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She whips me down
And drags me round
She roars like thunder
And my freedom is plunder
She spits and seethes
And still nothing pleases

And so I’ll leave
For she will not relieve
The torrid strain I am under
In this oh so monstrous dismal blunder
I’ll succumb to a sweet sleep
And I know you won’t weep
As I end my stay
Besides, who could dismay?
 Mar 2017 Alexandra Provan
Born
Vida
 Mar 2017 Alexandra Provan
Born
I love the illusion earth has to offer
the vanity
the supposed happiness
that I cling to
Forgetting that
Every good thing
Must come to an end
short moments
timelapses
blurred colours
and lines

feelings
just beyond
fingertips
tingling
along synapses

but amongst
all the uncertainty
the almosts and not quites

the smoky smell
of Russian Caravan Tea

and then there you are
laughing mouth open wide
cigarette in hand
grey ash on black clothes

and for a moment
it is as if you were never gone
never gone......away
 Mar 2017 Alexandra Provan
Esther
Dearly departed,
Pray for me
In life I still need to excrete
Not only faeces but thoughts
Just like food in my mouth
I chew possible sounds
Until they are… reproduced
I think
What I thought was art
Is now a bit bitter on my tongue
The saliva must be tainted
With odours I’ve inhaled
Because this ******* I taste
Is too flavoursome
I know this isn’t appealing
But neither is the finished product
Unwrap what you can
Of what we toss down to you
And swallow what you think is sweetest
You know it will all be… sour
I think
What I thought was lasting flavour
Turned out to be flesh
And even as I write this
I feel the unpicked hair in my teeth
So that when I create
I am secretly painting in words
From the inside out
I am closer to you in this way
But in that way-
Not so much.

Dearly departed,
Pray for us
In life we must run to you
But in living we must wait
Amongst the rotting peels
We left in our backpacks
For too long
We’ve learned to speak
About the smell
But in doing so our breaths
Stink up the air
And our legs are getting stiff
Sitting cross legged and festering thoughts
Bubbling images we wanted
To forget
God, this is a witch’s ***
But she forgets to stir it on hot days
And we decay
Faster than you do, I swear
The curses don’t become me
I know, the curses
Must be me and them.

Dearly, Departed,
Pray, and still listening
I’m sorry about the foulness of everything.
I've started keeping my poetry to myself
written in a leather journal
that feels smooth and safe under my fingers
in ink most often black
but sometimes paper cut too deep red
and sometimes the color of tears
which is to say invisible but crinkled
the horizontal guidelines smudging their colors.
And these poems I write privately
are not my best work
but I love them all the more
than anything I've published.
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