[x]

Fold Overi.

across the vaults estimated by every milky tone
the curious whirl in old friends gather a surface
wholly between each divide of behavioral light
cones bend to placate our amass combustion

that is

until her legs uncrossed absolving my repetitive
nature to forget what conditions a truth has also
to submerge and share in upholding closely
the uniqueness of love we each must extinguish

our self

to then

ii.

across
the vaults

estimated by every
milky tone

the curious
whirl in

old friends
gather

a surface
wholly

between each
divide

of behavioral
light

cones bend to
placate

our amass combustion
that is

unti

immolatethe first step
to sadness is to
have.

[3]

poseidon
punctuates the bruised
shorelines with broken hearts and
shattered abelone
shell fragments.
sometimes the
shore creeps up, kisses
my feet. sometimes he rips through
the distance between
us, taking
what's his.

[5]

the air here
vibrates to a fire,
sparrow's heart humming in c
major. it does scare
me sometimes,
how i might love you
more than ibuprofen, or
the way the light might
oscillate
through an ether storm.

the person i am now is
not compatible
with who i
was before you. but
how do i scrape myself out
from under my own
fingernails?

[7]

we caught the
moon

BrackishAfter the wet season, before
the midsummer night's drought,
I flight for the floodplains, where
the northern downpour bleeds out
and sweeps its love to the mouth
of my lungs. I sleep in the crux
of an oxbow, let my dreams flux
and flow fractured, deltaic. For this
is the way I piece myself apart,
a resolution, my absolution
in a new avulsion.

During the day, I move south
towards the river mouth, picking
pebbles, coral fangs from the riverbed.
A loose tooth is a common truth
in these parts. Bones are febrile,
eyelashes are made of chalk, salt.
Tears turn brackish. They cake
and crack on the flats of my hands.

This is my Pang

At The Old Folk's HomeThere is a chair beneath the cherry tree
velvet red upholstery peeling off the yellow foam.

There are no cherries left
and no one in the chair.

The two emptinesses commune to the sound of
the cicada reciting his mantra.

I would sit but look
the seat is wet with August rain

petrichorNiobe weeps.

gold scattered rough across
cracked earth and the last
remains of summer - they fell
like leaves in the arms of the wind.

some scents cannot be captured.
the gods bleed onto rock,
and the stone sends her prayers
in return: petrichor.

listen - the heavy thud of
rain on parched ground;
the monsoon sealing life back in;
the sky bows and kisses earth.

Niobe weeps.

SubductionWe drip into October
with the silence of spiders
heavy in our chests,

our hearts curling in
on themselves like
leaves in autumn.

Lungs unfurl into the
stillness;
there is a breath, a whisper--

This dying wind whistles
through empty throats,
as if to murmur a warning,
perhaps, that we threaten
to become
earthquakes
along our hipbones.

The HologramsBefore Casper we were a quantum band,
an act that only happened when unobserved.
Our drummer maintained we'd split
the world, then took a full-time position
in PR. Auditioning his replacement
round our Crouch End front room,
with his white vest, buffed All-Stars
and holographic principle patter,
Casper shone. 'These,' he said,
nodding at his drumheads,
'are my event horizons;
it's where the beat really happens.'
To prove it, he worked up an almighty storm,
while we puffed on our cigarettes.
Short of a singer, Casper made a call.
Yume Shirakawa, he explained,
would beam in her performance. Jay,
sliding milk down his

The Thin HoursI.

Those of us here in this skeleton time,
this time of the year when the nights are thin
and dark, and dark with anxiety, peeling
as layers of an oyster shell, brittle and effaced
and somehow iridescent.
When the bell tolls out the time the sound is thin
and reaches into fractured air and softly
seeks the spaces between the atoms and
misses the vital Os and CO2s in a lasting,
failed pinball. The bell sound dies in
some space between midnight and thereafter,
and each tock tock of slipping cogs is
a repeat and not a moving on.
The air is filled with each dull sound,
each tock a repeat and a repeat again. And the
slip betwee

A Handful of Moths The mountain is a pincushion for cactus. It looks like some irritated desert deity just threw saguaros like spears at the hillside until s/he ran out of spears.

It's movie night, and that means that tires crunch through the gravel at the drive-in to see the latest stars-and-explosions movie. It's robots tonight, great city-wrecking things with Hollywood voices and gears spinning behind their ear plates. That means that we pile into the cars and go, plaid rugs flung over the backs of the seats, plaid shirts over tank tops, team bumper stickers. Go Team! It's cooled down to seventy-five degrees and the condensation on my soda cup drops down t

31:12N, 121:30Emy Dear i just noticed
my balcony is shaped
like wings

and the wind is billowing
the moon up, up to-night
in her dusty purple garb

and i think
no Dear i do not want
to leave here: where men

build bridges over oceans
and live inside of mountains
like river dragons

where the sun shines
not at all at noon but gleams
like an orange at sundown

where the moon walks home
surefooted to where my neck
cannot crane

for exit 165.in the outstretched wingspan of
tuesday night you'll find them:
the foothills slumbering jagged under
sixteen inches of loose sand and
the city hushed and glowing, lines
of porchlights strung together in suburban rows like
beads on a chain

your house was cavernous hollow like a lung
the colors were dim and
jaundiced, a quiet rush of tepid water
bent the silence while thirty years of
smoking hung ownerless
in the air like the cling of a dead moths to a wall

you tell me of a dream that's vague like
clouds in the sky like
clouds in the sink with
your body limp and damp like
hot tea bags and
your face like spilled milk
a

No oceanNo one sleeps the night the army comes home,
and memory storms the shore, bipolar and sexy.
You always knew where to go and what to drink,
where to find the crows that stalked the summers
left lying wrinkled on shorn boardwalks,
Augusts headless and Julys scuttling over hills.
When you were gone I fucked Arthur Rimbaud
in a Parisian basement. He hooked his eyelashes
under mine and made waves on my skin.
Tolle, lege, like the parable tells me.

de la bellei have been told that
my cheeks seem to slender
like the stars.

truth be told i

inhaled until my bones
bloomed through my skin
and i sunk;

licked my kisses chapped
'til they reddened
like the roses;

contracted so i'd esvaniss.

i had once hoped to find
it there, the beauty

but instead i
always found space.

So Much Beauty in DirtChang was about to end his shift when he found the portal to hell. The most sensible thing to do was run. Just pack up and leave. Cover it back up, take your pay, pack up as soon as you got home and leave town by daybreak. Chang was a sensible man. You don't live this long in the mines without learning to be sensible. Unfortunately for him, he was also a kind man.

"Don't go all the way down my shaft," he told Li. "Stop halfway and start a new tunnel. Say you were following a small vein."

Li was ten years his junior. He just recently returned home after a failed attempt to start a life in Shanghai. Unlike in the city, the mine was always hi

6Either way

It is past seven and there is a rumor that you are coming home.

When I saw you last, I found
that word in your mouth. It was
foreign, a small success for your vocabulary.
I stalked it all the way back to the house,
sucked it clean and dry and no longer holy,
hanging by a horrifying thread.

What will be the first thing you speak of tomorrow;
what wills your growth, what wills you to change?

If we are wanted,
if the earth swirls right, almost cloudlessly,
if you should find my hand and whittle out
a new word—

If you hiss
like a turntable
as you try to spin me round and round—

It is only seven; I trust you w

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Orientalism

by ~kajigoddess, Nov 1, 2010, 7:37:49 PM
Literature / Poetry / Sociopolitical / Free Verse

In the day, yellow sand
from the Taklamakan
coats the motorbikes
of your overlords

At night, this city's towers
gleam, a Chinatown of lights
(dragon gold, lantern red)

Here, you can eat
a Philadelphia roll
or a fortune cookie
with fictional
Confucian quotes
on the side

Or you can dive
into a Pacific of
specific patterns,
woven with
living threads
in wire cocoons

Don't get distracted
by the innumerable
neon kanji; trace
the tiny green
lights to the
computer shop
at the end of
the way.

Orientalismby ~kajigoddess

Literature / Poetry / Sociopolitical / Free Verse

©2010-2013 ~kajigoddess

Another poem from "Historical Technology." I would say it critiques and pokes fun at Western perceptions of Oriental cultures, while simultaneously providing a way in which to rethink those perceptions...

Daily Deviation

Given 2011-10-28

Orientalism by ~kajigoddess ( Featured by ^Beccalicious )

~~love 0 0~~

~~joy 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

*Angie-Pictures Dec 6, 2011

! Congratulations on the DD!

Reply

~PTDaHood Oct 28, 2011

Ooohhh, nice structure.

And that portrayal of Chinatown. As a Chinese-American, I'm just frothing at the mouth in joy xD

Reply

~kajigoddess Nov 14, 2011 Hobbyist General Artist

As a white American, I am extremely honored by the fact that you felt the energy of Chinatown in my work.

Reply

Mood: Stunned

~Zumiex Oct 28, 2011

Congrads on your Daily DEVAAAAATIOONNNNNNNNNNN!

Reply

~kajigoddess Nov 14, 2011 Hobbyist General Artist

THAAAAAANKS!!!!!

Reply

~Zumiex Nov 15, 2011

You're welcome!

Reply

=Moonflower16 Oct 28, 2011

This is a fantastical and well written poem. I love the imagery and carefully chosen words.

Reply

~kajigoddess Oct 28, 2011 Hobbyist General Artist

Thank you very much for your compliments. They are greatly appreciated. ^_^

Reply

=Moonflower16 Oct 29, 2011

It's my pleasure. Keep up the good work! ^_^

Reply

~Li-flower Oct 28, 2011

Great imagery. All the colors remind me of both Chinatown and Tokyo or Hong Kong. I love the dichotomy and, like QyJx, the irony of a Philadelphia roll (reminds me of the time when my co-worker in Japan said, "California rolls aren't real sushi).

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