I want to put my fingers
in your soil,
sift until you're ready
to be planted
deeply &
I will lift you up,
drop my precious seed,
rooted into your sweet furrows.

Viking ground. The belly of
Norway. Music like thunder
Keeping whole villages awake.

Swords, spikes, norse jewelry
And black, black metal
Of the kind that honours

Those who were here before
These hundreds of metal heads
And contemporary heathens.

She works in the beer tent,
Throwing long gazes my way,
That I return.

She took
Me
Here.

Stars above a stage lit with a
Thousand shades of neon that
Emphasize the

Ground locked mist; breath
Of Odin and His believers.
I love this music; this brutal

Noice within system. I love these
People. They seem scary from
Afar, but share a brothership

Within their worship.
Enslaved is one of the most
Famous bands within the

Genre. The guys still join the
Roadies, clearing the stage
From their gear.

Netanya
sits crossed legged
in the bar
(Irish bar
off Whitehall)

her red dress
above knees
the black shoes
pointy toes
and flat heels

I sit there
beside her

loud speakers
easing out
the music
of Ireland

what a night
she utters

never had
such a night

I sip beer
she sips wine

did you count?
I ask her

studying
her features
the slightly
broken nose
now mended
the green eyes
holding me

5 or 6
times it was
she tells me

feels like it
I tell her

she takes out
cigarettes
and offers
one to me
then herself
and lights up
and inhales

I’m 40
she tells me
but I feel
years younger

she looks it
her dark hair
set down loose

and you are?
she asks me

28
I reply

she smiles now
not thinking
about her
bald husband
miles away

we had ***
in the small
hotel bed
many times
seemingly
almost one
big session

then she moves
uncrosses
her fine legs

glimpse briefly
Eve's Eden
paradise
sight of thigh
paradise
ease a sigh.

Her tears are all she knew,
and from this day forward she flew..
to be no more; she mourns
simple white roses,
tangled and torn
in her golden hair that poses
her crown of thorns
bloodstains that disclosures
her angelica face of bedlam dreams
so torn to be free, oh so free
angels fall sometimes even cry
and maybe just maybe angels die....

Debbie Brooks 2014

Would you please take my hand?
I know it's cliché but let's run away from here
No let's walk
It'll give us more time to talk.
On nights like this I wish you were closer.
The thin air is turning colder again.
It brings back the memories I don't have of you.
And I'm not sure what I'm feeling but it won't go away.
So please would you take my hand and walk somewhere with me?

I don’t really believe in a one true love or living happily ever after, but I believe in being good for each other.  I believe in choices and standing by those choices.  I believe in understanding promises and making them. I believe in having someone important enough in my life to make me enjoy compromises.

I don't know how to define love or where the checklist for forever is.  Love can't be weighed or measured on a scale, so I've decided to measure love by the way I was before and the way I am now.

I'm not losing myself in you like I usually do, I'm finding myself.  You don’t make me who I am or change who I am.  Instead, you remind me of who I am.  Maybe I would have found myself without you, but I like that you were by my side when it happened.  And I choose for you to stay there.

it's half-past our time
and i'm still listening-
a song about getting lost
in the canyons

-and the divide
seems much greater
than before-

if i don't look at you
maybe you won't see me

and i won't have to lie
here still
unmoved by you
and your kindness

i don't get lost there
anymore.

r ~ 9/8/14

Sundays
come in two flavors-
hallelujah
and goody powder

goody powders
go down easier
with flavored water

not the **** variety
but strawberry
or cherry

wall clock
goes ****
****
where's my ****

hallelujah-
FIRE

r ~ 9/7/14

I’m going to live life until it bursts—
softly place it between my teeth
and bite down until it pops
so its juices flood and trickle
out the corners of my mouth.

I’ll revel in my sweet, sticky mess—
stained cheeks, glazed chin—
leaving my mark on everything I touch.
Others will insist I clean up,
keep my hands to myself,
act
act like
act like a
act like a lady.

But as long as
there is life to taste,
I refuse to chew
with my mouth closed.

I find solace in the clouds
-she brings rain
to cool my brow

tranquil in my fever-
I close my eyes
and leave here

solace in tranquility.

r ~ 9/4/14

i thought i was holding your hand
but i guess i was holding your heart
you said "don't let go" 
i said "oh" as it hit the asphalt
do you think gravity knows 
that it makes people fall
does it know we go down hard 
because i think you broke the sound barrier 
on your way down to me
but i just let gravity send your heart
straight down to the street
i wasn't thinking 
or maybe i was
just not about you
i'm selfish
and so is gravity 
so i guess you could call it natural
and you can call me gone

[holyoak]

{I can live life unfiltered.

I preen and uncover the riotous feathers
I always felt I had to tuck away.

When I cause those laughs,
or at the very least, those grins,
it seems suddenly, I have swallowed
something much like the sun—
all of the lit space in its seams,
and I become bright,
unchallenged, and with purpose.

I live life proudly and profoundly undressed.

To feel comfortable in my own skin
will never be this natural in any other context.

I am rarely a creature of grace, but
when I feel those fingers
run down the length of my bare back,
I become a word so treacherously beautiful,
writers are too hesitant to pen it.

Wrapped up in those arms,
I find that I fit; I’m home; I’m safe.

I get an unmatched pleasure out of
watching such a mind work—
in awe of how it knows when things fit together,
the way it peels, layers, creates, and stimulates.

No, seriously though, the mind thing?
[Nothing turns me on more.]

The same fears are shared—
of living a cliché and settling,
of pain and disfigurement,
but mostly of
endings.

I find contentment
in simply being held in the
silent repose of the morning
before my small world is awake,
and the street lamps are still
competing with the dawn.

It’s occurred to me that this has
made me into something marvelous
I didn’t know existed. }

Just know,
why I keep you around can’t be explained
johnny-on-the-spot.
See, when asked,
my little heart crescendos, and all of the words
rush to tangle on the back of my tongue.
I pull the phrases out, word by word,
and string them the way
they were meant to be read.

Don't be discouraged
by an answer of “I don’t know.”
It sometimes buys
the necessary time
for one to display the whole truth—
one that that lovely, whiskey-soaked head
can’t fully comprehend in that moment.

But maybe,
I keep you around
simply
*because.