“Bruise” by Michelle Cantu
A week before you died
Mrs. Garcia told me
that she saw you at the flea market.
You should have seen her face
she whispered as she sheared
her mangled hedges.
——————————————
I walked away from her
thinking of your eyes instead.
Warm thick pools of hazel
turned into baby doll eyes-
rolling away in your head
when tipped back
clicking and clacking
when you are shaken.
——————————————
I wounder what that first bruise
must have looked like:
the first bruise of your happy marriage.
Was it like when you peel a banana
and find the brown flesh
underneath the promise of thick yellow skin?
This was a poem written for the creative arts journal at our school. I instantly fell in love upon reading it.
By 9 year old Cameron Penny
If you are lucky in this life
A window will appear on a battlefield between two armies.
And when the soldiers look into the window
They don’t see their enemies
They see themselves as children.
And they stop fighting
And go home and go to sleep.
When they wake up, the land is well again.
I think this is one of my new favorite poems, and it’s by a nine year old
I know I haven’t posted from this account in a while…
Cuz I have my new tumblr, which is more funny stuff I find than poetry. But I just saw the amazing poet Marie Howe and so now I have a couple more I’d like to share :)
Als0, my new tumblr is woot859.tumblr.com !
“i dream as a lion.” by ~Corina90 on deviantart
i used to dream about sinking into the ocean. i used to dream about going up in flames and finding redemption in the way that the ash fell from my hands. now, when i dream, i think about the way that passion used to light my veins. i think about the pain that pinched my limbs and the cramps that woke me screaming in the middle of the night. i dream about the agony - the way i would stare at the sun and call it living. the way that i called each bleeding wound life and each burned palm passion.
i was the girl that swallowed the world and spit up the ocean. i remember the way that the mountains scraped my throat and the slaughter of the world settling into the pit of my belly. i remember the bitterness hitting the back of my throat and the way that even when i doubled over, even when i screamed out, even when i hit my knees that i was crying hallelujah. the way that the world was brighter for the pain and the way that i believed the only way i could see was when i was saltwater-blind and running for my life.
i am a veteran when i am awake, but a soldier when i am asleep. in my dreams, i have nothing but gunpowder in my nose. my arms ache from the kick of the musket and my legs burn from the miles that they have run. i am tired and i ache for home. my tongue is metallic and my cheeks are covered in grime. i do not reminisce about the war - i am the war. i am laughing for each bullet that i fire. i am the agonizing screams that wake young men at night.
i sleep as a lamb, but i dream as a lion. i dream of the blood running from my claws, of my incisors ripping into the jugular of life. i am a disaster and i have no care for the world that i am destroying under my soles. i am hollow and i am filling myself with the cries of the world. the agony of the shaking plains are held between my calloused palms. i am pain; i am pandora and my dreams are the box i break open every night.
i release my thoughts onto the unwitting world. i set homes on flame to wake the slumbering and let them know what they are missing. i dream in terror and remember the pain that once lit my bones alight. i remember the graveyards that i called home and the blank tombstones that i carved my name on - just so that i could call something my own. i remember the wars tattooed onto the back of my eyelids and the disasters carved onto the backside of my heart.
i dream in memories and wake in pain.
(i dream in flames and wake in ash.)
NEW TUMBLR
ATTENTION! I have a new tumblr :3
Not that I’m going to stop using this one! But this one is going to be for poetry and quotes while the other will be more for stuff I find funny on the interwebz.
Follow me! <3 http://woot859.tumblr.com/
Still now, I send letters into space hoping that some mailman somewhere will track you down and recognize you from the description in my poems, that he will place the stack of them in your hands and tell you, “There is a girl who still writes you…she doesn’t know how not to.
Some nights, I wake up knowing he is anxious. He is across the world in another woman’s arms, and the years have spread us like dandelion seeds, sanding down the edges of our jigsaw parts that used to only fit each other. He drinks from the pitcher on the night stand, checks the digital clock- it is five AM. He tosses in sheets and tries to settle. I wait for him to sleep before tucking myself into elbows and knees, reaching for things I have long since given away.
Baby, I’ll tell her, remember your mama is a worrier and your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more… Always apologize when you’ve done something wrong but don’t you EVER apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing. And when they finally hand you heartache; When they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street corners of cynicism and defeat you tell them that they really aught to meet your mother.
There’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline- no matter how many times it’s sent away.
There’ll be days like this… when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly, and the very people you want to save are the ones stepping on your cape.
