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i've written a grip of confessional love poems on beverage napkins
strung them together with a dissociative understanding of time (like dental floss)
     wrung them out and hung them up to ripen on the line

mama always said not to name things that are only going to die
and i lied to her face when i told her i wouldn't

          i gave it a name

and i was going to send it your way
as if maybe seeing it all spelled out
would make you change your plans
     and stay

alas
     i'm quite certain that i blew my nose on the winning sonnet
and burried the rest with what was left of my tears

now i don't even write
     i just scream at the stars all night
as if my life's become a sailor-song
and this desert
          my decaying cabaret
this is total ****. ironic, really. i sat down in a futile attempt to illustrate the way that sometimes, saying exactly what you want to, just doesn't read well enough. i'll never really be capable of articulating the pain of these passed two months, and if i could, it'd read like ****. like this.
 Dec 2014 Daniel Magner
brooke
do not feel the need to change your works/pieces because people on this site don't think you're up to par. I encourage all of you to keep writing
in whatever forms the words come to you. This is not high school or college. You are not being graded. Criticisms are welcome and considered but don't have to apply to your work if they don't fit in with how you think your poetry should be written.
I've never openly responded to things happening outside my profile and in the community. I was a bit peeved to find that there are people on this site who feel the need to police "bad" poetry and think that we need to be pushed to a preconceived betterment.  Keep writing, keep writing. Some of you don't have any better outlets and I want this place to stay a safe haven for all of us. I am in no way bad mouthing the people who do give criticisms and help people who genuinely want help with their writing, keep doing you. But please be considerate.
i'll leave behind a legacy of lengthy love poems
so that no reader could ever tell
     that i've never loved a heart who loved me back

i'll ensure that my body leave behind no bone unbroken
so no anthropologist would ever guess
     that i spent my entire life scared to death

and i'll fill each dusty corner of my tiny little house
with plants and books and trinkets of memories forgotten
so that the coroner could never publish
     how empty i really felt

oh-
          of all words i've ever spoken
    i pray that these will never read broken:

*i will sow this great earth with ideas for blooming
each incapable of death so that no child ever guess
    that i didn't live forever
love you, bisssh.
xxox
 Dec 2014 Daniel Magner
brooke
inside there was a
spat b e t w e e n my
bones, a wrenching
in all the sockets
every single
curl in my
brain was unfurling
but all I could do was
pinch the calluses on
my palm with a calm
ferocity, he does not
want me to c o n d e m n
myself but i was already
******* in, concave and
ready to collapse.
(c) Brooke Otto 2014
 Dec 2014 Daniel Magner
brooke
my mom tells me to
be encouraged and I
want to pry my ribs
apart and show her
my whitewashed
insides, how someone
went and took a matte
finish to my skin, I want
to show her the average
diary entry from 9:05 pm
and how I've stopped signing
my name because these letters
never get to God, I want her to
sit in on my conferences with
the empty chairs at work and
listen in on all the phone calls
I don't take, expect my showers
to be two hours long when really
i'm just filling the bathtub over
and over and      over and  
            over                  over
over



over
(c) Brooke Otto 2014
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