She’s got a cheap cigarette
she uses to bury us all in smoke.
It hangs off her lips
and wobbles when she talks.
She’s cracked open a new book,
another ****** romance.

It’s always romance,
she says, taking a drag from her cigarette.
It’s in everything, in every **** book.
Each word she speaks is followed by a puff of smoke,
small clouds that form as she talks
and roll off of the curve of her lips,

the very same lips
that told me romance
is for suckers, told me talks
of love are talks of nothing rolled into a cigarette
she’d never smoke.
She buries her nose in her book

once more, leaving me to stare at the book
cover and nervously gnaw at my lips.
The empty space between us is full of tension and smoke
and somehow, a stubborn romance
that hangs in the air like a half hit cigarette
hangs on the edge of an ashtray. She talks

to me, around me, and about me, but our talks
never include that tension, though I could write a book
full of the way she glances past her cigarette
at me, how her inviting lips
beg me to foolishly romance
her by hurling apprehensive smiles through her wall of smoke.

The tiny wisps of smoke
that swirl around her dance as she talks
about this dime-store romance
novel she happened to pick up, a devastating book
about a man who spent his life with his lips
sewed shut. She finally puts out her cigarette.

The smoke from her cigarette peters out and silence settles over the two of us.
I move my lips and no sound comes out. When she finally talks
again, I cross my fingers in hopes of being the next romance book she wants to discuss.

I tell myself that I had to go through everything I went through because this is the path that's been written for me. I had to be friends with a girl whose shoulder I cried on multiple times because "my grandpa was sick". It wasn't a lie. It was merely a concealment of my own sickness. My first time going out with a guy had to be me third-wheeling on her date. I had to go to a party just to fall apart on the bathroom floor wondering if this is the last time I feel its coldness, your alligator tears knocked on the locked door asking me to release the broken reflection of me in your eyes. I dreamt of the day I had to travel distances away just so you get hurt a little bit, cry on this shoulder of mine and it be my tears' turn to play disguise.

Down by the market, past
The only stop light
We would walk, and talk
Make out all night
Forbidden love
But it felt so right
Go to sleep early
Sneak out all night

The winter was cold
Friction warmed us both
Enough to get naked
Make love in the snow
Until we pocket dialed on
Your old cell phone
2:30 am your mom was home
I wish I could see her face
When she first heard you moan

Havent seen you in years
But this I know
You still smile
Whenever it snows.
If thats true
You're not alone
Because I'm cold as hell
And popping up a bone.

I want to say thank you now
for every poet here
who dares to use their voice
in prose
to face their deepest inner fear

that we alone are not enough when that is just a bald faced lie
cuz we were born just perfectly the truth
and we will be more so when
eventually we die
we just forget this incoveinent truth
because
they
clipped our wings to stop our fly
embedded in deep messages
and told to us as wicked lie
and when I think about this now
it really makes me shrug & sigh
and every now and then ya know
it overwhelms
and then my spirit has enough to  cry

****.
deeper sigh....

I believe,

we hear a voice of broken generations
we hear deep within our mind
and that voice it could be one or many
and man that thing can be so ******* mean unkind
but we can unlearn deprogram change
and what you think inside we'll find?

EVERYTHING.

Ma Cherie © June 2018

Oh, to be a poet
one must be so emotional.
Well, no. Not necessarily.
We're only really capable
of understanding feeling,
investigating our emotions.
It doesn't mean we cry all day,
or pass nights in dark rooms moping.

We have lives; come home from work
or get in on a night bus back;
it's from all this experience
that we can draw out fact.
From mundane to extraordinary
we will become inspired.
Our strength is versatility
and life ignights our fires.

So, we do not all have to be
constricted to intensity
-to ponder oh-so seriously
on what it simply means 'to be'.
We can be strong, flirty, or mean
or to the brim with confidence.
For, what does 'to be a poet' mean,
if you cannot explore yourself?

Let's talk poppies and candies,
Let's talk summer frocks and bees,
Let's talk blue skies ending
In crystal blue seas.
Sure let's talk the neighbors,
Sure let's talk cooking books,
Sure let's talk red lipstick
And guys' good looks!
We're gonna talk Elvis and Marilyn
And Trotsky and Tolstoy,
We're gonna talk Eastern countries
We're about to destroy.
And Italian movies and French perfumes,
Marijuana and milkshake,
Bobby socks and jukebox,
And vacations by the lake.
Let's talk, my dearest pal
All of the above,
But I'd say, first of all,
Let's not talk love.