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 May 2014 Erin Hankemeier
irinia
ask your blood
your limbs, your breathing feet
what Poetry is -
a phylogenetic anomaly
in light’s discontinuity

or just…
the strange yearning of hematopoiesis

ask the silence in your lungs
the bursting DNA, reinterpreted
how it allures memory inside your bones
how it treads conventions of sleep
with the weight of a sigh

if you ask me
what Poetry is
I’d say: breath calligraphy
a winged dream of depth
on enchanted retina
the bitter-sweet art of airy harmony

ask your hands
what Poetry is
perhaps they’ll take a moment
to bloom
I asked,
Begged,
Pleaded
For you to stop.
But the truth of the matter was
You were a train without brakes;
You couldn't be stopped
Until you ran out of tracks to guide you.
And even then,
You would go on,
Soaring recklessly until you,
Inevitably,
Crashed and burned
And lost all the wonder you once had.

And the day I realized this
Was the same day
I stopped asking,
Stopped begging,
Stopped pleading
For you to stop.

Because this was the day
I realized
That a broken, unsteady,
Out of control train like you
Stops for no one.

(a.m.)
 May 2014 Erin Hankemeier
Louise
Her words are clearly written

full of life and love

yet she is showing you
the emptiness

It's there
between the words

above ..

and below ..
the lines

It surrounds
each and every stanza

and envelops whole poems

You ..

just choose

not to notice
A group of friends,
A gathering,
Overlapped
And away,
Persists
Where all know all
With,
"You think you know me?"
In the all too honest background.

An answer to the above –
Our assumed empathy exists,
When truthfully
It truthfully eludes -
"You think I know you?"

"I"
Or rather the
"We" in the "here"
And "now" -
A lesser form,
And not our truest,
Hides the "real" and deep within.

Each has a pain,
Relatively at least
And perhaps our only concrete notion
Of who the "other" is.
A non-biological truth
Founded upon
A shared organic ancestry
Where
The skeletons in the closet
Translate as -
Lacks of ambition,
Ambiguous futures (at best),
Swept away addictions
And tears in the night,
Torture.

We shed our daily frown,
For a fake smile,
A facsimile
And play for the pains we do not share.
It’s a place
Where the hidden words,
The bad words,
The blasphemous words
Slip -
"Help me!"
And just as quickly
Retract -
"Never mind."

We hide it deep
And hide it well,
Because it's when it's
Shared
That we become what we try to
Avoid -
Attached
And in fear of losing
Each other.

Thus remains –
The ******* of perception.
As we hold to this
State of confused,
Or concussive,
Happiness.
And only later will we all cry,
As we've all gone home
And alone.
Published in “Down in the Dirt."
arms around my ankles
dragging me further down
you never show me mercy
only watch me drown
and now I have been trying
to climb and crawl back out
but you keep filling my mind
with horrible thoughts and doubt
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