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Braxton Reid Mar 2016
The cranberry dries my mouth
The *****, both demeaning and lifting
I am the rock and the hard place
I use nicotine to calm my storm
Braxton Reid Mar 2016
What do cigarettes smell like now
They don't smell like the burnt shallows of my heart anymore
They smell like a burning lung breathing in a poets mind
Braxton Reid Mar 2016
White vignette dream
Someone came to me
They asked if they could have my child
And I said yes

We talked for a while a smoked a few cigarettes
It all felt so real, and different still yet

I couldn't understand what was going on
Why I was giving up my child
Why I thought she would be better off
But the deal was struck

We went to the hallway where she was waiting to leave
With her blue owl backpack, and I couldn't believe
What was going on
She started walking towards me crying
And it all moved so fast
She said "Bye" in the sweet, shy, shaky, and child like way she does
And I broke down
I wept on the floor
And I wish I could rember what that sounded like
Because that would be the most captured performance of pain
This didn't happen, but **** that dream was intense
Braxton Reid Mar 2016
There is a man who has a large beautiful home
And a grand yard behind it
His sheets are made of Egyptian cotton
And he imposes his fit body onto them every night

On his bed he dreamt
The sky was quickly changing from pink, to blue, to grey, and so on
The ground was made of mirrors so he felt sorrounded by the clouds
He wasn't afraid even if it seemed strange
So he starting walking the set path in front of him

He came upon his house and went inside
And in it he saw nothing
And the nothingness hit him
He swore it off with anger
And went out to the large yard with shrubbery sculptures

The grass in the yard breathed
Ominously so
The ground had cracks but wasn't dry
And there was a spiral labyrinth

There were no trials in this maze
Only one task
To follow it all the way down

The entrance, stone with etched words he couldn't understand
Grew as he approached
And he felt the weight of the world like a roach
The hedges inside the labyrinth stared down on him

He felt the hedges stare all the way down
They dispised him for reasons unknown
And whispered
"What would you do in our shoes?"

At the center of the maze was a blood filled, oozing, heart
Every beat was slower than the last
And he understood it as his own
The sky turned a strict, brooding grey

Frantically, he searched his mind for answers
He blamed the people around him
"They're poison!" He shouted
But that couldn't be true

He wept, for he didn't know what to do to make the beating regular
And the hedges stared
And the sky closed in
And the whispers turned to shouts

Then it all stopped
The heart, beating
The hedges, staring
The sky, moving
While he was glad, he felt alone

But then it seemed the world spoke all at once
"Give us your all, we shall return the favor, and we will be one."
And he awoke in his beautiful home
And he wept in repentance
  Mar 2016 Braxton Reid
Sylvia Plath
My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.
  Mar 2016 Braxton Reid
Kenēn
I guess the heart is made that way
Wanting what's forbidden
And sin tastes like cherry with wine
With an appetite that can drown the town.

And weeping won't cure you.
God doesn't care.
And Eden is closed to those who are drunk
But darling, we have heaven here.
Braxton Reid Feb 2016
We'd dream of Paris
In possibly, all the ways it has been already
But this one is ours

You sit in the grass reading on Delacroix
Speaking up every now and again to spike my mind with your alcoholic knowledge
And you would succeed in intoxicating me with your passion
As you always have

We take our time and get lost in the city
Spill our glass hearts full of wine at night and get lost in each other
Not in the dream, but the truth
After all, who's to say there would be any time

And if there isn't, I'm content in knowing that cheap wine is enough
And that books can be read on any grassy knolls
And as long as I'm in your fast, talkative presence
I could get drunk on your passion whenever you flow
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