Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 Jul 2016 John Hawkins
Leia R
A R T
 Jul 2016 John Hawkins
Leia R
WHAT IS ART OTHER THAN
BOOKS AND PAINTINGS?

IT IS PLEASURE, ***, AND POETRY.

l.r.
a note that I wrote in my sketchbook
Stargazer fish, of tactile scope,
a firm apparatus of sullen sail taking on watercrest
and nests in song,
in rivaling storyboards hoping children read along
of the pirate’s appendage - the moonlight, the claim rights
and every night cries for a villainess
to war the heart,
bombards and the plunder,
scuttling poetry under foamy humpback water
melted from night sky,
arriving in tides named for our stride
 Jul 2016 John Hawkins
brooke
I recently unearthed old photos of me
with a mop of scraggly black hair and
a ***** smile on my face, the kind of
smile I used to give before sinking into
myself, twisting my face up to disappear
and reassess my insides, how was that heart
workin' out for you, sweetheart?

And years later I still feel the familiar jolt,
manage to think that I am too sloppy for
loving, I've always been a pallet of nudes
a swarthy child waiting to be as blue as
the sky, holding myself to a standard
physically impossible, people tell me
I'm beautiful and I still wonder why
if this is as easy as loving myself then
I want to know how,  I say thank you
with a hand over my heart to hold in
the little girls, who still wait in the middle
of empty classrooms for a partner, who still
envy the women that grew fox-glove petals
in the golden hour while I crouched in the
curly willow branches, semi-dormant
perpetually brown with too much skin
standing off the side because I was too
afraid to touch others,

too afraid of an olive complexion. Too afraid of being in this body.


When someone loves you, how will you know?
what will they do when they see my scars, the ones that only
show at certain times in certain ways? Under hot water and at
noonday? when will I be okay with a broken heritage, with a mexican
daddy who cut the ropes back to the village where I was supposed to
return to? And why do I feel like the winds and hot sands when boys hold my hands? Like I am burning up the rivers or smoldering beneath
the dry autumn brush in San Isabel, where only beetles and lizards congregate, a backboard baby with
an overprotective mother, carrying the strings I've tried to tie to others--

direct me home, sir.
direct me home, ma'am.

Tell me who I am.
tell me who i am
(c) Brooke Otto 2016


Draft dump. Written May 15th.
 Jul 2016 John Hawkins
brooke
all weekend i fed cucumber skins
and apple chunks to Minokie
and several times i thought the old
corpses of tree trunks were fallen calves
leant to and packed with damp soil, white
roots stretched out under the overcast sky
peeking out of the natural mulch and fern
soft and raw

If I walked past the rocks quick like, they
looked like shoulders or kneecaps, angel heads
that the earth washed out, pines keeled over with
their innards exposed, the sound of veins being ripped
from the bedrock still audible

I started thinking of things based on where you
could have been or would have been
with me--sleeping patterns we might have
discovered, the narrow places we find we fit,
the hollows too cold and mountains just right--
how the night flashed behind my eyelids
like a buoy in tumult and the rain sounded like the footsteps
of someone stopping at the edge of my tent over and over

I keep casually mentioning your name because
it still sounds right, but i'm cautious around the syllables
as if i've taken clay to fold around the ends, spoken secrets
into sego lily petals,
I'm a little more down in the earth as if
i've been too high up in the clouds, i've picked up
this strange way of speaking that the old folks are
drawn to--they touch my wrists and pray with me
over their anemic daughters and passed sons--

they hear me.


I keep thinkin' maybe we're meant to be or maybe
you were the catalyst to an end of a softer life i'd been
living, one without the smell of cow pats baking, the dense
grass giving off steam, uncomfortably humid but it makes your
sweat kind of sweet, and the bees think we're honeysuckle, foxglove
jim hill mustard, soaked up in truck exhaust at 5 am,
a dry cold that advances on your lungs--
almost hurts the way it unabashedly fills you up,
doesn't feel sheltered, feels saturated and heavy with
possibility. Feels like the amber grass, newborns, cold tin roofs,
stars in the back of your throat.

tell me, was that in your blood? and when i dug splinters out of your
palm, when you were staring around my earlobes, did it spread? Did the birds pick you up and scatter you like wildflower seeds? it jumped river, through our mouths or elsewhere

we're not talkin but you're still here
we're not talking but I'm still there.
(c) Brooke Otto 2016

the latest.
 Jul 2016 John Hawkins
chump
space
 Jul 2016 John Hawkins
chump
plane ticket
i said good
buy
People commit suicide when their soul is dehydrated
When thoughts outside a solid wall can not be gyrated
All embers grow cold and vacant like they've been sedated
Or maybe caved in because once inflated to a certain extent
There's no room to be sated when only knowing wicked intent
A body needs to be caressed and let a broken bone mend
To make it flexible and elastic -first shown how to bend
It's nothing fantastic but merely a lesson on how to cope
How to watch yourself rebound from any and all hope
How to break down and realign then redesign the entire mind
Seeing being beaming retreating
screaming at you
with NOTHING inside

And how that harrowed hole bores into how you're defined
And how time is the only place left to fill an empty space
So hollow at this point it feels like it can just be replaced
The following revolutions come one second at a time
If you can't find the courage for evolution
You're destined to rewind
It manifests as a habit building pressure in your mind
Until one day what's filled up has pressed your luck
Because guess what? it was the same as the last grind


The only healthy circle comes from an innate sense of being
When you reach within all you've been and all that you are seeing
And when you find the epitome of all that you have sought Remember all in practice & nothing that lasts is bought Overcoming tragedy found through glory and no retreat
While marching to the sound of your heart's personal drumbeat Will be lost to you over and again yet returns at a single thought It's no predisposition but practiced, understood, then conditioned When you open your ears and truly listen

Not all times do diamonds glisten.
No footprints are left behind without a vision.
No wisdom is borne without decision.
Nothing changes without remission.
No fault is known without admission.
No script was written without revision.
No skill ever mastered without precision.

So when you spend time wondering how things could have been different.

You'll do yourself a favor instead wondering what it all meant.
Next page