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Talarah Shepherd Mar 2014
Dressed in the best clothes I could find at the thrift store
long lost and rediscovered in this bottomless closet
dressed in a dark red dress, best dressed of anyone
sitting and waiting for kingdom come

this is a small room to do it in

cramped up muscles and tendons embracing bone
squeeze tight round my marrows while my warmth
yeah all my outsides spill freely, unwrapped alone
sitting and waiting for kingdom come

star stuff imparted with potential unknown
realized through wisdom realized through time
who gave me this bus to drive home?
manual ticket tear before the automation
who gave control to the ticket holder?
it wasn't you it wasn't you it wasn't you or you
***** all others waiting for stops at stops
capacity for passengers tops out at one

sitting and waiting for kingdom come

concentrating with eyes closed and cheek pressed to carpet
trying to return to Earth through wood and stone
and all the bones hidden below

lights out but incense

sitting and waiting for kingdom come

what a small room to do it in
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
To divine the truth, is to define a miracle --
since you asked I'll reach into the bag of
both realigned and canned answers I keep
with the good intention of weaving old
wools for you, into wisdom anew,
just for you
Hell, I'd rather reach inside my lungs,
scrape with ten jagged fingernails at
lining sprayed with silver by what's
become known as better judgment
until the flesh caught underneath
peels away
There's gotta be more to this exhaling
exchange of words than we've let on
constructions of construction in the
destruction come from centuries
of hard and stark speech revision
for science
Ever open restaurant rooftop under
four grounded legs, four gazing eyes
Sky scape splashed navy painted dusk
You ask lightly, highly of me
How do humans rust?

A burlap bag broke in bleeding insides
I reach deeper into my recesses
the cavities keeping my trying heart intact
and pull that bleating piece of trash
up through my teeth and cough
up for you

Is there a soul there?
Is there a soul there?
Is there a soul there?
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
Humble shadow sprawl
oak fingers stretching out
breaking quiet astral glow
in crossings on your cheek
with one closed tearing eye
the river forms
A silent and weary wind
whispers to exposed moon
you're lifelong miasma
going by night upwardly
back again for hours at best
with morning sun.
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
One of the few things I know about your father is that he hates me or
at the very least he's ****** sure I'm the one who, you know, pushed
the situation that we were living into the mess and the chaos and the
scream of sirens and phone call cries and late night drives through
perilous raining passes and hospital sheets and threats and breakdowns
that something once like love finally warped and quickly became.

There's no real problem with any of that except for the fact that now
it's so many months on and we both know we're still living the lives
we were, only now extended and separate and lonely but more close
than ever, over the North/South distance we created to say, Hey, we
don't ******* need each other and what we left we're leaving because
the reality of the ecstatic sort of good times fever dreams we dreamed
was that we woke up every morning feeling worse than the last,
running our engine and spinning our hamster wheels and talking
talking talking about things we'd do, but never paced ourselves enough
to spill our brains and hearts and our souls out of our bodies through
our capable hands, instead filling the gaps with more gaps and chasms.

Too much green grass to adequately water the land that matters means
that over the great expanse of minutes and hours and days we fall
behind without the energy or the means to cover enough ground and
give water to the buds we love, ******* buds into our lungs more
often than in the beginning to hide the fact that we bought a farm
from the start and never, ever, ever, once ******* thought to buy
a riding lawn mower or the seeds to sow in hopes of furtive futures.

I've been spending so much time falling apart, over and over in
what I thought might be the eerie and pitifully pathetic beginning
of an endless staircase that I tripped down the moment I told you
I'd never talk to you again and cut you out of my life in a fit of
anger and blind eyed tunnel vision that strikes, snap, lightning
fast from the terrible, less kissed and uncontrolled side of intro
version, intuition, feeling and perception, only to find myself here
in a melting meadow of ice and slush and feeble gray sunlight
through slate clouds as if we've seen the dead of Winter and stand
dumbfounded in boots and wet wool socks in the aftermath with
our mouths gaping in the face of the fact that we're painfully
breathing ice cold breaths that are slowly growing warmer, like
two lost kids buried years in sand to our necks, thinking the
possibility of dual meaning coin in our coffers like a dream.

We talked.

We have things to say, maybe, but we don't say them, because
in the light of a quiet, hopeful dawn we both learn that your
father's dying at the exact same time while we play with fire,
Catholic youth in public high school sneaking into each others'
bedrooms without condoms to do the things we want to do
without thinking about the consequences that fate's lining up
and laughing as every punishment falls into place like the last
time we ******* tried just crumbled into God ****** pieces
of glass from our oft mocked frame and bones of stone and
blew away in the Summer's wind, but we expect the Winter
is as over as the seasons are attempting to tell us.

We know that all pass.

Dad pass well, please.
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
Exchange between four eyes, four lips
two chest cavities containing two hearts and double that in lungs
apologies between bits of conversation
not taking the easy path in unsheathing the easy sorry in hand
trading glances spilling out love notes
like our lids protected emotional human oceans, open to the table

but never saying,                                "I want you back"

Sidestepping every memory left black
and as tires on the expanse with our knees tucked into our necks
excellent at simply skipping bad scenes
while we avoid recalling pieces of happy recall for which we met
our big successful forward movement
continues healthy momentum's slipstream of the highs we forget

We forget together how it was to vibrate
We forget together exactly how to speak

never saying                                       "I want you back"

Pound pulse-like music                               where                                 Logic never touched page
Revelation coil twisting                               where                                 Sleep broke with the day
                                                             ­            where
                   Human being water, spooned, was the shape and sum of its container
                   Still, silent, covered lightly under bed sheets in euphoria's sad recovery
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
Recently, things exploded
Violent threats and screams
Aimed in a general direction
No one of us could have predicted
Eruption casually erased two
Of the whole who now drive off
Maybe for the better

What am I to say?
You don't choose family
This muddied bloodline
This displaced gathering
This collection of lives all picked from the same strained places in history
All grown in and picked from the same orchards and pastures of ****

Well

What am I to say?
You can push away if you want to push
It's that recently I've had a chance to
Meditate

And

What am I to say?
I agree with no sentiment at all that you share
And you all share your opinion on the same subject
Nightly, Nightly, Nightly
What am I to say?
I don't talk anymore since I tire of your ignorance
Not comprehending how you hold such hurtful views
Highly, Highly, Highly
What am I to say to the world about you?

While it would help my image completely to hate you so deeply
This little life support system survives and I like it enough to provide
Talarah Shepherd Feb 2014
Well maybe you should ask what's in a name
But before you ask you throw that finger
Like you know
You don't
You weren't here one year ago
Unlike your accusations
That isn't speculation
It's a fact
A fun fact

Scissors cut
Photographs snap
Speech concerns
Hair regrows
Pictures burn                  (but not on the internet)
Though words hurt
I will learn                       (but I'll as soon forget)

A pop star in crisis?
You're right
Money can't buy attention
Money can buy attention
And I'm broke

(This is the stupidest thing I've ever put on paper)
(Congratulations!)
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