Terra Nova' Writings

[terra nova]

[silently]

I found myself adrift in space, with echos all around
and wondered how I came to be so distant from the ground;
my eyes were on the milky way, some stretch of distant lights
a paint-stroke gashed upon the black and starry canvas night

I took the paintbrush, held it tight, and closed my far flung eyes
and widely spun it 'round the ever closer, darker skies
till nebulae and giant stars lit up and bathed my face
with warmer, softer, light that filled up every hidden place.

[terra nova]

[i]dreams in which you run and run and always stay in place

some nights i kiss my fiance in a dream and it tastes like springtime.
my front yard spins around us like a carousel,
daffodils springing up in circles at our feet.

i touch his cheek, "are you going to leave me?"
he smiles: "let's order out tonight"
now he's a baby in a birthday hat,
now i'm a bed sheet flapping in the breeze.

"are you sure you aren't going back to your home planet?"
he rubs cake and ice cream into my face,
he doesn't answer me.

[/i]

[terra nova]

random chance

i used to write poetry
about hurricanes and
funerals,

about people
who have never known
or loved me-

now I write about
someone else's pain
because it is easier
than conceptualizing
my own

when i talk to god,
it's like
picking at a scab-

if you could see my soul
you wouldn't want
to hold it,
either

[terra nova]

Tissue And Sinew

some nights, i'll see the moon
marooned in an indigo sky

and it spins to me a daydream
of jagged vines
hooked over my collarbone

like an anchor,
thorns pushing a crescent
into the slope of my sternum

carving initials
that can't be swept away
by the rush of the tide.

[terra nova]

emptied

Draped in fleshy attire
showcased
under storefront lights,
a hidden gem.

Evening falls
the shutters down
I'm tricked again.

Beneath the fabric
wooden hands
are lacking warmth.

I am a mannequin.

[terra nova]

I Empty Myself Where I Can

Sweet leaf on the water
won't you comfort me?

Aging petals in your hair
you turn to me, and there are
rusting metals in your stare and you
are looking everywhere and you
are looking at me.

I hold onto your words for I am waste
"but you can't help it", she said
"Take your life and shelf it 'till the right one comes along."
The one you hear about in songs.

Listen to my fingers
All signs refer to you
and your design tells me what's blue
and what is true.

Sweet leaf on the water
I will comfort you.

[terra nova]

waste of space

the light is wavering
shying from an eternal midnight
but a glow, the flowers bloom in its death--
luna sitting on a nimbus's breath

an etched, nuclear bruise
against the mouth of a winter dawn
pretty but poisonous

he melts beneath cracks of a molten sidewalk,
dancing hopscotch on credulous spines-
so his shadow could escape
being singed into the planet
a crater brimming with ultraviolet flames

and terra could sing of his colors,
waxing in the aftermath of a raw supernova
wishing his reflection was beyond just white light
and a memory of solar storms
in the midst of an off-kilter orbit.