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Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. Leonard Cohen

Friday, May 31, 2013

Starved



(Image Via Photobucket: vivianandrea22)


Your heart is starved
I can see the hunger in your eyes
I can feel it even when they are closed

Desperate for connection,
you wander the world
like an exhausted passenger
seeking a seat on a full train

You search for the scent of kindness
underneath shuffling newspapers and coffee cups
and wonder why
everything you plant
dies

You thought you were surrounded
by fertile ground,
but when you dig,
layer by layer you find clay and sand,
while the verdancy taunts you
from just over the fence
or around the next turn

Sometimes
you want to yield to the emptiness,
surrender to the isolation
and let your appetites
dissipate
like a drop of ink
in the ocean.


Ponytail by Last Exit 

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Breathe

source
Naked morning light
weaves a seamless blanket
Thoughts depart
like a passing breeze
I float,
a sylph
no longer tethered
to ground
Breathe in
Breathe out



submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Words Count With MZ
and mindlovemisery, Prompt 5, Wordle Challenge

Monday, May 27, 2013

Sweet Heat

Painted Faerie courtesy of L. Diane Wolfe

Tender words make me blush
like a ripe, rosy peach
You kiss me 
with your maple tongue
and the sugar rises
You coax me
gently toward the flame
then watch me burn
sweeter for the heat

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Mini Challenge, Diane Wolfe Photography

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Cheaper By the Dozen



This poem was inspired by a conversation I had with my daughter about why she doesn't like shopping at large discount stores. Most of the descriptors are hers.

Open the doors
Get swallowed by the vastness
the feel of an abandoned warehouse
into which someone has wheeled in hundreds of racks
of haphazardly hung clothing
Dresses mix 
with shirts mix 
with pants
No apparent arrangement 
     by color
     by size
     by function
Hear the buzz of overhead fluorescent lights
one-third of which are burnt out
giving the place a strange bright dimness
reminiscent of purgatory
Voices mumble in the distance
Babies cry somewhere
yet silence surrounds
Over the dirty linoleum floor
roll dozens of squeaking shopping carts
pushed by sad seeming middle aged women
They plod through the aisles
adding to their purchases
     plus sized jeans
     boy’s sneakers
     men’s underwear
     a ceramic soap dish shaped like an alligator
Their faces blank and haggard
like they’ve never known joy
and have given up searching
except for that queen sized mattress pad
which seems to be sold out.



Friday, May 24, 2013

When Summer Belonged To Us

Unidentified Photographer, [Two unidentified girls, one eating watermelon, the other disrobing], ca. 1960 (2012.24.1) from Fans in a Flashbulb

When summer belonged to us,
we shot out of school doors like pinballs
pinging off trees, porches, each other,
racing toward imagined jackpots

We lay in the heat,
hair and freckles bleached with lemon juice
and tasted the tang on our skin

We shucked Silver Queen on front steps,
the silk sticking to our fingers
and stealing nibbles off the cobs

We grabbed thick slices of watermelon,
ate them down to the rind,
sweet juice dripping down our wrists,
then spitting the seeds
across crabapple dappled lawns

We set the pace of our days
to suit our moods
and lingered under street lights
well past dusk
Feigning deafness to the calls of parents,
we schemed our next scheme

There was always another tomorrow
when summer belonged to us.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

from 50 Shades of Feminism



"
Laurie Penny’s Saudade

There are more of us than you think, kicking off our high-heeled shoes to run and being told not so fast

The best minds of my generation consumed by craving, furious half naked starving-

Who ripped tights and dripping make up smoked alone in bedsits bare mattresses waiting for transfiguration.

Who ran half dressed out of department stores yelling that we didn’t want to be good and beautiful

Who glowing high and hopeful were the last to leave the gig our skin crackling with lust and sweat and pure music

Who wrote poetry on each other’s arms and cared more about fucking than being fuckable

Who worked until our backs stiffened and our limbs sang with the memory of misbehaviour that was what it was to be a woman

Who dared to dance until dawn and were drugged and raped by men in clean T-shirts and woke up scared and sore to be told it was our fault

Who swallowed bosses’ patronizing side-eyes stole away from violent broken boys in the middle of the night and vowed never again to try to fix the world one man at a time

Who slammed down the tray of drinks and tore off our aprons and aching smiles and went scowling out into the streets looking for change

Who stripped in dark rooms for strangers’ anodyne dollars because we wanted education and were told we were traitors

Who sat faces upturned to the glow of the network searching searching for strangers who would call us pretty

Who bared our breasts to hidden cameras and fought and fought and fought to be human

Who waited in grim hallways with synth-pop crackling over the speaker system for the doctor to call us clutching fistfuls of pamphlets calling us sluts whores murderers

Who crossed continents alone with knapsacks full of books bare limbs clear-eyed vision running running from the homes that held our mothers down

Who filled notebooks with gibberish philosophy and scraps of stories and cameras to prove we were there keeping our novels and the name of our children close to our hearts

Who were told all our lives that we were too loud too tisky too fat too ugly too scruffy too selfish too much too and refused to take up less space refused to be still refused refused refused to be tame

Who would never be still. Who would never shut up. Who were punished for it and spat and snarled and they shook the bars of our cages until they snapped and they called us wild and crazy and we laughed with mouths open hearts open hands open and would never not ever be tame.

Sara, I’m with you in hospital, in the narroe rooms where you have put off your veil to count your ribs through your T-shirt, short hair and secrets and quiet defiance crying together that we don’t know how to be perfect-

Lara, I’m with you in mandatory art therapy, where we draw pictures of weeping cocks and are told we are not making progress-

Lila, I’m with you in a north London bathroom, watching unreal maggots crawl in the cuts in your arms and listening to your girlfriend drunk and raging through the wall-

Andy, I’m with you in Bethnal Green where you love ambitious angry women with heart brain pen fingers tongue and you have a line from Nietzche tattooed over your cunt-

Adele, I’m with you in the student occupation, with your lipstick and cloche hat and teenage lisp drawling that there’s not enough fucking in this revolution and we must take action-

Kay, I’m with you on the night bus, half drunk and high dragging bright-eyed boys home to our bed, where we watch them worn out sleeping and whisper that we will never be married-

Katie, I’m with you in Zuccotti Park, where a broken heart is less important than a broken laptop is less important than a broken future and we watch the cops beating kids bloody on the pavement for daring to ask for more-

Tara, I’m with you in Islington where you have thrown all your pretty dresses out of the window and flushed your medication so you can write and write-

Alex, I’m with you and a bottle of Scotch at two in the morning when you tell me that no man will make us live for ever and we must seduce the city the country the world-

We are always hungry.
There are more of us than you think.
"
Laurie Penny’s Saudade, from Fifty Shades of Feminism (via mollycrabapple)