Sophie Herzing: Favorites

Nov 2013 Sophie Herzing

Stevie Staunen

It’s just me and my mindless indulgence
we throw one hell of a party for two
my apologies ahead of time for calling
the toxins always brought me to you
after all this is the mess you loved to lay with
this is the boy you always wanted to be with
I haven’t seen him in some years now
every since my troubles caught up and threw him out
from time to time he still comes around
shows up buzzed and happy, gets drunk and eventually falls down
the way she cared well it really scared me
that girl she made me feel everything when she spoke to or touched me
most will spend their whole lives looking for what we had instantly
but now the time has gone and left us nothing
nothing more than a home in these pages
a story to never be told but one for the ages
a girl with a thief of a smile
a boy made victim by it
the kind of attraction you don’t encounter in real life
you know the type
it makes an artist paint, a musician sing and a writer write
the type of love that inspires beauty and it was all mine
even though you never were this memory is all mine

Nov 2013 Sophie Herzing

Mother's Song

Nov 2013 Sophie Herzing

Jon Tobias

Mother's Song

This song ended like a dry heave halleluja
Like the auction caller ran out of breath
Like we both had nothing to sell and nothing to say

And I've been waiting fo that gasp
So this song can come back.
Been adding gunpowder and tobacco leaves to my coffee
For voice like the earth
To sing a song written like dust kicked up in the ways we walk away
In dirt brown cursive
And choke on your harmonica inhale

You left me speechless
With the things you said to me
Your rusty bear trap dentures gnashing

Spitting out the venom
you ****** from your own wounds
Your music tastes bad when it's lost it's tune
When Captain Morgan set your soul to sea
Poppin' pain killers because the pain aint free
And momma's got a new song now

Long after the men have left to the stairs to smoke
And the women wait with them to be walked to their cars
You sit on your piano alone
Still singing
Warped wreckord throat
A song all slurs

I leave with the men too

And it's just you
In your tiny room

The door slowly closes behind me
and your song is cut short

And I catch myself singing along in the silence
And realize

I'm out of tune

Oct 2013 Sophie Herzing

Waking with you

Oct 2013 Sophie Herzing

JM

Waking with you

Waking, pale sun burning away the smoky remnants of my dreams of you.
These memories of delightful daydreams.
I create a universe where your spine is steel and our love is a featherbed in a castle.
Our heat fills the cold stones
as greyhounds and bulldogs share the halls with young boys laughter and the smells of tea and toast.
I know you devour me while I sleep
the same way I consume you while you bathe,
soaking up every fold and freckle,
memorizing every precious contour.
Waking, your pale skin burning away
shadows of the past,
my strong hands rest on
your waiting hips.
The boys and dogs come tumbling into our morning oasis with bony little elbows and bad breath and laughter like heavens manna.
This is my now.
You are my forever.
We are eternal.

Oct 2013 Sophie Herzing

Unlike Our Parents.

Oct 2013 Sophie Herzing

brooke

Unlike Our Parents.

Our ideals are
so easily scattered
as a voice whispers
see, I told you so
but we should know
that just because
it is so with
another does
not mean it
will be with
us.

(c) Brooke Otto