A collection of Poetry written for both academic and personal purposes
Villanelle
March
When the cloth is stained a bloody red
Do not cry child, you must march ahead
When the cloth is stained a bloody red,
And the last house crumbles to ashen dust
Do not cry child, you must march ahead
March, march child, do not mourn the dead
Hide within the trees. Quiet, no tears
When the cloth is stained a bloody red
Pay no head child to all the blood that has been shed
There is no place here for you among the still bodies musk
Do not cry child, you must march ahead
Do not let this be your life and sever the familial thread
There is so much yet to come in the expansiveness of your years.
When the cloth isn’t stained a bloody red
Run child run, do not allow the memories to bear down on your head
Memories of angry men made of greed and lust
Do not cry child, you must march ahead
Yet don't allow your mind to be lead,
As your father before with his patriotic cheers
When the cloth wasn’t stained a bloody red
Do not cry child, you must march ahead
100 words
I was not the first thing he created. He floated in endless nothing, until he decided to fill it with something. He started with a few stars. He needed the light. Then planets, galaxies, universes. And when he saw their beauty, he made me, someone else to appreciate him. I watched him stitch the cosmos together, his endless star studded tapestry. When I grew bored I wrapped myself in his creation to live among you. I’ve lived a million lives. One face among an endless sea. Quiet and unknown. Yet, you saw me. You saw the stars in my veins.
Character Poem
Scylla
“She’s a grisly monster, I assure you.
No one can look on her with any joy,
not even a god who meets her face-to-face”
-Circe, The Odyssey
I cannot remember my body,
I do not recognize my limbs.
They call me mother but they cannot be mine.
They snap at the waves as they stretch upward trying to hold me.
I cannot remember the feeling of the sea.
I hide away when it tries to reach me when it calls my name, what a horrid sound.
It used to embrace me
as my mother once did
I cannot remember her face
Sometimes I think I can see her in the mist
As the waves hurl themselves against the jagged stone
They pleading for me to come down from my sun bleached perch
But I remember you
Your eyes stare at me from the crimson sea below
You smile at me from my reflection
Your laughter echoes in their screams.
I wonder,
If I had offered you the love he denied
Would you have smiled like that
When you tore me apart
Pantoum
Labor of Love
It was a labor of love
The new hope of a generation that we would never see
A thousand years floating, floating
A life painted in steel and grey
The new hope of a generation we would never see
But the ones before us new the green of the trees
A life painted in steel and grey
The trees were not meant for us to see
The great children will know the green of the trees
But we spend a thousand years of floating, floating
The trees were not meant for us to see
It will be a labor of love
Free Verse
Francis and Alexis
I was excited to meet him. I heard the whispers of his arrival in the cool autumn wind, I had never seen him, but I wanted so badly to meet him. Some called him a tyrant, violent and cruel. Others called him nothing more than a wandering soul . but one thing that was agreed was that his arrival demanded respect. The windows were to be adorned in silver, the pantries stocked for the feast. The threshold of every house buried in the crystals of his homeland. We filled great bulbous sacks laying them out in offering begging for his mercy or his blessing.
My mother had still kept me close, she had not yet finished with me. The color of my cheeks were still flat, the curve of my finger not quite right, the arch of my belly not quite full. She prayed for her perfection, and she would keep me till I was such. But I had heard the whispers, smelled the salt on the wind. I would not wait for perfection, I was far too eager of a child.
The night when I met him, everyone gathered in that great yawning hall, huddled together like children at a sleepover, whispering their dreams. They whispered that night in that hot still air, where the only screams were that of my mother, begging me to let her finish sculpting my form. But I resisted, I was already running late. In the night, as I was torn from my mothers womb, I cried out to him praying I was not too late. He called back in glorious rolling thunder.
Free Verse
Five minutes with God.
I was given five minutes. Five minutes to unload the grievances from my shoulders and peel away the scars from my skin like stickers from a child. He stood still in the expansive cosmos. The light of the stars shone in his eyes, the pain of his years was sewn into his smile. He was my father, my grandfather, my brother, my best friend. Ever changing and all at once. I thought that when I saw him, the words would pour out of me like blood from a gaping wound, but the world was silent. I did not know where to begin. My stomach twisted and knotted, the ropes still bounded me yet. They wrapped around my stomach, my heart, snaking upward into my throat. Pulling tight, stealing my voice from me. The universe hummed on, and as we stood staring at each other across that vast expanse the ropes that bound me continued to tighten cutting deep into me, and from the wounds a vicious black venom seeped and pooled. I wanted to spit it at him to watch it burn him and blacken his beautiful stars. I wanted to run to him and embrace him, sink my face into the folds of his robe. I wanted to hurl myself at him and strike him, his cosmos scattering like scared little rabbits. I wanted to grovel at his feet and beg his forgiveness. Wanted to kill him. But I did nothing but sink to my knees. Tears, hot and heavy, pushed their way to the surface and I forced my eyes upward.
There in the shimmering colors and the golden lights, my family danced. My sisters twirled, the stars swirling around them. My brothers played catch, juggling the great planets between one another. They were not as they were on earth, they were as I had always dreamed them to be, bright and beautiful. Brighter than the stars themselves. He sat next to me now. He smiled his star sewn smile, and I knew. We were not like his heavenly bodies, breathless beautiful things that danced when they were told. We were something entirely new. Stunningly horrific little creatures obeying no will but our own. He did not mark our path across the sky with maps carefully etched in stone. Freeing us from the confinement he had sealed himself in, awaiting our return. His voice stretched about the expanding room, the voice of everyone I had ever known. Cogito ergo sum, and all at once the stars burst forth dancing together. I think therefore I am.