The sun, the moon, the stars
They can only be all they are

The sun cannot guide you at night
Just as the moon
Will never shine a sliver of daylight

The stars will always be so very small
But the sun and the moon
Will never know what it's like to fall

Imagine yourself
a linear expression of experience,
a long strip of film like
the kind in old projectors with the
sepiatic sputters and flickers--
yes! Imagine yourself a strip of film but
rolled up messily like
the earbuds in your pocket or
folding fitted bedsheets.
You are a movie and the filmstrip endpiece lies at your feet,
you are knots and coils and tangles and
if you were to lie down at the top of this mountain for a moment--just a moment!--perhaps
the wind would catch the loops of film and
you would feel yourself
unravel.

We must remember
That the U.S. is essentially
An experiment

i'm not even pretty but my voice reeks of *** and my fingertips leave stains on everyone i touch
they can't forget me
can't live without me

I have a heart full of cement
Solid... Permanent
I've sang your lament over and over again
But every song has the same intent
Like something permanent.
I regret not having a patent on your scent,
Or the way your teeth are bent or broken.
Like at some point a decent person
        Had a cruel accident
                 But, against your jaw
..........A fists descent...
...To punish you..........
And forever augment that one percent of you.
I don't know the intent of the event
But, I do know you underwent some hell
To get to me, in our present
But, that doesn't matter my gent
My denouement is becoming distant
         ...you are here...
                      And there you went.
But, our two souls are water and powder
We create cement...
**Permanent

I, harbor danger.
Forever attempting to befriend the beast within
My grip, white knuckles, too weak,
She burns sharp as acid through the cracks in my fist,
Poison trickles through veins, taught.
Panic.
A Grasp of desperation,
Stumble,
on the edge with no choice but to balance
on the tips of broken glass.
A thing of beauty,
pride or disgust.
Both,
it must be
everything at once.
Terror swallowed in the dark
Demented
Chaos

When people read my poetry
they all have the same question
"Why does your poetry have to be so sad?"
The question used to offend me
I used to think that question deserved an answer
I even started changing the kind of poems I wrote to please the people who read them
I was satisfied with my work
but it wasn't really me
I began to feel guilty
I began to feel like a fraud
Charles Bukowski once wrote
"a good writer must simply let it all go, regardless"
I'm sure he meant for those words to mean something else but for me
it was as if I was being reminded to stop allowing other people to have control over my writing
It's not every day I gain advice from someone who has passed on years before I was ever born
I no longer feel the need to answer everybody's question
Hell I even ask myself from time to time
"Mandie, why must your poetry be so sad?"
Depression is another language to me
I speak it well
I write it well
I know it well
Bottom line
if my poetry is too sad for you
then don't read it