[poetry] terra incognita, a collection of poems about bleeding poetry

[perfectworry]

title: Terra Incognita, a collection of poems about bleeding poetry
rating: G
community: NaPoWriMo
summary: a collection of poetry from my participation in NaPoWriMo 2014

i. Terra Incognita (1 April)
Unfold for me, a map on my table,
lay out for me trail through alien continents
full of desire -

for longing, I understand;
and loneliness.

ii. red delicious (2 April)

you make a poem look easy
like bleeding
but really it’s like pulling teeth

perhaps if you are beloved of monsters
and sinners
and saints
you can sit down at your typewriter
and bleed

at odd moments
poems simmer beneath my surfaces
fragile apple skin
separates us

inside I am both bitter and sweet
but I have bills to pay
and I do not bleed poetry

iii. seafoam (3 April)
sticky with humidity like melted candyfloss
a burn blossoms across my shoulders
sweat slipping down my spine

salt skin when I crawl out of the ocean

iv. Inkheart (9 April)
now is not the time
for bleeding poetry
but stories crawl underneath my skin
itching to get out

stories carved on my bones
and scrawled on my back;
songs in my eyes and
poems oozing from open wounds

v. six things i need to survive, part i

i, books;

all that is left of me in my childhood home
is a room full of dust and books,
crowding on shelves, ordered in a secret pattern,
stacked on floors in teetering piles, towers
reaching for the heavens

when i moved to the city, i only packed one book;
it was full of strange magic and i forgot my own
at immigration; i left that all behind,
as though i could shed my own mythology
like a skin, fold it up on my closet floor with little girl dresses,
and old halloween costumes

i walked through the streets in a daze, eating only
glamour; pomegranates won’t fill you up when you are a girl
of skin and bones and ink and dust
but i stopped eating anything but the food of the underworld, until

starving, i woke up from a hundred-year-long dream
and consumed every book i ever loved to fill the void left over
ravenous, i ate books for breakfast until i bled poetry

i built a nest of books, hoarded stories inside and all around
hid fiction in cupboards and under beds
always tucked a story under the blankets and another in my purse
to eat in case of emergency; suck out the sweet insides, let words
drip down my parched throat like water in the desert of our love

familiar pleasures; i rebuilt myself from the
soul, up; remembered who i was on the inside:
a girl with stories carved in her bones,
written in her blood,
passed down from a father who ran away to join a circus
and a mother writing a memoir i unwrap like a present
every year for christmas

stolen like a magpie’s treasures
from every book i’ve ever read,
i cast a sword and shield of words

and braver, stepped out to do battle
in the world where i was born

vi. fairytale retellings (17 April)
spilling stories out from my fingertips,
pricked that spindle long ago
fell asleep from dreaming
woke up to a thorn bush

gathered nettles growing,
wove them into flaxen gold
to save myself from this spell

i couldn’t guess her name, she who
spun gold from straw before my eyes,
twisting a thing from itself
into something else

she offered me an apple, poisoned
to survive it’s bite, i changed;
a dragon who burned the cinders
of the girl with glass shoes
i gave up my voice

cut open by the knife of forgiveness
i bled my poems out into the ground in tithe

Comments

[jiyuu]

i adore your imagery
like nectar from blossoms
that i can never have enough.
poetry is
food is
drink
is everything
is life itself
and you bleed it
like rubies.

(Sorry... i got inspired. forgive me for like leaving you a comment of poetry like a weirdo.)