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Bree Morton-Young Poem
you breathed rainbows into my skin,
I felt your breath condense
against my pupils, and
streak down my cheeks in rows
of mascara-tarmac strips
but I haven't felt you for weeks.
Your ribs caged me
and I lost myself in the depths of the forest
growing in your gut.
I was a fire of the worst kind, and you
were the winds that blew me between continents,
to burn in people's throats and
teach them to revolt, but
I've never thought of myself as matter- I am gas.
I am the stuff of stars
and Darwin's evolution.
I was built from dust.
Burned into existence by
some natural, explosive force
that grew taste-buds from vapour
and blasted my web of veins from nothing.
you can say I'm the same
as any other corner of this map
we call humanity
but find me someone
who isn't afraid of dying,
and is terrified of their own reflection like I am.
you are a Monet, and I
am just graffiti,
scrawled
on your local skate park
but somehow I manage to enthrall you
with the shine of my hair, or
the taste of my fingertips
every time I catch your eye.
and I, I'm not sure whether you notice
the way my over-grown smile glows
whenever you take my hand, or
hold my waist without asking.
(the part that curls into my hips
the one you find with your fingers
every time I turn away)
I have kissed the sky too many times
for my lips to taste of anything but clouds.
sometimes I just need a break from dreaming,
so I sit outside and enjoy the ash
falling from my teeth, or
drink coffee at two in the morning.
He rotted me.
Now I taste sweet,
like preserved lemons, or
the trigger guard of your favourite rifle.
I never fancied heavy artillery,
I preferred moths dancing on tiles or
whiling away my time watching light
glancing off the surface of lakes and rivers,
I am too busy to play games
or spend time thinking up things that I don't really mean.
I'm not going to bend or break.
I will sway.
Copyright © Bree Morton-Young | Year Posted 2011
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Details |
Bree Morton-Young Poem
you spilled
from my fingertips.
I painted
the sunrise in puddles of your faded expressions
and grew cities
from the glimmer of smiles burning in your eyes
I could swim in the cerulean blue
of your mile-wide iris,
or drown myself in the trenches
beneath your eyelids that fill with tears whenever you cry;
mapping oceans on your face
in streams and rivers
I tripped on the acoustics of your bedroom;
the sleepy curls in your hair
did nothing but
amplify the sound of my fall
and smother me when I found the floor
with my hips,
you built the curve of my lips
from guitar strings.
the gales that blew you
into my life whipped my hair around my face
and shivered between my ribs
making breathing hard and speaking
harder than the concrete that found my creaking bones
whenever you left me lonely enough
to rot and turn to sodden mush
for you to squish between your fingers
I don't believe that you
were ever Heavenly or that you
knew anything more than the Bible said
about yourself and others,
but your book could never explain to grieving mothers
whose child had died at birth
why the corpse in her arms was destined to burn.
Summer spun itself in circles
around my fingers
like hoops around the waist of seven year olds,
too innocent to know their own ignorance,
I guess we've all been there,
some of us just didn't grow up
Woe is me,
I cannot see past my own hands, which
I have firmly clamped over my eyes
so I can pretend not to notice
all the horrors I claim to believe in.
Copyright © Bree Morton-Young | Year Posted 2011
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Details |
Bree Morton-Young Poem
I move my life to marching drums,
carving paths into my bare palms.
You showed me how to play apathy
I've never begged to a silent god more than
when I dreamed of empty tables
and riots in my wardrobe
(instead of lions or snow),
but then you glowed through the mist of my mind, and
thoughts of you were all I could find
in the cavernous space in my head-
for all I knew every nerve ending had left me
empty, and
wired with an endless map of veins;
built, from the ground to the ceiling
with the yarn of life.
You cut through all my knots
now I'm a mess of frayed ends and
more pieces than you could ever imagine.
You threw me to the sea,
I was swallowed by the brackish shore-line
which coils itself into the monsters that hide
around every corner I turn.
Will you never learn that nothing you do
helps me to stand,
you just split my seams
and spill my contents onto the floor.
If you learned one thing from your mother
it was never to cry;
not over spilt milk, anyway.
My heart beats cracks into my ribs,
but my hands hold the sun
it shines through my fingers, scorching
each one of my nails
and curls me at the edges
(singed)
the earth will never turn enough to
spin me from its surface, so
I guess I'll have to jump and
swim to the brim of the stars
while they bloom in the night sky,
a black sheet of pin-pricks
burning white against your charcoal surface.
sometimes, my pupils feel like frosted glass
but then I turn to your Good Book
and that lonely feeling swells
in my chest.
I feel more at home
when I'm floating somewhere
above your head or
maybe into happiness again
but I will never see
any more than what I've seen.
I will never skim the surface
or go anywhere I've never been.
I am stuck
living quietly, angry at myself for
falling into this rut.
and, to be quite frank
there's no one I'd like to thank more than you
(or the Goliaths you sent chasing my skirts)
Copyright © Bree Morton-Young | Year Posted 2011
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