I've seen limonade spilt down the sewer
and down the drain. (life limonade)
These limons have long past rotten.
Stale, and forgotten; limonade spillway.

I wouldn't be satisfied with the quality of that limonade.
(not at all)

I

On n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans.
- Un beau soir, foin des bocks et de la limonade,
Des cafés tapageurs aux lustres éclatants !
- On va sous les tilleuls verts de la promenade.

Les tilleuls sentent bon dans les bons soirs de juin !
L'air est parfois si doux, qu'on ferme la paupière ;
Le vent chargé de bruits - la ville n'est pas **** -
A des parfums de vigne et des parfums de bière...

II

- Voilà qu'on aperçoit un tout petit chiffon
D'azur sombre, encadré d'une petite branche,
Piqué d'une mauvaise étoile, qui se fond
Avec de doux frissons, petite et toute blanche...

Nuit de juin ! Dix-sept ans ! - On se laisse griser.
La sève est du champagne et vous monte à la tête...
On divague ; on se sent aux lèvres un baiser
Qui palpite là, comme une petite bête...

III

Le coeur fou robinsonne à travers les romans,
- Lorsque, dans la clarté d'un pâle réverbère,
Passe une demoiselle aux petits airs charmants,
Sous l'ombre du faux col effrayant de son père...

Et, comme elle vous trouve immensément naïf,
Tout en faisant trotter ses petites bottines,
Elle se tourne, alerte et d'un mouvement vif...
- Sur vos lèvres alors meurent les cavatines...

IV

Vous êtes amoureux. Loué jusqu'au mois d'août.
Vous êtes amoureux. - Vos sonnets La font rire.
Tous vos amis s'en vont, vous êtes mauvais goût.
- Puis l'adorée, un soir, a daigné vous écrire !...

- Ce soir-là..., - vous rentrez aux cafés éclatants,
Vous demandez des bocks ou de la limonade...
- On n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans
Et qu'on a des tilleuls verts sur la promenade.

My birthday is today
Seventeen years since another Sunday at 9 AM
On top of a mountain called Ozark
In a land that reminded me of Harry Potter
Called Pettigrew like Peter
It's forests elicited sprites and daddy long legs
Made of me a changeling then spit me back out

I learned what real ice tea was at the age of three
It was my birthday
Doing Pirouettes on my aunts Patio
Again, under Arkansas stars
With faery lights leading my way
I ascended to the brush behind the house
Got lost in the greens and browns of paradise's supply
Returned with flesh painted the colour of love

In an apartment overlooking crab apple trees
Fresh Canadian foliage fostering a well concealed creek
On a 90 degree angle over a dark chocolate cake
My ninth birthday
I drank pickle juice because Vinny said it was limonade
I wore dresses that year
And coveted baskets filled to brim with blossoms
Baked the crab apples into a pie
But preferred mama's banana cream
I wore bandages on my arms
and grass stains on my knees
My tears washed away like Crayola markers
And my biggest inner questions had to do
With what was for breakfast
And the lifespan of a temporary tattoos

14 came with a ******* bow
Done up gaudily in greys with a sad little smile
Three years marked with pink splotches and lines
A subject to hormones and arsenic tones
My birthday
A celebration of decay
And mama still sang, and baked, and kissed my face
And didn't wake when I placed cotton ***** in her ears
Because I was a happy girl

Today is my birthday
And mama exclaims
"No more babies! All four of you are so grown!"
But the mirror still illustrates an odd little show
With a baby face
A girls chest
And a womans hips
An ordinary freak all stitched up
Awkward and too much of everything
But not enough all the same
And inside I know
Is a sea of paradoxical Samanthas
Some stubborn and loud
Some shy and reserved
All with changes to make
Books to read
And places to go
And  only few that are quite wanting yet
To be 17

The Earth
is one big ball of twine
Every person has a piece of string lacing up their leg, like ballet slippers that you can walk on
You don’t dance through life on pedestrian slippers
There’s no form of tap, jazz, or hip-hop that’ll keep you from knotting your threads with mine
So as you sit in a cafe in Paris
sipping limonade and watching the river of people on the Champs-Elysees
You’ll pretend you don’t feel a tug on your ankle
from that the little fille in Hong Kong who got an A on her test
the teenager kneeling down to rest a rose on the cross with a Jewish étoile
the old man letting out the sail as his bow skims la ocean
As you stand up from the cafe table let yourself be pulled into a dance
People these days
abuelo says
like people are spit off the tip of his tongue
People these days
always rushing to a place they don’t have to get to yet
Back in my day
in my dia
everything
was
just
slow
Back in your day abuelo
Back in your day
there weren’t seven billion people that had dance slippers made of twine
there weren’t so many playing cat’s cradle with their feet
People rush because they do have somewhere to go
Somewhere to be
obviously, that somewhere to be is not where they’re rushing to
obviously, they wouldn’t go where they’re being pulled
obviously, abuelo

So my abuelo can tap his feet to seven billion cats‘s cradles
As you scrape your feet along french pavestones in Paris
And the twine will knot and twist and make all of us dance
to the beat of the world instead of the beat of sound
because music is made using hands, not feet
and under your feet
there’ll be a ring ring ring
from an Earth made of twine
the best sort of telephones
were always the ones made of Campbell’s soup and string
and as the world goes to voicemail
you might tap answer with your feet
say a prayer-
miss you, please-
I’m sorry, I didn’t-
There’s no way-
What? I can’t-
On that off sort of chance
You pressed answer
and all the messages come flooding in
Pressing answer is like cutting a wire
the electricity sparks and freezes
the caller is stuck
Your answer is like trying to speak over a jet engine to someone underwater
Silence is the loudest muffler for anyone who
Doesn’t want to hear it-
You just don’t understand-
I can’t believe you!-
Wrong, you’re wrong-
Someone else hears a ring from their soup-can-and-twine
You let your’s drop down and tangle with ballet shoes made for walking

Humans are alive for one hundred years
People only live for eighty or so
From when you were a little baby, you’ve felt the beat of a thousand hearts
The breath of a thousand dreams
The spark of a thousand smiles
Through the ribbons of twine that wound up your ankles
But the older you get
The more you fray
And it shows in bruised eyes, callused fingers, wintered hair
That you’ve been walking for as many days as the earth is wide
Collected enough footprints to feed a soul on stories
And when you die
mourir
pethaíno̱
umierać
Death cuts your string with his blunt-honed scythe
Your voice goes from the twine that twisted up your ankles
To the crystallized light that filters in between the leaves of trees
The crackle of firewood on a misty evening
The waves that slip on shell-laden sand
You won’t move so much as whisper
Talk so much as laugh
Be so much as exist
The earth is a ball of twine
We all walk in pedestrian ballet slippers
Die into beauty that we’d never thought we’d flow to
Never going where we need to or where we want to be
Your string is caught up in a thousand others
Twisted with mis-steps and calls made over soup cans
We are a thousand beats off rhythm in melody
A thousand stories in tugs and sound


Welcome to Earth
A world of 7 billion connections
Silence instead of answers
Once thousand languages to say seven billion stories
french pavestones in Paris
abuelos who step in rhythm
Dead who live in warmth
Welcome to earth
Population: twined

La poésie est Rose
Limonade par une chaude journée d'été,
La poésie est la sueur qui
Coule dans ton cou
Alors que vous buvez profondément ...

I

On n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans.
- Un beau soir, foin des bocks et de la limonade,
Des cafés tapageurs aux lustres éclatants !
- On va sous les tilleuls verts de la promenade.

Les tilleuls sentent bon dans les bons soirs de juin !
L'air est parfois si doux, qu'on ferme la paupière ;
Le vent chargé de bruits - la ville n'est pas **** -
A des parfums de vigne et des parfums de bière...

II

- Voilà qu'on aperçoit un tout petit chiffon
D'azur sombre, encadré d'une petite branche,
Piqué d'une mauvaise étoile, qui se fond
Avec de doux frissons, petite et toute blanche...

Nuit de juin ! Dix-sept ans ! - On se laisse griser.
La sève est du champagne et vous monte à la tête...
On divague ; on se sent aux lèvres un baiser
Qui palpite là, comme une petite bête...

III

Le coeur fou robinsonne à travers les romans,
- Lorsque, dans la clarté d'un pâle réverbère,
Passe une demoiselle aux petits airs charmants,
Sous l'ombre du faux col effrayant de son père...

Et, comme elle vous trouve immensément naïf,
Tout en faisant trotter ses petites bottines,
Elle se tourne, alerte et d'un mouvement vif...
- Sur vos lèvres alors meurent les cavatines...

IV

Vous êtes amoureux. Loué jusqu'au mois d'août.
Vous êtes amoureux. - Vos sonnets La font rire.
Tous vos amis s'en vont, vous êtes mauvais goût.
- Puis l'adorée, un soir, a daigné vous écrire !...

- Ce soir-là..., - vous rentrez aux cafés éclatants,
Vous demandez des bocks ou de la limonade...
- On n'est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans
Et qu'on a des tilleuls verts sur la promenade.