Shannon

Shannon May 2014

sorrow like a garden grows,
around my feet
and
      through
                  my
                        toes.
sahn 5/11/14

As always, thank you for reading my work. I like the idea of the 12 and 10w poetry. It is a challenge to get a thought clearly across. I enjoy little rhymes that sort of swim in your head after you've read them.

#love #loss #sorrow #grief #12w #similepoetry

Shannon Apr 2014

i will wake

You will lean across my body,
you pause as we both stare.
inside the cosmos of our eyes
two universes ask each other,
will you kiss me?
will you let me?
and you will lean across my body.
and you will breathe a breath so deep
it blows my hair behind my neck
which tickles my ear
and i hear you whisper a thousand secrets
in that tickled breathe
of how wicked, how divine you are.
and you will lean across this body
and your chest will heave mighty gasps
from mighty heartbeats
and quicked breaths.
valves that open and close like butterfly wings in pursuit
and you will lean across this body, my body
and i will feel your lips and they will feel as vast and endless and unforgiving as the ocean,
and you will lean, you will heavily... with all your might, you will lean across this body,
and you will grit your teeth like lovers will, when lovers want.
and you will lean across this body,
you will push across this body and you will grasp and dive, and fall, and tumble and
and you will lean across this body, my body, and you will kiss me
and i will wake.

sahn 4/29/2014

As always, I am beyond honored when anyone reads through anything I wrote. Encourage and love feedback. Thank you.

#love #kiss #beauty #lovers #intensity

Shannon Apr 2014

7 sorrows 7 saints

how many ways must i give you up?
grief is just a sport for lucid and the lame.
how many boughs till i break this falling-
to the mossy hill below?
where grief is just a shallow pool
with reflections of me beautifully crying
We ugly mourners live to talk.
selfish shallow pool of grief-
my yellow rainboots fall madly
upon my mirrored head.
i am just a puddle
and i wear it like a man because
sometimes...
grief is just a tailored suit
all dressed up in pawpaws best
neatly pressed.
the seams of your life sewn in a straight line.
it's easy to compartmentalize the times you weren't your greatest you.
in death you leave the lovely
behind
and take away the rest.
in life you leave the death
behind and take away the lovely such a wasted irony.
grief is valentine.
wont you be mine pinks and whites? sugared promises of time.
grief is a lovers candy heart. sentiments on marble etch the total of our time.
grief of mine, such weather beaten blanket. when did she become my lover?
cast aside your sadness.
grief is a friend of mine, grief is a friend of mine.

Sahn 4/22/2014

after experiencing a significant loss in my life, i became aware of the rich layers of grief. thank you for giving your time to read these poems.

#love #death #loss #grief #memory #mourning

Shannon Apr 2014

The Elephant Gift.

upon the elephant rode a boy prince,
his royal command, he was there to evince.
dark with grace and dripping with youth.
bringing his men, his crown and his couth.
town after town he strode fierce through the gates.
and any detractors were left to cruel fates.
and on one windy day, as they strode into town.
the faces where tenfold and a hush passed around
the grey of the creature with knowing black eyes
swayed left towards the crowd as if to capsize.
and the mass gasped in horror; bairns seized by their mam.
men flung at young ladies, babes pulled from the pram.
the bewildered and flustered
tired elephant sat.
in the center of all on the bald pastors hat.
the old pastor looked stunned to see such a disgrace.
until he remembered, and composed his face.
'your highness' he bowed. his manners restored.
but the poor prince was toppled his mighty seat floored.
they gasped for the prince, just really a child
dressed in fine silks on this elephant wild.
pastor said, 'here now' extending an arm
hand wrinkled and gnarled from the land that he farmed.
then the guards sprung to life as if sudden awake
guns point to the man of whose life they would take.
and just as they squinted their eye for the aim
a boy sang out sweetly, 'sire he's not to blame!'
and the prince from street where he lay in pool
held up his hand and recovered his rule.
he looked at the crowd and he said 'boy now speak'
the boy said, 'prince it is the prayers that you seek.
the prayers that you'd visit. the prayers that you'd stay.
lord must of heard them and granted this way.'
his eyes wide with truth and the love of his church
the prince laughed a beautiful belly filled lurch.
the carriage was called as the prince shared a feast.
and even some water was splashed on the beast.
such a good time as he danced and he spun
till the horses arrived in the dust of a run.
to thank the town and the lovely haired boy
the young prince gave up his own precious toy.
the beast stays quite put in the center of town...
but prayers said no more...so the prince won't fall down.

sahn
04/10/2014

*with love, for kales, jess & jt* (otherwise entitled "watch what you pray for, for you just might get it"

#story #light #visual #elephant #happy-ever-after

Shannon Apr 2014

Doppleganger

I missed you today.
With a suddenness, a bereft slap across my skin.
When that familiar hair ahead of me on the sidewalk
turned.
And it wasn't you.
I missed you in the hollow of the moment of the stranger who wasn't you.
And with resounding howl
Like a grieving mother
I missed you.
I remember in the sheets we'd tangle,
I smelled them. I smelled summer air and my perfume
I smelled your soap and your musk in that minute second on the street.
I stopped and I breathed in deep. Inhale, Inhale.
Before you turned and it was not you.
Like a sailor's wife on the shore
I watched as the stranger who wasn't you turned back down the street
Growing smaller and smaller in the distance.
And a thousand piercing stinging blinding pins of light forced themselves.
They stabbed at me and took my breath.
Took your scent and the bed we lay.
On the street, on the street
as you walked away, the stranger.
Paralyzing me with your nearness only to be someone so very much not you.
I missed you and i stood in the street and gravity gave up its pull to laugh at my foolishness
and my eyes filled with tears to celebrate their perfect deception.
and my bones forgot how to hold on for dear life
and I slid to the ground
to the ground
because
I saw you today on the street. The stranger that wasn't you.
I have learned the art of hiccuping you inside.
Memory, hiccup. There you are now tucked away inside.
Kisses on the soft hairs at the nape. Hiccup that away too.
And all of the hiccups came out in a swallow of your name...
A hundred swallows, truth.
They flew wickedly around my head gleeful in my faux pas.
And ten hungry vultures came to take the remains of my hope.
Pick away greedily at my anticipation.
Satiated on the last of my blind faith and now they are too fat to fly.
And I am too weak to run.
Because I saw you on the street today,
The stranger that wasn't you. My beloved. My adored.
Such a peculiar street.
I will not pass this way again.
sahn
04/09/2014

this is about losing someone and what happens in that brief moment when you are sure it is them you see on the street.

#love #heartbreak #feelings #desire #street #grief #miss #heartache #stranger #mourning

Shannon Mar 2014

Josephine

I'd like a sometimes-shallow river.
Just enough to dip my feet in deep until they land on smooth, cold stones.
I'd like a tree to hang a swing on a cliff that hovers over my cold water river.
I'd like a road soft on my wet toes
(moss will do)
-that leads to my swing that hovers over my sometimes-shallow river.
I'd like the mossy path to start at the front of a white wrap around porch
that hugs a cottage of the palest of blue with creaky steps to my squeaky screen door that opens to my hardwood floors.
My wet footprints will leave ghost steps in my parlor beyond the porch.
I'd not sit in the fine couch that I'd have only for the company.
I'd like to have some tea to warm me after my swim... I'll drink it in the sunroom
just beyond the white kitchen.
I'd like to see a vase of white daisies with sunshine yellow center white on white on yellow in the pristine kitchen of mine. The daisies-I've picked them fresh,
...From the garden
...that's in the back off my cottage and set them in an old jam jar on a worn-with-love wooden table.
I'll hang my daughter's summer jumpers on a line that runs from the willow tree
(she'll have auburn ringlet curls that gleam in the sun as she dances through the drying sheets)
-to the cherry blossom tree that I'd like to think would be right just below my bedroom window (so I'd smell them in the morning when I'd like to think of me yawning and stretching in a bed of pale pink lace and soft wide pillows)
I'd like to think the cat would meow and he would pet her lovingly.
I'd like to think he'd be kind to animals and to me.
Perhaps handsome with his crooked smile.
I'd like to think we grow old here. And grow happy.
And the children. Oh how the children have grown, lives of their own now.
I'd like to think we can dip our feet in that sometimes-shallow river, not that they are older and settled and it's just him and I.
Now that all the years have lovingly passed with ease.
I'd like to think.
Yes. I'd like to think so.

Sahn 4/30/14

it's funny what pieces you love as the writer, i love river rocks. for me, it's that piece of it you hold onto when you feel like all of your hard work is for nothing. it's that small part inside of you that keeps propelling you forward.

#happy #dreams #hopes #rivers #family #believe #childhood #simple #daydreams

Shannon Mar 2014

Don't, then.

If you don't love me the stars will no longer be flickering fairy dust
just dots of light that I can't comprehend.
If you don't love me the ocean will not play it's violin sing-song for me.
Just the tide sigh as she follows the endless whims of the moon.
If you don't love me the city won't be cradling me in kind looks and baskets woven from the crisscrossing of streets, the city will burn me with it's cold dirt floor and endless vacant eyes.
If you don't love me the song on the radio won't be winking at us as it croons our story, just a song on the radio for some other lovers. If you don't love me, I'll just turn the dial.
If you don't love me my fingers will still tap, words will still spill, the paper will burst but the content just vague ghosts of conversations we used to have, prepositions and verbs.
If you don't love me wine will not paint faint blush on my cheeks, make me clever and coy, twirl my hair round it's stem. She'll be wicked and horrid as she whispers the truth to my heart. That you don't love me.
If you don't love me my feet will keep up their silly game of one before the other. If you don't love me my heart will keep instructing the band inside how to move, to beat, to flow.
If you don't love me my eyes will blink from the dust of the road that you left on.
If you don't love me I will wake up with you on my mind,
If you don't love me I will still wake.
If you don't love me I will.
If you don't love me there will be no more reading poetry to a firefly audience, if you don't love me the sounds of the crickets won't whisper, "kiss her. kiss her".
If you don't love me and the hollow of my shoulders,
and the yellow light of my eyes, sway of my walk, and the cut of my jeans and the hue of my hair and my skin against yours.
If you don't love my eyes that flirt and my sleeping tossing form, if you don't love me, then don't.
If you don't love me. Don't, then.

Sahn 3/24/14

#love #strength #courage #discovery