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 May 1
Elizabeth Kelly
There’s a family of bullfrogs nearby
Their cries rise and volley
Shimmering in mezzo-soprano melancholy
A torch song to the new moon,
Pleading her silver bloom
return to the black spring sky.
 May 1
Elizabeth Kelly
Today was a sad song day
And I am alive.

I read a poem about love and tomatoes
that moved me to tears

And it’s raining now,
storming.

And I am alive.

Were I a different kind of mother,
the kind from movies,
I would wake you up so we could run outside and dance flailingly in the front yard as the neighbors peer through their slatted blinds, shaking their heads.

The storm has already slowed, though.
It always ends eventually.

The rain will bring tomatoes
and soften the grass between your tiny toes.

And I am alive.

How perfectly my aliveness fits my every me,
how much room there is in here.
If fill my aliveness to the very top, somehow it is never full,
there is always space for another swirling galaxy,
another thunderstorm
another sad song.

Tomorrow there will be tomatoes
and soft grass and tiny toes.

Today was a sad song day.
And I am alive.
Elliot Smith Figure Eight, Beck Sea Change
 Apr 30
Elizabeth Kelly
Ex.
It was you
Who embodied brokenness
So long ago
When my skin was soft and pale,
Lineless as the summer sky.
Clear eyed, then,
In everything but you.

Tonight it is the same
I know your name
Your number by heart -
Now so scarred it
hardly bears the beatings
Of that forgotten mottled sweetness.

And you’re still broken
And I am healed,
healing.

We catch up, old friends.
Flowers blossoming in the wreckage
Of a felled tree.

Oh, to again be nineteen.
 Mar 31
Elizabeth Kelly
We venture into the storm
Against my better judgment
(I’m ready to go home)

The wind kicks up
And a thousand
No
A million flower petals
Swirl around us frenetically.
Great beasts of raw, hungry light snap their jaws
Not so far away

You aren’t scared,
Your curls wild in the dark.
The storm, you say.
The storm, Mama!

The sirens, now,
And the rain,
And so many flower petals.

We turn and head back inside
To wait a little longer.
 Feb 14
Elizabeth Kelly
Brevity
So treasured
As if a soul could be measured
Get to the chorus
 Feb 14
Elizabeth Kelly
Finally back to my womb,
to the ocean of my gestation,
the peace of my creation

Old bones,
and the supple space between each.
Sleep now, they beseech,
such parts unknown
only dreams may reach
Ah. Goodnight then. Finally.
 Feb 12
Elizabeth Kelly
The darkness is
alight with static
filling the air,
washing the barren ground anew.

She sleeps just there,
I see her from the ceiling,
measured breathing,
stealing dreams from the ether blue.

On this snowy night
may we each be warmed  
against this frozen blight
with the promise of summer’s dew.
 Jan 29
Elizabeth Kelly
Here I am,
sick again,
a small pile of cough drop wrappers
growing on my nightstand

It’s spreads,
they say,
from brain to body.
I can’t speak, can’t scream,
no one would hear me.

Stress wins today,
it got my best.
Tomorrow I’ll fight,
today I’ll rest.
 Jan 29
Elizabeth Kelly
Exhaustion glazes the surface of every moment,
softens the corner of every thought,
until saturnine darkness enfolds the light at last.

Come, she purrs,
her long black nails hooking the thread of the veil,
drawing it back and back as it melts to milk and the smoke curls wantonly.
Sandalwood and palo santo;
Cinnamon and marigold and pomegranate seeds.

No lighted path behind, here,
nor threat of day,
nor forking ire.
Only dreamward are you lead.
Only dreamward do you desire.
 Jan 29
Elizabeth Kelly
A rare steak with red wine
to rend with my teeth
to replace the shed iron,
to soothe the ache of my emptying body,
to rebuild the temple
in sateen and velvet,
to nourish the traveling soul who at last commits their divine Knowing
to divine Being,
to provide safe passage from There to
Here.
To prepare for the guest who may never appear.
 Jan 26
Elizabeth Kelly
I used to be a *******.
Now I’m just dumbfounded.
 Jan 26
Elizabeth Kelly
What I’d like to impart to future generations
is that it’s completely okay
if your teeth
are a little
wonky.
 Jan 25
Francie Lynch
I drove under the overpass.
That would be an underpass.
Yesterday, I drove over
The underpass.
That is the overpass,
Above the underpass.

In squash, 99% of the ball
Is In-bounds on the red line,
But still 100% out-of-bounds.

In tennis, the ball
Is 99% out-of-bounds,
On the white line,
But still 100% In-bounds.

And, if I stand on my head long enough,
Our world seems up-side-down,
But really, it's right-side-up.

Life is like that.
Isn't it confusing?
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