Posts for June 22, 2017 (page 3)

Why is it that in my dreams
People come to me – 
I do not know them at all
Are they lost memory?

And you see, these strangers
The ones who come to me
Don’t seem to have a lot to say
But they must hold a key

They are oh so very nice
Cause me to smile and sing
I’d really like to know them
Such joy to me they bring

Sometimes there’s someone that I know
I tell them   ” Go away – 
I don’t want you near me
Messing up my day”

Cause anyone I recognize
Should not be in my dreams
They’re no longer in my life
They’re mean and full of schemes

They put me in the foulest mood
And I yell at my cats
The question that I have here 
Is, I had friends like that?

Seems I’m getting new ones
Sometime real soon I bet
They wave to me from Dreamland
Although we heven’t met

So I’ll just keep on waiting
Biding time with cheer
Holding on to sweet dreams
So they won’t disappear.

Tasmanian Devil 
wouldn’t have left 
such a trail of puddles,
fingerprints and mystery
smudged: Midas touch
but instead of gold, sticky.
Remotes in the garbage.
My phone in the garbage.
My wallet in the garbage.
Crayon in my books, on the wall,
on the refrigerator.
A joy I’ve never known
shining through.

This Ain’t That, Either

              “I think (he’s) having hysterics,
                  Maybe you should slap (him).”
                                                     –    Alice Cullen

Did he just….
Did I just… 

Yup. I went there.
Regretfully. (Regretlessly.)
Quoted those books.

(Breathe)

Have you ever fallen for a fictional character?
Yea, me either. But if I had. Like, if I had.
It would be her.  Hands down.  If.

And maybe it makes sense (having been forced to read them),
having remembered similar personalities, for whom I’d once fallen,
(in the past). Not the past of the novel, but the past of my life.

And maybe she foreshadowed, as she often foreshadowed, as literary
device (wait, can I type literary without laughing? Or vomiting?),
one who would follow, or preceded, even, the others? In a past life?

                           (shootmenow, justshootmenow)

But it’s true! I didn’t need Greene, on the lackluster silver screen, to see
what I saw in my mind as I read (or didn’t see, for what seemed an eternity,
in that one book I waded through like crepuscular mud, where Meyer took her
away and held her hostage to forward a ridiculous conceit of…)

…I digress.                      (“How strongly are you opposed to Grand Theft Auto?”)

Um. Honestly. She’s the reason I kept reading, when an ex made me begin
and I guess I have to own up when I say she was neat. Super neat.
And I kinda, sorta, missed her. A little bit. But not much.

But a little.
Until I met you.

The henna blossoms outside her window
reminded her of the copper gilded ghosts
and the grief that changed her hair
from coal black apple shine to dirty dusty silver. 
The thick irrational shiver,
adjacent to the dead temperature of her savior, 
put poetry and novels in a box,
to be carted off forever.  Her three legged dog, 
Memphis, visits her unmarked grave daily.  
He cries to kiss her, knowing, it’ll be never. 

(C) Edelweiss Meadows-Millstone

They search for
the One
while I embrace you, squeeze
you like a stress-ball into a crumple of gray foam.  We snuggle
like post-sex lovers who actually like each other.  We laugh
at our inside jokes – the Lone Ranger walks into a bar… We dart
knowing glances at the
coffee shop lurker
cemetery widow
black rhinoceros on the African plain.

I met you when
I fell to bed through
mattresses of glass
slammed onto a block of ice
at the news of daddy leaving.
You uncurled my fists from the sheets.

When she took my children,
my mind jumping around
the board, slapping down checkered
hate you pulled at fingers on my face,
picked dried salt from my eyes
and whispered “King me.”

You say you tangled your shifty body
with Jesus, felt the blood-slime on wood,
hung there smiling at his crown and eternity.

At my party, you ate
all the food took
my girlfriends home
fucked them at 2am
hummed at me after,
the drone of a dial tone.

My neck drooped from
the search,
you cupped my chin in your smoky hands,
turned it to show a pretty girl smiling
and kissed my cheek.

Now, we dance
twirl arms
over giggly children in the street,
kick puddles into the air,
sing songs of togetherness and
loneliness.

Your rosy colors bloom across my fingers,

girly girl.  You really know how to show yourself 

and, what’s more, you know how to show me.

You tie me in knots and restrict my activities 

for days on end.  A doctor once laughed 

and called you ‘the ohio river valley crud’ 

because you had danced around my bosoms 

while I harvested grapes.  Ok, I was huge 

pregnant and panting and, yes, my fault,

I pulled my bra off because I felt I’d smoother.  

Irony—yeah, I get it.

You got the last laugh then.  You’re

laughing today; your sap found flesh 

through my gloves.  But it’s not over.  

Once my fingers regain greater range 

of motion, I’ll hunt you out, 

every sprig of you, then I’ll pour boiling 

water down your throat, not once 

but for as many doses as it takes

to make you wilt until you disappear. 

I remember where I was yesterday and the day before.  

I’ll blister you back to your roots and eradicate you.  

Yes, Ivy, I hear your comeback:  

“But birds like my berries.”

How hard it is to teach
with the hangman’s axe
looming overhead

How hard it is to write
when every stroke of the pen
feels like lash across my back

How hard it is to grade
when every drop of red ink glistens
like my blood on your blade

How hard it is to plan
when I hear you 
plotting my demise in the next room

How hard it is to lead
when I know your assassin
will slip in behind me with a garrote

How hard it is to advise
when I cannot see over
the walls of your trenches

How hard it is breathe
when you have placed
the weight of the world on my chest

(after ishmael reed’s “i’m a cowboy in the boat of ra”)

like prometheus in adidas,
i spew askew / a lyrical backfire,
a black, elemental mist that is
pumpernickel, periwinkle, amethyst:
the thesis for a pickled pig-footed
prose; the placebo and the poison;
1 part geronimo, 9 parts geronimo
ji-jaga pratt. lean into my curb-side
sonnet / a pan-africanism on
metformin and psilocybin. so now,
all i need is a red, black, and green
liberation jumpsuit, a horn section,
and half a dozen background singers
accompanying me as i walk to work,
gone to catch up on a week’s worth
of freeverse / flashbacking into
old stanzas and cold phrases
panning for gold / a sold sign
unfurling from my tongue; my lungs
a black matter alive and thriving,
my ginsu upgraded to machete
and all this confetti made of my
opposers; the pile is riled up and
me left holding the bag…

and a box of matches.

I envy clouds
They don’t need 
Coffee or combustion

All they need
To get them going
Is a gentle breeze

From Beatrice Underwood-Sweet’s Day 18 Prompt

A vast array of colors were seen on this nature hike
lush forest green foilage covered the path
creekbed stones of charcoal, amber, white, and onyx
a camouflaged snake sunning on a log
a pale green moth, wings outstretched on burnt umber bark
fuschia tree blossoms with golden centers
crystal clear waterfall running down the mountain
truly a masterpiece from God