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Don Bouchard Jul 2014
Outside, but not so far away,
Missiles are falling;
Early snow has settled
Beneath gray overcast....
Sirens in the distance
Send their low moan
Across the miles...
Echo faintly in our canyon.

Too cold for lightning,
We turn away from light
Flickering or flashing
Upon the bellied skies...
Don't want to think
About the thundering
The light implies.

Muffled sound and muted light
Confirm our living
Away from town.
Perhaps we are
Far enough....
These days, though,
Places to run are few,
And war is moving out.

At least the news has stopped....
Was sporadic
Then...
Stopped altogether
Now.
Almost a relief....

The coal oil lamp -
Her mother's mother's -
Burns a reddish glow...
Diesel's charring smudge...
Comforts us
In a growing dark.

Roast potatoes,
Rabbit stew,
Pickled beets...
No bread this time
As I uncork chokecherry wine...

And it is summer 1999....
We are standing in tall grass
Somewhere between Red Lodge
And Laurel along the road,
Ice cream pails echoing
With plopping chokecherries
Near black and hanging thick
Like miniature clusters of grapes.

We are there to beat the birds and bears,
Knowing choke-cherrying
Is the hurried work of many races,
Some wearing claws upon their heavy hands,
Others flitting in with beaks upon their faces.

And then the kitchen smells of cherries boiling down
For syrups and for jam,
The old ten gallon glass fermenting juice and sugar,
Stands waiting in the corner,
Later to be filtered off and corked away
In twice-used bottles....

Other years and other picking times
Lie bottled  in wooden racks below,
But we have chokecherry wine tonight,
While storms we never thought we'd know
Blow hard against the world.
Working on this....thinking of so many places in the world today....
brooke Apr 2015
I find G o d
in the dust
up  against
chokecherry
trees by the
river, when
i talk to him
s u n l i g h t
brushes  up
my   thighs
or   f i n d s
me through
the   leaves
encased   in
honeycomb


encased in honeycomb.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Dylan Wheatley Jun 2018
You;
That sweet, barbed tree,
Marring my back.
I still check the mirror,
See you,
And remember.

Our roots are still tangled,
I still remember our
Summer and autumn
But it was nothing
Compared to what
Winter gave us,
Gave me.

Your leaves:
Forever home on my branch,
Immune to the wind’s plead,
Unique,
Deadly.

No velvet for comfort,
Only rebuked manure;
No pruning for growth,
Only determination;
No escape,
We will be one.

Me;
Never alone,
Never the same,
Never the same shades
But,
Standing Tall.
Sophia Granada Mar 2019
Bury me under the chokecherry tree
Then they won't forget how and who I was
When life is done retching and spitting me out
Plant me with the kindred roots like a little cyanide seed
A hard and bitter pill in the wet black maw of the earth
Remind the little children
Of the red ridged fingertips that pressed my taut skin
They gauged that I was valuable and ripe
And bruised me
Grey Mar 2022
18,
Dropout.
Alcoholic.
Addict.
I moved into a ratty old apartment with my cousin a friend and at the time girlfriend.
We drank religiously, had every drug to get us high.
And somehow all managed to keep our jobs, not just keep them but we excelled at them.
My favorite was coke and speed. I liked being able to just sit there and my head blank.
I have ADHD so **** works differently with me, my friends would be hyped up or paranoid.
I felt safe, ****** was home though.
I loved being able to shut my brain down,
Of course I overdosed twice,
Once in high school my best friend found me took care of me like the hospital and stuff.
I was so ****** up then too, I didn’t even notice he was hurting inside too.
He ended his life with a bullet to head, his brother and I found him at chokecherry canyon.
The second time I overdosed I was 19, we were at the apartment.
We had the whole week from work because we all wanted to just have fun. I’m talking going to the lake and everything, we did it all. That last night of our little staycation I didn’t even realize how much **** I was taking because of how drunk I was.
The last thing I remember was hearing the muffled music hearing my cousin and friends laughing and boom.
I woke up in the hospital scared shitless.
The doctors told me they barely got me back, my heart stopped twice.
They brought me back.
Honestly I hated them still do.
I didn’t see anything of heaven or hell just nothing.
It was like I just went to sleep and that was it.
I, of course, signed myself out of the hospital against the doctors orders.
Came back home and they were so scared that I almost died.
I thanked them and proceeded to drink the bottle of jack daniels I bought and left in the freezer.
Life went on, I hated every second of it.
Yet I still played the part of a happy person, kept up at my jobs became a manager somehow at the skate shop.
Then I started just giving up again,
Instead of completely falling into the **** again I went to rehab.
I got therapy, I eventually didn’t drink.
Life was looking a little better
That’s when I got the job at big r and eventually met someone who would change everything.
Even to this day I wish I met her like 5 years later or something because she didn’t deserve the ******* recovering addict/alcoholic who eventually started drinking again.
She didn’t deserve that I didn’t deserve her.
And what ***** is that I absolutely freaked out.
It was like meeting her and knowing that I could actually be a better person was ******* scary.
And overwhelming because I wasn’t ready, I was barely getting sober.
Barley getting on my own two feet,
No where near ready to fully take that next step in healing from the trauma I lived through and grew in.
So I learned a thing,
I played the victim & ruined a really good relationship.
Like demolished it,
I hurt her because I was hurt.
I broke her because I was broken.
It was unfair to her, watching someone she loved become this complete monster.
In my head when I finally snapped, all that numbness was gone.
And every single hurt pain trauma, all of it came out.
And she left which was understandable because no one should have to be the victim of someone who exploded in anger and broke the walls of his home,
I wanted to tear that house down because of what I went through there.
The worse part of it is, my whole meltdown? It was never against her none of it was.
That was the acting out of a child who lost their childhood.
That was all the unresolved pain that I went through and literally blamed her for making me angry when really I was angry at myself and she was never the problem.
She really did love me and tried to be there, I did a “fantastic” job at pushing her away. Far away. She’s with someone else now, and I have to live everyday with that guilt.
Because she really really did love me, and I was too broken I was too far gone to even see it. I did not at the time realize that I needed to work on myself I needed to heal from my past, and there was no way that I could’ve actually given her the love she deserved because I couldn’t even love myself. I failed at being the man she needed, I failed at showing her that she was my world, because I was so stuck in that self hate that even though I knew it in my soul that I loved this girl so much that I would’ve done anything. The problem was I wasn’t actually healing myself, I tried to just cover up all that Hate and anger at myself and put on a mask. That was happy or that nothing was wrong.
Eventually that mask broke, and she’s gone.
I was 21…
Now I am 23,
What ***** is that I still love that girl, and to this day I wish I would’ve just met her 5 years after and not then… right person wrong time? I don’t know.
She loves someone else now and soon I think I’ll just be a memory, shoot not even a good one. I remember all the good and bad memories we had, and like I said I know I will forever live with the shame and guilt of hurting the woman I loved because of my own incapability of loving myself and healing.
I want to say I’m getting better, however I don’t really know if I’ll ever be actually better.
Everything still hurts.
And now I’m still a cocky **** and I’m also trying to be a better person,
The problem is the lesson I learned recently?
It all will end eventually, what matters is that each day is a chance to be better than who you were yesterday. That it’s okay to hurt, to cry. However I still get that numb feeling. I like protecting myself, but I can’t stay stuck in just survival mode anymore..
I am worth it, I’m worth something. I can be a better person than I was yesterday.
All that hurt I went through? They’re lessons, I know better now. And that it will all be okay.
One day at a time.

— The End —