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Stretch me out and count me like clouds
Say she is vapour
Venom, velvet and vermouth
With hair of hazelnut rapture
Clutch the moments, clutch the moonbeams
Clutch the stretched out skies of cloud and mustard gas sunset
Sing she is a child of trauma
Supressed in the name of breathing
Violence in the name of skin
And she is venom, velvet and vermouth
She was born to pink salt lakes in the low country
With ruby pomegranate eyes
And hair of hazelnut rapture
Girl with the soul of a thousand pilgrim journeys
Girl with the soul of a blackberry bush
Girl with the soul of olive trees and sheep meat and oven bread in the fire country
Human smiles
And other dark things of value
She lies like velvet
She lies in the name of supressing traumas
In the name of breathing
She bleeds like a billion stars bleed vapour
She is venom and vermouth
With hair of hazelnut rapture
She is the sum of a thousand pilgrim journeys
The prayer of holy rivers in the canyon country
The smoke of incense burned by sages
The scars of bodies burned by crusaders in mustard gas chambers
Goddess of Nuclear energies
Red-eyed like ruby pomegranates
Like the dewy cauldron of morning
When tenuous steps lead bodies down the path of executionary revolution
To boarders, frontiers, walls of white-skin scar tissue
Sing songs of Babylon in the free country
Clutch the moments
Clutch your breaths and hold them in broken palms
Clutch the tides and teach them
Breach your rib-cage, unstitch and return the borrowed bones
Melt the metaphoric thrones
Breathe backwards in the name of unsupressing traumas
In the name of truth
Stretch me out and count me like clouds
Girl of angel-breath ambition
Soul of blackberry bush and smile of splintered terracotta tile
Sing your songs
Say she is vapour
Looking for notes, criticism, anything really! Thanks **
 Jan 2017 Laura Jones
Mistry
She is a work of art
The epitome of beauty
Covered in her African butter
She wears a crown handcrafted by God
When her foot touches the ground even the devil bows down
She was happy with her perfect imperfections
Till you came along and made her feel like absolute trash
Playing mind games, you're really good at that
Threatened by her crown, you told her to take it off
"Straighten that Bush over your head"
Told her that her berry was not sweet enough
" Bleach your skin, light is the new beautiful "

When you were out with your peasant till 2am
She started reconnecting with the God within her
And He restored her confidence

When you least expected it, she packed her bags
Put her crown back on and went back to owning her throne
You and your cheap peasant didn't even last after her
You can't enjoy your side dish without your main meal

Now tell me....
How on earth do you even sleep at night?
.
In gravest, gravels of untouched soil,
Spearhead of purple, beyond the pale,
One statue of siege upon a windy foil,
What mires meek airs in all you survey?

Like a frost of summers, you are lord,
To hold that seed in your spiny face,
Depressions of land your promontory,
All up with arms, iron clad as a mace,

Beneath you, the grown motley fields
Are desolate, all flowers bled, blender,
Spiders and birds know you unyielding
The lost aleatory scent of no surrender.
 Jan 2017 Laura Jones
sura
Your shoes,
I saw them lying neatly
Side by side upon the bridge.
Laces untied; socks in a crumpled bundle inside
As if you had just stepped out of them,
As if you had just left them on somebody else's doorstep.

Gingerly, I picked them up.
In the air I let my questions hang.
At what point in your life
Did these blood-red sneakers turn almost white?
Since when did its crisp signature logo
Turn into an unreadable smudge?

Worn out and faded,
Tattered and almost unrecognizable,
I barely knew the thing I was holding in my hands…

Perhaps you were too busy running
To even notice its deteriorating condition?
Never mind the cracks on the surface,
The thinning soles already caked in mud,
As long as they take you away from the darkness
Which seems to follow you everywhere.

For the last time, these shoes have served you.
Brought you in this unlikely place, on this very bridge.
Where you left them lying neatly side by side
As you took the way out, barefoot.

Hoping someone would step into them,
Feel for answers with their own toes.
And finally understand that
There were no haunting shadows in your pursuit

Because all this time

The darkness has always been inside you.
You can't hold the short arm of the clock
and call it yesterday.
This is what I've learned this year. I think we've all grown up in ways we don't want to admit.

And in the end we're always more lost than ever found. But isn't that what life is all about? Finding your way back to yourself.

Happy new year everyone.
I hope joy gets your address right this time.
Most humans drink coffee and wine
They consume television and mainstream novels
They feed their souls with popularity contests and safe relationships

But poets
We could not survive without passion, intensity, and meaning
Everything we feel is felt to the depths of our souls
We are the ones to put into words the unspeakable pain of heartbreak
The incomprehensible joy of falling in love
We are the ones brave enough to say out loud the diaries of a thousand souls

Us poets
We drink tea and whiskey
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