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Steele Nov 2014
She doesn't own a mirror.

Confirmation of her beauty comes from those around her at all times.
Fawning fools adore,
jealous sisters abhor,
but all notice the shine of her hair, the tilt of her lips.

She does not dance.

Her steps lead, and dancers follow with no reasons nor rhymes. They cry:
"Lead me not into temptation",
but in her ministrations,
they ache and beg for her glance, their hearts in her grips.

She does not care for suitors.

Her heart was long ago dulled by the fencing blades of admirers. And yet I
if honest, must admit
that it is a careless abandon, devoid of wit
that begs me join her jousters in mock combat for the privilege of her kiss.

What a porcelain fool, she, to inspire such a heartfelt, bloodtaxed roust.
What sorrier the fool, me, to join in such a sure dealt, unasked joust.
I find it funny (in my black humor) that so many chase one who only wishes to be left in peace, myself included. Beauty is often a curse.
We love urban, ice wrapper choc full, dense with matter, cream the power runs through, finding space, each cell. Unit, one by one, stacked upon deck, pile, floating concrete and multi access path. Crank each floor, glass patent steel, glint the Thames, Humber and Clyde, a boat in the reflection, slum cleared gentle penthouses on the other side. Dogged, ***** not allowed, Barking, Hackney, Toxteth, Little Ireland aka Cardiff gone. Dodo, hatchet, escalate poverty, high rise cool, the high rise flat.  Crowning glory, a sea of chiming memories, stirs the tenement cat. Swept beneath the paradigm, catapult off the parapet, somersault into a different time, moonlit skyscrapers, street sweepers become the concrete and the fifty foot glass dancers, cross between the cargo arches, gargoyles and shields bring them to the ground. The twisted metal of prams and brand new cars grind, traffic in drones, and the city drowns. Strip turn central, gorgeous girl, Hoxton lad, a touch too Dad, deposit on a Liverpool street pad, generation retro spinning fractal, money linear pavement uber yellow, scuttling insects and street martins, skylarks flying Saint Pauls cross and ball bearings, shopping centres unending. Biting into Cheapside, the hidden livers, gold delivers, pure to stay the shivers, the office block rises. Sharp bends, the bridge divides, shark rides the sky, dumps the bank and pierces its side, docks in every city worldwide, rivers pink with the ticklish blood of regicide. Pumpish, Victorian, sweet and blue, the older the City the quicker the glue. Mortar rectified a moment to ***** and overawe you. Shock, new wave architecture, backhanded awe. Brum pill wave beast eat your heart out, find another Chinese storm, currency blizzard, scales hardly balance, aha you had it, now you simply own. Own the moment, the pebbledash, corrugated roof, outside toilet and underground transit. We love urban, your moment we cherish and drain, there is nothing we can’t refuse to understand, too complex to refrain. Bounce as we ride the terrace and its suburban long train. Take your sweetheart on the nightbus, ****** him her, the hier of your plane, that’s where they will love you in the memories of the life near the top floor, and the final flight you were too drunk to gain. Seventy Two, you’re only thirty and you’re on forty one. You’ll fall back or you’ll begin ascendency. Shrink with wisdom, pick up the building, a tool, dreaming of scaling London, young a journeyman, jousters young son, learned, resisted the gun. I’ll fight with two hands, pile bricks or guide with a pen. Draw your city, write my memory, bind moment with every fragment, underpath, cycle through. Lights fading, jumping colours in the district where the girls who live the density beyond you and me, each element boiling their hearts and steaming potent New York’s paths. You had poetry in the apron of your mother’s lap, golden syrup and milky sap. You love urban, fifties bubble contrast in your seventies shunted through urban oasis and with that unknown factor, uber bijou, ‘Finding Nemo’ flat. We are urban, you are fashion, you are the generation that copied that, found the culture in the swinging city, post uni shack. Seven Eleven, Atlantic side heaven, promised more than double checking your watch before bedtime. Look at your daughter, she’s got ‘more than’ you hoped for, already in the palm of her sleeping hands, waking up to a metropolis only she will understand.
I thought that we were heaven sent but found that we're just jousters in a life or death event.
and I don't want to take part in this tournament or wait in the tent until my name is called.

The referee,who he may be,I do not know.
but he must be a proper so and so to bring us here into the ring of fear.

I would go home but where is that? it turns out true, that this world I knew is not flat but round and I would just come back to fight the same old ground, the same old motley crew,what can I do?

Next time,
please give me a break,
send me to some deep volcanic lake and let me drown
in peace.
Leroy J Harris Apr 2014
However much I tried to hold it,
That smile took over once we'd started to dance,
Winds caught our cloaks, holding them for us.
My smallnesses were treated as tender vessels of grace,
Collected inside his gentle instruments of playful security,
We were both safe and in danger, it was all possible and perfect,
No barriers or protections, only the terrible magnificence of constancy.
Twisting across our five senses until we couldn't think of other places,
Only the here and now because everything else wasn't real,
It was ecstasy, his eyes fixed on my every movement.
I was a performance he'd give four stars,
If he could pluck them out of the night sky.
Curves and angles, lion heads spreading into the air,
Tempting eyes to water and noses to itch,
Dizziness made it all soo real, slowing down reality.
Allowing us to be here as long as our hearts could hold out,
Our feet kept up somehow, these stolen shoes, his borrowed boots,
Glided over green grasses beaten sticky and wet,
By our twirling figures oblivious to fatigue,
I fell first, he stumbled back like a champion undaunted,
By a jousters spear to the chest but,
He to was sent spinning to the ground.
We fell asleep watching creation reveal itself.
As our bodies began to shutdown,
Defying our desire to remain awake,
Forever.
newborn Jul 2022
imagining through the blue light on my screen
whispering profanities at my low life presenting personality
having had brunch with my cousin and my aunt pretending to be more of less of myself
it’s good to know they won’t know my full truth and personality and quirks since they wouldn’t come around anymore if they did
keeping secrets to secure family lines or at least the manifested faulty ties inside my mind
getting more comfortable with the fact that people shouldn’t have identities
never wanting people to know who i truly am or what i stand for

when we are younger we want everyone to be our friend and we don’t judge with cold steel eyes
we go up to the nearest person and we start playing with toys together
of course, i never did since i was the shyest kid ever, walking into kindergarten for the first time was traumatizing for me
kids don’t think about things such as slim waists or “too much” kinds of personalities
i don’t think i was aware of my identity till kids starting calling me ugly and saying they didn’t like me anymore
i came home crying, turning on the shower, knowing i wasn’t good enough for my peers
terrified for the first time in my life that i wouldn’t be accepted and i would be the bullied one on the outskirts
always wanting to be popular and liked was on my mind constantly, but at least i was being  
myself

nowadays, i hide away from people, knowing that when they speak to me i won’t be able to hold a conversation, knowing that they wouldn’t like the version of me that is embedded deep into my skin
my identity lies in my hands, manipulated to feel established, fiddled with to earn head nods

when i am older, in the partying age, someone might want to experiment touching my skin and creating divots where they placed their heavy fingers
might only wanna know what time i go to bed and purposely make me skip it, won’t wanna know what my favorite place to eat is after a long and strenuous cry, won’t wanna know why my identity is so secretive
won’t wanna know the flaws on my body that my mind has scrutinized for years upon years
just like harry styles said in fine line, “spreading you open is the only way of knowing you.”
we are so body and pleasure focused, knowing anyone anymore is like finding a needle in a haystack

sometimes i can be afraid to meet new people because they might not like me or i might never show them my true colors although the latter is a me problem
i’ll make friends who won’t know my favorite band and memorize all their song lyrics like i did when the anxiety was pumping into my veins rapidly
i’ll make friends who will come and go and get buried and get taken advantage of and maybe i won’t know their backstory because they might have chosen to hide their identity one day just like i did

proving your place in this world is exhausting and having a couple friends sprinkled in every capital city is soul *******
it starts to make you feel like these people are only around so you can raise your social status in the midst of robotic people with plastic instead of skin because they always hated their flaws and no one ever said they were beautiful and that it was actually society that shoved botox into their faces
wrinkles aren’t ugly, they are aging factors
stress isn’t avoidable, you can’t pile wax in your face to make it all come to a close

we stop being innocent and thinking the world is pure in middle school, some even earlier
we realize santa doesn’t come down a chimney and give us gifts every year, it’s our literal parents
our parents sell and tell us lies and we believe them because naivety hovers inside our brains
no wonder adults always call kids stupid and inept, they sold us detrimental lies in the first place, telling us to believe in magic, saying that the easter bunny actually came around when we should be talking about Jesus, it’s literally His holiday, God forbid

identity sprouts from human beings desiring to put each other into tiny boxes
“evil, shady, kind, jerky, angsty.”
no wonder everyone’s so ******* up nowadays, they just wanted to be accepted into these tiny labels and they never did so instead they cut themselves and slit their throats
their guts might be considered to be conforming, so the jousters will leave you on your death bed alone, in silence, smiling in ghost form, so happy you made the decision to just cut the world off
some of us aren’t that devoted

i have had plenty of different identities in my life, but never once have i loved myself
even if their lyrics holler “self love” i won’t be able to relate to that
good for everyone who can, it’s just not me
look—right there, what is me?
who am i?
in this world, what should i be, what identity does society want (need) me to be represented by?
but
whoever i am, i hate her
very existential. anyway, this is extremely personal. who am i? that’s a good question for everyone to answer. again, a small trigger warning. thank you for reading my honest and truthful thoughts, this is truthfully where i put all my baggage and everything. thank you to words and writing that have always been there for me. identity crisis

7/26/22
newborn Dec 2021
ur name makes me feel like i am in a victorian castle
bouncing from the chandeliers
and dining quietly in the rat corner
scavenging the scraps of the queen’s last meal
she’s dressed in minx fur from russia
even though i have rags of clothes on
i glitter like jewelry
in the gaze of your valued eyes
ur name makes me think of rome all dolled up
the colosseum basking in his own glory
and the leaning tower of pisa laughing that i am standing up straight and not curved over
the city of ancient ruins
i feel you in between all of the leftovers of the broken dreams and efforts
ur name makes me think of summer
a day outside in the beating hot sun
drenched in sweat
with short shorts and lacy coverups
glistening bodies lying with their gorgeous zombie jaguar eyes
staring at my figure like we are at a buffet
splashing in the misty air of daybreak
and i touch your body with my butter hands, circling around like scarlett witch’s superpower skills
ur name reminds me of 1459 when the kings and queens ruled the world with their staffs and their crowns
of when the jousters pranced with their medieval stallions
knights with metal that clinked if you threw a glass drink at them
and i fall into the well of doom
landing in your embraced arms
silky smooth is your skin
wandering strategically through my brainwaves
and reciting that it’s going to be ok
ur name reminds me of the old days
when i was five and didn’t know that the world had anything to offer a girl like me
you are the natural history museum
i walked through peacefully as a seven year old
the art is just like you in ways i can’t be
it grins and curves and spits violently
it jumps and laughs and drowns out the negativity
i am slowly falling deeper and deeper into your stream of consciousness
slipping and tumbling until i hear the sweet ring of your name in the emptiness
who says i can’t feel whole seeing your spine in the nighttime while you swiftly disappear into the volume of the town?
i am reunited with every part of every country and every place i have never visited when i hear the rasp of your voice or the crisp etiquette of your name
ur name is so beautiful

— The End —