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Softer lies

2/28/2017

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Picture
Shadows tell softer lies
Than mirrors
Than your eyes
Than your lips
Than your calloused hands
Possessively draping my hips

I know I don't belong
But where I'm meant to be isn't clear
So keep telling those lies
Loudly enough for me to hear

I won't look at the wall
At the way the light plays tricks
On our lines
Blending one into another
When separate is what we are

​You say that you mean it

I know that I don't
Unable to tell a lie
So I won't




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Wings in place of roots

2/27/2017

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A generation born in an ice storm
An existence encased in glass
Trained faith to the intangible
Making wishes to watch them melt

Saying I love you is easy
Saying I trust you is not
Wagons without horses
Only dying stars to hitch

Forced resilience a toll paid to Darwin's spirit
Evolving wings in place of roots
Buying flat pack furniture
Since permanence is someone else's hallucination
The weight of an oaken heirloom
Too much to bear
In case of sudden flight

Stacked in concrete blocks
Five and six to a cell
It's what we can afford
Grass and trees slashed from the budget
Luxuries sacrificed to the body's relentless
Need to feed

Vilified for selfishness
By the ones who threw us out
With the bathwater
Because there was cash at the bottom of the tub

We froze
Glazed over
Immobilized by the elements
But you still ask why we're so cold
When you had the summer of love
And left us a long winter of discontent












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Searching for Ursa Major

2/23/2017

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You were always too big
Always too loud
You stayed too long at parties
And made inappropriate passes

You had a bear's spirit
Destined to lumber
To frighten initiates
But you were born only a man
Your heart was kind
That was what mattered
You'd give the shirt off your back
The food from your plate
To anybody you thought might want it

It's been years since I've seen you
Floating in different circles
Fate interfering with intersection
But I knew you were there
People talk

I heard the news
Looked and looked again
There are only questions
Destined to go unanswered
Facts ground fine in the rumor mill
Chaff mingling particulate with the consumable
I'm not ready to choke it down

I hope your flight was smooth
That you had a first class ticket
That the flight attendant winked at you
Free drinks all the way

You've joined your brethren
And I'll think of you when I gaze at the sky
Searching for Ursa Major


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You won't suffer the cut

2/22/2017

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You put me on trial
In your kangaroo court
Fabricated charges
Created damning evidence
Bribed the jury
And convicted me without hearing my testimony


You sentenced me to death
Dealt the final blow yourself
Watched as I twitched my last
You were satisfied
For a moment or two


You've had time to think
Haunted by my silent, wide eyed ghost
Realized the choice was wrong
You still can't fully confess your folly


You'd like to resurrect me
Thinking your powers of persuasion
Can bring back your dead
My body may animate
Words may come from my tongue
Smooth and hard like sea-glass
But you're not that skilled
Nor observant enough
To note there's no glint
My irises dull and milky
Stones instead of suns


The dead will only rise
When they know
You won't kill them again
A pact signed in your blood
But you won't suffer the cut


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I held my breath

2/16/2017

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I held my breath
As you broke my heart
It took weeks for you to do it
I turned blue
And I missed you the whole time


I know whose bed you share now
You know I refused to share it
And the reasons for my choice
Preyed upon us both
Failing with one, tried the other
Sometimes within hours
You laughed when I warned you
Told me you'd shut it down


I hope it keeps you warm
That the emptiness in you fills
Your youth is a fuel
And a joker in a game without wilds


Maybe you'll change the game
But I'd bet you get played
Choosing that heart over this
Guaranteeing yours will break in the balance
Two out of three ain't bad




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I came away clean

2/15/2017

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You went searching
Dug deep
Your shovel forming mounds
As you sunk lower


Perhaps you found what you sought
Metal clanking on ancient artifact
But you're a poor engineer
Didn't shore up the four walls you'd made


It started as a trickle
One particle at a time
Cascading to your blackened boots


And you didn't see
Thought it had become easier
The digging becoming looser
Scooping what you'd already thrown
Piling slide on avalanche


It'll be in your mouth soon
Choking it down
Filling you with someone else's filth
It's what you wanted
To bury yourself


You struck out alone
Told nobody where you were going
This place is remote
Screaming won't help you
And neither will I


It's me you dug for
Me you found
Broke me from hard earned rest
Cupped your hands and lifted me by a heel
Out of this hole


I'm walking away now
Your pleas are becoming muffled
And there's a smile forming on my lips
Color returning to my cheeks
I came away clean
Your luck was not so good
Like your grasp of physics
In relation to the digging of hard black earth
Or your decreasing ability to breathe










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Your capricious eye

2/11/2017

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Picture
I am an accessory
A shiny bauble worn to distract
from the day to day
Taken off
And set aside
when the world needs no softening
I am neither vital nor integral
To anything but a specific ensemble


To me
I am yours
Moments consumed with you
I anxiously wait
For the next time
I catch your capricious eye
Content to be held
While you're holding




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Sachets of sadness

2/10/2017

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I wrote it all down
Slipped notes in drawers
Sachets of sadness
Smelling of salt and poorly pressed flowers


Today I found your name
And I felt nothing
There was no hitch in my breath
Reading it over and over
Just to make sure


It's funny because I think of you
Nearly every day
Like a dead thing that lives inside me
A reminder of arrested development
Fruit that would never bear


I filled a thimble with foolish hope
Watched it drip down the sides
A ring of damp expanding beneath
You'd said it was big enough
But I knew the waste to come
Some was better than none


What evanesced can't be recaptured
We created and destroyed
The law of conservation of energy
A lie both cruel and kind
The eternal spring
Somehow run dry
























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Gods or monsters

2/9/2017

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Picture
I didn't believe in gods or monsters
When I came here
Solitary soles clicking on concrete
Echoing between tall buildings


I found the door
Brightly lit
Just as you said it would be


Marble floors gleaming
A sour smell beneath the perfume
You thought I wouldn't notice


I sat before you
Allowed the appraisal
Spoke the words you wanted
It wasn't enough
It's never enough


This battle of wills
The trick of water versus rock
One of us will crack
And I know it won't be me


I will walk out of here
There will be less of me
But I don't believe in gods or monsters
And I will leave as I came
Alone






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I was quiet

2/8/2017

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I was quiet as you squeezed my hand
Hard enough to make the bones crack
And you told me to shut up


I was quiet as you told another lie
About your endless failures
And diminished my successes


I was quiet as you picked the lock
To the room in which I'd taken refuge
And forced your way in
To demand closure that would never come


I was quiet as you stripped myself from me
To make me small enough to fit inside your palm
The only safe size for you to be
Good enough to yourself


I was quiet as you joked at parties
That you would leave me
If I became pregnant
And chose to carry to term


I was so quiet
They thought me nearly mute
A background murmur
Behind the scrim you'd built before me
Playing the role you'd written yourself
At center stage


They saw through you
Your performance hollow
Believed mine
Because fear is convincing
But I don't want the accolade
My voice is good enough






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