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It’s true what they say,
we always hurt the ones we love
and love the ones who hurt us.
We can quote Bukowski as much as we want,
but we need to realize the severity of his words.
“Find what you love and let it **** you.”
Love is a death sentence.
It is a sweet one, but in love’s very nature it is a death sentence nonetheless.
You will search the world for someone whose favorite book is The Picture of Dorian Gray
and who worships the same 1953 Hepburn film
and inhales dark coffee in the way that you do.
But you will end up settling for someone who has skimmed the back cover biography of Wilde
and who remembers when and where Audrey was born
and drinks java from a little coffee shop that you think is pretentious.
Yet there will be a time when you will find someone that you can’t live without
and you will be shell-shocked when you see that they can breathe air through their lungs
and eat the spicy food that you don’t like
and sleep with the window cracked just a little bit
all without you.
You will hate yourself more than anyone for letting yourself need someone as much as you need that one person,
who doesn’t even know that when you say you only take two sugars in your coffee,
you actually mean four, sometimes five.
You will ignore their pleas and roll your eyes at their petty compromises.
You will make them miserable because you love them more than they love you.
And they will stick around because they feel guilty for that very reason.
You will salt their wounds and ice their veins.
They will leave you on the side of the road and try their best to hate you.
You will both recognize that it is a valiant yet fruitless effort.
The line between hate and love is so slight that a feeling can change like a compass.
Love is hate and hate is love.
So you will grow to tolerate their lack of literary prowess
and enlighten them on what you actually mean when you say two sugars.
Most times everything will feel off and never quite the way you had expected,
and you’ll always wonder if you have ever really been happy,
and if this is actually how love feels.
When this happens, you must remind yourself that love is a complicated emotion.
It is in the tide of the sea
and the phases of the moon
and sometimes found in a frightening trek down Memory Lane.
You can find it in the face of every person that you have ever met
and sometimes it does not grace those pretty faces for very long at all.
The most truthful and sad part of it all is that it will eventually **** you.
But it is a death sentence at it’s finest.
i used to think
of you in ragged
edges and now
so gently as
the music
clicks
away.
(c) Brooke Otto 2014.
I am the moon...
     watching over the world
     and making things cold...
          preparing life for the warmth of sunrise.
in the shower i stare at my fingernails
thinking that soon I will be in the plane
on my way home and the entire day will
have passed and I will never get it back.
The water is warm and I wonder if this is
how I time travel, by merely thinking of
the future. I tell myself I must appreciate
every moment or otherwise not think of
such things, but within seconds I am
hours away from that shower, then
suddenly on a plane, and soon I will be
in my bed wondering if this week even
happened or if i am just dreaming.
traveling. Only
Remembering.
(c) Brooke Otto 2014
Seattle Poem 1/2/14
 Dec 2013 Alexander Albrecht
AM
It feels as if I've been  lost in this flea market for years
Skimming over every item, dismissing each and every one for their slight imperfections
Once I happened upon a lovely little stool
It was quaint and simple and as I sat upon it I felt I must have it
I finally had my brilliant find, my wonderful little flea market triumph
But it wobbled under my weight I noticed a scratch on the surface
So I let out a sigh as lifted myself off the imperfect beauty, and I continued my search
It is only now that I have found it,
My perfect bargain item!
A porcelain figure so beautiful I can't imagine why it hasn't been snatched up
It seems to be glowing
Beckoning me to join it in its glass enclosure
I approach the wrinkled fellow who sits beside the case and inquire of the price
For that little figure whose beckoning has become impossible to ignore
He flashes a nearly toothless grin and bids me come closer with a trembling wrinkled finger
He smells of cigars and moth ***** and he rasps
"You know, young lady, the most beautiful of things are the hardest to hold on to
and the quickest to be lost."
He gestures to the glass enclosure where my figure
My perfect porcelain figure
Sits no more
she is a flash
across the wheat-field
a tribal dance of light
across the grass, even
her shadow is thrown
across the sky.
(c) Brooke Otto 2013
I drive a truck
Which makes me a manly man among men
To those sissified 70's
I never caved in

Heck yea, that's country not disco
You hear blaring in the back
Which sometimes rattles the triggers lose
On my shotgun rack

And yes I do live down South
But not a redneck per say
My camouflage leisure suit
I only wear holidays

Or out to special dinners
Say Denny's or Huddle House
You know those fancy places
Where there's no spitting allowed

So getting anything more outta me
I wish you good luck
Now where was I going with this?
Oh yea...I drive a truck
i am your

                                                  arrow


r­elease me where
you
will
(c) Brooke Otto 2013
I'm the caretaker of a lonely lighthouse
On the shore of a small New England town
Not much here has ever happened
That is until Stephen came around

For weeks now I've been haunted
By the ghost of Stephen King
I'm quite sure that he's still alive
Which makes this very strange indeed

At first he wasn't doing much
Rattled chains, walked through walls like any ole ghost
Then Stephen discovered the roaming light
That I shine up and down the coast

Now his favorite pass time every night
Until the break of dawn
Is to make shadow puppets in the light
I don't have the nerve to tell his ghost it's wrong

Yes, Stephen King loves his shadow puppets
On the jagged rocks below displayed
Butterflies and puppy dogs
Is Stephen's ghosts forte

But all the puppy dogs have monster heads
And the butterflies giant bat wings
I guess you just can't help yourself
When your the Ghost of Stephen King

This lighthouse is no longer lonely
Since Stephen King's ghost did arrive
I'm still not sure how he does it
Cause I'm quite sure Stephen King is still alive
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