Don't look.
The world's about to break.

Don't look.
The world's about to chuck out all its light
and stuff us in the chokepit of its dark,
That black and fat suffocated place
Where we will **** or die or dance or weep
Or scream of whine or squeak like mice
To renegotiate our starting price.

I was the daughter of winter
when you began to whisper
in my frigid ear. I lifted two
snowballed hands and chiseled
through the solid ice; bitter
words pierced the raw mist
surrounding me, but you were
not disarmed. I tried to stop the
thawing, dreamed lustily of a
rapidly approaching sleep,
that deep freeze and muffled
silence. You stayed, shivered,
and I was suffuse in tender
sunlight, for you were an
Indian summer, a falsehood
by very nature—false hope,
false promises, false warmth.
Your lilting birds and sultry
air enchanted—I was dizzy
and drunk, melting slowly.
You sang in the soft breezes,
danced frantically in the wake
of falling leaves, and swore
with each delicate blue sky:
It will always be this lovely!
But you were just a charade.
I was no more than a pool,
heated from the diminishing
glow of your fervor’s twilight,
and Autumn waited, patient,
as the mask finally slipped.

People of peace walk gently
People of strength never be stilled
Abundance awaits those with courage

RW Dennen-


Stay out of Iraq the spirits
pleaded...
Eyes wide opened, boots and shoes lined up in order
in almost perfect straight lines in Philadelphia July 2005
Symbolic death shoes of civilians out of synchronization
in a war of soldiers

Under a small tree meticulously placed
we're children's shoes in a perfect solid circle
I read o months of age on tags
I read 8 years old on tags
I read 12 years old on tags
And on and on the children's lists grew,
as wisdom must have waned
and common decency
was once cherished

These shoes and boots sadly became
the dimishment of human beings,
horizontal and vertical rectangular
snapshots of once smiling faces
all in the name of war, they vanished all too soon

And I saw running tears and tears being held back
and I felt lumpy throat feelings in unison
with the rest but in cemetery silence

Touching deep feelings so overwhelming
is to touch a false bent flower and flowers
and pictures of deceased soldiers and civilians
and letters once presented at doorways
throughout America
America cried its sadness and disbelief,
the vanished breathers of life giving air,
Our sons, our daughters,
Our mothers, our fathers,
Our sisters, our brothers,
Our relatives,
Our close friends,
All perished, like a vampire that ***** away the life blood of
the once innocent

I noticed mostly tourists coming in droves from Market Street
towards us volunteers who were located adjacent to the
visitor's center side entrance as silence like before still prevailed
And like before the atmosphere prevailed even stronger
as these boots and shoes became tombstones

And tender hearts became tombstones
broken into small pieces
Passions never changed into loud speech

And the green turf
rolled down towards the sidewalk
like a green carpet holding all those boots and shoes
like a quilt interwoven with boot and civilian
shoe memories about days that should never
happen again...

Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes
Which starlike sparkle in their skies;
Nor be you proud that you can see
All hearts your captives, yours yet free;
Be you not proud of that rich hair
Which wantons with the love-sick air;
Whenas that ruby which you wear,
Sunk from the tip of your soft ear,
Will last to be a precious stone
When all your world of beauty’s gone.

I think I loved you most the winter your heating was broken
And we’d stay inside all morning
Pretending to complain that we couldn’t get out of bed
Our clothes becoming little islands on the floor,
Ones that we could not quite find the courage to visit

Your hand stayed glued to my hip,
Your breath warming my shoulder
Like a long drag of whiskey
That kind that had a home so far away,
In a glass bottle on top of your refrigerator.
The one that would not be opened
Until that fateful day in February,
When everything went wrong

And on that unbearable night
When you joked that you’d freeze to death if I left you
There was a long silence
Like it might be true.

Now it’s warm enough
That I show too much skin when sitting in bars
And you avoid me like the plague,
Whispering in any girl’s ear that’s near to you
Every time you see me watching out of the corner of your eye

We should have stayed inside when the ice began to melt
Because I think
When those doors opened and we finally ventured outside
The world had changed,
And so had you and I.