Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
How old are you my child?
I said im twenty one.
She said she likes us wild,
She said she likes us young.

She said that every morning,
Before her beauty dies,
She stands in from of mirrors,
Looks at herself and cries.

She told me that one night,
When she was just 18,
She thought she was the light,
She was the nocturn queen.

Same night she met, she told me
A man she didn't know,
He told her all must die,
"Your beauty'll have to go".

Hello, I am the devil,
Wishmaster of the night,
Don't cry my little sister,
I'll make it all go right.

But I need you to help me,
One soul of yours I need.
Imagine every night,
You'll be again 18.

How old are you my lady?
She said she's 51,
And I saw something shining
At corners of her eyes.

I said "I'll meet you some day"
"Not day", she said, "some night
A beauty with no soul
Is shamed to see the light".
(c) Vadim Bravo 2002
That panting belief of men;
a thirst for that which fills the glass,
beckoning the hand to grab the cup
like the itch moving the mind
to believe in
what?
Whether or not it’s enough we still fill that cup;
with some things,
others put in nothing.
Grab your cup and get drunk, get crazy,
love the world who is a capricious lady saying,
"Have one on me, fill it with everything!"
It’s a prayer without word or plea, the sound of everything ringing inaudibly.
It’s the power of song pursing lips to kiss dreams where we believe.
The canvas of our body, mind and soul
where we draw the ink,
imagine the dream,
and become reality.
The moment when the pen is the same as the beast starving for a feast only fit for men.
The same as the artist holding onto their vision.
The same as the language translating the soul within.
The same as the stars burning away the wick of entropy that ends the same as it begins
insofar as all finite things have their dreams in essence of their being
and yearn for infinity.
I dodge most every postcard      
to be washed away in defeat                                                      
because there's something                  
about self destruction                
that keeps the world off my reality        
other people spitting dust bunnies
when they speak
clouding my language with their foul mouthed debris
becoming a mountain of dirt
I can't get over
these words
for real
aren't me
I
am
becoming
a valley where I hide between
the outside of everybody
and my wildest dreams
From the tops of moments
I breath
in slippery slopes
and hold for backporch memories
the neighbors are away
so it's ok to get loud and free
my darling there are
the cattails from your mamas creek
connected to the dots
that I trace back through memories
from my perch upon now
my junkyard soul
noticing wheels that are missing
from the things they were made to roll
into a tire swing
into racing streetlights
for scraped knees turning to
children remembering a wedding ring
because we told them marriage was how you take honesty
and make it concrete
before we took their honesty
and made it history
I
am trying to build something
that wont blow away with the leaves
oh I turn red blushing blood though my veins that are like trees
bound to be framed in some hillside autumn landscape of me
with words that have always been too vague
to translate my name
but as I grow that's subject to change
as is everything
so I'll consider of what I am made
and all that water may wash away
all of desire's delays
turning fatalistic denial
into some authentic decay
Electric flowers
grown for all the homes, people
have made from midnight
Ushering alms for themselves
In the form of addiction and fist fights
thinking back to the first time
You ever felt alive inside your own life
Saggy skin that sheds
reluctantly in the daylight
A body that's an anvil
Under a temperamental sun
that we no longer need for our gardens.
inlove with a girl who breathes like
snow so light, it is almost
nothing, nothing at all

inlove with a girl whose skin rubs against mine as
a tongue fondles peaches(cling)

inlove with a girl who sighs like the crest of a wave, falling
to meet the rest of it's body(russsshh)

inlove with a girl whose move-
ments collect eyes like her hair collects
rain or her toes collect sand

inlove like I am
inlove, like I am
inlove
Why should I?

I am a being.

I am being ordered.

I am being compelled.

Directly

And indirectly,

with whatever means

at their command.

They have the schemes.

They have the means.

To use me.

To abuse me.

But why should I?

I am a being.
Poem II
(Written to be spoken to babe-y)

When it comes to putting what you are
into words
do you trust yourself?

I understand there are many ways for another to mistake their symbols
for your sound

I've been wrong about more things than I care to count

and I still try to count on all the things up in the air that I haven't nailed down

but my love is so unreal it's getting kind of hard to figure all this unreality out.

Harder than stilling shaky hands from all my mental pacin around

and impossible as that one poem I read to you aloud.
You know the one
 about how heaven and hell
are also just trying to figure each other out.

I can imagine the view
 from up there and believe me
I know my sleeves shouldn't be so ******* filthy

because from this distance and from what I wear, some may confuse 
my heart for the muck

all the love I've tasted with a pinched nose trying to stem disgust

I could never wash any of it away 
but



I should remember

I do remember and recall much

that has made me into someone I love.

Born of dirt and trying to be enough.

Just two in the running tally, 
of my error.

There is no volume control for my daydreams

and there are no knobs for this kind of radio

so when living poetry around the clock

you either you dont like the song 

or your driving foot gets a little heavy and the windows come down.

Faster, faster coming to me faster 
across lines that blur into the trees

that blur into the blues. 

My favorite song,
a kindred color that without

I wouldn't be able to see you

Dancing on the edge of my vision 
blowing bubbles in a see through room

I've made out of the words beauty and grace

glued together with tiny memories of your face.



I remember.



One eye staring from over a pillow full of a moment we'd rather stay awake for.

A tangle of your hair bolting across your cheek I liken to drinking black coffee  

and those electric lips owning the words that almost drown

in the wake of your thunder

but I'm listening

and oh god I hear you. 

Sounding down my spine with lighting striking from your mouth into mine.

Under a storm of blankets and mixed limbs that become the eye

A perfect stillness

a weightlessness

where there's not enough gravity to go around 
for all my weatherfall still there

rain snow and shine stuck hanging mid-air 

you are a timeless weather woman

with no need for percentages

because you give me

what I've always known to be real

that the other forecasts 
predicted only to exist in a halo

eternities chance approaching zero

the circle that's but a fraction of an instance colored in you totally

smothering me slowly in a symphony sparing no noise

impossible to be wrong about

the correct answer

nobody ever told me to jot down

and baby I've been tested

I graduated from broken records

and the bad side of town

from black sheep flocking to 
darkness
with clothes shaven from the light

Top of my class with a degree in acceptance

at a university where we take left and use it to make right.

My friend, these are some heavy credentials 

so I hope you understand the weight 

behind my certainty in your footfall.

I'm some authority on mistakes and heartbreak

so treat me like a scholar 

or a weatherman with forecasts known to account for everything and the decimal.

A dotted i

Hear me place the you in me down to a point

the one I'm making

with all I've ever been wrong about

beckoning us

but never doubt.
A runaway
ducking landlords
just back from timbuktu
containing
           wild
wild
                                     and some rite of
                                                              ­                                              some protective voodoo
dialing for

d
o
l
l
a
r
s

I don't have

I just gotta get through

Beggars call collect and the alms are anyone's ears,
anyone
will do
The receiver,
eternity's choir
Singing
soggy
sorry
gloom
The preacher man's a liar
Just tell God to let me through

My tongue
becomes
                                                  ­    a sublimated jazz singer                                    spitting
my soul impromptu
some
R a p i d f i r e

c                o               n               f              e               t               t               i

At a party where everyone is mute
Their silence unsettling
the space between rings, music

I'm going to

lose it

stop

traffic has gone bebop
Outside                                                    ­             the booth
While the rain is trying at the blues
But I know that song
and I know me
it's way
out
of
tune
Singing, Hey mama!
I'm so sorry I flew the coop
I should of changed from my pajamas
But I still had some furious flu
So I got
down
with
the
sickness
Because the cure won't                                  
                         ­               fit in a tablespoon
Even still,                                                        
I hope to get through
                                                         ­                                the kind of hope thats put me
At the

bottom of                             the

booth

Bi     t  i n        g  
                                
                   ­                     ankles                                      ­                                                            
                                                    
                                                                ­             moon              
Howling
                                    at the
        
Giving
up
to
a
gambit.

Who am I even talking to?
Next page