24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
You feel the push
You feel the pull
Some hold on tight
While you let it go
They sometimes break
You sometimes times bend
You’re out of shape
The shape you’re in
You show up early
They show up late
Some hold steady
While others sway
They’re giving in
You’re giving out
Your share of this
You have your doubts
While some are lost
You make your way
To find yourself
Another day
I drive by places that remind me of you,
You are every where, always in view,
I cannot find you though, no matter how hard I try,
It gets worse and worse , as days go by.
I wonder if you know how bad my heart aches?
That I cry out of nowhere, from my heart breaks,
That I think I see you when random strangers walk by,
I don’t know what to do, I wanna stay sober , I try.
What if I find you, or if you show up at the door,
I get my hopes up sometimes, then I fall to the floor,
Hope is hard, but letting go would kill me fast,
You are my future, not a part of my past.
I hope you know, every night I leave the light on,
I can’t admit that your missing, I pretend that your gone,
Gone to a friends, or maybe to summer camp once again,
Atleast then I can sleep without nightmares now and then.
What can I say
About the ideas that
Flow
Musing often make
An artist
Grow
complete chance really
that I was walking past when he took
samples from the furnace
stopped me in my tracks
it’s like ultramarine but bluer
think cobalt but bluer
and bluer like takes-your-breath-blue
a stable blue a blue that you can rely on
a blue you can’t stop looking at
or haven’t you ever tried to create
something but stumbled upon something
more beautiful instead
For Robbie, Who Lost an Arm
you used to lay your arm
around her
amidst The Evil Dead, theater dates,
and everything Nicholas Sparks.
you used to catch one-handed high school
wide-receiver. your knotted spear of elbow
thrust into my stomach mid-moshpit.
we wrestled in sixth-grade and your half a foot difference
pinned me to the sheets. your hand misspelled
university essays, fingers forgetting grammar.
i can still see your old muscle, that sinew taut
under athletic arm. i can still see it mirrored from the other
and i forget the metal thinness and how it
connects to your shoulder. i forget the pictures
of recovery. i don’t even know who we are anymore,
and more than just an appendage has lost its life, its function.
wow, we’re done,
man, that was fun.
12 hours of time well spent,
some good poems, some mere dents.
good luck for the rest of the twelve hours, please prevent tire.
keep calm and forever be a badass writer.
where is your name, slave girl?
you’ve gone missing
taken from your family
not remembered enough to even have a name
purchased, war bounty from a raid
attentive to your mistress
who didn’t have a name either,
wife of Naaman;
through compassion you became blessing, slave girl
a remnant of the colored cloak of another slave, your ancestor
and you, slave girl with the missing name,
a liberator for the one with the name, Naaman;
what milk carton bears your image, your name?
what mother searched for you?
what was the smell of the pillow your father carried daily because you had last slept on it?
where is the dust that still carries your name, your bone, your marrow?
where is the book that your name is written so I can read it, slave girl, instead of this one marked Kings?
I want the book named Slave Girl
I want the book with your name gone missing
By the light of last night’s moon,
I aimed for glory.
Throwing on a canopy, hopefully,
Of poetic imagination.
But panic has set in.
No words more have I to spare.
© 2016 SP
I am in need of a friend
All I could come up with in the end
Was to cook one up myself
A couple of books off my shelf
A character’s smile, another’s eyes
One’s truth and another’s lies
Birthed from a movie and gown up in another
3 sisters, yes and maybe one brother
Next I stir in religious devotion
And a drop of utmost loyalty, maybe a little obedience
I’m nearly there, one final ingredient
Life, where shall I find life to breathe into my puppet?
How will I push that final button?
I travelled and searched and strived in vain
My friend must remain
Lifeless, simply singing to me in the end
“I need a friend”.
There’s a face on my milk carton,
Every time I turn it around,
That face stares at me.
There’s a face in the grocery store,
Every time I walk through,
That face stares at me.
There’s a face at the Post Office,
Every time I post a letter,
That face stares at me.
There’s a number on the bottom
Of each page of paper under where
That face stares at me.
I wonder if I should call it
Every time I pass by a place where
That face stares at me, because
There’s a face in my mirror,
That looks like the face on the paper
That keeps staring at me.
Is it me?
Lue
August 13, 2016