24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
The Great Gatsby
The shape of restlessness
Sparkling in the night
Bated breath
Your love potion
Is pure poison
Your face, your ache
is familiar
Her well-loved eyes
A thin red circle
Where your heart used to be
In its stead,
A pale gold odor
What a grotesque thing
Dear Jay,
What were you thinking?
Lover to Lover
skin all cream
flashing sun on water
wings that shimmer
silence and echoes
looks of ice
unanswered questions
lover to lover
Drag
Bluegrass reminds me of a shit town
Worse than dirt
You can drag your dreams up north on a bus
They won’t come back
From a place so shattered
It’s lonely out there once you hit the road
The stars look on and the trees pass in the windows,
But they all seem to live in the past
You can drag your hope around America
It won’t come back
Love lives in my heart like a mad dog
Trying to get out and
Who would you loose it on,
Wish it on,
When you know it won’t let go?
You can drag your love by the throat
It won’t love you back
Snake and Mouse
Eyelid slide, shutter click
Bristle of fur, whisker twitch
A furious beat, a tiny heart
A drum, a time piece, with no escapement.
All the while, scales of gold
Moving, articulated, slow
A calculation, a maneuver
Black-eyed, dead-eyed, taught.
Inevitable darkness falls,
A being’s true nature calls
contraction, constriction,
A gentle slide to oblivion.
The Same Sea
I climb down to the water
Where paper rains into the sea
The same sea that, when I sleep,
Has a song I can sing along to
The same sea that, when I sleep,
Will tangle me if I step into her surf,
Eroding the sand out from under me.
She always threatening to drown me.
Salvation
Art can make a man go mad
Madness can make a man go blind
And art can be his salvation
My dad told me about the Starry Night
How Vincent cut off his own ear
Art can make a man go mad
He taught me using vinyl records
Do you know what this song is about?
And art can be his salvation
In our little living room, I listened
to the lessons of song, and learned
Art can make a man go mad
A man gets lost, full of histories
Dad tinkered with his guitar
And art can be his salvation
And you, my father, there on a starry night,
Music linked you and me to all the stories
Art can make a man go mad
And art can be his salvation
A Walk
Nasturtium creeping in the hedge
Blackberry flowers promising fruit
Ivy, green and waxy tangles
I smell the water and the blue eucalyptus
I note the speed of swallows
Sap shining in the sun
Bougainvillea and wild rose falling
Hop-scotch and foxglove inviting
Great bee with glass wings, warming
If this was all there was
Would I be happy all the time?
Bubbles
Tiny hands and lit up faces craning skyward
The green of summer surrounds
And the bubbles float,
the oil slick of their skin an iridescent silk,
barely there.
Dancing eyes follow them
Soft arms reach for them
The glassy creatures bumble, and baby smiles conceive
Impossible fragility.
They gasp in delight.
Lost, Looking In
I am lost, looking in
Wandering the circle of a cup and saucer
I am lost, looking in
Pacing the perimeter of a brick house
I am lost, looking in
Fading in the mirror every morning
I am lost, looking in
The portal of a photograph for old truths
I am lost, looking in
The house full of people is empty
I am lost, looking in
Flickering in the windows of a train
Rose Mars first saw poetry at the age of 6, and began writing at the age of 7. She is a self-taught writer, whose main emphasis is poetry, though she aspires to be a competent writer of stories…someday. Rose Mars has completed two collections of poetry, and self-published one of them, titled A Body of Water. Literary influences include Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, Arundhati Roy, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Rose Mars likes to mix writing with music and considers popular music as part of the modern history of poetry. She especially enjoys and takes inspiration from Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Elbow, and Radiohead. For Rose Mars, art is the lifeline, and poetry is something she was meant to do. Without it, life feels empty.