Special Sundae Treat- Sammur-amat's Sunday Feature

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The amount of artistic talent here on dA has always amazed me, I feel like it should be a privilege to be able to feature such amazing pieces as these. Therefore, without further ado this Sunday's Specials:heart:


Literature





Poetry



    rahabshe's built of honeycomb bones --
where her skeleton presses,   tight
beneath her skin her
sweat is sweetest
from her temple to
knuckles and knees,
her limbs brings tears to my eyes and
i use her ribs as a ladder;
her lips gates to heaven as i climb toward
god;   as i climb toward her tongue,
whisper -- hallelujah
hallelujah; spelt across her shoulder,
a saviour savoured in fingerprints
that press faith into my flesh,
her heart beating hope
she presses into my flesh:
her rhythmic rapture,
lungs gasping glory
leaves me longing
throat exposed to revelation,
and from her temple,
to her temple, temple -
she is a temple
       SalemI.
the bright scarlet egg of dawn
nests in my head.
when it is time, it will crack my
skull like a shell
and be born.
II.
I have a witch's fingers and a
witch's eyes, rough pewter lenses
through which I see the world.
I have sabotaged their crops,
I have plagued their children,
I have eaten their livestock in the night
   (so they say)
and I hear the whispers in the streets.
they will be willing to kill
for their conviction, though
I am not willing to die for it.
III.
I am no longer human.
I've been branded
with an ugly mark
of fear and desperation,
one terse syllable that cuts
like a switch.
IV.
a thin reddish line splits the horizon;
I set my ribs on hinges
so they can get to my heart.
a damp wooden platform,
a rough rope necklace—
I am not a Spartan
carried home on his shield.
this is not an honourable death.
   

    the art of making loveyou and i make love
without ever taking our clothes off:
through the cheesy poems we write for
each other, through all the sidelong
glances across the dinner table. your
palm pressed into the small of my back,
or when i have to reach up on my toes
(or sometimes, jump) just to place my
arms around your neck. when we nuzzle
our noses like inuits in the cold and
talk about growing old together. when
you start to fret when we aren't
holding hands, when i see your face
in a mirror and smile and suddenly
feel beautiful. all the gentle kisses,
laughing until my ribs might crack,
holding back tears when it's been too
long since i've seen you.
     this is how we make love.
    WhisperEyes solemn as pinewood
The touch of your hand
The river's at half-tide
They don't understand
The night is still falling
Don't know you like me
When sun breaks the morning
By sunlight you'll see
We whispered 'mongst spring-blooms
A promise to keep
When we were both yearlings
The valley is steep
My hands through your mane now
As sure as the day
Fly free as the meadows
Where grass finches play
Our eyes are still keen and
Our hearts don't know grey
With these limbs like greenlings
I'll take you away.


   

:thumb256836797:   :thumb263016906:   :thumb278461620:

    When God Sleeps.I. So it comes to this: pangea tearing itself raw
from our throats to pour into squares of newly open sky
where the stars grew aches and darkened lakewater
once bloomed into bruised winters. Somewhere
beyond the thick of snow, prayers are strung
on moon-rattled winds
and birds' teeth tear apart the poetry
of our hands. They will raise something beautiful
from these ruined words.
Continents shift slowly. They are
dirt-bound titans, these beasts;
rootless giants that mold themselves
to fit the vision we hold inside our heads. Oceans sigh
and their tides crawl ever upward.
II. Our shadows become umbilical
in certain light. Unknown children cast
dark shapes of water
to nourish the gardens springing forth
from the dirt's wrist like a eulogy for lost sky.
Morning doves sing because they see what we cannot:
the years between us laid out like miles and our feet
that never mark the reddened earth and
the passion-trees birthing flowers of such cold, untamed souls.
We are walking in the wombs of
    Romancing CottonSomeone told me that the balled-up almost was growing inside her like
a sapling, that soon the girl would be all swell and wet.  What she said
was, "don't leave". Her ego was a white sheet caught on a branch, the
type of fabric my mother treated with contempt. Frippery, beautiful
but impractical: keeping it alive was like trying to catch a bubble with
dry hands.
The wind carried the sickly smell of opium and morning sickness,
signals of a spring in which fingers like white spiders cradled
the beginning of bloom. Hope seemed at once skin-near and star-far.
What I offered her was not a marriage proposal, it was a murder
of crows slipping across the sheet of day. Union makes for ardour
and sweat. We were trying to build a body bereft of bones, with
phrases shaped like small sharp pins, like dove-fletched
arrows, like abandoned gods—relatively, you're
beautiful
and there are always greater pains.
I assembled cribs, prayed to the god of broken things.
The future
    Magentashe liked to face the general direction of applause.
she would devour entire poems but in haste,
she only thought in phrases (that had a nice ring).
micro-scrutiny,
a metronome was kept ticking by her desk-
a table of conversion to chew the syllables as they
rumbled past in clumsy, skewed boots with forced perspectives.
she kept her instruments gold-plated, silver-washed;
on the inside they were mahogany,
wood from sheared toothpicks lying in drains or
chopsticks ground down at a dinner table-
pickings from a heap of discarded things.
her eyes seemed to shine like gilded awe,
upon closer inspection it was found that
the reflective wonderment lighting up her face
was due to tiny metallic fragments
embedded in her watercolour irises
(from standing too closely to stage lights
directed on a podium when they imploded).
she goes to sleep being introspective.
she doesn't drink coffee because
either way she stays up all night,
tossing and turning over and over again to avoid
the faces of every
   :thumb298207120:





Prose



Too Many Clever BuggersThere were too many university applicants.
A theory for the clever bugger influx was that previous generations of university graduates went forth and multiplied. Another was the rise in opportunities for the peasant classes. Whatever the reason, there were now legions of heartbroken students feeling quite miffed. Touched by their suffering, the government voted to triple tuition fees so that many of the peasants wouldn't even try to apply.
Apparently that didn't work so well, making all the politicians very sad. They consoled themselves by claiming second homes with taxpayers' money, because even if you lived less than twenty minutes from the workplace, having two homes was just nice.
Using paper money to wipe away tears as they sat in their second homes, they wondered what else they could do to discourage the clever buggers from fulfilling their potential. Eventually, an idea came to them.
Testing. They needed more tests.
Unfortunately, it was known that clever buggers had a certain a
    Why I Am HappyThe boy sitting on the park bench had eyes like sandpaper melancholy.
I think I noticed because I am a poet. I don't think anyone else but a poet could look at his eyes and think, "sandpaper melancholy." But they were that color. A fair brown. And grainy. I liked them in the way I like bitter baking chocolate -- because it has an interesting flavor, not because it is sweet. Unadulterated chocolate is almost unpalatable.
We like sugary chocolate because it has been changed. Adulterated. Oh.
Could tears clean out the roughness in his eyes?
That is why I am happy. I cry the Sorrow out, since poets are not afraid to do that sort of thing. The hunger of starving artists makes us sensitive.
He seemed like one of the people that can be Happy while Sorrow constantly nags on their heartstrings. Like, "Ha, ha, that film was funny!" but after the film is over there is nothing to distract you so tugtug! you remember being sad. They're always sad, but they can't always remember. He seemed ok
    Artistic SolipsismThe world has ended.  Maybe it was an alien invasion, an astronomical catastrophe, the ever-popular zombie apocalypse, or some ironic twist involving irresponsible science and man's own hubris.  It doesn't really matter.  Perhaps it was a grinding decline like a torch starving in the night, or a fleeting blaze of cinematic glory.  That doesn't matter either.  All that matters is that somehow, I ended up being the last person on Earth.
I learned a lot – mostly about survival, but I'll leave that for a later monologue.  I found that in a strange way, I had never really existed.  No, I haven't gone mad.  At least, I don't think I have.  Allow me to explain…
My first move, reasonably enough, was to find a dwelling close to clean water and nonperishable food, which would buy me time before I had to venture out for more supplies.  Soon after I settled, I found myself doing the oddest
       Journey of a Coin.Penny's life started just like every other coin's long life: having been melted, flattened, punched and inscribed, she was finally born into the world in 1971. Along with her 1,521,666,250 sisters, Penny was introduced to a new life of travels and adventures and hardships, beginning in the bottom of a Tesco cash drawer.
It was lonely there, certainly not one of the high points of her existence: none of the other pennies were particularly verbose and the majority of them were dull, rusted and squalid. However, as one of the newest coins on top of the heap, Penny didn't have to stay there long.
On her first day on the job, she found a new home in the hands of a four-year old boy: his hands were sticky and grubby and soon both of Penny's shiny faces were thick with a mixture of soil, saliva and sugar. It was almost a relief when he set her on the counter in his kitchen, but when the child's mother came into the room and beat him violently for taking ten pence from the coin tin, Penny wish


Improbable(Lights up on a modest kitchen. MAN and WOMAN are standing, facing each other.)MAN
So, can I ask where you've been... all my life?
WOMAN
Here and there. Why? Does it matter where I've been?
MAN
Shouldn't it matter?
WOMAN
There could be something the matter. But why do you care? Are you afraid?
MAN
If I were to know, would it bother you?
WOMAN
(gasps) You know? How did you find out? What tipped you off?
MAN
The more appropriate question is... who tipped me off?
WOMAN
Okay, who tipped you off?
MAN
Ah, but therein lies the question, doesn't it?
WOMAN
Therein lies the answer, too, I hope.
MAN
Really? Does it now? Fascinating.
WOMAN
Don't you have the answer?
MAN
Do I? I thought I had it, but I might've eaten it, or used it to fill my gas tank, or mistaken it for a -
WOMAN
(yells) How could you be so careless? I gave you that answer on our honeymoon!
MAN
Wait - we're married?
WOMAN
I thought so... aren't we?
MAN
Perhaps, that fact has been es
   

Mature Content

    The Business of Murder"Well, now that we're through with the pleasantries, Mr. Daniels, I must ask: Why is it that you want to die?"
Joseph Daniels sighed and slumped down in his seat, the picture of unkemptness. His face looked tired, with large bags underneath his eyes and at least three days' worth of stubble. His hair was a mess, his clothes were disheveled. He seemed to exude an aura of despair.
He surveyed the room he was in, which was quite his opposite: neat, orderly, unremarkable. Blank, white walls, some filing cabinents, three windows looking out on downtown. He was sitting in a plain, wooden chair in front of a plain, wooden desk with merely a fake houseplant and laptop on top.
The woman behind the desk, typing notes on the laptop, was similarly forgettable. She was dressed in a black pantsuit, her dark brown hair in a bun. Her eyes were blue, but otherwise ordinary. She wore little makeup on her plain face. She was as unremarkable as the room, which was how she liked it.
She had introduced hers


:thumb312450654:       ThrillShe felt it every time. The rush. The adrenaline.
The thrill.
It was an accidental discovery. She hadn't meant to... it just sort of worked itself out. There she was, cramped up on the tube with everyone else, when Jane noticed the neck of the girl in front of her. It was beautiful. Such clean, soft skin, lightly peppered with hairs, snaking down to the secrets held underneath her pinkish collar.
No-one was looking. And they were all packed in so close together. So she just gave it a little lick.
Just a light brush with the tongue. A dab. She barely even made contact - just the faintest of pecks.
And it was beautiful.
The lady barely even knew it had happened. She looked around, absently rubbed the back of her neck, but continued flicking over her iPad as if nothing had happened.
That was when Jane realised that people didn't expect the unexpected, and as such they didn't react to it. The rush she'd felt.. that fleeting intimacy, that slightly salty taste just tingling on her tongue. S


these roads we travelYou could've been the girl who changed me.
I've fallen down and fallen apart enough times that it gets hard to remember, but sometimes I study my scars in the sunlight and trace the patterns back through time. I spend my mornings living in memories, reliving the places I've scuffed myself, and I've found that romance is better in hindsight. Her kisses are sweeter tinged with nostalgia, and it almost feels like I'm whole again when I'm thinking of the dents she put in my pulse and smoothing out the wrinkles she left in my resolve. For a moment, there's equilibrium, but then the sun is setting and I'm disoriented, dropping fragments of myself between cracks in the sidewalk I'm following down the street and towards an independent sunset. I'm standing on the corner and waiting for the light to turn, and you show up with a wayward smile cradled in your fingers. You press it into my grasp and I'm thinking maybe I've spent too much time looking at my flaws instead of my potential.
You could h
    SunriseYou say my name like a poem you will never write. You look at me like a sunrise you'll never witness because if you stayed to watch, I would be real, instead of being just the promise of something beautiful beneath the horizon. You touch me like a question I can never answer, like words I scratched into your back that you can't quite read, like the only phrase in your vocabulary is "what if." I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to use tools or how to follow directions. All I have are my two hands and the sheer determination to do something right for once in my life.
I'll duct tape phone lines and life lines and fault lines back together. I'll peel off my nail polish and rub my skin raw, so you can see I'm not a sunrise, I'm just me, don't worry. I'm not. I'll pretend I can hear your heartbeat in your smile and I'll let you think I can handle myself just fine.
You pinned the butterflies in my stomach against the cage of my ribs and tied the corners of my mouth to transcontine
    For Sarah, Forever AgoI worked the midnight shift last night. It was the sort of night where you body feels so heavy that your mind just starts floating away.  I was exhausted, worn. Sleep reached for my heart like a vigilante reaching for a gun, and I couldn't stop thinking of you.
You filled my head with poetry.
I could write something beautiful, that it was a clear night and the stars were out, that the moon shone above me like a love song in the sky. But it wasn't. The clouds were low and heavy and the streetlights painted the sky orange.
It was the kind of night that makes you feel trapped. The kind when there's no one alive but you, no sound but your heartbeat, a wolf howling and a siren in the distance. The kind when I decided that the world isn't big enough for us. The nights that turn into sunrises – the sunrises that break apart the horizon and pull the breath from your lungs.
You know the nights I'm talking about.
The nights when the wind lashed our lips like we were sky-sailing to
    fleeting forevermorei fell in love with a stranger today. we sat on the bus together for all of ten minutes- but i knew from the moment i laid eyes on her that she had my heart. she didn't even notice i was there. i sat by myself and out of view, in my usual spot at the back of the bus. i watched as she made faces at a little girl. eliciting the sweetest smiles from the otherwise quiet child. they began to speak and it was as if her voice was an angelic song. the velvet tones of her laughter warmed my heart and i longed to see her smile at me. i imagined it was i that was causing her to laugh. that she was so taken with me that her eyes glimmered with love and a soft caring which i knew permeated her soul. she got up- it was her stop. it was mine too. my heart raced- this was my chance. as we got of the bus the little girl turned in her seat and waved at my love. she blew a kiss as the bus pulled away. she turned to me and i saw the smile on her face radiating with a simple happiness you could tell was fe    The Little SparrowHer name was Emma, and she wasn't afraid of falling. For as long as she could remember she had been jumping - always plummeting. She understood the laws of nature: no matter how high she climbed, gravity would always carry her back to the ground; gravity would always grant her momentum to fall and wind-resistance to float. She understood why birds had wings and humans didn't; it was because humans would just as soon leave, and they belonged on the ground.
They always called her a little sparrow, always trying to fly, but they never understood that she didn't want updrafts or wings, she only wanted to scale walls and scurry up trees, to test the limits.
She wanted to throw herself from rooftops and swan dive from balancing bars, challenging inertia and gravity and the laws of motion. She wanted to cannonball into puddles and see if the ocean caught her, or if she merely fell through the earth  to the steaming, bubbling core. She wanted to lift up her arms in triumph, her hair


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IndigoSkyes's avatar
I am so so late, but THANK YOU. :heart: