http://slow.writerscafe.org/JuliannaMarie The original writings of author Julianna Marie en-us Copyright 2026 WritersCafe.org 1776016752 WritersCafe.org RSS Generator 15 The roses bit theirtongues,and tasted blood without water.They would have screamed if theyhad the gallantry,but they never would,and neither would I. If I had an ounce ofcourage left,I would have told you that your track markslooked like a f*****g cross-walk,you hitch-hik.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/802046/ When our stomachs hurt,it was because we filled them withrhymes that tasted like lemon rinds,and pocket lint that had shards of starsin it.We thought we could say anything,we thought we could lionize the symbols of one another that we had so parsimoniously built for one another,wai.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/798937/ We were dirtier than pigeons--Our empties were compostable,But we didn’t want them tosinkintothe earth,we wanted them tosinkinto us.Whilst we were just searching for coastlines,where land,where lifestops.The water danced without music,and it made us feel d.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/797255/ I’m having nightmares again--I painted my face gold,it didn’t help.I told the trees to stop apologizing,It didn’t help.I pretended I could melt the lightning,it didn’t help.I told you that it didn’t help,it didn’t help.P.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/794754/ We can throwwhat others have thrown,but we cannot createwhat others have maimed.We can breathewhere others have gasped,but we cannot kisswhere others have battled.As if screaming would provethat we still had fightleft in us--We speak in waves and bear lips chappedby sea salt,we tread water unti.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/793444/ It was as if the absenceof birds in our poemswas the absence offlight in the world,but there were always crows,of the same fraternal feather.Can you hear them now,as we stand heremelting?Like a pine needle ax in a tabloid forest:Our minds contorting into symbolslanguage couldn't behold,our synchroni.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/792756/ We could hear their voices,but not their language.We could see their faces,but not their expression.We could taste their rhyme,but not their reason.We could feel their absence,but not our own.The rose on the floorof the mind of our lossbegan to go into labor,bringing forth the thorns on the flooror .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/792752/ Nothing you say matters if you don't speak the language,I'll go back to Seattle and forget to speak pretentious,go to work and forget the word "coffee,"go out with friends and forgethow to cough up hipster hairballs.Blame it on jet lag. Allergies.The worth of myrhh went down in Mesopotamia on t.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/791667/ We were held (like this)by invisible strings tied to invisible wrists,so that when weshook,we shookthe same.Strung up like marionettes to one another's previous lives,The past called and was shaking from withdrawals,cooing in our ears like a phone sex operator,begging us to spend the night.She kept .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/791497/ I woke upand I was home,but not in a childhood sense.There was no one next to me,there was no one,but I was home.Like that time you woke up in the hospital bedand couldn't decide if that was whatyou wanted---Like the way in which you feltas if you were alwayson the vergeof waking up.With a name that.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/790647/ With the creation of the mirror, we all learned to cry--Can calamities be catastrophes or is this just our life?Conventionalism and creativity collidelike an oil tanker and a mouse on a motorcycleto leave everyone wonderingwhy our rain tastes like ash.Too many have confused the scent of the pas.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/790634/ I watched the Chinese man walking his dogon one stick,and I watched the Chinese man walking his dogon four legs,Asking me if my lips were painted redbecause the Forbidden City claimed it would bring'Good Luck and Happiness,'and I said "No, but let's Paint the Town Red!"Let's buy paintbrushes and sub.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/789378/ There they all sat:Hard-boiled eggs with white headphones,with ketchup blankets,Hard-boiled eggs with unborn babies,with prescriptions they snuck through customs--Snicker, snicker.Hard-boiled eggs eating Snickers as chasers for their self-loathing:A few extra pounds is always in fashion when you hat.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/789367/ Nobody reads poetry,Tell me a story!This is melodramatic,You're unrealistic.Too short, too sad:Stop writing, I've written you off.Where do the moths go when the lights are out?Does sonar go out like teenagers through windows in the middle of the night?Countless bats with concussions.Myself, lik.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/789148/ We blink to see the emergency lights flicker:911,411,Without SHIFT-ing this is my emergency voice!Exclamations disguising themselves as primary numbers!HELP111OUR SKIN HAS GROWN OLDER THAN OUR BONES CAN TAKE111AND OUR KISSES ARE LIKE A SONG:LIP-SYNCED111POETRY HAS YET TO GET AROUSED111The pen stroke.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/789147/ We are limited by 26 lettersand unwritten vocabularies:Our words only fitting together in magician's boxesused for the spurious slicing of bodies in half,but they'd always trick us with rubber legs.That's what we were given to work with:RUBBER LEGS AND A PLEXIGLASS SAW!But something within us shoute.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/788989/ Babies cry the same in every language:With an unexplainable emptiness each of us feels when we lose our umbilical cord--Pre-Freudian castration anxiety: the unisex version.We hide in corners to avoid self-imposed eye contact:Nobody puts Baby in the corner,Except of course, For Baby.You can time.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/788591/ 1940's fortune cookie flames:Stomping and snapping like black sequined tassels along time's folds and creases.There were tambourine tangerine sunrises: shaking.Like Polluck paintbrushes across our watermelon shelled walls that were quickly losing their erections--De-robing the pink juicy flesh of my.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/788587/ This is my toast to the cataclysm of thecliche!
My glass is raised to knowing
each one of us
has an aborted mirror buried within our intestines
that just needs to be 
dusted off and 
de-rusted
and looked back into:
doe eyes inverted,&#8.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/778985/ I have seen my hands,I have held,touched,felt,loved,kissed,lostwith these hands.They have burrowed meand they have lifted me.These hands have destroyed meand created me,shaping my world into over-baked miniature clay figurines,that we'd play withuntil oneor allof them would break.And each of them wa.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/776019/ Speaking in braille,the night of of spilled beeps.You thought that you felt what you said that you felt,but your eyes had escaped you!You thought that you felt what you said that you felt,but all you had to show wereengorged taste-buds."LOVER, I KNOW YOU'RE SWEETBUT I CAN NO LONGER TASTE!LOVER, I JU.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/775094/ Ricepaper skin turned to wax,things began to slip offthe instant they began to cool.And you claimed yourself a feather,"I JUST WANTED TO FEEL FREE!"As you knew your metamorphosed bodywas merely pluckedfrom the physical manifestation of fear.Nothing but amputees with their good legs falling through t.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/774140/ There were concentric rooms, Caving in on themselves in fetal positions. Matryoshka rooms with no windows,But we had our imaginations, Construed by mist meandering in misdemeanored sheep's skin, We couldn't wait for it to settle. The night would call and sayWAIT FOR ITW.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/773505/ Pocketfuls of poppies: popping. In scents of. Barley and rye.The lonely will burrow,nails contorted into calcite shovels with surprise soil-fillings,revealing nothing. Buttwo clenched lace-embrodiered fists,trying to holdtheir few remaining manic memories,fraying along their barnacled edges.Exp.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/772217/ We felt our asphodels dancing without limbs;florally bursting in synchronized routines untouched by post-mortem mortars in places repressed by Freudian idiosyncrasies--We built jigsawed fences around them so only we could know where they’d go,We builtand we built,knowing that at a date po.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/769707/ We have loved with the hearts of cowards,tufting our ‘manes’ in hypertension melodiesat one another,bearing our teeth, growling without the seismic tap-dancing of vocal cords,bearing our teeth,grinning without the royal blue blanket of faux silence coveting our learned insecurities".. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/767007/ There were deserts emerging like wolf packsafter a blitzed winter spent in cannibal caves,deserts eruptingbecause everything we touched turned to glass.And the clocks were crab-walkingon their handsin reverseso the glass regurgitated the lightning strikesInto our trembling palmsa.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/763446/ Termites.Water-logged bridges.Black Mold.The youth. Is starting to change.Judge any one of us by our coversand we are all Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”We leave poetry on sticky notes at bus stops,just in hope that someone will FEEL FOR US,that SOMEONE will know what we meant.Our eyes fa.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/763221/ The sky would open in a back-stroke motion,one french door after the next;we watched in a isolation-tanked white silenceas our best selvesrose and fell with the morning fog,and we were both Anne Sexton, crying“THEIF!WHY DO YOU GET TO DESEND INTOTHE DEATHWE ALWAYS WANTED,ALONE?”We bo.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/763106/ There were Rorschach butterflies perched on the peach pits in our stomachs,our legs traded off trying to run away from ourselves,causing our torsos to fall in etched games of tic-tac-toe scribbled on one another’s consciousness.And we’d cry, and we’d shake and we’d go dig up .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/762532/ There were eyes on advertisements on the 49, looking at us, pleading for better childcare, for erections, for a vacation on the Caribbean, for us to drink the latest flavor of vodka,They were encrusted with the sweat, piss, semen, tears, spilled coffee and wiped mucus of a fistful of the population .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/760706/ Building houses out of homeswith our matchstick fingertips,harboring the sparkwhile walking in and out of our best minds.And I saw you in the corner,you were walking with the sculptures,pouring baptized bleach into your lap with trembling hands in 12-point font crying“MAKE ME PURE AGAIN,M.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/759770/ I’ve seen the night,and what it does to you.I’ve heard you say “I love you” in your sleep,as your barstool fingers reached out for me incessantly.We’re wrapped in avocado skins and “Unknown Pleasures,”you should ‘wrap it up,’because you’re .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/753607/ If anyone would’ve asked either of us before the technological revolution,we both would’ve replied that we’d never last,but we cheat with contact lenses so we won’t walk directly into the guillotines dangling from the cedar trees,and we cheat with off-white colored dew drops .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/753581/ I can’t tell you what it’s like to be a ghost,(because that implies that you lived before your death,)My timeline starts a little after that.I was thrown, unloved, kicking and screaming, wrapped in a shawl of my mother’s deepest, darkestsecretsdirectly in the arms of the .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/753561/ I awoke at dawn and my eyes were cement mixers,churning conglomerate thoughts into instancesof smooth conversation,taking chips off the shoulders of him, her, them, us,contorting their manicured bodies to form the charactersof this exact text,as each of them screams I DON’T CARE ABOUT IMAGE,wh.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/753081/ These clothes only belong to mebecause consumerism told someone else tothrow them away,strung up on my limbs of wilted grass,browned by the memorythat has held us here,like this.The memory that has held us here,dangling from the rosarieson one another’s necks,framed by glass beads of fore.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/750021/ Behold the vast, deep-blue sky breaking waves above us,We are the sirens that loom beneath;We are the beautiful,The doomed,The wretched.Society, society! You have done this to yourself,Giving us the hair of angels to crown the minds of cannibals,Giving us lips so cherry-ripe to enclose our serp.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/734945/ If poetry was a city,it would be burned down and underground:charred skeletons of buildings left loomingin a basement full of lifeless salt mines�"Where the coal dreams of being ignited into diamonds,and the damned dream of coming back to life.If poetry was a city,it would only exist at .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/733679/ There were grown men on their kneeslike crawling children,reveling in their own s**t,unable to get up and walk away,unable to act their ages.Everyone was an angel with human skin,shaking down to their knees,Screaming in gospels of hatred,dancing in devilish beats and melodiesunheard and unmatched,Wa.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/732565/ The world is so beautiful when its quiet,see it there, in the lingered graze of your fingertips.At finger’s edge, you’re limitless.And the beauty there,can you see it?Framed by destruction and chaos,dumpsters overflowing and broken people falling overbroken legsand broken hearts&#20.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/732542/ Let the wretched dandelions do the growing,let them sprout up out of Satan’s hell-basket one-by-one infuriating every garden attempting to be “beautiful” with their serpent stems screaming out in obnoxious yellow hues, “I am here now, and I am here to stay! I am here now, and.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/723037/ One of us is pretending,the other is lost"we’ve both disappeared into smoke,we’ve both disappeared beneath buildings of ash.What were the flotation devices we used to thrive upon?How did we ever keep ourselves above this?Both of us are pretending(to be lost,)Can anyone hear one of us wee.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/723036/ I’ve been crawling under doormats,thinking they were blankets.You’ve been walking into houses,thinking they were homes.I was crawling into your heart,thinking it was my own.You were walking out of my mind,thinking it was yours.We were living in reflections,so impossibly the same.We were .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/686576/ Your heart was overgrown with asphodels, constantly in bloom. And your eyes were full of lilacs, that only blossomed in the sun.(You whispered to me ‘you are my sunshine, my only sunshine…’)They wilted arrogantly along with your nerve-endings, in salted trails of petals .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/685733/ Unpack these bags beneath my eyes,we can't stand to be alone.Pack up those bags beneath your eyes,I’ve found myself calling you home. Oh, they’ve got you so black and blue,our bruises fade to mimic their counterparts.Oh you’ve got me so black and blue,our bruises fade to match.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/681864/ There we danced,without bones,withoutskin,and there we sangwithout words,withoutvoices"we handed ourselves in bundlesto the clock’s open hands,drew his face upon your shoulders,traced his sound upon my lips,I tickedand you tockedand we knew,this was our timeSo we dancedand we sung!And we loved.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/681862/ I’ve heard them speak of ‘how things could be,’I’ve seen them grin without blood in their teeth,Come closer lover, whisper how it could be.Come closer lover, teach me how we can breathe,without skyscrapers of ash urbanizing your lungs,forming the bridges we sleep beneath,unde.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/678254/ 86Too many branches on this goddamn tree,too many leaves being shed in every direction�"my hushed glances under autumn overtones:contained chaos, barren frames,confusion,confusion,confusion.You said dream life and daily life would bea beautiful collision,if only you could live in a treeh.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/635342/ Just as we always knew:as we’d always expected--thechaos in calmness, like a cool sip of chamomile tea, whilst thekettle shrieked to scream, “It’s done! Quick! Before you burn the house down!”Screams we’d both become so accustomed to,our ears were numb to the .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/JuliannaMarie/598245/