Ode to a Hen
A Prose by Corset

Just yesterday I contemplated
never to pick up a pen again,
then I realized,
In a different reality
I could be a hen,
and I began imagining life
as a chicken.

A huge **** would wake me
long before the frost burned off,
climb on my back
pull out my neck feathers
make me birth a football
every **** day,
only to have cold human hands
steal it away while it's warming,
frying up my unborn child
and having it for breakfast.

Inevitably, a fox will show up
during the dead of night and
steal my clucking sisters,
but never
the **** bird that wakes me
before the sun rise; and I
having no sleep at all;
will birth another football.

now, I feel better,

don't you?

Layers of steamy pick ups,
rejoined a staggering crowd
behind the bar,
(who put that thought there?)
I partitioned that wall
for me to bump into,
as if it weren't there
just moments ago.

A shifting maze,
my mind,
it's labyrinth
ever changing,
rearranging,
scratching the interior
of my scull,
fingernails on chalk board
grind stone
against stone,
making my teeth
ache
until I,
I pull them one by one,
like red angry children
lined up for you.

I offer them to you,
without their fleshly clothes,
roots showing as a forest
of ivory trees,
wearing true colors
on bare bleached sleeve.

I stare into the shadows
and remember
the Panhandle dust
that made them,
fuzzy now,
around the edges.

The mural that somehow
felt sacred on fire
the tumbleweeds in your
eyes as they rolled to
look into the distance.

How the lightening
struck your hair and
left it white overnight,
and the way you clawed
to find the door to
anywhere
else...

I remember the trip home,
how the early spring wind
howled through the empty
windows, the necklace
around my neck
the cherry red
ball of vines
awaiting my return,
as if to say
yes, he was here,
but now he is gone...
and gone is what he is,
will always be,
but here,
here is a bite of me
to always remember
those tears that echoed
in silence.

when last have i had a 3am kind of conversation,
with my star like emotions scattered all over the darkest parts of me,
mimicking the sky,
my moon like persona that always returns back to hiding me away.  
when last have i felt safe enough to let somebody in,
to not have visions of my vulnerability being tied to the bed after he locks the door behind him,
his voice like some sort of broken record that keeps on repeating that
"it's gonna be okay."
when last have i had a shoulder to cry on that isn't my own,
for my neck to stop worrying that the tear filled sea on either side won't get waves big enough to drown me.  
when last okay,
when last has it felt good to be me.

They said,  "you're not a poet"
"You don't write about love"
"About beauty and harmony"
"You should write with a quality of light"

I replied, "what about the pain"
"The torment within the soul"
"The expression to feel rejected"
"For l see light through darkness"

They said, "You have no meter"
"Your words lack any rhyme"
"You should write with rhythm"
"That is what poetry is about"

I replied, "I am a reflection"
"I can not be anything else"
"My words come from my mind"
"For my poetry is about.......me"

Kept her away from it all
She was there at his call
She always knew of his wife
But became his separate life

His mistress, his one and only
Still she felt a little bit lonely
Did everything that he wanted
But for love she still was haunted

Just kept her as his little secret
She was his ***** little secret

So then as the years passed on by
He'd change, he'd make her cry
There were days he never came
She wondered if she was to blame

Then he left her to find another
Got himself a younger lover
She finds a wasted life of regret
Just a ***** little secret he met

Just kept her as his little secret
She was his ***** little secret

Copyright © Chris Smith 2015