Lyra Brown: Favorites

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

Cutters

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

JM

Cutters

Stop cutting.

I get it, life hurts.

You want to feel, something.

You would rather watch your own blood seep out of your body from a self inflicted wound, than experience the hurt you have inside.

I get it. Stop cutting.

You choose to hurt yourself because you are overwhelmed by the pain you have caused another person, even if it was unintentional. The thought of that person whom you have such strong feelings for, suffering because of your actions or in-actions, is almost unbearable.

I get it. Stop cutting.

You don't know what to make of your situation. You don't know how a person like you could end up in such a ****** up scene. You feel stuck, lost.

I get it. I do.
Stop cutting.

Your parents ****. They don't understand the kind of **** you are going through. Sure they were kids once but that was different. Things were different back then. They don't get you and they probably never will. They don't care.

I get it. Stop cutting.

You really want to hurt yourself because you get off on the pain. You want it. You need it. You deserve it. You were put on this earth to suffer and you accept your role as martyr.

I get it. Truly, I do.
Stop cutting.

You need some sort of release. Something, anything. Anything but the consuming black,
nothing. The sweet release that only a razor can provide is the only thing that seems real to you amidst all of the drama.

I get it.
Stop cutting.

There is chaos in your life and the secret solitude provided by your ritual seems like an oasis.

I get it. Stop cutting.

You like the way your skin splits open. You like the way you can touch the cuts underneath your clothes. You like the way the scars remind you.

I get it.
Stop cutting.

The love of your life has abandoned you, leaving a void that nobody will ever fill. Ever.
You are completely and utterly alone.

Life *****.

I get it.

You however, are beautiful,
inside and out,
scars and everything,
and you are not as alone as you think.

Please,
Please,
Please,
Stop cutting.

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

Conversation

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

Ai

Conversation

We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don't tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that's where I'm floating,
and that's what it's like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

My Elbows Feel Damp Today

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

R E Sadowski

My Elbows Feel Damp Today

My elbows feel damp today like they’ve been sitting in
Small pails of oil and someone forgot to tell me.
They feel drenched
Where if someone tried their very hardest to pinch the skin
I would feel no pain.
My only moment of invincibility.

My elbows are boney-
From my mothers side of the family
Like my toes are shaped like my fathers
And no amount of brightly colored nail polish will distract from that fact.
My hair is all my own and my eyes, a cinnamon mix
Caught between browns, yellows, and
Gluey waves of molasses.

But my elbows feel damp today
Even though its fall and skin likes to crack and break and shutter in the wind’s blue outrages.
But skin is only skin
And I didn’t die from scraping my knee on that branch hidden in the big vulnerable pile of leaves…

It’s fall. And leaves are caught struggling with
Conformity and peer pressure.
Their newly painted toenails scream out insecurity;
Caught between greens, yellows, and
Cinnamon mixes.
Like gluey waves of molasses.

I bet some of those leaves have damp elbows too…

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

A Holey Chest

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

R E Sadowski

A Holey Chest

My unprotected heart
Limply falls out of its chest
Loses its way down the left arm and
Slips right out of my sleeve
Rolling right past my cuff, my open palm, my fingernails
No time to catch it, no room hide it in my skinny wrist.
No time to take it back, to swallow the incredible lump of tears swelling…
There it spills. Pumping blood into cracks and crevices on the unfinished table.

My unprotected heart
Cold and birthed
Lays there beside the elephant in the room
Gathering slivers and stains
Too scared to move, too weak to breath
The room gets a good look.
A car wreck, gazes glued to the scene.
So many gazes…
Unprotected, it is dissected.
Focused and scrutinized
It is analyzed
Thoughts like a string of pearls so perfectly placed
The perfect calculation for my imperfect equation
Lab work is drawn up.
My heart becomes the experiment.
Attention in humiliation like a trip on the sidewalk, a
Stumble on the road.
My unprotected heart undergoes surgery

Open on the table
It cries out to be back in its cage.

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

I'd Give The Moon To See My Sister Again

Feb 2013 Lyra Brown

Aaron McDaniel

I'd Give The Moon To See My Sister Again

You wear only black
You're angry
You lock yourself away

You wear only black to hide in the shadows that others have placed you in
You're angry because you've been hurt deeply by a man who is suppose to teach you forgiveness
You lock yourself away in your room to keep anyone else from hurting you

You wear only black
You're a storm cloud
If I know anything about Storm Clouds,
It's that they end in remarkable rainbows
Paintings of God across our skies

You're angry
You've got emotion to scar people for years
That kind of power can be harnessed
For smiles that may last centuries
Your smile can be harnessed
Like diamonds in a valley of roses

You lock yourself away
The tiger you used to pretend to be when you were younger
Is scratching at the padlock
You're defiant and rebellious
Calm, silent, remarkable
Your stripes are unique and vibrant
Show them to the world
For cats remain on leashes
Tigers are the queens of jungles
Rule your kingdom
You beautiful beast

Bailey, I love you.
[Poem inspired by Wil Gisbon]

Jan 2013 Lyra Brown

Cigarette Burns

Jan 2013 Lyra Brown

Erica Boyd

Cigarette Burns

Do your scars ever insist
That you touch them?
Do they hover above your skin,
Just so you'll scratch them?
Like maggots
Crawling over a carcass
Wounds that will never close
The burrowing mouths
Leave permanent trails
Because the flesh is dead.
So contrasting,
The pink of healing
That was once an angry scab.
But you scratched at that, too,
Because it stuck to your body
Like some parasitic tick.
And I wonder now,
If the circles of scars
That trail down my forearm,
Are like a line of dark ants
That will follow me forever.
Or if in their ugly hatching,
I can see metamorphosis.
But in the corner of my mind,
I know
They will always follow.
And in the corner of my room,
I hear the buzzing
Of a fly.

Jan 2013 Lyra Brown

Welcome to the party

Jan 2013 Lyra Brown

Scot Powers

Welcome to the party

Welcome to the party
welcome to the show
this is for the tired beauties
promenading the watering hole
searching for another
stand in for the night
back in the darkest corners
where they lose their fight

And when the sun goes down
the feelings start to stir
another chance to redeem yourself
have you really found your cure
loneliness and desperation led you to this place
stuck in a world
where deceit is common place

Take a look in the mirror
tell me what do you see
are you proud of what looks back now
who you want it to be
wasted days and nights go by
soon turn to years
hopeful dreams and pleasantries
vanish into tears

Standing at the crossroads
of life uncertainly
past choices and decisions
stare back impassively
nothing comes easy in this life it seems
is all what appears to be