two for one poems

by bachelorette


my brithday is exactly
one week from today

it doesn't really mean anything

and rarely do I get excited
but I have to be frank;
I hope no one forgets.

I want to be thought of
I want to go to my junior prom
I want to be blonde
and I would kill to be thin.

not svelt
or AVERAGE
(I hate that word)
but skin and bones
with beautiful definition
and painful perfection.
nothing could taste that good.

last night felt perfect:
sitting in a dimly lit basement by myself, but not alone, and listening to songs that could not have been as beautiful/appropriate under any other sober circumstance.

i'm going to stop poking holes
that make it hard to breathe
and stop planning sex with
boys who don't mean it
and stop taking shit
from anyone who gives it.
I'll let go of the vices I don't need.

I want something written in words that
I understand, telling me how to live
and how to die having lived.

A couple of poems about a couple of people

mike t swanberg

The leaving

It was longer then we hoped & it pulled at us too often
-each time my hands found the small of her back
I was saying “ soon I wont love you the same”

And every time she would kiss my eyelids it meant
“I am kissing these because a part of me once loved it”
But also
“I hope no one ever kisses your eyes but me”
And we both knew that it meant “ im sorry for every time
I said I loved you, & for every time I didn’t”

I wasn’t there to cry, or to ask her to stay
The leaving had begun months before
As a slow polaroid fade, the right corner of the room
left first then her hips and her right hand
I kissed her hard, hoping she would know it meant
“I was sorry for being everything I was”
If she knew she didn’t say just climbed into her car
And I stood in the street and waited for her
But she didn’t come, and the bottom left corner started to go


That dance

The moments came and went
anxious guests at the same party.
The host off in the closet
sliding his hand up time’s dress.

He was kissing her neck, my god
She leaned into it
that pleasure as heavy as stones
ankles turned on piles of shoes
the air heavy with winter coats

A child would have said
that they were dancing
& grown ups would have laughed
grown up laughs, shared knowing glances
across tables that conversation doesn’t cross

& The hostess stayed close
to the piano all night, waiting for a chance
to share her failing voice with a half attentive room
knowing that time
hadn’t been a very good friend to any of them


No ones child but mine

My father was an island
& my mother was a bank
on fridays
Everyone waiting, tapping
their legs

There was nothing left in me
after a day in her bed.
I wrote confessions on her skin,
made up failures to suffer over.
& what started as a moat
between her voice and my full attention
Grew and grew

By the second year I couldn’t even
hear an echo
Those white birds left for good
And her boats came
less, and less often

I would hear stories from travelers
Their, eyes wide with adventure
That the children were handsome,
& she had opened a bank

lonely old man

by shira

decaying chairs at a table
yellow light on the back of your neck
broken glass in all your footsteps
last night you won, you won and you're happy now

keep your temper, wash the dishes
fill the cabinets with curses,
polish the hinges and swallow the key
make it quiet and clean and hidden
i'll buy you a haven if you answer my prayers

a crying sister on the phone
and lusting wives in all your rooms
you make a living and no loving
to any photograph or live brigade
too young or lovely or fastened to
the back of a truck
that could send you to hell

you're a bad man, you're
a memory
a voyeur and a dying priest
you burned all your bibles for a rose garden
and you sharpen the thorns with a blade
you give them to all the girls
who cook you dinner
or call you father

33 RPM

by S.a.Sunlight

We gently laid the record
down on its dusty back
the needle slid over the chords
playing our hand picked track

It crackled and popped
like a well groomed campfire
it brought such warmth to our ears
as we shivered together there

and i laid there next to you
we were like two links to a chain
connected by the ideas of an artist
yet separate individuals

the fire crescendo
notes graze our ears
as we melt away our pain and fears

and my actions speak more than my words
sometimes you dont need to say a thing
for the words to be understood

and it was quite clear, that your eyes
spoke louder than the pentatonic melodies

La Mer was strong, we sunk in the waves
but your smile told me that you are a life raft
you'll always float my body

my index finger was a needle
it slid down your grooves
oh what horrid music it made

so many dissonant notes
to clash harmonies with the fire around us

who's ears decide what a beautiful melody is

playing in the key of sincerity
my human needle keeps following the turns

the fire burns

The Seas Beyond

by S.a.Sunlight

Where is it?
he must have
his porcelain frog
by his side

or else
his cloud barren mind
will not create
the textures of worlds
beyond our vision

seas in our eyes
seas too far to reach
seas that we can feel
he sees beyond

the old deaf one
he was no match
for the clouds and the sky
channeled through
these polytonal hands

such renown
but never look down

and though he was a chinese doll
someone elses hand was pulling strings
only the son of a sailor
can write about the sea

And my how your porcelain frog has broken
and now with the shattering we have lost the token
the way to our dreams of golden seas
the most imporant of so many keys

we could reassemble the pieces
put your entire lifetime back together
but it would never be the same
it would not amount to the same thing

Take the Money and Run

by Surreal as Sunlight

It wasn't my fault.

I know all parents like to say that,
but I'm going to be an honest father.

The way that all first-loves
are actually walking sandstorms

I used to braze through that desert
I felt the warm sun glazed sand sieve through my toes
And cling to my eyelids
In a constant state of closed dry morning eyes

Your mother's long hair
was a golden curtain
to block us from the rest of the world

And on a warm June night
Minutes after the sun set
The one carries you
Led herself into my resting place

She wanted to be taken
Anxious as a classroom sleeper with the correct asnwer
like her hand was raised for so long

Brazing that sandstorm
I'm not sure I knew where I was going
Leading myself in
Practicing Catholicism like it was my death

And in that sense, you were Saved.

It wasn't too long
before the hair was cut short
The curtain was raised
The air was let in
The sand settled down

And if you remember what I said
about first loves
Well,
your mother's sandstorm was never over

And she took the treasure with her
back to her closet lover
The subconscious stream of denile
That she waded in for so long

I used to think I was rich
wandering that desert with a cause
But I was robbed before the curtain was even built

And so, you are wandering the desert with your mother
But I hope
For your sake
That you don't spend your whole life there

Because everybody goes back for the gold.

shira

by shira

years ago there was a child i lost
down in the banks, in the cliffs, in the sewers
my voice and my carriage crashed
into left field and the
pitcher and team smashed my songs and my reason
for writing you into a score without harmony

your name means a song
in my language, my tongue
in your grandfather's bloodlines
you are chosen and dark

i lost my daughter
my son
and my every last
breath and beat-beating
when i stopped singing songs

the lullabye i'll bring will be
silent and bronzed
by a sun in a coffin
i'll trap underground
i'll rock you and
softly kiss your every fingerprint
they won't match mine, child, but
you'll still be mine

for my baby

by turtledove

For a few weeks every month
I believe my life has a greater meaning
I'm sustaining myself for you

I stick my belly out in front of the mirror
and decide it doesn't look too bad

And when you're growing
I will nourish you

We'll go for walks together
And I will feel the walking
Rocking you to sleep

And when you are born
I will count your fingers and toes
And look into your eyes
I've never seen eyes so clear
And you will look like your father

I imagine you riding on his tall shoulders
And you will be asleep when he tells me that he doesn't love me
And you, I hope so much, will still be sleeping when he leaves us.

My dear son or daughter, yet to be born, whom I love so much:

Written by Kester Henrick

Hopefully by the time you read this you'll realize
that Daddy wasn't as good as you thought he'd be.
That what he wrote about Mommy and how he wrote about her and the words
he choose to describe the day that you were concieved and brewed yourself into
existance...
May...
Have been...
A mistake.
And if there's one thing I can teach to you now, years before I even lay my lips onto your mothers and taste what I have had bottled up inside me for over twenty years...
Don't...
Look...
Back.
Press on with you life and live it for yourself.
If you live it for others and the satisfaction of others, you're being a whore.
And you'll never truly be happy with yourself.
And one day I hope that I'll still be alive to watch you grow up to be a tall, slender, beautiful child who shares the blood I hold in my veins.
Who will find one day, no matter how long it takes, someone who will truly make you happy with yourself.
And I pray that you teach your kids:
No matter what mistakes you make, don't look back.

notes to my unborn children

by michael thomas swanberg

but before we get there i want to congratulate all the local poets, who might not still be local but attempt to tip the scales at least once a month, or every two months. its still a very thrilling website to be a part of, even though turtledove, you know who you are, thinks she is too good to post a poem even after i called her and told her she had to. either way, i just wanted to touch base with anyone who still reads this or likes this or writes this. keep up the good work guys.

notes to my unborn children is an open project to anyone who wants to write something to the kids they dont have yet and fear that they will eventually neglect. or perhaps you can write them nice things, however you were raised.

1

What you are now
Holds truth
There is beauty in that form

You, without sex
Quiet as blood
Spinning in a loom
Of your mother
Her body is yours now
Her hands
Her lovers


2

Do not be born.
Leave your mother early
Make it an accident

I will come to her
In bright kitchens
touch her stomach
Kiss the place you grew

wait until she has fallen asleep,
and sneak down the hallway
to sing lullabies
into your empty bedroom
I will name you after all the things
Your mother and I did wrong
the quiet, the fighting

3

I have seen your mother’s death
The one she waters like a plant
In the back of her mind

It is may when I get the call
There are birds outside the window.

I do not drop the phone when they tell me
I ride it to the floor

I can see the earring she lost last month
Underneath the refrigerator
The teapot is boiling on the stove
You are screaming in the yard
“I shot you, I shot you, I shot you”

4

Make my body to ash
Scatter me someplace
That, beautiful years ago
has lost its charm

Give your grand children my jewelry
Tell them you found it in the garden
That it belonged to no one
Kiss them when they loose it
Tell them it was nothing

by: bachelorette

do you feel me here
still breathing on top of
you

I'll let you touch me if you mean it
and jesus, do I want you to mean it.

I'm picking off my scales
one by one
and it started out as a bad habit
but now I'm hooked on the high
I only want you to make me feel unique again

and yeah you're cancerous
yeah you'll one day consume me
but here is my promise
that it doesn't bother me.

i've never

by shira

i've never told you
often or early enough,
if i've changed my mind
and that i'd
like to go home, now

so,
my darling.
come find me, pick me,
lift me.
get a taxi and a plane
and wash up,
all clean
and dark
all flesh and everything
i've ever touched and kissed and
wiped my eyes on
right through my door
i'd like to go home,
now

please

my only home
is yours
it's true that
you've been
you've come to be
you are
you are my
one and only

when it finally collapsed

michael thomas swanberg

If you thought the world
Was ending then you spread
Your legs in a most beautiful way

Thin ankles and calves that he kissed
Maybe for the first time
If it hurt you didn’t scream

The afternoon peach light
Your mother in the kitchen
The world was ending

And you
You were watching a necklace
Dangle orbits around his throat
Listening to water in the pipes
Your mother humming

Or were those sirens ringing?
A dog is barking
Or is it you, a sound trapped in a throat
For a lifetime finally coming

Finally coming at a moment
Too soon, almost unwelcome
If you wanted to say please, or love
You didn’t And then before you can stop
Or even gasp to breathe
It is here

she never

by shira

i never used to run like you
through fields at night or houses in morning
i advertised my family's fortune
to anyone who'd knock on our door
to any ghost who had a backseat
big enough for my suitcase

i'd sit up afternoons to make my break
while the rest of the rooms were asleep
i'd stare out my window to plot out great awakenings
in empty boxes, among bruises and brooms

but she never wanted to join me
and she never understood a word
i said
asleep or awake
in one language or another
because our lineages only cross
at broken bridges and burnt telephone wires