The Amaranthine Poet

The Bluebird’s Lament

Two proud bluebirds built a very proud nest, laid their eggs, watched them all hatch, then shut their eyes so that they could rest.
During their untimely slumber, an eagle flew by and stole the smallest newborn bird whose feather’s most resembled the deep blue of the sky.
The eagle flew him far beyond the Turkish trees and over the wide and solaced seas,
She flew for days until her wings became tired and her body went numb and she spotted a little girl on the land crying over a broken drum.
The eagle, having grown fond of the bluebird and not wanting him to die, dropped him inside the girl’s broken drum and stumbled away as she said goodbye.
The bluebird looked up at the little girl and asked her why she was sobbing. She told him that her drum had broken and could no longer beat like a heart with its rhythmic throbbing.
Seeing that she was quite distraught all day long, the bluebird took pity on her, swallowed the sunshine and sang to her the most beautiful song.
The girl smiled and seeing that the bluebird was completely alone, told him that if he sang for her everyday, he could live within her home.
Over the years, the bluebird grew quite fond of the girl and with the accumulation of that thereof, his heart began to beat with a rhythmic throbbing and he fell for her, deeply in love.
The bird was silent with his affection, but with each day, was secretly falling apart; so, he told the girl that he held her deep within his little drum heart.
She told him that she could not love someone whose body was covered in blue feathers, so, that night he plucked each one out and was sure that they could now be together.
But then she told him that she could not love someone who had no arms of which to hold her in, so, he fled to a rose garden where two fairies slept and chopped an arm off of each sleeping fairy twin.
Then he cut off his wings and put the fairy arms where his wings once were and went to the girl in the hopes that he might have finally appeased her.
But the girl sighed and said she could not love someone who was so poor and told him that if he fell into great riches she would not ask for anything more.
So, the bluebird set off and came across a man with jewels of great sorrow held in his eyes, his body dripped with myrrh and he was writing a trembling letter in the dull glow of the moonrise.
The bluebird watched as the man finished the letter and sent it to God in a white balloon; he turned to the bird and told him that he was a wealthy king whose wife had just perished in an angry fire that very afternoon.
The bird frowned but continued on his way; he swallowed the moonlight, lifted up his voice, and the moon, the stars and sky were all envious as he began to sing.
Then he stopped as he heard the man say, “If only I had such a singing voice, I could sing away all my sorrows. I tell you, it would be a far greater gift than being a wealthy king.”
The bluebird suddenly had a brilliant idea and he began to rejoice; saying, “Dear King, if you give me your riches, your kingdom, and your throne, I will give you my beautiful voice!”
The king agreed, so the bluebird cut out his tongue, the king swallowed it and began to sing as he took off his crown and made the bluebird, king.
The king had become a poor man, but with a happy heart and the bluebird could not wait for his life with his love to start.
The girl, finding that the bird was now what she wanted, married him that day and with their marriage came a multitude of happy tears. However, the bliss in the bluebird’s heart did not last, could not stay, for he became very distraught after just a few years.
He began to long for all the things he once had; the bluebird had changed who he was and thus, became terribly sad.
He missed his feathers, he missed each blue wing, and most of all, he missed his ability to sing.
The bluebird built a boat out of pieces of gold and rotting trees and became a blue sailor who sailed far out just to be alone to cry in the solaced seas.
He knew that riches meant nothing if love was not true, and the little bluebird became so blue, so very blue.
His heart was broken like the girl’s drum which could no longer beat with a rhythmic throbbing and the bluebird went out into the deep of the emerald forest and began sobbing.
He wept so much that a river formed and began to swell and rise,
and the poor little bluebird drowned in the tears which fell from his very own eyes.

Jenna Awad
The Amaranthine Poet

Metamorphosis of a Pink Girl

They are called dreams: Without warning, we are taken away, released from time–beyond the reasoning of the conscious mind. Without warning, we are confronted by nuanced fears, somehow discerning the messages written on the bellowing hearts of tears. Entering a cavern of sleep–dreams–effervescent, like the foaming tide–gently pull us deep inside…

A pink girl lies in bed at the close of the day, shuts her eyes and she is taken away. Finds herself walking a spiraling road and sees a sojourning juggler singing an ode–”Ode to pleasure, ode to pace, ode to each moment in each sacred place…”
The pink girl stops to listen to the juggler’s words–each verse is sad, like raindrops weighing down the wings of bluebirds. He tells her he can no longer entertain a crowd; by the end of his act they’re all laughing out loud. He used to be amazing, all would say, until a feral child bit off three of his fingers one day…and now he is no longer able to juggle a ball, for his maimed hands are much too small.
The pink girl watches his mouth open wide as it fills with his sorrowful stories, his heart sinks below his ribs with the burden of his worries. After he is done speaking, he takes a deep breath and swallows, and the black cave stretching from his heart to his mouth, once again, hollows.

The juggler touches the pink girl’s tender cheek and suddenly becomes envious of the pure waters rushing through her eyes. He decides to ravish her delicate spirit and fill her head with terrible lies.

“Iridescent creature,” he begins, “One day, five cotton clouds will darken your fear, fade with each morning, but with night, reappear. Your heart will expand like the harvest moon, scintillate with starry snowflakes on the bluest day of June–But the five clouds will pour the ocean over your head and hold you under, storm over the roses of your cheeks until your honey heart is torn asunder.”

The pink girl, listening to the juggler tell her of her awful fate, begins to cry. And the pure waters through her eyes begin to wither and dry. Her pink flesh begins to crumble and form into a heaving balloon. It envelops her, filling with her tears, and pulls around her like a black cocoon.
The juggler sneers and continues singing his ode as his drinks a little of her soul and hurries down the spiraling road.

After a few hours, dawn arrives and shatters the moon, and the raining diamond shards split open the girl’s cocoon. Emerging, she is no longer a pink girl, but a scarlet woman, lying beneath the sky’s fiery pearl. She sits in lamenting silence, so that she can hear, as the giant ivory star whispers in her ear–

“The icy blue, or the vast green–we lie in great pastures, but drown in the sea; the more you’ve listened, the less you’ve seen. It’s not hard to guess the place where you will be.”

The scarlet woman watches the world begin to fade and descend as her consciousness returns and her frightful dream comes to an end.

The scarlet woman is lying awake, the taste of scouring rain on her callous lips. Her hands are old as she lifts them to her face–innocence drowning in the tears on her fingertips.
She looks out the window and sees five cotton clouds pressed against the pane, asphyxiating dancing moths as their golden wings tremble in the rain. Now, the scarlet woman begins to remember what she has dreamt–

Cold water rushes through her veins amid
the thoughts of bewilderment, trying to remember what the juggler, in her dream, did.
Violets pirouette inside the scarlet woman’s head,
As she desperately tries to remember exactly what the juggler said.

Jenna Awad
The Amaranthine Poet

©Jenna Awad. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication without express permission by the author by any means, mechanical, electronic or otherwise is a violation of all application laws.
—

Epiphany in a Cell (Song for the Avid Listener)

Just a preface: This is, in essence, about how people are so easily victimized and imprisoned by the hatred, corruption and manipulation of, not only society, but by their personal environments and experiences. Additionally, the reason why I’ve figuratively placed “their” prison cells behind the rib cage of the sky is due to the idea that the sky so often connotes vast freedom and limitless–an escape from the world, in all aspects. There are no obstacles or walls within the sky; if people only knew how simple it is to be freed from their “prison cells,” then they could be just that–free. That is why I use the sky as the ironic metaphor…(Hm, by the way–in case you are wondering–I am aware that I write a lot…but, that is what I do…if I wasn’t able to inscribe my thoughts, my head might explode. Haha.)

Epiphany in a Cell (Song for the Avid Listener)

A river reflecting green but painted blue,
Hides them in its depths–
Drowning voices purging through.
Their eyes are dimmed by a lick of white thunder–
Cracking beneath a velvet cloud-
It holds them under.
The sky expands with painful breaths,
They’re trapped in cells behind his broken rib cage,
Their innocence dies vaporous deaths.

Faded rainbows parting their billowing wings–
Climbing up their spines,
Piercing through until they reach their hearts–
Stealing from their tepid minds.

They’re raveled in the vines of porous trees,
Golden sunshine staining their lucid seas.
Shards of glass rain down-creating a perilous ocean.
They run to hide within mere phantasms of unbridled emotion.

I’ve left a message for them–
Where the crimson cosmos kiss the spinning mountaintops–
It was swallowed by a bird who spat it at the moon–
Who cries until the spinning stops…

He’ll tell them long before the dull chime of morning bells,
Epiphany–
Like a summer melody dancing in their dark, cold cells.
Wiping the dust from their eyes.
Like a storm after a drought,
Will be the rapture of their stifled cries.

The night will incinerate once the world forgets how to hate.

Silent Blue

Silent Blue

Many said that Leda picked up her blue silence,
And gently lowered herself into the well.
But the truth-
Leda fought against the beak of violence,
As a swan pushed her and down the hole she fell.

Her voice lept and smashed against the falling diamond sky.
Her laughter left in bubbles and drowned in the murky bottom.
The moon ran damp fingers against the well’s tumid eye.
The blue wind whistled on that summer-like night of autumn.

As she hit the floor she found the rainwater to be very kind.
He caught her in his wide mouth and held her ’til her tears were done.
When she drank up all the starlight he really didn’t mind.
He gave her a fallen rose from heaven which tasted like the honey sun.

The next morning the clouds came down and lifted her out the well.
The water, swollen with love for Leda, knew just what he was to do.
As the swan flew by, the sun bit his wings and down the well he fell.
Then the water crawled down his long, graceful neck,
And drowned the swan in the silent blue.

Jenna Awad

The Amaranthine Poet

This Dark Town

Well, it has been quite awhile since I have written anything on my website. I think I am going to still put up my poetry and certain works of prose up on myspace, but everything else (I don’t know what everything else is) will go up here. I think I will put my esoteric works and thoughts up on this here website…although, I suppose all my work can be considered esoteric. I would like to think that that isn’t completely true…Well, let me begin the first entry of the year with this little crumpled up tissue of esoteric-ness: A story.

With a swift movement, she swept her hair behind her ears and stared into the ground–as if she was trying to burn a hole into it with her gaze and escape from here; climb into the hole and crawl deep below the hollow howling of these people. I hear them speaking loudly about her.
“She can’t do it! She doesn’t even have wings. Who does she think she is? I wish she would just fall flat on that monstrous, rosy little self-righteous face of hers,” scoffed a jealous group of bystanders.

She had claimed she could fly. No one believed her, but no one cared either. She claimed she could fly and said that one day she would leave town; one day, when the darkness of midnight has become the blackest black and when the hearts of her neighbors become as stiff and cold as a mid-winter stone, she would climb atop the highest hill and fly away. They all wanted her to leave. She was too pure for this little town. She made all the citizens look bad in contrast to her sweet nature and they didn’t like that very much. Instead of changing their cold hearts and following her kindness, they rebuked her and mistreated her. They all wanted her to leave…but I didn’t. It killed me inside to imagine her gone; the only light within this dark town. It would be as if the sun had one day refused to shine…what would be left of a world enveloped in darkness?

I stood there, surrounded by the dark cloud of the town’s mocking citizens and wished that she would just look upon my face for a moment and see that I wasn’t one of them. I loved her. I looked up at the setting sun and its dull rays seemed to bleed her name into the drooping sky. At the sight of her name, I was certain I would melt…disperse into a scattered rain of a billion overwhelmed stars. I wished she would lift her head from her moment of focus and cast her stormy eyes upon the raging crowd and see me…She looked into the sun as if reassuring her path and I envied it at that moment. I envied the sun. I knew that he would always be with her. I knew that he would daily lead her path and warm her. I knew that she noticed the sun; I knew that once she glanced at him and blinked at his beauty…

She stepped forward, ready to fly away. The crowd cleared an empty patch of balding grass below her, hoping that she would fall and not be caught in anyone’s arms–fall to her death and they would all marvel at her silent, twisted corpse…but I wouldn’t let her die; I would catch her. She smiled to the crowd and a rainbow of melodic words fell from her lips…but I could not make out what she said because the malicious crowd was cursing roughly at her. I heard the sound of her voice though. Her voice was like the perfect song–capturing and surfacing the entangled emotion hidden within a person’s quietest desire. Her voice was like a whispered lullaby behind the velvet heat of a summer midnight. Her voice was paradisal bliss…like the bliss of heaven. Heaven: where the world, the banality of evil, the boredom of routine all fade away…not just fade, but lose their form of existence all together.

Then she frowned and mouthed the words, “good bye,” and the crowd laughed as she lifted her heels off the ground. One woman picked up a small stone and cast it at her…then the rest of the crowd assumed the activity. I was caught within the web of chaos amidst the crowd but as I looked up at her, I was filled with tranquility, mesmerized by her coy beauty. She wasn’t considered beautiful by most. Her inquisitive eyes were warm, but her face was a canvas of scars–caused from what, I do not know…but she was beautiful to me.

I reached out my hand to her as she lifted her arms to the sky, her fingers spread in desperation–like a child reaching for a consoling embrace–and as she closed her eyes…the sky lifted her up into his strong arms. The crowd grew so silent with their shock and a heavy tear dropped from her eye and fell, fell to the empty patch of grass where the malicious crowd had cleared for her to fall upon. I looked upon her face as she flushed with the distraught of hopelessness for humanity. I reached out to her and screamed for her, cried for her to take me with her, to rescue me…as I fell to my knees the crowd returned to their chanting and casting of stones and I called out her name as I sunk into the dark fog of the town…I wished she had seen me and had loved me the way that I loved her.

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder and as I looked up, I saw that the sky had lifted me up. The sky was carrying me away from the roaring crowd and the dark, hateful town. I watched as their casted stones became like mere dust particles. I saw her flying in front of me and she looked back into my burning face and smiled. And as she smiled, the fragrant breath of the sun and all its euphoria exploded within my heart.

<3 Jenna Awad <3

Read You Like a Book

This morning, a dove flew over my car as I was driving. At least, I think it was dove…it was a white bird…soooo. Anyway, I have come to the realization that I am a garden with no fence surrounding me; Is it scary when a complete stranger is able to read you? Is it scary when every gesture, each vocal modulation causes you to become an open book? I want to write books, but I did not realize that I am the pages within. I want to write; I want to obliviously meet millions of people by chopping down my thoughts: the tall, thick trees rooted in my soul…stop them at their continuous growth, cut them down, and distribute them to the world like loose leaf paper, exposing my history, my age through my annual rings. I want my thoughts to intertwine with yours. I am extrovert as I hide behind black ink. You will never have to see my face, you will never find my leaves, but you will know where I am.

So, people say that I do not set my boundaries close enough, so I will build a fence that no force can pass. Some say I need to get angry. I say: For all of those who live to destroy, for all those who trample over my orchids and set a veil before my sun: I will not allow your malice to disturb my peace. I know you hurt others because you are hurt. I will take your pain and smear it over the sky; Wash your remorse with expressive poetry; calm your thunderous voice with trembling songs. Art is my vengeance, my kiss.
Your words are bane. Your thoughts are shards of glass. All those you think of bleed under your oppression. You will never find rest in the shadows. You will find yourself at the tip of my pen. You will become my story. Thank you for being my muse.

One question wastes space in a mind; Why do you ask, “How is s/he doing?”
-S/he is doing well, I think, at least from an external observation. As of her/his internal status, I am unsure. If you want to know, sit with her/him under the drooping sun and read her/him. S/he is a tragic novel, simmering in the afternoon’s heat. Let her/him narrate with a voice: thick, like molasses, heavy with tears; fragile and laced with laughter; pounding and fierce with anger, choking with passion. They are searching to fill, you are reading to be fulfilled. Read them.
<3 Jenna Awad <3