Paperweight Poetry

 They burst into our home Demanding for metal Snatching things as they roam For anything that will settle Enough to make a bomb Or maybe a tank or a plane As tears drop from mom Like grenades about to detonate They search in our rooms Chopping things into parts Our trunk thrown open with a boom I hear the gunshots in my family's hearts As they grab the dog tags on chains Each one for the pilot sons of four Using their metal corpse to build airplanes That oddly, I think, will only  kill more. -anna sluder

 Pounding against The hollows of my chest I find there is nothing I help When I only attack the shadows of myself. -anna sluder

The trees They stand still Waiting patiently As they ask us please Up on top of their hill To realize that the art of being still is what makes us most free. -anna sluder

When I was in the hospital To see my grandma There was this man Once upon a time There he was  That always took off his oxygen mask No matter how much he needed it  Regardless  Of how much they told him not to  He didn't want their oxygen Is what he said He didn't want to smell Oxygen The filtered, cleaning chemicals and  A diluted element from A germ free plastic mask  That cuts into his cheek He wants  He wants  To smell the rain  On a spring morning when simply dew Forms puddles of mud The earth And it's oaken infallible smell of soil In crumbling clods of red clay  That tumble Down through and between the fingers He wants  He wants  To not just live Live a shell of a life Strung down by and bound by  Ripping tubes and needles chained Into your insides By a machine Live by a machine Because that's only existing One cannot live in chains They are simply There  So once upon a time There was a man  Who didn't want their oxygen He wanted air Who didn't want to in

What if when the stars fall into their place, Light burning against the absence of light, It's trying to spell out something on the sky's black face? That it's time to hold hands and give up the fight. -anna sluder

Sometimes I wonder what you think of me Is that little smile that you cannot contain That numbs your heart warm with glee Is it a thought of me you cannot seem to drain? Sometimes I wonder what you think of my smile If it spreads too broad or is too thin Does my head throw back too far when I laugh for awhile? Or do you wish that I never lose my grin? Sometimes I am so terrorized that even though you love me You don't necessarily like the way that I am I wish I would say that I could change for you easily But to be true to myself I can't For I like how your hands are soft and how the wind on your skin smells For this is how this crazy love is supposed to be Where we find pleasure in each other's little and big things as well So if I like you for the bad and the good, you have to do the same for me. -anna sluder

The sun dances on my skin The rays and us do a waltz When I step on his foot he grins Laughs and says it's not my fault Then another sunray intervenes And the music changes to  foxtrot When he tilts his head and leans I tell him he looks so hot When he places his hand on my back And we flit to the music But then the dark begins to crack And he tells me he must leave quick For the dawn cannot rise without him But he's glad to have danced with me all night And he promises me before the next hymn That he'll see me tomorrow night, when moon is night shift for the light. -anna sluder

The sunshine is drawn in with pencil lead Day and then night, it stays the same in the comic strip So I smile at what the sun's thought bubble said That it wishes to shine without a script.           -anna sluder 

everybody tries to help but they never ask if they truly mind being homeless wrinkled hands stretching over the thin woolen blanket the gray papered news burning in the grappling orange wet fingers of a makeshift fire the gravel of this society digs deep into the soft of their back so they choose the earth the bawdy clods of a sweet dark beauty unrefined perhaps they don't mind the cold for their hearts are warmer than the ones who live in homes in those four walled boxes perhaps they don't mind not knowing the news for they live in the moment falling in love over and over and over under a threshold of stars perhaps they do not like the code and bars of society that lock them in that tell them what normal is for lying with the grass in their hair and the earth as their bed they feel less alone and more alive for homeless is not quite the right word it is not that they are without a house or only like to wander and roam it is that they make the e

I used to hope that one day you would love me as hard and as deep and fiercely as I love you but I shouldn't pray for what's not meant to be I shouldn't desire for things that simply cannot come true for you are dying and I am not I am breathing and you are being denied this right to live rather than cross your hands and rot and fall asleep until you give into the light but maybe that just because you are dying it never meant or means you never loved me and that your love has always been nothing instead of the love you always wanted me to see people are fleeting, like leaves in the fall but even when people die, love never does I thought the more you shrunk, the more your love became too small as if your love for me never was a was, but perhaps you never stopped loving me at all? for in fact the more you died, the longer that your lips fighted to stay on mine, the more embraces, and work calls as if you were scared of when you might slip you keep telling