#5

From May 2007, which was hard times if there ever were hard times. Its amazing to look back at how far we've come in life. This is one of my favorites, ever. Dear 17 year old Sierra, please give me some of your magic (you didn't even know you had it). This is called "aphasiac years" ("aphasia" being a language disorder that in severe forms can make you unable to read, write, or speak).

-

they say she was an octave below
the title of mistress, lady, gunslinger
of his supposed holy war.

his eggshell teeth hard as slate, diamonds,
paper-boy hat askew while he
played the tambourine for her body.

someday (while swallowing oriental leaves,
his tonsils scratched by their cross-stitched
brown hands, fingers spread, as though welcoming)
he would imagine her as substance and pray
on her sister's wooden pearls
for the sight of her coral-reef,
rippled beauty to materialize for his pen,
for his physical shell to stop alienating.

instead she melts into the slick,
frictionless agony of night,
knowing he will never grow while held
in the promise of something black,
not her skyscraper fingertips crushing
into his eavesdropped world.

a country where it is dusk;
the sky is overdosing on too many thoughts,
and crawling home for her bones.



SJ


New prompt?! Write a poem about something blue. It doesn't matter what. Just do it.