Gems by Gabrielle Bryant-Gainer (chrysanthemum read aloud txt) 📖

dying

 
I wonder what you'd say
If you were mine
If you were more to me
Than this porcelain darling
The face who stares back at me
Smoke and Mirrors
Those children, were glimmering like stark sheets
of ice
a mother doused in confectioner's sugar- she was so
sweet
pampered in soda-lime- and we were
brought up to smile softly
then simmer, eggs ready and we'd all go home
for days coming- the next roll of a cigar.
It passed us, winter, come join us man--
soon we'll be hidden like roses in snow
sooner where cat tails stalked on prowl


her salted lips kissing the moon
perfume whispering of thyme dreams
it was a time for seasonal affection
scabs were picked at; oh those buried
sores from the highest mountains
where birds flew over rocky spores
but train whistles whimpered
as her carnivorous spawn
journeyed out east to the coast

 
who bred behind apple trees, but
flourished in great nothings--tiger-lilies
Jealous of her zealot fantasies
long days had grown heavy
In lilac memories for her tide
the boneless shore
as seasons had worn thin
shaking off her skin
to perform another swim through you
the dead beat painter
find your pace, bird lover
pours over linseed layers
loss sectioning the scene
peeled the black mosaic
of thick-over lean dreams
so long captives seeming to
speed through silhouetted holes
tea of stories for shock synthesis blues
It must help heal the wounds
alcohol for the Gods
tobacco for the womb
waist-heavy momma
bread, donned her white hood
in sadness- beads of clay
sown in gladness
The long lost voodoo Priestess
packed papa sweet jumbo love
calm in green-sea lament

 
for twisty rainbow swirls
the story of the river
grown sunny from a fever
crackled paint on white, lift no finger
summers over prudent nails
winter night here drunk in wails
spring anew for the season's breathing
spring's transonic meanness seeping
girly pink dresses, furious flimsy words of crooked-
spite
Out the shadows of the sun.
Clumsily we had not nearly begun.


Our Ritual


The thread
I followed
led me to the top
of a forest hill
where I stood
and looked over the expanse
knowing, it was not time
to die
or kill
Then her voice sang
like sunshine and rain
to be still and sit
I was pulled further

 
within warm hands
I was at the top
but felt I was below
within and underneath
the roots of the hill
and so it continued
our ritual.


Coated


You will die one day,
And I will be here,
Watching your ashes,
Scattered over the meadows.
Curse your worries,
Hold your hand,
When you are dead,
I still won't understand.
Why you never tried,
You simply existed,
Lived a selfish mind,
And I persisted.
Someday you will have your gold,
And can forget about me,
I will be nothing but a fading,
This long gone memory.

 
Or had you not bothered,
To see my face in the mist,
I will always be immortal,
And I will persist.
You can play that game,
Naming names that never were named,
But remember you will always spread,
But I will never ever be dead.

Bad Wine


I'm chain-smoking, and today it is 'hiding'
the air feels free and cool against me
In my bedroom, I toss off my jacket
Then I stare into the wall
I smell like old shoes and feel like something--that
shouldn't have
Plural in its vocabulary, because no one else is as
selfish
Watching shadows crushed under my weight
One drag is not enough of a climax
The sun is golden and hurried
Like she has an appointment with someone
But it has been delayed, and the urgency
is still there--there's no bottle just a wine glass
full of cheap wine, and it tastes miserable
I gag- then I take another sip just to make sure
Yeah, it still tastes bad.


 
Trouble

Her ache needs to be freed from this dark circle
Once prim-roses now poppies in a field of surrender
Lights burn bright ruby songs into pewter chains
Yoke-like morning suffers through the cold wintry
daze
Her glassy eyes barely blink before the cage
No longer furious, curious, full to her brim of rage
No longer full of rage and she's milder than her age
To understand those differences could mean the
difference between
The impossible and the unseen--metaphysical I
mean
Lemons sliced, ideas diced, iron cauldron fused
with crinkling pages
Invisible dreams torn through the melancholic rages
Her desires must run through the crystalline water
Could she be? What did she say? how is your
daughter?
Deafening sounds of a thousand needles singe
Her wings beat, like a bloody cardinal pierced thrice
Showers clean the wound. Hurricanes mingle with
mice
Thumping after, forever after her fruitless affair
Sounds with bone-drums, lip syncing demons
there's no direction for this corner lover
Her shameful eyes hang with a sad sorrow
Her creative pursuit to defile this firmament

 
Those plum-circles never cease to suffer
Under the eye-lids heavy in crease
The being sleeps within a coat of ashes
feeling numbness as she climbs
Higher and then higher, as anticipation grows
Caught in these lustrous throes of never
Inside the heart of a sizzling lemon, sourly
composed
Cooling into red venom, snakebites that cursed her
Bitter, brittle, breaking to scatter across those
Facades and schemes and red rows of clover
Feeling much better, though the heart knows much
better
There are things which we cannot state in plain
language
Of the soul, the paper bag where it was held captive
Before she had thrown it over the edge of the sea


 


Human

Forgive me father, I do not go to church
I have sinned, yes I am sure I stand alone
I don't believe in God or in the only Son
I don't think that there is even a heaven
I'm sorry, I wish your guidance had been there
But too many times I called your name
You did not care when we were still one
Cursed me with your thunderous storm
I wonder, why has HIS mercy expired
Because I am faltering, I am hollowing
I am following the haunted footsteps
Breathless, deathless, I am missing the bone
Your saving grace, the sinless face of Adam
I know you must understand, How I jealously
guarded
My sword, father I do not understand a word
You say I am childish and ignorance you tout
Sending your angelic hierarchy to punish me about
As if I were a moron! Oh its blasphemy!
Tormenting!
Oh its something you'll never understand because
I am not FREE! I ate the apple. Yes, this land is
your land
This land is my land

 
This land is our land, but God, I can't find the right
hand.


Prisoner

Haunted town by a river bed
lily flower
however dead
so red
so red
commercial for millions
papers in hand
someone closes the curtain
then heads for the kill
if you can, will you hold my hand?
I still don't understand.
I try not to say it when
I am asked for a prayer
the holding cell is unlocked
but no one dare go in it
The gate is opened now
suddenly there's a clap
How many moments
were taken from before
the knock on the door
knock knock...
they are here waiting
with guns and man

 
they are waiting
to unleash their weapons
so red
so red
so red is the rain
the prisoners are not all dead
and they speak
one by one
release their pleas
to save their world
their realities
realities
vacancies
emotions
empathies, sympathies, regards
regarding the war
and sanity and pain
and sanity and pain
and I can't think anymore
can't reason with
the shovel and the gun.


 


What If

I don't.....need to cure this disease
this isolation, butterfly dust or anything
we notice the rain and the bunnies floating
I don't need anyone or anything
She sings to me, verses of Talula Talula in my head
1000 Oceans, 1000 beautiful roses, red
What if...I could write that fiction that'd never been
said
What if these hallucinations fled, fled from my
head?
I cannot seem to sow the stitches in this, human
skin of mine
My back is broken, there is a knocking on my door,
hey
I am nothing but a cracked up, waste of time
I don't know...but you wondered about mine
He calls me at 2 am to say goodbye
And I wondered in his head, that voice that said
"I am alive." I had my hands folded as if in prayer--
I wanted to crouch down, in the corner there.
How to feel like you'd been brought up to be this
way
Whatever happens, then they’ll forget it anyways
God's promise, as the cities fall under the quake

 
The rain is crying, wash my tears wide awake
I don't....need to cure
I don't know my self
for sure
Overwhelmed
But not secure
I don't know
Who you were, they were 'they' were
what if?


White

so judgmental
the light,
confused with rain
absolved of sin
torments me
With reasoning
through softened temples
the colors collected underfoot
white noise
white skin
white cold hands
upon mine
white jackets
and white cells

 
where my body sleeps
white as hell.


Silent House


It fell upon deaf ears
Like a siren screaming in the rain
A dizzy dancing man gone mad
Beside the screaming train
Their voices were multiplying
And Van Gogh once painted pain
He would have loved to know
What others ignore in vain
It fell with a thunderous crash
But no one heard the sound
As a million fiery splinters
Fell harshly to the ground
And no one saw her falling
Right through the broken moon
As the fire turned to slaughter
And the laughter turned to boredom
For she woke up that morning
With strangely no recall

 
Of any conversation
Of any sound at all
And in the silent house she cried
As her children continued sleeping
When no one wanted to remember
What it was like to hear them speaking.
Gypsy Dreams
Dark purple, amber, a grass green on her skirt
She dances, the damsel, not afraid of her hurt
as the old man in his wagon, he woes like the sea
carving animals out of bones and the soot at her feet
But don't dry your eyes just yet, for your tears be
precious jewels
In the darkness of a mind, we work through her pain
Then, no one will ever find their life's meaning
If she cannot dig deeper into her core, so don't adore
her
don't worship, just dig dig dig till you dig through
the dirt
Beneath her, and all the dreams, blooms her worth


 


Fire Fairy


While tonight I'm all dressed in dews
She's clapped among the circled hues
deep upon waters diffused, diffusing
I drank of daughters wooed and bruising
the sacred and the lost profane
the beautiful and the most mundane
for you, for her, for her and me
the girl of sunshine and colors the
Most optimistic, the most agile
the fire, the fire, the air has been
smoking tears of the night-time again
splendid- she rose from sapphire
and the red, then here she wasted
he wasted away there too
oh hey, oh hey, I am the way to you
no night, rose colored hues so blue
It’s the reason I do dress myself
In my little firelight muse oh who
so lifeless, so flowery and blue and black
oh my fairy princess, oh my fiery muse
The night-time wandered without you