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through her window, she watched
sun shafts through the trees, a transient
tapestry on her potholed lane

a half dozen eggs sat beside her bowl
ready to be beat for the scramble; a half dozen
hours after her street was alight with noise

first the pernicious pop of the zip guns
then the cops '38s; then the howling of the
sirens, the howling of the survivors

mostly Chico's mama and sister
who watched him gunned down, and tried to plug
his half dozen holes with their hands

the street doesn't remember, she thought,
even with a biography of black blood dried
in its cracks and crevices

if it did, surely it would protest, or
make a solemn sound when the dawn shed
all that honest light on dark death

she cracked the eggs, put them
in the hot lard, not bothering with the bowl
breaking yolks blindly in the black skillet
September, 1960
There once was a lesbian named Zoë,
Who was born in a month quite snowy.
She has glasses on her face,
Enjoyed a warm embrace,
And her smile was big and glowy.
I just came out to my English teachers using this poem.
Paintbrush and paints
can make empty canvas
               change its identity
3 generations of dust gathered
on a groove outside my
window,
breeze licks hair licks salt to nose
are we all not
here but to suffer
in our own forgetful minds

This loneliness and sunny languor
is a mirage
so big I cannot fathom
it, nor can I remember
my sadness's Name
i fixed the error, but it trended oops
Trickle,
You are picturesque abstract
Elongating droplet stroke
Smiling on surfaces
Fondling oxidized tissue
Making love to ozone
From afar

Trickle
I am painfully patient
deliberate witness
to your
becoming
A river

Breaking my o-zone of comfort
Vapor distorting solidity
Fall back unto me
Bring back the salt
that I squandered
But don’t
Deliver this clarity
razor-sharp
Through the fabric of irises
So impossibly deep
In the flesh of my
Indigo sky
Embedding eternally
That state-shifting
Thought foreign body
Lost in the cobwebs
Of amber-caught impulses
I tried to put my heart in the sink
but it just lapped up the water
and swam
It likes to move like wind
fluid in the water
It just gets bigger
not losing any big spots
traveling like a road
seated in all the areas
sitting in the sink
like a dish you can't scrub
because it is too old
It cried on the insistence toward itself
but it just loved all the new words it heard, clear water sloshing its own elbows
like everytime, it says this
adding a book to the shelf 'New Nonfiction'
and itself wrestled to freedom along a free Library
and it sings flat
without hearing itself
and when I tried to drop it where a mountain wouldn't use its arms to move into a torrent of rain
that only heavies a long area of ground
it tried to look away
because there is so much, always so much water where there is water
no drops as is on one bounced leaf
My heart does wear a necklace of a stream; it would rather be adorned
and it has such acute ears to the sound of the clear and blue
but leave's wetness can't spread into the depths of green and stay
a wet monster just patters the whole forest jungle like a drum
The leaves don't become like rags in the sink to wash the dirt on the ground
the dirt would just stick
so the water it just runs and runs
you can just tell by the sound
and since it can't get past the green
it sees the open land next to the large bush of trees and compares
why would it only water the grass to make the earth all plain like Kansas
it is something, it is drank, all of it, in eager swallows
the days even swallowing each other
and so the mind keeps living
Good information for the mind just happens to be like this
it gets from below and dirt and whatever wherever steady earth, and from the clearest above
'So wonderful the sky will come down and love on my ears
even though they don't remember
How I tire of the ground and its mutations
How I tire of the amount of blue things to drink
but they fall against me, my different lips
and I look as if I run with the water
because I think.
The blue runs with the green
and we are just painted like a book typing with rainy ink
and it is all that I can do
Carry the weight
until it lifts and I am left to myself
with a withering neverending need
At least it's not the air and spaces with ears
like a heart without shoulders
It's a forehead and wrists
that rest on the bed of the sky, upside down
because it is so hard to be a chronic rock
so heavy it needs to suspend with its head
away, to where rocks are fluid
How many stars are spread like water
still and concluded, like one neck looking down
saying my ears must be brave
my one pair of eyes against all those clear stars in the night
Good information makes my mind spin its wheels
back against the sky and back against the ground, walls
though left and right wheels keep spinning
hell and heaven my ears
The widest place inbetween
friendly space that carries them
held with hearing- those. Those sides of my head.
To-end to-end of my heart is how long the page must stretch
and how long it would take to roll the wheels in Finality up my brain and the sky
Much slower than the routine closing of a millionth eye I've broken open from the old
Copyright Chelsea Anne Palmer Oct 19, 2013
Stillness of night reigns,
pale full moon conveys
something subtly ambiguous
to each one looking at her
from their respective stand points,
the most painful feelings
echo in the heart of the lover
alone in this jungle hideout
on a blind pursuit of
another kind of happiness
he can't forgo, even if he wishes.
Now the stillness is broken glass
roar of a big cat out in the wild
hunting the best of preys well fed,
an ecstatic mating call,
of an amorous parakeet,fallows,
In the rule of the jungle,
pain and pleasure co exist
any moment, like darkness and light,
the wheel moves on, interminably for ever.
I find a heart that sings eternal song,
inspiring dance from sore and stumbling feet:
a beacon which has never steered me wrong.

In days I felt that life strung me along
a greater Spirit surely found it meet
I'd find a heart that sings eternal song.

How fortunate to have a faithful throng
of friends whose voices never lie or cheat;
a beacon which has never steered me wrong.

Music leads and leaves a path so strong
my soul is stirred to marching to its beat.
I find a heart that sings eternal song.

Inspiration strikes me like a gong,
the ringing out which time cannot defeat;
a beacon which has never steered me wrong.

The fresh, green spring of life returns among
your words by turns so rough, so true, so sweet.
I find a heart that sings eternal song;
a beacon which has never steered me wrong.
To those who believe that free or blank verse is the only true expression of poetry:  To write concisely, simply, and meaningfully in formal poetry is one of the finest challenges of our craft and art.  Don't knock it until you've tried it.
How to deal with an addiction to hellopoetry:

Step one: Admit you have a problem

Step two: Start by limiting your time on it

Step three: Join a support group and share your feelings

Step four: Have the people in the support group talk to you about quitting hellopoetry.

Step 5: Slaughter everyone within a 10 mile radius with a chainsaw and go back on hellopoetry

Step 6: When the police knock on your door offer to help them sign up for hellopoetry.

Step 7: Creepily pet your chainsaw like a cat.

Step 8: Never mind, I'm too busy on hello poetry
I know, I have a problem. If you have an issue with that I HAVE A CHAINSAW!

Sorry if I have offended someone with my violence. :D
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