreams
& whispers promises of a forever painted feverishly in the gasps of our passion..

prism'd
under ancient spirals of light
I am earth
I am hope
I am love
I am omnipresent
I am

his breath folded eternity onto my lips..

...he left my love to die in the mo(u)rning light
as if I was only meant to be no more than a memory
my tired eyes glazed in onyx corseted fire
shattered in whispers
scarlet lips humming in the tones of black

time colors the perception of memory