Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
It’s a bit like shock therapy
When you’d come to.
It was the Depression, sure,
And I was barely clothed and fed
But I woke up refreshed
Realigned and adjusted.
A clean sweep!
Surrounded by my loving family.
Back.
So this is the way things are;
The way things were,
Before
But it’s not so bad in comparison.

That over there was a disaster
The so-called
“Loss of consciousness”
Was I in a coma?
With witch’s feet
And those dancing trolls
A road leading where and why?
There are no other roads, so who cares the color?

It was a horror story, not a morality play
They were so presumptuous,
What I needed!
They told me that I had killed someone,
a complete stranger
and
That’s when it all got worse.

Bluebirds fly
Yes I suppose they do!
You are right!
I got my wish in a sick kind of way
I went beyond a “rainbow”
as it were

It was bad.
I liked those gorgeous orange woozy poppies
but so what,
I was asleep anyway.
Do you see what I mean?
Chased by monkeys and
people who don’t really like me.
Not really.
Not any more than anywhere else.
Despite what they say.
Anyway, everyone clearly had their own agenda.
It was a matter of convenience and opportunities.
What was mine again?
Oh yeah.
For it to stop.

The Wizard was a Kansas Man
He said so himself
And when I showed up
Well he decided to clear out
I guess we were two Kansans too many

Stay with us Dorothy!
We love you!
All of us!
We don’t want you to go!
Doesn’t that sound a bit odd?

So I came back with this bit about
Well “if I ever look
for my heart’s desire
again
I will look no further
than my own backyard
Because if it isn’t there
(It gets good!)
I never really lost it
To begin with!”
Can you believe that?
I also relentlessly repeated
HOME
Euphemistically speaking
and the word
LIKE
Which isn’t really a total and complete
lie

And somehow it worked
It came to an end
I can’t really explain why but
It could have been a Jim Jones situation.

But do you think that I believed any of it?
I escaped
And now I think that I know how to do it.
And I can do it again.
But to someplace
Else.
Sean M O'Kane Sep 2018
Auntie Em is calling….

I was just getting to love my Emerald City
The shiny feel of it, its sweetly diverse demi-monde.
Its shimmering green beauty and tranquil sense of safety.
The heels of my ruby red slippers were well & truly dug in.
But no, the state fair balloon stands before me ******* & ready to go.
A grand exclamation mark in my way if ever there was one.
And Toto for once has gone mute, no chance of a last minute hold up.

"Dorothy, Dorothy, where are you?"

I guess it must have been too fantastical a dream to be true.
A time for goodbyes.
I’m embracing the Lion telling him to always be proud of himself & not to walk unafraid.
The Tin Man’s gentle open heartedness I compliment him on as we both shed tears.
The Scarecrow I kiss and thank for his loyalty & grace under fiery pressure.
With a heavy heart, I climb that first tentative step on the block.  

"We’re sick with worry over you"

I could be angry but the wise words of the mystic ring loudly in my year.
I do need to go back – My Auntie Em is really calling me.
Calling me back to the grey flatlands of home.
Back to the numbness of small town heteronormativity.
Where Twisters rarely every came by to sweep you away and save you.
I could only keep singing ‘Over The Rainbow’ in vain hope.

"Find yourself a place where you won't get into any trouble!

Unlike Dorothy Gale, this Dorothy left Kansas voluntarily
The long yellow brick road finally took me under the rainbow and on to my Emerald City
I no longer pined for home but knew all along that it would call me back one day.
And so here I am, drifting higher & higher away from my adopted home.
Perhaps I need to build a revolving door when I get there to pass through both worlds easily
Or perhaps bring something of the rainbow back to illuminate the grey-lands.
Or perhaps – in reality -  some reconciliation between these worlds is in order.
Perhaps.
It’s time to slip on the ruby red slippers and prepare the way for Kansas.
Yes, this Dorothy has surrendered but
I always had the power to be me, my dear.
I just had to learn it for myself.

August –September 2018
This poem was written in response to my feelings about some tragic news I received last month & how I was dealing with it. Initially, it was quite deep & bitter in the way it wallowed over the world I thought I was losing because of my duty to family. My home town is a stifling throwback to bad old neanderthal homophobia and has nary a sniff of transcendental beauty unlike my adopted home.

However, I thought long & hard and realised that because I now stand tall as a proud bi/pan/queer person I should take what I have gained and use it to guide me. Plus my anger was wrongly placed - not at the family member for taking me away from my Emerald City but cancer itself for throwing chaos into our lives.
DP Younginger Jun 2018
Dorothy is captivated in her own mind,

Her eyes step into a colorful illusion of a an altered universe,

An outer parallel that consists of tangerine trees and marmalade skies,

Her perspective lost in kaleidoscope vision and sugar coded mountains,

The sky is a meadow of green and the grass is an ocean of cerulean,

A second dose catches her in a flick; a motion pictured mindset,

Her eyes have completely lost focus,

Gum drop rainballs and pixie stick gravel,

She is absent minded of all that is telling,

A third hit and she disappears,

Flying through the sky, she dreams of the life of an average person,

Reality swapped with insanity,

She lives a dream and dreams what others live.
Written in a creative writing course that I took in High School.
Joe Thompson Oct 2017
My mother dearly wanted  
to be Dorothy Parker.
She yearned for a taste of the power that comes
from a truly witty response.

She craved to deliver
A statement so powerful
and sardonic that it would terminate
all argument or discussion.

My proximity made me an easy target to practice on
as each of our arguments ended with a bon mot
delivered with the all the acerbic flourish of Bette Davis.

As I listened to her footsteps receding down the hallway
I had only to take one more breath
before the footsteps reversed direction
and - standing at the doorway to my room -
She would deliver another culminating witticism
turn, leave and repeat.

In the fifties and sixties an intelligent woman –
a single mother of three
with no high school diploma,
but a surfeit of imagination –
Savoured what little power she could find
even if it was a fiction, a delusion
or just a punchline sharp enough to draw blood.
STLR Oct 2016
Dreams as vivid as reality, my bodies lying on the bed as my mind soars causally.

In a wooden house with strangers equivalent to Dorothy's

I look outside the window I see waves of the open seas.

But were not in the ocean see, because pirates are never seen. I swear this is a different scene. If you could see it, you would believe.

But I'm not here to prove that it's nonfiction, let these words be a depiction of dreams that have been driven.

By Purposes filled in vials then consumed by minds made by miles, roads, and directions styled

in shuttering accents, enough of this madness lets jump into passions.

Engraved in my soul is the past-tense...if nothing's new under the sun,
then let my shade be a labyrinth
Cameryn Micheal Jan 2015
Dorothy,
Who left me in tears,
Watching her walk away,
Was crying everystep of the way.

Dorothy of OZ,
Who walked down the old path with out looking back,
Walked alone.
Dorothy never asked for help,
Because she didn't want them to touch to tarnished bricks,
That used to be bright but now brings depression,
A curse to all who tread its endless path.

Dorothy,  won't you come back,
So I can walk with you?
I know Im not the greatest person,
Annoying and helpless,
But I would follow you anywhere.
You aren't alone.
I had a dream once
Circular in reason
Teasing me
Bruised and beaten
Sleeping
I wandered angelic
Dorothy and Alice
Through nightmare geographies
Landscapes cruel, beautiful
And strange
Talking crows
Enveloped my eyes
A crown of pearlescent feathers
Obscuring my vision and yet
I saw
A waterfall of tears
A guru on a lotus
He whispered
Whiskey breath and sleepy eyed
A hep cat hipster in hemp cap
Gin and tonic gripped
Like a life preserver
“All you need is love”
And I wandered
Lost

— The End —