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you wake up
                        (6:45)
                                   you close your eyes
                                                                        (7:00)
                                                                                    you pass
                                                                                    away
                                                                                    the urge to
                                                                                                           WAKE
                                                                                                            UP
                                                
bliss.
your mouth is wide open
teeth pointed
like a vampire
you look hungry
like you haven’t fed in a while
you crave him
but
he can't satisfy you
don't you see
all this is in vain
you are his conquest
he is your vervain
you must forgive
yourself first
art
you are an artist.
you like to paint
                             smiles on your face to conceal the pain
you like to draw
                              laughs out of the hollow pit of your chest
you like to colour
                              your wrists red and taste the life flowing out of you
                              as if it would quench the thirst created
                              by the loss of someone that you knew
you are an artist
                             you love to create
                                                             you
                                                                     love
                                                                              to
                                                                                   erase.
 Jan 2018 Tanisha Jackland
L B
The snow is thin and pale today
like that girl –
you thought –
from the Home Depot –
the palette of an empty day

I think, instead
to smooth my hand along your arm
extend dominion 'cross your chest
To till the damp ***** of your shoulder
in surging heat
of earthen tones
to find in winter flames
your brow, your cheek, your neck

...your mouth that way...

This is the braille I'm all about
being far-sighted
and just too close
to even focus on you –
your eyes –
and all
the loss
these days
 Jan 2018 Tanisha Jackland
ryn
I feel like river water.
And I don’t belong to stagnancy,
yet I’m caught in a lake.

•••

I’m destined
to move silt and sediment.
And overturn
submerged pebbles
so they won’t see
the green of moss.

I’m meant to surge
and eat into banks
so I could be split -
to make more of me...

My reach would extend
far and wide -
like scraggly fingers
grabbing at the
face of the earth.

My energy channelling
through careless forks
and into slimmer branches.


•••

My soul is river water....
And my heart renounces
the throne to idleness.

Yet I am,
but a lake.
What sense’s sensuous delight
may breathe joy into
my anxious state of mind.

A gentle breeze
that cools me
bringing in
the scent of
smiling flowers
slightly muted
by the morning dew
that almost
forms a rainbow,

The same wind
now rushing
makes the sound
of rustling leaves
then flows
like a wave across
the growing
glowing green
parallel path
of grass that I see
from the harsh highway
that seams
to own me.

Or is it
the soft hairy head
and the sound of
a baby laughing
after I gently tickled
his tiny toes
that makes me feel
just a bit better
then when I am anxious.
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