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Jean Sullivan Jan 2016
In the times of my fragile heart, I imagine myself at a train-stop, a faraway train-stop at 2 AM, or in a country not mine, listening to the streets and Nico, wondering when it will rain next, or one block away from here at the bar with wood panels, drinking blues on a Tuesday afternoon.
In the days after I left home, where my brothers sleep on torn couches, in paintless rooms or ripped wallpaper. The dishes there were always *****. The curtains were always closed and the living-room would be coated in darkness of day. The poor kids are fine, but so far from okay.
No
Jean Sullivan Dec 2015
In a green beret lives her grandfather's ghost,
engrained in the wool his blood is soaked,
she wears it as a fashion hoax,
to tell her friends and blow cigarette smoke.
Still, over the years the hat grows smaller,
but the beret reminds her poor grandfather,
of the overcast days when bombs hit the shore,
the days he forgot what he was fighting for.
The day he left his wife and kids,
to fight and **** innocent pigs.
And this green beret, which he laid down his life,
for the freedom of his granddaughter, his sons, and his wife.
Jean Sullivan Oct 2015
We weren't ally movies, cigarette people,
gawking at a late night phone call.
Humbled at cathedral train stops, twitching for their next fix.
We weren't tidy enzymes, dieting hitchhikers,
Einstein drag queens and old boyfriend photographs,
generation universities, alcoholic planners, *** breath.
We weren't Godly student coffee drinkers,
mother machines abdominal on speed,
delighted in poverty and splendor paperwork,
We weren't high-school bathroom ***,
***** sheets, glamorous handcuff hunger,
waxy TODAY show hosts,
We weren't pompom mutts,
Underclass DNA and angsty pin-ups,
We weren't back hand world, no money,
Clinical musicians, and upper East side Jesus,
Harvard waitresses and empty notebooks,
poets on crank and speed,
We were All ******* Up
Jean Sullivan Oct 2015
Hands
the first thing I noticed.
A Smith, with the hands of a painter.
Striking me first as someone who would prefer a ball to a pen,
A phone to a book.
But his hands suggest a delicate part of his life.
A part maybe less troubled than mine,
and a little more appreciative than mine.

Dark soft eyes,
a warm entrance into the mind,
but often he looks away from me,
so that I cannot quite fit into that entrance.
The persona, the mask, the cataract,
He hung an old sheet on the window,
a few slits,
maybe a few have even gotten past it.

Sporty Smith on the outside,
He matches no season,
and forgets to decorate himself in life.
A grey cubicle but in the corner I see a blues guitar.
A white picket fence who is secretly a rock climber,
A wife and two kids who likes to drag race.
There is a bulk of normality in him,
and a hint of adventure.

A helicopter movie at the bachelor party.
What a trustworthy guy!
Decent grades, decent life, embarrassed, and mature.
And his words suggest a vocabulary of a well read college student.
His portrayal of himself is confusing.
Like a hipster vegan Lion.
He doesn't make sense.
And yet he is a whole person.

When he spoke to me his words crystallized in his mouth,
his shoulders slump forward,
as if he were dragging through an unfortunate thought,
his tone understanding and enthusiastic.
A decent bedtime I assume,
and the possibility of insomnia is present.
A few friends, and no musical preference.
And once he smiled when we spoke,
and his teeth as white as his words,
The image of a good dentist’s hand
and a smoker's dream.

He moves his head when he talks,
n’ twirling in his chair,
like a blonde girl and a string of her hair,
he twists back and forth.
He does not move his hands when he talks.
His Hands.
Softer hands than mine.
Soft as the new velvet record album cover.
His hands own my attention.
The hands of glove owners, velveteers, cake decorators,
and clearly,
the hands of a writer.
Jean Sullivan Sep 2015
Age, and age.
She galloped along an icy field.
The lights of Paris gleaming behind,
with Pigs on a throne,
Cows dancing in handmade gowns.
The public officials lead her gaze
stranded on the Atlantic.
In the middle with a white picket fence.
This day she had finally escaped the inevitable,
with a dog and some soup.
Again she took to sweep away.

This time
evolution ate and ripped her to shreds.
Instead of gills
she grew boats for feet.
Instead of fins
an engine.
Soon the waterway evaporated,
and land then seemed appealing.
Wrong!
Here only war, anti-war, war against war.
Age, and age.
Dead, religion, fight, food, power, fight.
Everyday

Lost and distracted on the melting grass.
She remembers the days before her race.
Time slipped by her.
Trapped in an hourglass,
forced to stare at magazines, beheadings, homeless children.
So sand drags her down
and the last pebble fades in her hand.
Now on her deathbed,
looking into the eyes of the village fool
she tells him her secrets
how she never felt alive.
“But you are alive today queen”
said the fool.
And with that she looks up at the silicon roof
remembering her days of escape.
Closing the door,
her elevator descends again
Age, and age
retire, children, marriage, school,
down to the tiny purple shoes,
and ending right where she began,
the icy fields behind Paris.
Jean Sullivan Jun 2015
We watch the tsunami of lust,
fill up up the lungs of the young.
Careless marked as hipster queen,
too blind to see the dirt
underneath their high heeled feet.
Jean Sullivan Jun 2015
Follow me, dust to dust.
Our aching feet will rejoice once again,
Where the leaves fall
and the stars explode into the glittery cosmos.
Speckled with atheism and creationism at once.
Where no man falls under rule
and no crates of bone return home.
Where empty minds don't exists,
and knowledge is sought through recreation.
And dogs don't wear the suit and tie,
and women are men too,
where kids imagine,
where parents say yes.
Where our reach is endless.
Where the metal bullet collects layers of dust.
When what needs to be said will be said,
and the new is no longer our worst fear.
When I no longer sit and wait,
and instead I hear and now.
With my scattered and erased etcha-sketch mind,
I follow the noise and not the cattle.
When everything I say will be true.
Oh lead me to the sight of those years.
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