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Elizabeth Dec 2024
In eleventh grade, I learned the word
grotesque.  
It seemed to me that it was tied to human  
nature.  
All the lines we try to hide growing  
thicker.  

We are monsters, the animals to  
fear.  
Rabbits don’t need Botox, yet we rip off their
heads.  
A bit rude when you think about it;
unnecessary.  

I want to be old and like a rabbit when I  
die.  
Shriveled and happy and kind like a  
baby.  
One or the other: bunny or child it’s up to
me.
Elizabeth Dec 2024
Cover your ****
Your bellybutton
God, don’t pierce it too

Cover letter again
Make this one sound  
More like yourself

Cover titles of my life
Include: I WISH I WAS ASLEEP
I WISH I WAS DEAD, psych

Cover band playing hits
“Fly Me to the Moon”
Wish I was there to attune  

Cloud’s covering faces
Not to be sad
This poem is a ******* drag

I’ve blown it, my cover
They all see through
Ages, stages of bright, deep blue

Covering up the fact that
This used to not rhyme
Now it does, totally sublime.
Elizabeth Dec 2024
I find it puzzling the generation of sidewalks that pass on the way to the grocery store.
Times when my tongue clicked at the passing trees and hot air
made me scream.
Katie always did her best, but her best against the summer  
beast was no great feat.  

Feet, on one hand, were not something I could stand the feeling of, with all their nerves and endings.
On the other hand, feet are not hands, nor am I holding one in my hand,  
for that matter, nor was I in the Volkswagen when the trees were waving by. Excellent
times to think back to.
Elizabeth Dec 2024
I made it to page 40 on one of my documents
One of few to get this far
Now I want to describe what it is like to drink
Or be drunk: yippy, conscious in a scary way
Poopy in guilt maybe for tomorrow
But I’m explaining it to someone who  
Doesn't know what drunk feels like
So they don’t need to worry about that.  
Anyway, page 40 of words, my words,  
Undiscovered, y'all should be so lucky,  
I swear I’m not cocky, just lonely in the pursuit
Of fun.
Elizabeth Dec 2024
Write like a human and they'll understand
My heart is broken
Make it metaphorical, symbolistic, idealogical
Like a coocoo clock in the basement
Yes, good, not too basic, specific and imaginative
Underwear covering my face, my eyes where legs should be
No, you're off track, they don't understand
But it's the absurdity of it all
Yes but that's not poetry alone
Why can't it be, I want the words to be art
They are, even untethered
Elizabeth Dec 2024
Thin lines open to a final destination
Horizontal trees cut days: clusters of  
warm. Bargain with our killers, delicately ask
What felt good in your lives?
Be more pleasant, they said, broaden your  
smile. The peace lies under your toes for
Dying arms to open. We cry into them;
Sprawling love builds in the touch,
The lines begin to dissipate
Elizabeth Dec 2024
Please don’t say I didn’t change you;   you know you thought mammals were something quite different than they are. Like a bobcat in a swimming pool or someone’s grandmother in the backroom at church. There are things I do   and we do that mean things, all of which are true and understandable, but for you to think    there was nothing I did    within you    is an outrage because of all the things I did    for other people; like when the lamp wasn’t hanging from the ceiling and I gave    it light or when the kid on the baseball field, no he wasn’t    on the field, he was nearby, eating a fistful of pretzel, all of which is such unimportance. The kid was trying to catch    the ball, and like I said, mammals will do these kinds of things from time to time, in attempt to impact people    or their grandmothers (religious or atheists) or their families who may have never    loved them.    That is their own prerogative because some people are quite unlovable, but I promise you    I am not, I wear dresses and tennis shoes to the dentist sometimes when I want her    to think I am much more mysterious than I am    in reality because one of the least mysterious things in life is a person in love. I was    in fact a bit in love with you but you don’t think I changed    you and that changes everything    and also a bit is only a section or a freckle of something, like the nose on a donkey, or the tail as they say, or a rainbow that is inconveniently positioned ¾ of the way behind an apartment building that is a strange shade of brown with a terrible pop of color that gives   a bit   of umph. I must have, at least, changed you the way the ocean is    changed   by a man who fishes without a permit on a    salmon fishing boat; he continues to hunt and **** and unfriend all these perfectly kind gentlemanly fish in the water. He does, in fact, influence the tides as     a whole because one bit of change in something    sways the rest   in one way or another.
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