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Oct 2019 · 192
Gummy Bears (10 Words)
Traci Sims Oct 2019
Hey!
Sweet and sour bears!
Come home to my mouth.
I love gummy bears.
Traci Sims Oct 2019
The full moon suddenly emerged.
Silvery beams caress your porcelain skin and my throat swells against my collar as I sigh with anticipation.
Your face thrown into Yes-No shadows
pulls me further into your mystery,
I close my eyes,
I hold my breath...
I plunge.
Reworked. Would love a bit of feedback. I am trying to tighten up my poetry. Thanks in advance!
Traci Sims Sep 2019
A whistle blew
The orange squeezed cherries
Will orange-juice be made?
Cherries are one of the national fruits of the Ukraine
Traci Sims Sep 2019
"Love is nothing but a biological transaction," you yelled at me and we fought anew over the perfidies of the male ***.
Initially dismayed, I soon understood that
As a girl, you saw your father break your mother,
Her will over the years fusing with his own
As she became shadow,
And then sickly ghost,
Her lucky marriage effectively erasing the stain of her Jewish birth--
As oh so Catholic Daddy
proudly told his friends and relatives.
And even though you tried to fight Daddy's self-importance,
He was always there behind you, squeezing you between his fists,
molding you, as he imitated his god creating Eve,
Casting you into his own perfect image of chaste and chastened womanhood.
And when your mother decided to permanently leave,
Daddy forbade you to miss her,
Celebrating, instead, his own resurrection with a new project and a new wife.
Twice.
You thought you could resist,
But Daddy's benevolent advice
about your plain face and lumpy body wormed into your fragile psyche and
cracked you in two, leaving you raving and disjointed.
Daddy eventually joined his sky-Father
And you wept, vowing to forget and remember his legacy.
And now you live, addled and alone,
A basket of pills on your dresser,
Fanatically frustrated yet terrified of a man's  touch,
Angry yet wishing Daddy was here to save you.
And as the years passed and your friends married and divorced, you
convinced yourself that you had
escaped a woman's fate , not
realizing that you had offered up your own heart and soul  years ago as a suitable offering to His eternal memory.

Yes, Daddy made ****** sure there would be no following act.
This is the story of a real person. Everything I wrote about her father is something she told me actually happened to her and her family. It is a modern American horror story.
Sep 2019 · 305
Seattle 2019
Traci Sims Sep 2019
Someone once said
that if you stop clapping
the fairies will die,
and Neverland will grow barren,
the sylvan glades and parks
dried up and overrun
with Arizona tumbleweeds...
Swan men and swan women
will shrink into human form
and spend their lives toiling without end,
their troubled dreams filled with remembered places of evergreen-sheltered lakes and ponds
shimmering in a landscape
long ago and far away...
Climate change and Amazon come to Seattle. It is profound.
Jul 2018 · 570
HOWL
Traci Sims Jul 2018
tears sting the corners of my eyes
you wrote me a *****-slap
and wanted me to "get real"
well...here it is...

i speak in two languages daily
and learned how to negotiate the world of the absurd
you only needed to learn one to survive
and you obviously did that well
enough to feel that you have the god-given right to point your
snow-white fingers at the rest of us and shake your head in pity

*******.
Feb 2018 · 251
Haiku For People In A Hurry
Traci Sims Feb 2018
I see you wrote me
    And I will try to reply
    Please... take a number

2. Love me NOW, ******!
    I can only wait so long
    Another beckons.
Traci Sims Jun 2017
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad--
Still behold me at your side.

Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care.
Say the devil touched my tongue--

Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
True this...
Traci Sims Jun 2017
I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at earnest, simple folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.

I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me anymore.

I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men--
I'm due to fall in love again.
Ah, Dorothy!
Traci Sims Jun 2017
If I had a shiny gun
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains

Or had I some poison gas
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no legal weapon--
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell.
One of my favourite wits of all time.
May 2017 · 766
Rubato
Traci Sims May 2017
We were scaling Mount Si
when a cloud rolled in so thick
we had to wipe the mist from our faces.
Our shadows, already growing longer,
disappeared entirely
and the time we measured
by the burning in our legs
and the shortness of our breath
seemed to go with them.
Light no longer came just from above,
it was all around us, equally,
and it was then that I thought part of us
would never return and that moment
would never end, when you gasped
and whispered, LOOK,
your arm outstretched,
and there floating out of the fog
was a ghost, and then a shadow,
and finally stepping onto the rocks
as new as creation itself,
a beautiful, white ram.

From "Bird's Nest In Your Hair" by Brian Jobe
May 2017 · 297
Under The Overpass
Traci Sims May 2017
Fifty feet above, the steady whir
of traffic and the slur of rubber
on asphalt sounds like a river.

On calm nights I can look down
at Lake Union and see the lights
of the city reflected in dark water.

No stars. Heaven here is I-5,
north to Canada, south to Mexico,
but below, as in an empty cathedral

filled with broken bottles,
random car parts, and old newspapers,
I lie here and breathe gas.

Some day these pillars will fall,
but listening to a river tonight
I'll sleep well under the overpass.

From "Bird's Nest In Your Hair" by Brian Jobe
May 2017 · 570
Ego et Ego after Bob Dylan
Traci Sims May 2017
Tantum tempus temporis
quoniam aliena femina in meo cubiculo dormivit;
ecce illi quantum dulce somnus est.
Quanta etiam libera somnia sunt.
In alia aetate mundum certe rexit
vel optimo regi in matrimonio fideliter ducta est
qui iuxtus flumen psalmos luce lunae scripsit.

**** me iri foras egressum et spatiatum
Nihil occurit hic, nihil umquam fit.
Praeterea si incedat iam volat me narrare;
habeo nihil, praecipue erga quicquid erat.

Viam cepi aviam
qua celeres non superant;
dignis praemia sunt
qui verbum veritatis distinguere possunt.
Hospes solus me docere potuit
praeclaram orem iustitiae contemplari
et videre oculum pro oculo, et dentem pro dente.

Nisi duo homines in mansionem,
Est nullus in viso; verem exspectant,
proinde quasi ver plaustro accederet.
Mundus deleretur ea nocte
sed meae amicae aequum esset;
illa meo cubiculo dormiret *** revenirem.

Meridiano me promoveo
adhuc in obscura parte viae;
in angustos corruere
et constans manere non possum.
Alius mea ore dicit
sed solum meo animo audit,
calcas omnibus etiam tibi feci
quibus tamen careo.

Ego et ego
In creatione quo ingenium alicuius
nec alicui ignoscit nec excolit.
Ego et ego
unus alteri dicit nullus et videre
imaginem meum et vivere possit.

From "Bird's Nest In Your Hair" by Brian Jobe
For Lovers of the Latin language...
May 2017 · 614
The Silver Chain
Traci Sims May 2017
Green grass, silver chain,
a low, slate sky waiting to rain.
My Golden Retriever finishes her yawn,
sits up, and takes off like a shot
towards the far end of the lawn.
In one, long wave the fine mesh links
are played out until the line yanks taut.
The dog never learns. My heart sinks.

From "Bird's Nest In Your Hair" by Brian Jobe
A wonderful writer and good friend of mine. Hope you like it!
May 2017 · 342
The Chinese Curse Fulfilled
Traci Sims May 2017
How did we get here?
The White House in chaos
We watch, stupified.
The curse is "May you live in interesting times..."
Traci Sims May 2017
To write a sonnet doth Juana press me,
I've never found me in such stress or pain;
A sonnet numbers fourteen lines, 'tis plain,
And three are gone, ere I can say, God bless me!
I thought that spinning rhymes might sore oppress me,
Yet here I'm midway in the last quatrain;
And if the foremost tercet I can gain,
The quatrains need not any more distress me.
To the first tercet I have got at last,
And travel through it with such right good will,
That with this line I've finished it, I ween;
I'm in the second now, and see how fast
The thirteenth line runs tripping from my quill;
Hurrah, 'tis done! Count if there be fourteen!
From Lope de Vega's "Nina de Plata".

One of my all-time favourite sonnets from a prolific Spanish poet/playwright.
May 2017 · 1.2k
Freewrite
Traci Sims May 2017
Chinese bells red tassels
scarlet swaying winds
Mongolian warriors on horseback
leather gauntlet falcons
grip with strong talons
Face-bent good and hot
Cheese curds steaming
in the cold winter night
on the mountain snow-covered
steppes step back front
door and took out to the
horizon horses drive towards
the mud and centre of our camp
Young girls wrestle in embroidered boots
helmets on lacquered heads black
as satin and moth wings...
This was part of a freewriting exercise...Set the timer for five minutes and start writing...Good luck!
May 2017 · 364
POEMS IN THE DARK III
Traci Sims May 2017
Fragment I

So long ago, so long ago,
You are just the bones of memory now,
Yet your influence remains in every gesture,
every glance of all the hims I've come to know.
Like a Cheshire cat bound for Hell,
You lie in wait behind unconscious eyes,
Watching and waiting--with a knowing smile...
First loves last forever...
May 2017 · 587
POEMS IN THE DARK II
Traci Sims May 2017
Love Is A Forest

Love is the dark path,
the trip through the midnight forest.
Love is the hoot-owl sounding its warning,
the thin, keening cry of the bean sidhe
as she flees along the leafy floor.
Love is the ceaseless soughing of the moonless wind,
And the desperate, dreadful shriek
As the trap snaps shut...
Apr 2017 · 755
The Age of Desire--Part One
Traci Sims Apr 2017
Oh, I love love love you
Tragick-ally, forever-ly, romanti-kally,
And I am...STUPID...with desire...
Whoever said that age would bring peace and wisdom
When I gaze into your blue eyes and know the truth of the matter?
Apr 2017 · 258
Three Seattle Haiku
Traci Sims Apr 2017
Bumper to bumper
Queen Anne on a Friday night
I'll get home sometime!

2.  Oh, this endless rain!
Summer will need to be dry
I'm becoming moss

3.  Steam rises softly
My barista is a god
Jet City morning

— The End —