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Red
I just feel like I want to bleed.

Have you ever stared at your skin,
And imagined sweet red,
Tickling as it caressed your skin,
Oozing down,
Leaving trails like tears?
It feels almost cool,
But maybe that's because my veins froze over.
It feels almost calming,
But maybe that's because it's the perfect distraction.

Oh, you haven't felt that way you say?
Well maybe I'm just demented.
I read her skin like my favorite novel

memorizing the lines and passages of time
and tracing her character outlines

until we hit the ******

-- they call it the apex of emotion
I call it the pinnacle of her arch

because her back becomes broken dialogue
monologues reduced to gasps

while the innermost character struggles are flung
wide open, until a million errors spill out
punctuation out the window
grammar's gone through the door

my name becomes an expletive

I read her skin like my favorite novel
-- there's something different every time
 Jul 2013 Anndersen Fremin
Molly
I should never speak of it, though I always do.
Friendship falters, like it always does.
I must learn to fall in love silently.
Never returned, but never deserted.
There was a woman
She liked being lost
I don’t know where she goes.

I would sit there and watch her
She’d close her eyes
She moves her arms.

She pictures her thoughts
It was pure
Her thoughts were pure.

It was unusual
The sight was beautiful
Still with her eyes closed.

I stopped watching her for a moment
Suddenly I hear shouts
“STOP IT”

The woman was shouting
At the people who would talk to her
She didn’t like talking when her eyes are closed.

She paints the same picture all over again
She starts to frown
The painting’s destroyed

She suddenly wrote down words
I tried getting closer
“How, why, when” it said

Her eyes still closed
As if she was talking to someone
Someone out of this world

It still made me wonder
From a beautiful picture to words
Why?

Once I got home I ran to my room
I locked all the doors
Then I closed my eyes.
Give us 10 more years
paving this land with memorials.
Arlingtons, Monuments, Wailing Walls
to those who chose, and some who didn't
for causes sometimes hardly worthy
filling our country
with reminders of contempt
and bitterness- loss- maybe without cause
until our babies
have no soft place to rest their heads
and plenty of ideas
ready-made
on intravenous drip
into soft minds
so they never have to draw
another conclusion ever again.
Last night a young poet’s voice
tore so deep within
that it ripped my soul apart.....

Her words of birds and cages and gravity
and what human does to human
brought me back to wind swept hills
where the was sky blue enough to drown in
and vast enough to blanket all corners of the earth
where I, as a boy, worked and wandered
wandered through words
words spoken in telling
and words raged in rage

As I pulled the implements of grain through the soil
I learned to think
the dust I raised drifted across the land
bringing with it my thoughts
passed horizons, passed the hills
to distant lands
torn by the pains of love, of war, of loss
and
of what human does to human

His rage was the desperation of a soul shredded
by war
by what human does to human
he was caged
between what he had seen
and that he should still posses some hope
between witnessing the destruction of a world
and believing in a world

But deep within him I had always heard a voice
a voice buried deep beneath his rage
a voice..... he could no longer hear
but I
could always hear
“no matter how long I am caged
no matter how long the gravity of ignorance and hate,
the gravity of hubris and destruction binds and
holds down my soul,
I was alway meant to fly,
we were all....meant to fly....”
I published this eight years ago. I thought I would revisit it again.
a symphony orchestra.
there is a thunderstorm,
they are playing a Wagner overture
and the people leave their seats under the trees
and run inside to the pavilion
the women giggling, the men pretending calm,
wet cigarettes being thrown away,
Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the
pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees
and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian
Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,
one man sits alone in the rain
listening. the audience notices him. they turn
and look. the orchestra goes about its
business. the man sits in the night in the rain,
listening. there is something wrong with him,
isn't there?
he came to hear the
music.
It was always hard to know
Who hid in the hedges
Who flickered like flames out of sight
The end of the garden
The crackle of the night

It was hard to see
Through the branches and the sounds
And push away the leaves to where the secret fires burned
To think what might simmer
In the cauldron of darkdreaming

And I could never go
To the end of the garden
Not on my own, with my net and my penknife
Only with you, and your eyes snapping bright.
Even though the worlds on top of me.
My legs are heavy my back feels weak.
I stand up straight as I should be.
My destiny is mine to carve.
I tell myself to succeed and my fire burns.
Why not follow and see where this path leads.
The golden road is ahead.
Warm winds and eagerness drive me.
I'm alive.
I won't run.
I won't cry.
These scars were deep, but now are faded.
This is me.
The weights under my eyes

are heavier than they've ever been.

There are pins and needles

and thorns in my fingertips.

There are shards of broken

window panes in my feet.

And I’m driving just to forget

that I have no where to drive to.

And I sing until my chest

caves in and my jaw aches

with every note.

My ethics are in the backseat,

and my uncertainty is riding shotgun.

I've never felt so lost,

but I know exactly how lost I am.
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