PLEASE this feature and these wonderful works of art, thank you!

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


Literature



Poetry

:thumb330861112:   Twenty-One RoundsDream torn,
"Rare form,"
notch-bone,
whetstone,
soles lock,
turn, drop,
twenty-one rounds.
Wrist-shatter,
knife-clatter,
grind-nose,
"Night shows,"
jackal-smile,
broken tile,
twenty-one rounds.
Fall-breaker,
ring-taker,
cursing fire,
ripped asunder,
bobbing, weaving,
leaving nothing,
twenty-one rounds.    
  04.10chapter one:
leave the boy and
don't look back
"but you do, sweetheart."
(there's no room for
second guesses here.)
chapter three:
spanish music and rough russian accents
those fruity pink drinks were the death
of chapter two, the green ones will do for the night
chapter four:
"why?"
"he didn't trust me-" 
(among other things)
"-so i took away his need to."   :thumb318332254:  

Mature Content

  SojournerRevisited 10/28/2012 - Read by disrhythmic HERE.
I.
Salt in the cemetery licked at the lacking and
Lacquered ribcages of centuries old hulls—
Hulls and albatrosses overhead like
Broken ribs and severed sternums.
Masts akimbo and off-kilter, wood stained
To the marrow by the fresh saltwater from the shore
Of the Aral Sea; beached, sunk in the speckled
Sand, like the words of a guilted verdict,
A flotilla of past-flown ships and craft
Plunge further into the pebbles and topsoil.
The decay of humanity and humus emergent,
Each vessel was a well-rested relic reliant on
The sun to circumnavigate the pearlescent skies,
For the vessels could no longer circumvent the
Dusk that plagued each day.
Coerced to acquiesce and reacquaint with
The night, the marquee moon beams upon
The shoreline where sea-stricken ships offer
Shelter, like a light   :thumb335203706:  
society is warped like a two-by-fouri used to hide behind pages, hide in between the three-punch holes and the
too-straight blue lines on looseleaf
paper because that's where i thought i belonged: among the blankness
of ideas i felt but didn't hear, touched but didn't see – oh, they
touched me, they brushed against my eyelashes like
dandelion seeds tumbling through the ether, and the
wind ripped them from their stems and flung them
into the world and then they finally
realized: this is who i am supposed to be, no, this is who i am and nothing
can change that, not even when i find myself pummeled by tsunami
waves that crush houses like we crumple all the wrong words into little balls with our
little fingers, our little fingers that
curl into fists and punch glass windows until the panes have
shattered into a million pieces like the pieces of our hearts and we're left
breathless and bleeding and oh-so-sorry that the
world can't leap out of its orbit and tango with the black hole in
the middle of the milky way b   ServitudeHeart painted lips poke outwards as though mucous squeezed from an tender, shuddering eyeball.  A frog pout and sucked in pink-tone cheeks battle for prominence on her round face.  Poisoned yellow eyes swim, darting and floundering, in glaring ovals of cerulean paint.  Eyebrows smothered, color gagged in virgin white over the chocolatey grey of her asthmatic skin.  Unshined silver hair perches like the dried, immobile sand of a beach day castle on the tip top of her head.  Dust hangs in the drapes of lace and chiffon oozing off her wasting body; it latches on like leeches, sticking to her bustle, her moth-eaten petticoats, the succored yellow stripes of her sweat-moistened overcoat.  On her feet, shrunken forms that buckle her feet like rotten bananas;  in her hands, a tray of tea.

I stand, I stand, my darling dearest
Your patient of eternity
Your doting wife
I dote, I dote, come now, your tea grows cold
Your bed sheets grow cold, I can still give   One Day I Shall Lay Down And Dieone day i shall lay down and die
and so for now here is my kiss, my golden-ness,
my forehead pressed against yours
like two strange animals lost on a plain of
red sand. one day i shall lay down and die so
now here, let these birds pick me apart,
show you it all, the torn underwear
and the girl gazing at the soft glow
on trees, the ferocious lion-love
weeping under the kitchen table. one day
i shall lay down and die
so for now i feast on beaches, your breath,
the flutter of my dress sore against my skin
someday i will find that peace,
plant a spring-flower deep in my heart, land one last cool kiss
on the bow of your mouth and slip away, i know that one day
i will lay down and die but for now
feel your fingers spread across my heart,
feel my roar in the night
  :thumb245879806:   Staying for the Seasonyou were born
of a broken cradle
where no one taught you
how to breathe
you need the stars
like nourishment, but
they just don't feel
the same
you live like a heart attack,
an insufferable shuddering,
a socially aware illness without
the will to pull through
it's a sad truth when we
look up in the mirror, and
only see ourselves-
but it's okay.
write it on the walls, it's
okay, you just need a
little more sleep.
(wake up. it's nearly
December and you're
already dead.)  
  10.04i.
She sits all alone by the sea
before the empty stretch;
whispered winds wandering through,
without any hope
of a realisation.
ii.
The hush of skin on skin,
such submission in her posture
to shimmy past boulders and pebbles alike
into the vast emptiness --
what a wonderful death it is. To drown.
iii.
Wooden clunk of boats
rocking against the gentle, rippling tides;
brightly painted sides
and glowing edges
and well-ripened lichen and a lining of barnacles
which soothes the onrushing memories.
iv.
Gravel-like hiss of sand on the
sloping route up wooden stairs,
creaky, crumbling boathouse;
faded outlook under grey-blue clouds:
your ship doesn't pass by this place any more.
v.
Maybe that's why these shoes hang,
odd pair as they are,
in these nooses
underneath the water
facing that clear, heavy sky
where we used to walk,
the sun and I.   another version of the truthlet's skip through the unnecessary dialogue,
the late-night phone calls where she screams until you hang up,
the "i'll see you next monday,
until then i'll just try to breathe."
let's get to the part where she dies.
  there is poetry under her skin, a pulse that defies everything,
  arteries clogged with stutters and pleads.
  she cut her finger on a paper once,
  and words swirled out along with the blood,
  drenched in a bitterness of sorts.
  (she licked it off, but the words remained,
  spreading across her body like chicken pox).
and it still itches, skin peeling off faster
than you break promises,
do you remember the sun when it went down?
she went down along with it
while you enjoyed the view.
         
wooden floorboardsold houses have memories
of things that you don't remember happening
until you touch the chipped paint in the garage
and remember
'hey, when i was a kid,
i ran a bike into this wall and broke my nose.
i was really stupid'
and
skeletons hidden in closets made of giant oak trees
of the wooded backyard.
specifically memories
of your brother daring you to eat an ant
and for some reason doing it.
note to self:
it tasted nasty but it was a bit better than
the centipede. a bit but not by much.
that oven where a mom used to put in
those cookies with the designs on them that baked
in what?
twelve minutes?
yeah.
and vowing one day that you'd serve them
at your sibling's funeral
just to spite them.
knowing my brother, he'd choose the santa ones
even when the pumpkins were clearly the best.
that swing on the oak tree in the back yard
that for some safety-risking-reason
swung over the creek
and i shoved you off of it
and you broke your arm
and spent all day in the emergency room.
on   He Scares Mewhat scares me is that
he knows exactly what to say without knowing what to say
the words hit me in just the right way
he never ceases to amaze me
what scares me is that
he holds me tighter when i start to cry
sobbing only makes him crack my ribs with want to
help
when i'm used to being pushed away
what scares me is that
he's the first boy i've not wanted to fix
i actually just want to be with him
he's the only one
the only one    Tallmy words are green tonight
written in the air in a neon glow
standing on the corner in the snow
reciting poetry from memory
i feel very tall
there is power in words
and tonight i'm in control
looming large and strong and
razor sharp
and feeling very tall
have i had too much? no,
just enough to clearly see
my shoulders are straight, my
head held high
speaking green words
and very, very tall  




Prose

  grassy field with rustgrassy field with rust
--------------------------
I'd heard about the old car, three miles out of town and all alone. I just had to see it. It was time. School was over for the summer, my friends were at camp, and I was bored. I set out Thursday morning for a hike, following directions that Uncle Will had given me. As the heat was still growing with the climb of the sun, I found the field and wandered around looking, and looking some more, trying not to be distracted by bees buzzing in the flowers, and butterflies and baby mice. Then it was there,  just a bit upslope from the bottom of a natural swale, and just below the sky at the top of the bank. A 1959 Cadillac convertible, but not like the old music videos showed.
This one was part buried in grass gone to seed and turned almost white golden with the dry heat. The tires were collapsed cracked pieces and there wasn't a trace of pink paint anywhere. Rust owned it, and it held on so tight that holes were showing in what used   OlvidarSlipping is the feeling you get when you dare to inch down a cliff you stranded yourself on by consequence of whimsy, squeezing your eyes shut and gripping each rock, praying the faint trail etched into the mountain won't crumble away.
Slipping is the feeling you get when you awaken one Tuesday morning to find overnight the universe collectively decided to wear plaid and speak Portuguese, leaving you abandoned by the highway side in your striped dress while you mumble curses in Russian.
Slipping is the feeling you get when you hunch over a worn-out keyboard with letters missing from the dull gray buttons, tongue thick and fingers frozen, staring with glossy glazed eyes at the darkened screen, wilting inside as you begin to remember you have forgotten.  
depreciateI have used this piece of writing as a submission for a writing portfolio as part of my application for Bangor University (6th January 2015) -- Danielle Jade Dudley
her spine was the most unappreciated part of her. he had never seen it in its bare nakedness, silken skin stretched tight over a sensuous serpent of bone, but now, while the moon writhed in the sky like a bug struggling feebly in a puddle of ink,  he could reach across the cushioned expanse of the mattress and touch it.
he brushed her exposed spine with his fingertips, exploring each curve, each crevice, as lovingly as an art fanatic handling a rare vase. he could feel all the beauty in the world, a lone daisy growing in a festering swamp, a premature baby's first intake of breath, a freak oasis in a desert full of wandering souls, epitomised in a single stretch of interlinked vertebrae and cartilage and milky white bone.
beyond the window, the night trembled, like an alive thing. his breath caught in his t     my howls are silentI, too, see the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. We are decomposing too early, our souls dying before our bodies can catch up. We are silently ravenous, a quiet craze in our hearts, not quite the same as your generation, Ginsberg. We do not shriek "Holy! Holy! Holy!" as we burn. We drown soundlessly.
The overeducated, proud products of postmodernism dissolve in a lukewarm soup of ennui, bored balloons filled with hubris rather than helium. Fragile dolls with flaking bones and hair and skin like flowers wilting, weighed down by indomitable wills and insecurities... these plastic girls starve to death and diabetes in the car beside me, fantasizing about food in the passenger seat. Former nymphets gouge symbols into themselves, the bleeding crags physical outlets for the demonic depression, for the memories of beloved older brothers molesting them in the living room, while her mother sits at a hospital bedside beside a fading father.
I see the most remarkable minds crippl  
Noticed in CommittingI started committing suicides.  They were small at first, but more grandiose as the months passed.
At first, I came up with basics: wrist slashing, hanging, overdose, jumping off a building, and stepping off in front of bus.  They were all very mundane, really, and if not done properly you just end up living very, very painfully.  It was after those routine ways to snuff oneself that I began to get creative.
There was going into a biker bar nude and starting fights with drunk bikers.  And when I say "fights", I mean with a knife in my hand.  That was a fun night.  Everyone was freaked out and angry at the same time.  They all wanted to kill me, but they didn't want to touch me either.  Eventually, though, they did.
Oh, another good one was sneaking into one of those giant dump trucks at a quarry and letting them dump tons of excavated rocks on me.  The driver of the loader always sees you just as it's too late and tries to stop the load.   Hardback TextbooksIn retrospect, Gender Studies wasn't the best class for a non-confrontational student. But it was too late to drop now; there was no way she'd get her deposit back. She pretended to study her textbook very hard, trying to filter out the class discussion going on around her. Why did the professor have to use discussion circles?
"I'm just saying, if a chick is, you know, wearing fishnets and a halter top, mini-skirt halfway up her knee, slinking around all skanky, you can't really blame a guy. She obviously wants it - if she looks like she wants it – "
The book snapped shut. That was enough. She gripped the textbook in one hand and threw it with all the strength she could muster at the obnoxious misogynist sitting directly across from her.
Her aim was good – right in the nose, and hard enough to knock him out of the chair. He grappled about on the ground, trying to hold his now bleeding nose and push himself off the ground at the same time.
"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR?!"
"YOU L   They Say I'm GuiltyOf the nearly eighty female prisoners that had answered my request, I had narrowed my choices down to two of them.  The first was a voluptuous, porcelain-skinned brunette that would make my brother drool in seconds.  The second was a golden-haired, frail little piece of work, and normally I would have dismissed her during the first round of eliminations, but something kept her there.  Maybe it was the way she stared at me with her venomous green eyes, but I couldn't be sure.  In any case, I had my two choices set before me, each isolated in separate cells on opposite ends of the jail so that I might observe them more personally.
I turned to the prison guard.  "What can you tell me about this one?"  I was starting with the brunette.
"Number 67," he practically spat.  "Don't believe a word she tells you.  She's as good a liar as they come."
I wondered at what sort of lies she had told the guard because clearl  
Date a girl who drawsDate a girl who draws.
You know the one. Her bag will be filled with discarded pencils and pens, scraps of paper with mindless doodles on them and blank books sticking out of her bag. She's the one who spends an hour trying to find the perfect sketchbook, only to pick up three more because she just couldn't help herself. She's the one hunched over in the coffee shop, rain or shine, the gears in her mind turning and turning while her hands move to catch up with every idea she has. She's the one who's too focused on what she's doing that her coffee's gotten cold and the people around her peek over her shoulder but she doesn't realise.
Compliment her drawings.
Ask to see more.
Turn the pages carefully, gently. Look at how hard she pressed the pencil into the page, the failed drawings, the successful ones. Look at the careful lines, the messy ones, the ones that give the drawings life. Linger on the pages you like but don't touch the drawings. Look at them carefully. Remember them.
Don't t   we don't sound like a whisper.The sun never sets over the water, but you still take me there whenever dusk comes to meet the horizon. We sit out on the rocks with me tucked tight against your chest, while you count stars like other people count blessings, but we're only half lucky with all these city lights ruining your chances. I know you're tired, love, but I'm terrified. I'm running out of ways to stop myself from telling you I miss you because twenty four hours isn't a long time to be separated and I'm really just more afraid of what you're doing when I'm not there -- and of what you're thinking when I am. I've been burnt enough times before to learn that loving with only half your heart will save you from the fire, but I know that's not what I'm doing here. I don't want you to be a mistake worth making. I want this to be real this time.
I keep playing out all the ways you could hurt me in my head, not because I think you will, but because it'll sting less if it actually happens. I've learned to prepare myself  
A History of PurgatoryFor more than a millennium purgatory's souls wallowed in despair while chaos and confusion ruled the realm. As a dark and barren pit, no sun lit the gray sky and no water gave life to the dry ground.
Souls appeared one by one as they died on Earth. They lingered in purgatory, weeping and cowering, until demon underlings dragged them to the pits of hell. The souls wasted their limited days huddled together for fear of the demons' frequent visits.
One soul broke apart. A soldier. Broad and standing tall in his gleaming armor, he held his spear at the ready and stood watch over the souls. He knew no other course of action.
As always the demon underlings returned to claim more souls. Three feet tall and hairless, the handful of gray and black imps scurried across the land and snickered to themselves.
The soldier bellowed a war cry and charged the creatures.
Startled by this first ever challenge, the underlings scattered, fleeing the enraged warrior and his spear.
Emboldened by the display,   Lion HeartIt is building up deep within her fragile body like a heaving monsoon forming over the dry, cracked, heavy heat of an African savannah; an unforgiving and all-consuming storm desperately willing to drown out its less than fleeting welcome. Flickering with ceaseless coils of skin-searing energy like a grey-faced fugitive's adrenaline stricken heartbeat, it is not a bringer of life, but a threat to it—and even the most reckless are hardwired to take flight in the face of such a colossal and uncompromising foe.
          Beyond these white-washed walls, the world would have her believe that she is brave, a lioness, an exception confronted by the inevitable; but outrunning the storm is no longer an option, and she has never felt more betrayed. Slowly, it is emanating from her heart and through the pulmonary artery—there, free to roll and crash, it engulfs her lungs in a terrible thunder that rattles the brittle bones holding her together. The ominous feeling that has settled into