Verseoftheday - Tumblr Posts
MANIPULATION
Quote from the Tao Te Ching
Verse 13
Acrylic on Cardboard
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kaleidoscope
The wrinkles of youth were playing
in the garden of adolescence
where stubborn roots make their way through infinite bouquets
of blades of grass
piercing the innocence of the horizon
wandering hearts
that have bled before
meet in this verdure
to bleed together
while we wait for a boat on the shore of a lake
on the shore of life
to come retrieve yesterday’s dew
because the unspoken’s remains
dwell in us
dismantle us
at every quiver of the waves
at every shiver of the waves
pieces of faith bloom
only to fade
when will the flower skim the greenery?
© Margaux Emmanuel
A damp seaside cottage bathed in a picturesque pastel yellow paint peeling off the walls cracked windows shattered bottles screaming on the floor a story that you’ll never hear a silent porch bearing a lonesome rocking chair where tears used to stain her floral dress a sore giggling wind brings along an exiled melancholia unloaded memorabilia and then there’s you, collapsed on the dangling shingles tumbledown eyes peaking out of streaks of wet hair humming an outdated tune from the pit of a golden lacquered heart sluggishly tracing the words your mind’s waves cry. Sometimes you sink into their foam with your lavender socks and then the bitter water licks your neck and you forget the punctuation of the days that strut by and on that rooftop overlooking your splinters you shrug starved by the discolored key waiting under the doormat by the flower petals lingering around the gutter maybe it’s okay to die a little younger.
golden lacquered heart | © Margaux Emmanuel
The champagne lingering in the driveway of his eyelids ransacks the minibar of his depressive tendencies. A suffering insufferable dandy with a corduroy smile spills the cough syrup on the window sill and walks through a non-smoking floor with an unlit cigarette giggling in between his teeth. The stained carpet mutters that he’s a homeless homesick and the tears sticking to the glass table know it already. So he sits back on a fatigued settee and pours himself a dubious drink with a parking lot view. So he sits back uncomfortably with his heart a little tight and he tells himself that it’s just another sick day.
sick days | © Margaux Emmanuel
clumsy town boy
Your heart
is stuck
in a long
car ride
edging
an endless
desert
empty
road
in 1973
sitting in
the backseat
reading Kerouac
butter-colored
baseball cap
no watch
timeless
wrist
high school
bomber jacket
covering a
white shirt
a chagrined
blue bra
his
aviator
Ray Bans
sliding down
the bridge
of its nose
listening
to the cassette
of a shattered
existence.
Two years
thousands of miles
away
he’s still
the one
appearing
in the
highway landscapes
ghostlike
you can almost
smell
his cologne
you thought
that you had
written
the last act
of that
tragedy
licked the seal
of that envelope.
But the trunk
is still
full of his
letters
the cursive ink
bruises you
at night
oh
the clumsy
town
boys
they really
mess you up.
© Margaux Emmanuel
sandpaper
Lining up
empty
soft drink
bottles
on the
windowsill
of a
dented heart
peering at
the streets
of silence
discolored
by daylight
you remember
a checkered
red and white
picnic cloth
flattened
burnt
grass
screeching
underneath
an orange tree branch
dipping in
a timid
foamless
ocean
sky
his honey skin
melting in the tide
pruney words
kisses
a chronic daydream
he never
draws hearts
with sidewalk chalk
but his initials
are sown
into the collar
of your reverie
you’re the
dissociative
teenager
that can’t help
but miss him so.
© Margaux Emmanuel
a dreamlike love bite
Two songs
away from you
having lunch
by the car
I close my eyes
memories
of kissing pretty neighbors
in their treehouses
paint dripping
down the easel
of the night
all I wanted
was for love
to bite
and now
you’re smiling
by my side
I guess
I’ll rob the sky of tonight’s stars
for you
but once my eyelids open
I’m still a lovesick kid
in an empty parking lot
and the stars always find
a place to hide.
© Margaux Emmanuel
The diagonal scar swelling on his cheek shadows the stalemate of salvation a glissando of desire that flew west for the winter away from the tempered light of day. The anacoluthon of love trapped in the pillowcase feathers of the "have you ever been hurt ?" speaks the demotic language of the pinned knight on the chessboard of neurasthenia. His heart writes letters with no return address My heart is trembling with haste. "Nunc scio quid sit amor."
la llovizna comprende | © Margaux Emmanuel
Ill-chosen metaphors towel my body dry inch towards the word toying with the tip of my tongue you know the word the one eyeing the dark corners of the after party of infatuation the one stinging in the touch of bare-knuckled motorists pretending to be in trouble in the implied sensuality of those haunted eyes I said no peeking you already know the word oh I’m not trying to stop you, love all of these untalented talented teens know exactly what they want now turn off the radio whisper it in your licorice breath I’ll just be here falling asleep in the arms of dawn waiting.
don’t look at me like that, help me find this word | © Margaux Emmanuel
women in love
Your face clouds over
when the picture
of the girl
with the red
octagonal
sunglasses
red cheeks
from having recently cried
leaning
on your car
falls out of your wallet
only to remind you
in the sotto voce
of memory
that she kept your
love letters
in a battered copy
of Women in love.
You wonder
if she kept it
she always said
that it was a mistake
to reread the novels
of your youth
Oh, she was a hesitation
You remember
every rhyme
every bite
of the poems
that she wrote
on your lips
for she always said
that you only know
what you feel
once it’s been written.
She was damnation
You remember
seeing the
ink stains
sprawled on the cover
of her
DH Lawrence
in the hands
of someone else
at that
end of the year
garage sale
he was laughing
chewing
his cheeks
but the book
isn’t funny
maybe he was laughing
at your poems
he was laughing
because he doesn’t love her
and he never will
maybe he was laughing
because you are trapped
in those pages
you still live
every curve
every sharpness
of her letters
and she now lives
in the verse of another
he wasn’t laughing.
© Margaux Emmanuel
There was this boy, checkered Vans and we played charades in the back of the bus sixteen we sometimes we would always miss it and we would walk into the ring and he would eat his vanilla ice-cream and our eyes would meet in full contact but I would fight in southpaw; our moves were mirrored but we never managed never dared to really hit. His sticky chocolate eyes melted onto my black leather gloves and our words took our hearts into a headlock, silently skimming the sides of every post of his sweet Cupid’s bow with bare knuckles, untied shoes. One day he just wasn't at the bus stop I waited and waited he called and said "I took bus fourteen" but I loved him too much and he didn't love me enough to sucker punch.
disqualified | © Margaux Emmanuel