Paperweight Poetry

Mama, why does it rain? Spattering drops onto my freckled skin My darling, it's cuz heaven's washing away our pains  And cleansing us of our stains and  sins.  -anna sluder 

They always said that men were supposed to be strong  But once the flat line droned, a mother and a wife on her deathbed  My father didn't even act like anything was ever wrong He just laughed and cackled, as if he couldn't believe human fragility could so easily make us wake up dead.  -anna sluder 

Our lives are wrought by moments Whether they are indelibly tender  An infinite instant that is inextricably Godsent Or the plaguing ones with enough torture to render  Our ache and pangs to all consuming misery  But needless of the type, these moments define Our lives, marking how you are you and I am me And teaching us where to search for this identity to find  O you inextirpable anomalies of time In between the reality and the illusion Teach me to live like you do in your fleeting lifetime In raw spontaneity and wonder again and again  For our lives are wreathed with you and your moments  But our lives are just as impermanent as you  But so that I know what my life truly meant Show me how to live unboundedly through   For my life is made of chromatic moments  But I am also one too.  -anna sluder 

i never need to explain myself to you or why i don't believe in the things you say for me to hear your lies aren't worth my time, only words untrue  for I am not a person who sells their soul to Fear.  -anna sluder 

Whenever he beat her, like he often did again and again   The woman, was quiet and wouldn't give her words up  For every time he uselessly asked to be forgiven   She knew, that for an answer, her silence was loud enough.   -anna sluder 

She got drunk on the dew of the morning As he got drunk on the stars of the night  But they did this daily, not a one night fling Their drunkenness guided by the separate lights  Their names were dawn and dusk  And they were the forgotten souls of time They weren't day or night, they're part of time's husk  An undefined moment, a blank name before the prime No wonder they drink, dawn sucking our dew dry And dusk guzzling away our carbonated stars  They are unappreciated without a why  Just a pre-show before where the big shots are  But dawn and dusk cannot change  Dawn isn't day and dusk isn't night So they get intoxicated in exchange Instead of remembering that they are stronger than dark and light For it is extraordinary for light to penetrate the dark Under the name that we call the  dawn And the dark to shroud daylight's heavy spark And that dusk can make the sunlight withdrawn Instead of morning staying in the darkne

I wonder if, in the way that we feel the rain The world feels me too, like a steadfast dripping of I  My volatile existence just dousing the earth with an invisible stain Yet, as trivial as I am, without it, the world would go dry.   -anna sluder 

Are we fleetingly tragic souls?   Who barely have the time in the falling of a petal   To scratch the soil of this earth, less make a hole   Our mark, covered by sodden dirt which settles?    Perhaps not, and here we do own nothing,    But this ineffable moment in our hands   But which is only ephemeral as the passing of spring   In these thinning fugacious lands    So I will die after this impermanent spring   Summer suns burning away my volatile body   Into the earthen ground of dust and nothing    Until I will bloom and fail again, trying to show there are more than petals on me.  -anna sluder 

You have a soul and body  But standing, you next to me I don't seem quite whole For, I may have body, but I don't have a soul.                 -anna sluder 

where are you? We ask this not to find, but to be found where are you? A cry turning to wail and then a scream all around where are you ? It's not a fear of being without you where are you? It's a selfish fear of being lost and lonely too where are you? The question is not for you, it's for myself on where to go where are you? But the answer is: I don't rightly know.   -anna sluder 

I wonder if you see me When you look in your rear view mirror I wonder if you ever catch a glimpse In the reflection of your tears  I promise not to haunt you, unless it's what you long for  I simply wonder if you see me Every time you open a window and each door But if a ghost isn't what you want me to be Then I will purely haunt you in your memory.           -anna sluder 

Why do they say that the world is made of billions of atoms?   Made of molecules that bind together the land and waters of sea?    When we are clearly not made of so many particles   Instead this world is formed from a billion stories.                   -anna sluder 

Her arms and legs are carved from trees No wonder they call them limbs  Where the birds perch and sing their glee And her fingers are long like leaves untrimmed  Her mind is molded from the clouds Casted into those wandering shapes Which is why her dreams echo so loud And she cannot find her way out of the whitish landscape Her hair grows from those clouds In long cirrus strands that pour from her head Or perhaps they are more like a field unplowed Growing stalks upon stalks on unruly beds Bursting forth into reeds of grass she calls eyelashes Which dries the rain that falls from her mind of skies And occasionally not catching the wet that splashes It pours out a drizzle through her eyes  The girl was made from the gold dust of the ground And every pearl of water from the sky But she wasn't any different from any of us around She is made of wonder and beauty just as you are and I.    -anna sluder 

There are rivers of wonder in our veins Our curiosities are each of the infinite cells inside Of a human body made of miracles that reign Over our ability to embrace this world or to hide It divides the living from the existing The ones who take the chance to press on through the race  Versus the ones on the sideline that tell their curiosity to stop aching Instead of holding up their chin, to make the sky meet their face  But then there is the thought of it being better only to endure  When those who compromise are the ones who die last For even though their lives are predictable and sure It is not as fine as the feeling of your feet bounding fast  To know that you gave it all for the entirety of the marathon Let the wonders burning inside of you  drive you to live life in full  For the ones who give the future people an inspiration  Are the ones who sprinted the race from their own magnetic pull.             -anna sluder