Raven-poetry - Tumblr Posts - Page 2

so it was my close friend’s birthday, so I folded her a thousand cranes and wrote this poem for her. She deserves the world, but for now I just give her a wish and spilled ink. Happy birthday, my love.

if you wish upon a star 

made of a thousand paper cranes

they’ll lift you up 

Into the sky and 

Fly you to the stars.

their thousand winged bodies 

will flutter against your skin 

like a heartbeat 

A ghostly tomb of 

a thousand trees. 

and you’ll dance in a dress 

made out of silent tears  

and broken promises 

and discarded ideals 

and innocent blood

and you’ll unfurl your dreams 

into golden silk and 

weave them into wings 

and fly with the cranes 

And they’ll whisper to you

make a wish. 

flicker

So small am I in Time’s tight fist, 

A singular match struck on stone. 

The drag of friction calls me into being, 

Only to flicker out as I am blown. 

Yet in this split second I illuminate more 

Than those who burn for centuries. 

My mere seconds compare to their hours; 

Time enough in my own eternity. 

Fleeting meaning against immortal being. 

Would you prefer to always be living? 

Mortals in their inevitable extinguish

see what the gods are always unseeing. 

Light the candle, slowly burning, 

Light it at the cost of me; 

How odd it is that I, so brief,

should teach the timeless how to be. 

fragments

I see you in fragments first, 

like the broken shards of an 

ancient mirror; the crinkle of

your eyes when you smile at me 

In its delicate elegance of 

hesitant joy. 

Then I see you, the whole of you; 

Like the pieces have been 

Rearranged, not a mirror but 

A painting that reveals your

beauty in your actions and

your words. 

How rarely we perceive our true 

worth in others' eyes--the light we 

carry without ever trying. You 

Look at your reflection and do 

Not see the beautiful being 

Whom I love. 

You’ve cut yourself on the shards

Of those you’ve tried to heal, 

Because they did not want 

Your quiet kindness. Yet 

You still dare to love with your

Entire being. 

Perhaps that is what I see in you—

A heart that longs to heal

The broken parts of the world

Faltering, cautious, yet despite 

Its stumbling, perfect in

Every way. 

So every day I choose this

To love you, to cradle every 

Delicate piece, to love you

Not despite your “brokenness” 

But because of every part that

Makes you.

kindred stars

night unveils her jewels at 

your askance, painting each 

star with patient detail; the 

heavens murmur to you and

gift you gossamer wings. 

climbing silken ropes of 

nebulae, delicate in their 

earthen creation, as if you 

are always reaching for 

the cosmos up above. 

You lift earthbound eyes to 

kindred stars—reaching, always

reaching, for a light that I

cannot see, yet—I want 

to see what you reach for. 

From corded aerie to stardust—

the velvet night spinning your 

dreams to eternity’s archive 

holding you in its arms; 

slowly—softly—gently…

daughter of dusk

daughter of dusk, 

selfish and cruel—

breaking, falling, 

her faces dual 

raw petals curling from 

cracked emerald eyes

nourished by tears 

and quiet lies

bleeding hope from 

thorn-lined skin—as

briar shields flower

as hands from help

don’t leave me please—

etched in starlight 

don’t let me go—

please hold me tight

then bleeding—bleeding; 

red slowly seeping 

lines upon lines while 

waiting for the reaping

but she’s right there

stay—leave—stay—please

is it—she—me—so wrong

you’re on your knees

just say it’s fine and

bandage the cuts

it’s just a bad dream. 

keep your eyes shut.

incomplete

Last night, I ate a grapefruit and it 

Tasted like you—bittersweet; 

Cut it in half, let one decay 

Let the other half be incomplete. 

“keep going,” they say, “time will heal,” 

put emotions away to the highest shelf 

and I guess it’s worked for me 

if the point was to lose myself. 

and now it feels like nothing is complete 

not the grapefruit I can no longer find

not your last wish, uttered in final sighs

and certainly not the living you left behind. 

gilded

gilded like priceless treasure 

but gold is so cold and 

so heavy to bear so plate 

it in unbreakable steel 

don’t let warm hands 

melt soft metal like honey 

oozing dripping spilling 

over like a brimming cup 

of wine trickling through and

staining the ground with 

gold, gold, gold like a

vein of fool’s gold and 

sunsets as they bleed into night and 

leaves in the autumn and 

the hourglass’s sands and 

the eyes of a deity who only 

watches the passing of time 

coldly—

heavily—

softly—

like the sun watching over 

the demise of the earth 

the solemn unraveling 

into dust and stars. 

spring dawn

You’re the snowdrop that delicately lifts 

Its head up from the melting snow—

The way first blades of grass push up

through the blanketed plateau. 

You’re the shy and rosy blush 

Of the briar’d, waxen rose; 

The golden warmth of apricity

and the hopping, playful crows. 

You’re the soft and dew-touched hush 

Of the leaves after the rain—

The deep bellow of white-winged geese 

Heading home—home—again. 

You’re the fragile, dainty dance 

Of the young and prancing fawn; 

The dappled light of komorebi 

From the slow rising of spring dawn. 

you. 

indescribable, ineffable—

every word for beautiful could fail to describe you. 

every phrase meaning i love you

ardent, luminous, so exquisitely ruinous

would fail, tottering and stumbling, 

to capture your essence. 

yet you’re like the silken, moonlit night; 

a swatch of deep velvet sprinkled with stardust 

like bright fireflies caught in dark amber

like stars you can touch, small suns in your hands 

because holding you is like the sun in my hands 

i’d give you the sun if you asked me to

each dusted freckle like a delicate kiss

star-kissed

we are all made of stardust but you—beloved—

are made of the seraphic, most radiant of stars 

of perfection cradled in the heavens’ hands. 

and I would know you 

if we were nothing but dust and ash 

after the unraveling of the universe 

i’d know you after the death of all stars

i’d know you in utter darkness or light 

i will always know you—

you.

apocalypse

If the world were to end

In fire or in ice

Or at our own hands

To fight a war thrice; 

You’d find me outside

With the night sky

Because after stars die

Their light reach our eyes.

how to be a saint

they expect much from you. they will touch your skin and claim your blessing. they will chant your name until their lips form it without thinking, until their tongues have memorized the way it tastes, until they have said it so many times that they’ve claimed it as their own. your name is no longer yours. it is theirs. it is divine, now. 

you, too, are divine. they will fall to your feet and you will feel the whisper of their lips caress your skin. benevolently, gently, they will graze fingertips across your face like they are touching the face of your god. this body is not yours anymore. it is of the gods. it is a vessel. 

they will not always be so gentle. they touch you with reverence, yes, but they are hungry. they are hungry for the touch of the divine for the gods for you. they will devour you with dripping lips and red hands and smile and say more. it is never enough. it never will be. they will slowly taste your flesh and tear you to pieces. your blood is not yours anymore. it is stardust and ichor and wine and ecstasy. 

the choir sings like angels with your name at every breath and you realize their singing starts to sound like screaming. why aren’t you singing? Sing for us. your voice is the gods’ voice. no it is not your voice you do not get to speak for yourself. you never spoke for yourself. your voice is not yours. 

your body is a temple. they will offer up food and drink and more gold than you will ever need. none of it is yours. the church will take it. you do not know what for. they tell you not to worry about it. worry will mar that perfect face of yours. do not destroy that body gifted to you by the gods, they say. do not be ungrateful. they have made you a perfect vessel for us. this is not the first time they have made a temple out of a body. haven’t you figured it out yet? you own nothing. nothing is yours anymore. 

they crave you like they crave anything they cannot have. you are intoxicating, addicting, your silken skin and sweet voice. they stare up at you like you are a god, blinded by the light. they do not realize they are looking at a corpse. 

how come you are not perfect? you were molded in the shape of perfect beings. you should be perfect. they want more. they need more. you are not enough. if you are not enough they will feast on your flesh and lick their lips and beg for more. can you hear them screaming? they need more. more. MORE. 

you taste divine. 

how to tell a story

How does one tell a true story? 

My poetry is not true. 

They are half-truths I decorate in flowers and sugar. They are little lies that I rip apart and chew and swallow and smile with blood stained teeth and say: look. I am an artist. I give you my heart and I chop it into fine pieces so it is palatable for you. I tear the flesh from my bones and devour it and spill my entrails upon the floor and make my carcass into art. Look at me and praise my pain. 

I say: I am a poet. 

This is a lie. 

I am not a poet. I am a broken human being who spills ink and blood upon pages. I am a thief who steals all the pain from others and take it for myself so that I may sing about my grief. I am not a poet. 

I say: I am a poet. 

This is a truth. 

I grasp at words and lay them upon my tongue and savor the taste of honey and decay. I spit them upon the page and create art. The words says what my voice cannot. 

I say: she was searching for home. 

I do not say: she would never find it. 

I say: the bloodied sheets pooled around her like snow around a dead bird and she wondered if she was dying. 

I do not say: society told her that she was a woman now and her body was no longer hers. 

I say: she was a soft down-feathered bird, fluttering her feathers, singing so sweetly.

I do not say: they’d broken her wings. They’d torn them off of her and flung them into the air. They said it would heal. It did. Her flesh forgot the wrongs they’d committed. Her heart did not. 

I say: she was an angel. 

I do not say: she had sinned too much to ever fly again. 

(I ask: But what is sin? 

They answer: the antonym to purity. You are not pure. You are dirty, dirty, dirty. You are tainted and evil and sinning. You have turned your back to God.

God? I ask. Plaintive. Pleading. Pathetic. Who is God? Why have I been condemned? 

There is no answer.) 

I say: God is real. 

This is a lie. 

I do not believe in a higher being. I have seen too much to look up at the heavens and say that someone watches over me, cradles me, guards me, loves me. The pain does not make me a better person, make me more whole, make me more good. It does not teach me to value what I have. It does not make me more beautiful. Fuck that. I make myself beautiful. 

I say: God is real. 

This is a truth. 

It is a truth when I look at you. 

It is a truth when I am on my knees begging—I love you I’ll serve you I’ll do anything for you because maybe if I beg for your love as I do a god then you will not leave me and you will not hate me and you will smile at me and say that I am good enough. 

It is a truth when I pick up the pen and write. 

It is a truth when I write about love and sweet kisses and fate and destiny and you. 

I say: I love you. 

This is a lie. 

You do not exist. You are some distant wish in my head for love and companionship. You are some shapeless dream of a perfect partner, of a perfect kind of love. 

I say: I love you. 

This is a truth. 

I love the idea of you. I love the idea that love exists. I love the idea of sneaking kisses, of stealing your scarf in autumn, of waking up in your arms, of soft dometistic love. I love that somewhere out there, you exist, and you are not perfect, you are not heavenly, you are not the most beautiful creature to grace this planet—but you are you and I love you. 

I say: let me tell you a story.

I say: this is all true. 

I say: this is all a lie. 

I say: that does not mean it is not real. 

I say: truth is a semi-permeable membrane. 

I say: this is how to tell a story.

I think that if you were to melt

You’d melt like sugar

Sticky-sweet

Molten—golden; 

Flaking on my lips and fingers

You’d melt like ice cream

Slow dribbling spilling seeping 

Brimming over the goblet

White wine (not red) 

seductively sweet

You’d melt like honey pouring 

Viscous and luminous 

Like your eyes in the sun 

Ah—the sun! 

The light—your light—

Your warmth like the sun

Like apricity—

Like sunbursts after the tempest

Golden sunshine spilling over

Like warm hands cradling me 

you touch me and

I’m burning

melting

for you.

First, her hands are cold when she touches you. Her lips are like the cool breeze of winter. When her fingers intertwine with yours it is like holding a corpse. When she exhales her lovely sighs ghost across your skin like fog. 

Second, you bare your throat for her, all jaw slope nape collarbone, all warm wet blood and soft skin. She runs her fingers down your neck, trailing down your skin like a half-finished sentence, tracing circles. 

Third, the pain is brief. Her lips graze your pulse, your heart caught between her teeth, and for a moment you are a rabbit in the jaws of a fox. Then it is her hand cradling your face, her skin against yours, hazy bliss and red running down your throat and her lips. 

Fourth, the moon is the only witness as she whispers my love will kill you, darling. You raise a hand to her cheek, red and sticky, and tell her she is beautiful. In the mirror, you are speaking to a ghost. 

Fifth, you are bleeding and she is hungry and you are dying in her arms. You are torn flesh and cut jugular and blood spilling out far faster than she can drink. You think she might be crying but it mixes with your blood on her face, on her lips, on her teeth. She cradles you in her arms, hands trembling. Her hands are pressed against your neck but your life still seeps between her fingers. 

Sixth, she is hungry. She is hungry and you are the only thing that can sate her. You look at her, bloody teeth eyes face skin clothes, red like blush on her skin, rosy and full of life, red from your blood as you die. You look at her and tell her she is beautiful. 

Seventh, she says your name. 

You do not respond. 

Pomegranate juice stains your mouth and it drips from your teeth like blood. I think i want to drink it and drink you and devour you whole. Persephone’s lips are stained with pomegranate juice and my lips are stained with your divinity. She eats six seeds but for you i would have eaten an entire pomegranate so that i could always stay with you, always taste you, always love you. Her mother wails her name in grief but i say your name like it’s a prayer and you are my god. Persephone smiles because she is free and you smile with your teeth and drag them against my skin and i can only think that this must be holy. I’ve tasted heaven and it’s your skin and your lips and your flesh. You kiss my neck and my pulse is between your teeth. The pomegranate juice drips down your body and i drink it from your skin and i beg for more. I crave you obsessively, madly, incessantly, desperately, hungrily. I want to taste your lips, your hands, your lungs, your ribs, your heart. Persephone is laughing as the dead surround her and whisper her name and reach to touch her and her vibrancy and i’m begging to taste you again because you’re the closest i could ever get to heaven. I think i’ll go to hell for the things i’ve done for you but i don’t think i care because you taste of ecstasy. I’m drinking your blood like wine and i’m tasting your flesh like I’m running out of time and it’s so intoxicatingly addictingly divine. I make a throne out of your bones and your fingers make the crown and your teeth are around my neck. I have tasted all that you are and i crave more.

You smile at me with bloodstained teeth. Offer me a pomegranate. I eat it.

you’re such a beautiful tragedy.

you’re so pretty

it hurts;

you’re just this sort of

painful pretty

you know—

the kind that makes you

sink to your knees in reverence

the kind that has you begging

knees bruised from crawling

the kind that’s doomed from the start

because you have more pieces of me

than there are stars in the sky

and I could drown in the tears

I’ve shed for you

but I’d drown for you

of course,

with your name on my lips

the words

I love you I love you I love you

a prayer—

because that lovely pain

makes this love

such a beautiful tragedy.

I fell in love with you in the summer. 

It was hot and dry and my lips cracked and bled every time I smiled. You made me smile a lot. I like to think it was a metaphor. You made me taste death every time I laughed. Or maybe life. I could never distinguish the two with you. 

Anyway. I dreamed of you, sometimes. You made me laugh and my lips would crack and bleed and you would lean over and kiss me. My friend said it means I desired intimacy but that the blood meant I was scared. She was into Freudian dream analysis. I never liked him, anyway. 

I guess she wasn’t wrong though. I dreamed about you more than I’d like to admit. In my dreams, you were poetry. In my poetry, you were the dream of you. I laughed and my lips bled and you kissed me and I tasted death. Sometimes you wouldn’t stop at kissing me. Sometimes you would keep kissing me, keep swallowing me, keep consuming me until you’d devoured me entirely. 

“Cannibalism as a metaphor for love,” I’d once said. “What do you think?” 

You’d made a face. “I think it’s gruesome. Romanticizes weird things, you know? Like those people who defend the serial killers ‘cause they think they’re hot.” 

I didn’t tell you that sometimes, I dreamed that I bared my neck for you, and that you’d torn it apart, my heart between your teeth. A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism. 

Anyway. It was summer and school was over and everything was golden. When the light hit your eyes right they looked golden. Sometimes they were dark, a soft brown like the piano I tried to teach you to play on and the damp earth after the summer storm. Sometimes they were blue like the sky or the sea and I was suffocating, drowning. When they were gold, they were like amber, sweet-sticky-thick, trapping me. Everything looked golden when you looked at me like that. I didn’t protest so long as you kept looking at me like that. 

It was your birthday yesterday. I wish I didn’t remember. I wish I didn’t text you even though you hadn’t talked to me in months. “Hey. Happy birthday.” It’s dinner time and my mom yells at me because I keep checking my phone. You text me the next day. “Thanks.” I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved or angry. I bite my lip. It’s bleeding again. “No problem.” 

You don’t reply. 

Anyway. I quit piano. I look into my father’s eyes and see you. Blue eyes that make me feel like I’m dying. “Oedipus complex,” my friend says knowingly. “You go after the familiar.” Sometimes I wish I didn’t remember your birthday. You didn’t remember mine. My father didn’t remember my mother’s, but he bought a girl a multi-hundred dollar gift for her birthday. She was closer to my age than his. You sent me a picture of yourself shirtless. My father sent a nude to her. I dated a boy just to see what it was like to be wanted. Maybe that’s why my father cheated. Maybe that’s why you kept talking to me like you could love me. It was summer and everything looked golden and I let you keep using me so long you looked at me like you loved me. I don’t know if I am more like my mother or my father. They are both unhappy. It scares me. Who am I?

Anyway. Sometimes I dream that you kiss me and I taste my own blood on your lips. Sorry about that. Sorry about the mess. Sorry that I bleed every time you speak. Sorry that I gave you my mess of a heart. Sorry that I loved you. I’ll keep bleeding for you. Just keep looking at me like that. Just keep telling me you love me. 

I fell in love with you in the summer. My lips cracked and bled every time you made me smile. I like to think it’s a metaphor. Maybe this summer I won’t remember your birthday. Maybe. 

It is august

It is summer; it is

Sticky-hot, the air so warm

It is like velvet over my skin

It is august, 

It is summer, 

and your lips

Are on mine, yes, 

And on my neck, yes, 

And I am saying your 

Name like it is holy

yes

And i am 

d

  r

   o

     w

        n

           i

             n

                g

in you, 

             yes

And I’ll admit that 

you’re the only god 

i’ll ever believe in, yes, 

And my heart is trying to

Escape its (rib)cage (yes)

You are e a t i n g  m e  a l i v e

And i am a rabbit on the altar

A living sacrifice 

your hands 

around my throat

Burning your touch is burning me i

am on fire fire fire 

You are the sun in my hands

And i am icarus 

Falling 

down

down

down

i'm in your bed,

my hands in your hair,

and i told you i could drown

in you so it's suicide,

so it's sunrise,

so it's summer it's august i was

faithless until i met you

(and i think i love you.)