"carolinas" poems
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A bag of clothes, a box of books, another smaller box of letters and photographs & an old guitar are sitting in the backseat.
It's 3am and she's driving through the Blue Ridge mountains. All the windows are down, warm summer air billows in and sends her hair dancing.
She doesn't know where she's going, but the warmth calls to something in her blood so she heads South.
She'll probably end up on a beach somewhere in a little East Coast town. Maybe she'll sell flowers and jam by the roadside or find a little bookstore that needs help, she'd wash floors all day if she had to and wouldn't think to complain.
It all feels like freedom.
The air smells like rosemary and thyme that grow wild along the roads. The stars are so bright she can hear them breathing. A jackalope dashes across her headlights & is gone before she has time to turn her head.
She parks in the back corner of a gas station somewhere in the Carolinas & stretches her legs out the window, takes a few sips of whiskey and reads a while before she falls asleep. Lightning bugs dance in a nearby field to the voices of cicadas.
Somewhere a voice is screaming, glass is breaking, sirens pierce the stillness of a quiet street, but she doesn't hear it & she never will again. Even in sleep she is smiling.
Apr 24, 2020
Apr 24, 2020 at 12:59 AM UTC
The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.
Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.
Already the new-born children interpret love
In the voices of mothers.
Timeless mothers,
How is it that your aspic *******
For once vent honey?
The pine-tree sweetens my body
The white iris beautifies me.
2.4k
Perilous voyages of small watercraft at sea , amphibious landings on well defended beachheads , Clipper ships whaling on distant oceans , military vessels in armed conflict , night of relentless cannon fire , explosive reflections across shark infested waters , treasure maps and chest laden with gold , rubies and pieces of eight , the cry of Viking warriors on the rugged coast of Newfoundland .. Pirates just off the shores of the Carolinas .. Forts Pulaski , Sumter and Jefferson on the Dry Tortugas ..
Oil platforms racked by ferocious winds on the Gulf of Mexico ..
Union and Confederate battles on Mobile Bay , Riverboats traversing the Mississippi ..Tending barges along the Ohio ..On high alert through Georgia's intracoastal waterways ....
Nov 19, 2015
Nov 19, 2015 at 12:39 PM UTC
"I left my ring in an envelope if you want it. If not toss it in a lake. Have a great day, love you..."
You got me ****** up if you think I'm gonna take that.
You lose what's left of your dignity as the words leave your mouth.
Have some decency, respect for me.
I'm thinking how I'm gonna get paid back.
You can take your time figuring out
what you wanna say to me on the way back
down from the carolinas, or wherever you've been staying.
Telling me it hurts so bad when the feelings come back,
but that's a payment you gotta make cause
Heaven is waiting but you've been
praying, saying "take it all away."
Numbing for so long, injecting it,
trying to forget the pain.
Thinking it was protecting you
from the unbearable shame
that you been so ****** all my life.
Can't even contact your ex wife without her flippin. ****
I remember being that three year old baby on her hip
and you spitting venom in our face.
Never knew how much I'd respect her
for putting you in your place.
By some miracle of the spirit
she still managed to give you grace,
giving you the choice to leave or stay.
But I got her crying on my shoulder
every time you missed my birthday.
The choice to leave or stay, stay or dip.
Then you went stuck a needle in your arm and flipped
into that monster we all hate.
I throw it all in the lake.
Apr 19, 2015
Apr 19, 2015 at 12:17 AM UTC
The anatomy of my country,
I am learning to understand the rivers
I know they are the veins that flow to the heartland
This heart, lying somewhere in Nebraska
Where the land is wide and golden, it pumps in tune
The hands of New York or Los angeles,
The ones that have touched so much and love far too well,
They give and they take and give back again,
So much to hold far too much to feel,
These legs lying somewhere in florida or Arizona
I do not know if it is the tropics of the desert heat
But they know the way the world moves,
The head lies somewhere in north Dakota
Such a sound mind, for she knows what she wants,
Such shoulders of Seattle or Maine,
whispering to the rest of the body some cry for remembrance,
Way up there in the cold of december,
The inner thigh of Louisiana,
Such excitement and wonder,
Let me touch it for a little while welcomed me in,
The between of Texas, The ribs of Maryland or Virginia,
A stomach lies in Missiouri,
The lungs of Wyoming
All pumping themselves back to heartland
The rivers know their way,
The excess of my love has run off to the atlantic
Poured itself into the pacific,
I am caressing the carolinas,
The anatomy of my country.
Has taught me the love of the plains
and the wonder to touch the oceans,
She is everything, She is always,
And she is teaching me the difference
Nov 9, 2015
Nov 9, 2015 at 10:49 PM UTC
Blue ridges rolling
To picturesque blue skies and
Islands laced in sand
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 8:24 PM UTC
My childhood ended when my dollhouse got repossessed,
crying in the back of Daddy’s Caddie.
You traded your daughter for diamonds
and left it all behind in a U-Haul.
You blamed his haunting city streets,
and post-war reenactment dreams.
You couldn’t be the queen to his beer can kingdom anymore.
He flipped too many coffee tables,
and let the kids grow up wrong,
and suddenly wasn’t the man you loved in high school.
He’s just another excuse,
But this isn’t about him,
This is about you,
All 534 miles of it.
You’re a woman without mirrors.
You play victim too well,
and love me like the favorite chip on your shoulder.
I gave your title to a deserving stranger,
and you flew from my human scent.
I never got to tell you about the splatter.
It’s hard to forgive someone who’s never at fault.
But this isn’t about us,
This is about you!
All 534 miles and counting!
This is about your life in 5 year chapters,
and sweeping your problems under the bible-belt.
This is about looking for happiness in the small town Carolinas,
and loving another man,
and another daughter,
and all the people you don’t owe apologies.
This is all about you,
And what you’ve done,
And you will never be more than this.
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 10:23 PM UTC
Some say that I'm wielding the powers,
That I believe in a wood stick I found on the ground, I make magic.
Attractive or not it's all that I got, barely holds me together, with all of my might I'm not sure I can still hold on when the sun goes home for the night, will I wake up and lose my mind or go back to the nightmares I've been trying to let go for so long I can hear my own voice in the back of my head like the shadows I wear across my back, it's sacred but I wouldn't lie about it now, could it be the time, can you say it's the time, I'd move my hand but then I'd start to speak, the kinds of things I've been keeping you from, not because you're dumb I just want to ignore me for a few minutes longer, you're much better off with only my good half, I'd try to unwind within your eyesight but I'm sure I would crumble into the dust. You are the magic, I'm just a kind of catastrophe carrying this story about a boy and the girl who drew star maps on her arms, like wings made to uplift him until they could both fly away, yesterday she put a stone on top of his grave
Nov 2, 2015
Nov 2, 2015 at 9:34 AM UTC