Ice

From fire to ice. Huh.

Short piece this time. Not something I REALLY like, but it's something I needed to get out.

"Winter-Heart"

 Still, I can again feel the growling winter
     dawn over my thawed insides,
     can sense the sweep of the Arctic
     and the crystals that will build me,
once more, into who I was.

It has been a long summer,
     but my heart is a season
     and you, my dear, are gilded
     and brown.

I only hope you say the words before I do.

Bonfire

GAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I'M STILL NOT HAPPY WITH THIS! PLEASE LEAVE CRITIQUE!

CRITQUE IT! CRITIQUE IT INTO THE GROUND!

The flow of this thing is just driving me nuts. I feel like gnawing my own fingers off in frustration.

I wrote this for a contest with the prompt, "color": "The theme is "Color". You can choose to write about one color, or many. You can describe a situation, person, object, scene - anything, but describe it in color(s). How it looks...makes you feel."

 I decided to approach the prompt sort of like a painting. I suppose another title for this piece might be "A Study in Brown [and orange]". I'm worried I didn't quite address the prompt, though. Thoughts?

As usual, all comments appreciated. Enjoy!

"Hunger"

Fire in the wild isn't the color you think it is.

It's all amber and umber and
terra cotta, one great roaring tower of orange
like the Wrath of God in a chestnut tree.

I can't go back again to Devil's Hollow—
just like so many wolves he will wait,
until I am ready, blazing burnt sienna and shining,
all teeth.

But I'm not ready to give up the ghost yet,
I'm still waiting for an excuse
to travel the galaxy empty-handed.
I want to see those bronze nebulas
gleaming like forest fires.

Oh, lover—I have watched you swim volcanic craters,
have seen your flaming eyes amidst the snow drifts
all brown with dirt. Dragon, mine, you bring
the mists in the morning, set the roads to smoking
after the evening rains, and you came to me as
a henna dawn that time when I
opened my sleepy eyes.

But this really isn't about you, you know.

I am always hungry and like a forest fire
I am eating the cedar crowns brown and bare
just like me, and one day I will call you a fool

And then the sepia, crackling gods will return
from the ends of a caramel sky and race roaring
to meet the great wolf and his brother serpent
and I will go down to die in the heroes' hall,
and become russet, stinking, crow-picked
on the exhausted battlefields.

And then: my hunger at last will die ash-like
and I will not be left to gnaw on the whitewash bones
of the post-apocalyptic paradise, and I will leave you like a widow
tanned and sunburnt and empty of me, hungry on your own.

Barefoot

UGH, Sonnet, I HATE YOU. I'm so terrible at fixed-form poetry, but a poetry group I belong to convinced me <a ref="http://my.deviantart.com/messages/#/d59gy0a">it was time to have another go at a sonnet</a>, so here I am.

I think generally I did pretty well. Except for all the places I didn't....SONNETS ARE HARD. Gah, for me just getting rhyming and iambic pentameter was hard. RAWRAAWRAWR

Anyway...enjoy?

"Hold, Youth"

You are verging on knife edges, wild youth:
The pricking of the blade in your bare steps
Marks trees of paper cuts, spells out the truth
that like lime juice keeps the wounds fresh -

You're not yet the person you'll want to be,
And that boy 'cross the room for whom you long,
Wild youth, will swallow you down like sweet tea;
You must feel your bones curled 'round, and all wrong.

Tightrope walker, do not let yourself slide -
Sense the vice-fear like spikes beneath your skin;
Use them well, cliff-walker, toughen your hide,
cling still to the walls, hide even from winds.

Hold - hold, for a boy who shall not, Grendel-
like, crush you warm and wet, small and spindle'd.