Performers 2017
Self Portrait of Aftermath
A Rose
you allotted me -knife edged thorns
kissed my skin, tongued my deep oak roots
Lapped like a thirsty dog at a silent spring,
drenched in the blushing aftermath of our sword
fight
ember light
Glowing, making ghostly our faces, highlighting the hollow, Unhollowing the sacredness of the moment
barking flesh ablaze, unquenchable fire behind your eyes, and in my head, a spark, a thought, a farewell note to loneliness: “I never knew you were this warm hearted.”
my body stemming forth, my back arching, my lips aching, no match for the pain of the Inferno,
sparking as you muse. Luminosity
Scalds my flesh
Your honey
hair glistening under the sun spotlight, dancing momentarily in a Kidnapper’s darkened dance, blinding
envisionings. day bloomed to night, budding into the eternal twilight between here and now, there and then, and branching arms enshroud me in this timeless forever
Lips
uniting, beneath this mistletoe
infesting oak
I became
Famined at the feast, I paused at the parasite you left,
You left me uprooted
hollowed
drained
my vivacity
Suffocated
my prosperity. How breathtaking!
I am trapped in this winter, filled with you and barren, infected with your colour, forlorned in your blackened white...
Your ocean eyes
whirlpools, my passion crash against the rocks
A riptide pulled
me
away from shore, your tidal force takes me to new horizons, drags me under, bloats me, and at once I am the colour of your eyes...i am your pupil too well learnt in your ways, like harmless hickies lapping against the stiffness of my neck...
3am skylines, hour hand chasing minute hand, minute hand too fast for her own good, hour hand too persistent, both shackled in the same dull face of round and round
racing thoughts
shackled
around my inner peace, like waiting for the alarm to ring, unwilling to breath until that moment never comes
Sometimes I wonder if you remember giving
Me
this rose I salvaged from our red remembrance,
I look at it each mourning,
wilting spine, head unable to lift up,
lifeless
drooping face, petal lips frayed, too brittle too un-
Touch-
able, once perky leaves now facing down--but not completely, almost as if to ask “why?” and I stare into the blank...
--Jaida Donnerstag (ed. E. De Mott)
A Rose
you allotted me -knife edged thorns
kissed my skin, tongued my deep oak roots
Lapped like a thirsty dog at a silent spring,
drenched in the blushing aftermath of our sword
fight
ember light
Glowing, making ghostly our faces, highlighting the hollow, Unhollowing the sacredness of the moment
barking flesh ablaze, unquenchable fire behind your eyes, and in my head, a spark, a thought, a farewell note to loneliness: “I never knew you were this warm hearted.”
my body stemming forth, my back arching, my lips aching, no match for the pain of the Inferno,
sparking as you muse. Luminosity
Scalds my flesh
Your honey
hair glistening under the sun spotlight, dancing momentarily in a Kidnapper’s darkened dance, blinding
envisionings. day bloomed to night, budding into the eternal twilight between here and now, there and then, and branching arms enshroud me in this timeless forever
Lips
uniting, beneath this mistletoe
infesting oak
I became
Famined at the feast, I paused at the parasite you left,
You left me uprooted
hollowed
drained
my vivacity
Suffocated
my prosperity. How breathtaking!
I am trapped in this winter, filled with you and barren, infected with your colour, forlorned in your blackened white...
Your ocean eyes
whirlpools, my passion crash against the rocks
A riptide pulled
me
away from shore, your tidal force takes me to new horizons, drags me under, bloats me, and at once I am the colour of your eyes...i am your pupil too well learnt in your ways, like harmless hickies lapping against the stiffness of my neck...
3am skylines, hour hand chasing minute hand, minute hand too fast for her own good, hour hand too persistent, both shackled in the same dull face of round and round
racing thoughts
shackled
around my inner peace, like waiting for the alarm to ring, unwilling to breath until that moment never comes
Sometimes I wonder if you remember giving
Me
this rose I salvaged from our red remembrance,
I look at it each mourning,
wilting spine, head unable to lift up,
lifeless
drooping face, petal lips frayed, too brittle too un-
Touch-
able, once perky leaves now facing down--but not completely, almost as if to ask “why?” and I stare into the blank...
--Jaida Donnerstag (ed. E. De Mott)