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993 · Nov 2017
Mutation
Cleo Nov 2017
I used to say I’d be nothing like him
A mama’s girl, fierce and fearless
But there is fear.
I am afraid of what I feel
Of the anger that swells
Of my inability to stop the tide
Of the time my mother and I fought
And she whispered
you’re just like your father
I am afraid of evolution.
A slow process
That can change a harmless thing
Into something else entirely
I don’t want to be that something
But in my head a voice tells me
You can’t deny your roots
And by roots I mean a grave
That dug itself into the earth when I was born
And waits for me still
When will I become your sickness
An emotional  minefield where no one walks
A sadness that makes my feet drag
I refuse to become the person I fear
Because although evolution cannot be stopped
I am the mutation.
And I will not become the man who brought me here.
846 · Nov 2017
A Sonnet Named Blue
Cleo Nov 2017
You make me feel blue
Not as in sad
As in I drank up the sky and took on another hue
You are my muse and I’m a girl in a notepad
I feel blue like the kind airplanes travel across
They are fleeting but I will last
We are the cause of beautiful and mad chaos
Sunny days and hurricanes in the forecast
The feeling of blue goes farther than the sky
It dives into the ocean, it brings things to life
It drips out of the eyes in a joyful cry
You see, the feeling of blue is not a feeling of strife
Blue is simply the color of love
And into it’s waters, you give me a gentle shove
Not including iambic pentameter because no thank you.
796 · Nov 2017
At the Dinner Table
Cleo Nov 2017
Your expectations are a plate I cannot finish
I eat until I am full
Until I am sick
What they say is food
feels to me like poison
I try to leave the table
But my plate is still unfinished
Eat
But I am full
My stomach can not handle
The words you try to feed me
They are watching
Plates are empty
But their portions are smaller
Don’t you understand
It’s not possible
Anything is possible
Those words will bring more suffering
And I will eat them until I *****
Every morsel of food expelled onto the table
The neatly folded napkins in disarray
The disdainful looks
What my body did to heal me
Is what lead them to disgust
I am now alone at the table
empty as I was
697 · Aug 2018
The aftermath
Cleo Aug 2018
And when you’ve healed
You’ll find that some people preferred you when you were broken

Because a drop of water
Is easier to manipulate
Than an entire ocean
627 · Nov 2017
Harmonica
Cleo Nov 2017
He called me his harmonica.
A name I used to giggle and blush when uttered from his honey-colored lips.
I thought that meant I was his music.
He called me his harmonica.
And we seemed like a good pair in the beginning.
We completed one another.
He breathed his life into me and I performed ballads for him.
He called me his harmonica.
He had other instruments.
He had other instruments,
and he found that I no longer played the right notes.
He had learned all my songs and could play them by heart.
But to know something does not always mean to love.
He called me his harmonica.
I sat on the shelf collecting dust and my silver finish turned to rust.
I was a relic and he was interested in newer things.
He called me his harmonica.
I could not move if I wanted to.
I was inanimate without his air and I wish I learned to breath without him.
But his air was his alone and he left me suffocating
while he played the most beautiful music that I could never make.
He called me his harmonica.
Sometimes he’d pick me up and play me beside the campfire,
my music diluted with smoke and the remnants of an old forgotten song.
His friends would laugh and he would laugh and then he dropped me in the dirt.
I did not get the joke.
He called me his harmonica.
But he never picked me up.
I depended on him and he left me in the woods behind a trail of tire tracks.
He called me his harmonica.
Others picked me up, but I lost count of how many.
I played my songs and they had their laugh and they dropped me
back into my pillow of ashes.
I remind them of their past and they like me until they remember
the past can be painful and I am only a reminder of some unbearable memory
that cannot be uncovered.
They call me a harmonica.
I used to be a harmony.
491 · Nov 2017
Dear Artist
Cleo Nov 2017
Lend me all of your paintings
Lend me your sculptures and molds
Let me revel in the song
That your music beholds
Lend me your tales
To read and decipher
Let me flip through every photograph
Let me see your life in color
I seek only to admire the creation
of the creator.

So please, dear artist, lend me your soul.
I promise to send you mine later.
484 · Nov 2017
Death Valley
Cleo Nov 2017
A shrinking shadow
Where else will I find refuge
For my blistered feet
396 · Apr 2018
Back Into You
Cleo Apr 2018
The second time
It’s different
Like we went to war
And came back again
Home
Feels sweet on the tongue
Interacting with you
Feels like that first drink of water after days of dehydration
I can’t stop breathing you in
I always thought that first love is the purest
But what is more pure than watching the sky clear after a storm
What is stronger than experiencing the worst together and seeing it through
How can I explain to you the gratitude
I feel for the things we could have lost but that love helped retain
Nothing is the same
I don’t want it to be
But one thing became clear when we wiped away the rain
Nothing looks better than home
Coming back from foreign lands
380 · Nov 2017
The Regime
Cleo Nov 2017
If I cannot sing then I won’t.
It is bad to ignore the rules.
I am good so I must follow the rules.

If I cannot sing then I will open my mouth only to breath.
After all, I must breath to live.
I am not doing anything wrong.
I am not a criminal.

If I cannot sing then I will speak.
Conversation with others
With myself
With the moon
Speaking does a person good.

If I cannot sing then I will hum.
This is not at all like singing.
I need not even open my mouth.
I just have this song replaying in my head
And I must hum
But I will not sing.
I love this song...

If I cannot sing then I will listen to others sing
After all, it’s their downfall
Not mine.
I’m just someone in the background
Listening.
mouthing the words

If I cannot sing.. why can’t I sing?
I want to sing
I feel it is right to sing
But I know I mustn’t.
But why?

If I cannot sing I will do so behind closed doors.
It’s not a crime if no one sees it.
I sing for hours.
After years of quiet
my voice is hoarse and timid.
But I still sing
And no one can know.

If I cannot sing
Who am I if not a slave
Who are they if not the masters
What is this if not tyranny
I will sing.
I am singing.
I am dead.

If I cannot sing
I will
                                     Now

                                      you
                                     must
Learn to sing
377 · Nov 2017
my Love, my Pain
Cleo Nov 2017
My love has daggers for teeth

When he smiles it stabs me

When he laughs I bleed

When he kisses my neck I no longer breath

My love is a beautiful thing

So beautiful

That it brings me so much pain
324 · Nov 2017
Mountains of Tehachapi
Cleo Nov 2017
Mountains of gold and green
My past is a distant thing
Halfway across the country
Where the wind carves and peaks
The mountains of gold and green
Seem to be calling me

I can’t deny that I was eager to leave
To a land of no gold and all green
But the thing I didn’t realize
Was that looking to the horizon
There were no mountains to see
looking back
296 · Nov 2017
How to:
Cleo Nov 2017
How to know when a relationship is ill-fated
All you have to do is look under the mask
What you find there will make you educated
For they will never tell, if you just simply ask

Now if you found something bitter in taste
Or even something of beauty and grace
The answer to your question you were given in haste
As soon as you found that you weren’t looking at their real face
242 · Dec 2017
Born
Cleo Dec 2017
There comes a peculiar feeling
With the completion of a poem
A sense of truth
Even if the topic is foreign to you
Like a mother giving birth
She has never met this human
But it lived inside of her for months
Connected in the womb
Growing each day
Just like a poem
That grows in the mind
An emotion
Growing in the pit of the stomach
And then comes the creation
That began with conception
And is born unto the world like the wailing infant
Desperate to be seen
As a passionate idea brought into the world
And in the world it grows
Away from you
In other hearts
Then you realize it is no longer yours to claim
That’s okay.
For there is relief in creating and letting go
What was once felt by one
Can now be felt by many.
Breathe
the birthing process is done
#birth #creation #poetry #writing #process #relief
229 · Dec 2017
And The Winner Is
Cleo Dec 2017
Hard work pays off
For the lucky ones
Often hard work
Throws your payment in a dusty drawer
Leaving you sitting
Heaving
Bearing the weight of the years
You spent begging the clock to hurry
Begging your legs to remain sturdy
what is done can never be undone
But it can certainly be forgotten
And the winner comes down to
The lucky and the few
#work #life #winning #losing #luck
205 · Apr 2018
nothin’ but a hound dog
Cleo Apr 2018
She’s been dead and gone for quite some time
Her body decomposed
A skeleton among the grime
A single figure sitting there
Beside her empty shrine
The figure has not moved for days
Its bones reach out from under its skin
As if to touch
Her dearly departed skeleton
All her friends had come and gone
Family left, stating that
“Her memory would live on”
But the only one that stuck around
Was her starving, mourning, beloved hound.
203 · Dec 2017
when i need you
Cleo Dec 2017
The tears are streaming down my face
I’ve never seen emotion in you when I’m stuck in this dark place
I just want you to care
But all you can manage is a pitiless blank stare
198 · Dec 2017
resuscitate me
Cleo Dec 2017
is it ok to breathe
when others have stopped
how can I still be here
when someone lovelier than I  
is not
170 · Nov 2017
About Love
Cleo Nov 2017
To hold the heart in your palm
A red that stains
A pulse in the veins
The one warm thing in the air
To pull it close and feel it flare

— The End —