We ran
From something
Unseen. We were
Two, a man and a woman

River flowed red
He is steel. And her tears
Bullets. We are
Bayonets and gun barrels

The earth flourished
With steel, straight statues
Of trees and undergrowth
A perennial memorial

Buried, we were
Under the earth
Meant to last forever
Meant to simply be

Red silence
Enveloped the world
My brothers...
Glided between the trees

Creatures joined
Those of all kinds, prowl
Across the land
Around their brothers

The earth split
We are the valleys. Gashes
Along the veins of the earth
Runs red like streams and fountains

Wounds dried and flaking
Freely beasts roamed
Lands demarcated
Trampled, trodden

We are echoes
Within the canyons. We stalk
Like spirits, like steel
Behind fervor, behind craze

They lost
Time was forgotten
Time was reclaimed
Remade

We do not know time
We do not sow
We do not reap
We do not see
We do not hear

The world is never silent
But the underground is

How would you feel
If you knew that
The world was hollow
Held up by rifles...

We ran
From something
Unseen. We were
Two, a man and a woman  

River flowed red
He is steel. And her tears
Bullets. We are
Bayonets and gun barrels  

The earth flourished
With steel, straight statues
Of trees and undergrowth
A perennial memorial  

Buried, we were
Under the earth
Meant to last forever
Meant to simply be  

Red silence
Enveloped the world
My brothers...
Glided between the trees  

Creatures joined
Those of all kinds, prowl
Across the land
Around their brothers  

The earth split
We are the valleys. Gashes
Along the veins of the earth
Runs red like streams and fountains  

Wounds dried and flaking
Freely beasts roamed
Lands demarcated
Trampled, trodden  

We are echoes
Within the canyons. We stalk
Like spirits, like steel
Behind fervor, behind craze  

They lost
Time was forgotten
Time was reclaimed
Remade  

We do not know time
We do not sow
We do not reap
We do not see
We do not hear  

The world is never silent
But the underground is  

How would you feel
If you knew that
The world was hollow
Held up by rifles...

I live underground—
with fiendish hands
that reach through
the dirt and mass,
grasping at a sound.

To their mile-wide gaze
of white wall eyes,
my lungs collapse,
crumble and fold—
taken in and out of sight.

Through earthly glass,
I am a broken con artist.
My cries, a faux pas,
my skin off-brand,
while somewhere
a heart beats, embodied.

Amidst
this push-pull throng,
a long goodbye speaks
to dead space,
bearing dead weight
down on the world—

Commodify my breath.
Call me sanctioned off.
Ship me to the doorstep
of a funeral home,
where I can be buried again
in my fever-hot coffin.
One would call it a soul,
forever dropping in—
from the other side.

Walls closing in,
Gasping for air.
Needing to run,
But not knowing where.

Every corner seems haunted,
There's no light to be seen.
Hearing such voices,
No one could know what they mean.

They chase me,
Everything does.
Everything is nothing,
Like how it first was.

Too much pressure, oxygen runs out,
I'm running out of life.

Is this how it feels like,
To be buried alive?

-anoeska

if anyone cares enough
to ask:
“why poetry?”
i'll breathe deep

and i'll tell them about Keats.
i’ll tell them that his was the first poem
i truly ever read.
really understood.

because despite years of schooling,
i hadn’t connected with anyone else’s work,
and it was solely because he wrote what i couldn’t.
the things i couldn't yet form into cohesive thoughts.

i’ll tell them about my english teacher,
who wrote the book that ignited my love for reading,
who read the first draft of every poem i wrote,
and every poem i’ve written since.

who encouraged me
endlessly,
(even if those drafts were entirely unreadable).
and i’ll tell them that i owe her my craft.

i’ll tell them about all of my failed narratives
that still sit incomplete on my computer,
and i’ll tell them about all of the finished
and polished poetry in comparison.

so if one day someone cares enough to ask me:
“why poetry?”
i’ll tell them that i stumbled upon it,
but have chosen it since.

most importantly,
i’ll tell them that it’s what allowed me to dig
up all that i have buried.
feel all the things that i have kept hidden

underneath.

i am most afraid of heights.
and the ocean.
and the vastness of the desert.

i’m also afraid of spiders,
and snakes,
and all things that bite.

i’m afraid of drowning.
of being buried alive.
of fire.

i’m afraid of failure.
of letting people down.
of never achieving anything good.

i'm terrified of dying,
and choking on my words
and feeling this pit in my stomach forever.

Aphorisms rarely confer the comfort they intend
                                    BUT
   “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”

An antique wooden trunk sits languidly beside the road (Alabama State Highway 98 Scenic Route, Main St. Daphne, for those that need to know) atop a concrete culvert cover amidst a color-guard composed of an unused ironing board, and a mildewed duffel-bag (but the nicer kind- made of synthetic blend, with the wheels that don’t really roll, and an extendable handle that’s stuck “in”; not the heavy olive-drab canvas of the pop-culture cliche, found slung across the shoulder of the love-lorn/shell-shocked/long-lost soldier returning home unannounced in a lifetime movie melodrama) discarded haphazardly, and awaiting their diesel-powered trash-truck ferry to the afterlife of moribund things; but serendipitously and surreptitiously it is to be rescued from oblivion by the unexpected happenstance of a passerby passing by distractedly (gone out of his way though he really has no where to go, just somewhere to be, eventually) meandering through town, down alternate roads making his way to a rendezvous with a friend to give them a hand, for a minute, with some chores they’d like to get through before they leave for Atlanta, because he hasn’t seen them recently, and he had nothing better to do.

How many others have passed by the unmapped X, but never saw it for they were so myopic in their missions and goals: rushed and unconscious, on autopilot, en route, to work, or to lunch, to mid-day meetings with clients for paper and gold; How many missed the possibility of adventure passing by, the childish excitement that could unfold, if they had just looked up from their phones and coffees and looked around for signs, untold? How many noticed the slight shimmer of fantasy left sitting by the road, but couldn’t stop because they were in a carpool, they weren’t driving, or just so unimaginative that to believe, for a bit, that a treasure exists outside the storied pages of fairy tales was too much to do, or too much to bear, with a rundown, old soul. Did a child see, with impressionable eyes, the chest of treasure left by a fool, unattended, out in the open (not buried, not even a bit, barely even hidden from view) and instantly wonder, too, just what might be inside? Could it be shimmering, shining jewels, loose and encrusting golden crowns, and goblets, scepters and silver candlesticks, precious oriental silks, or bullion and pirate *****; possibly a magic lamp, or maybe some enchanted tools?! A flying carpet!? Perhaps A Ghost of some grim ghoul. Did they beg a guardian to stop the carriage, but were denied and told, “we have to keep going little one, there’s much to get to that you don’t know. You have to go to school.”
Well, the glimmer caught the eye of one beholder and made them think immediately, “That looks like treasure!”

Indeed!
It did look like treasure: a literal chest, built of heartwood with a carved arch-top, weathered paint, rusted hinges, metal bindings and filigree.

(It was obviously empty of value, scuttled, broken, and relinquished to the refuse heap; However, To one with a limp, and a bad eye, and a deaf ear, brandishing a homeward bound insignia upon his chest and an island luck charm in black ink on his leg, whom you’d easily confuse for a pirate misplaced, you can see how it might seem to warrant an inspection.)

Plus: It’s uncommon to find a treasure chest
in the trash, in this century. Perhaps hope got the best of me; but also I knew its fate was not to be buried under heaps of plastic and rot.

I’ve a friend whose proclivity one could describe as a collector of things, useful and abandoned... but not a “hoarder” like on the television - Unless you count Ariel as such- with all her jetsam, Knick-knacks, thing-a-ma-bobbers, and dreams.

We are “of a kind,” prone to picking up after others, collecting aesthetic driftwood- anthropomorphized or just architecturally interesting, finding faces in fallen leaves, pointing to leaves that look like bugs, picking up bugs dried up like leaves and or sticks and stones and broken bones of small creatures long left rotting, beautifully decaying detritus of modernity - deemed useless; but still WE believe a greater purpose lies within, undefined by its usefulness, to be determined by it’s form Rather than function, appropriated and repaired  or dismantled and “re-crafted” into art, by simplification. Driven by a simple inspiration; To make beautiful decoration.

I pull aside, let traffic pass, circle back, reorient and reclaim this bounty of the proverbial “spring-clean.” Its condition is one of slight disrepair: needs hinges re-attached; but otherwise in fine shape. I collect this treasured trash and return to my path, on course to its new home with my friend to whom I was already bound; But now I come bearing gifts.

His smile was worth the drive and the dumpster-diving and the the whole day.

A gift given is a love lived-in, and a smile
shared with a friend Is love and life for me.

God made me into a marionette
He pulled me from the dust
He scooped me out of coals.
He breathed life into my belly
and now they call me animated earth.
He carved my bones from alabaster stones
long buried under piles of pine needles and leaves
He sang songs of Light and Life
and put them in my ears
and taught me all the words
and cut me silver keys.
now i stand up tall
like the Lighthouse of Alexandria
or the Colossus of Rhodes
i take showers under jungle waterfalls
full of orchid petals
and with angel fish climbing up the rock walls.
my head and all my limbs are hanging by
golden silken strings and threads
and where I walk the moss and lichens grow.
He fashioned my eyes from glass
blown over the hot geysers
and sulfur springs
of thermopylae
and the salt basin dunes.
He plucked my pupils from the pregnant blackness
of the Void.
He struck them over steel and flint
and the sparks made it bright enough to see.
my heart is a time-piece
keeping minutes with its beats
like a great shadow cast behind a sphere.
the elements once kept me apart from me my identity,
I was a hungry ghost
walking around town like a hypodermic voodoo doll.
everytime I turned around
I tripped over another basket full of rattlesnakes
hissing from both ends.
I gave up and crossed my heart
and gave it over to the chemical egregore
hoping I would die while somehow staying alive
and learning how to fly away home-
so i could leave all the piles of ashes and teeth alone
and maybe plant a rose garden.

but God made of me a marionette
strung me up from strings of silken gold.
He breathes for me,
and dances me to the music of the spheres
and now the whole planet is a
Hanging Garden of the Fallen Babylon
and now I keep snakes
as exotic pets
and as company
when i’m lonely
and for afternoon tea.