Paperweight Poetry

It's 2:48am and no body is awake maybe my dreams still are the ones that feel strange, look out of place my golden irrevocably breathing creatures whose hair flows like corn stalks swaying in a field and who move like silk across a woman's legs who rise and fall like violin bows they are perfect, these lions of mine bred with my quixotic unreality groomed and maintained only by my own fabrications They are perfect and they are pawing at the chapters of bubble and foam as they freestyle in the middle of an unaccompanied blue sea they wend on in a direction opposite to the current looking like suns drowning in an indigo sky but they do this because they are so perfect and they are mine and they love me. -anna sluder 

I am a fetal heartbeat docile, almost soundless like the sand compared to the sea I am a sage bowing to silence a prophet valuing tranquility as a statement of sound in itself you tell me to hurry up, get over the pain, speak. Speak. but I am a fetal heartbeat, and I have room to grow. -anna sluder

Not being able to be with you is like knowing that the most bright and beautiful thing is the sun but being told that if I look at it, if I love you I will go blind. -anna sluder

I want to fit the whole world inside of my chest But it is too large and I'm quite small and I would only acquaint myself with defeat if I didn't try so I would risk my heart bursting just for one taste of the trees just for one chance to profess my love to the wind even if I had to sell my soul to the ground I wouldn't settle for less. -anna sluder

Love. I love it. I love love. And I think love loves me too. -anna sluder 

I have made a small kingdom inside of chaos; lunacy dressed in chipped gold paint. -anna sluder

"I like you" I opened the paper bag. It was still innocent, pulsing like butterfly wings incredibly alone and incredibly alive and I swept my fingertips along the greased sides gathering a bit of blood as it trembled warily I inched my hand across the table like easing poker chips forward into the colosseum of games and fears where no one comes out alive "I raise you," I whisper, tipping my closed hand ever so slightly so that I poured my blood onto the table like turning a time glass of sand. I waited. The time was caustic, like a match burning to the end. Then he nodded in admiration and we played on like children finding little things in the forest flowers and twigs and climbing and scraping our knees on trees trying to make sense of a collection of unplanned entities "I love you" I stared back down into my lap, into the bag, into the dark aorta and the valves I wrapped my fingers around it and eased it out with the timidity and doe

Life is abusing me. I need an officer to come to my door and notice the hole in my chest the blood, the bruises, the scars and whisper to me that there is a way for me to signal that I'm not okay so that I won't get hurt again but the husband with the belt and gun and hammer and fist in the back room, spitting out the foam to get straight to the beer will get slammed into a wall read his rights and charged, convicted, persecuted I need an officer to come to my door and get me out Get me the hell out of this contract I didn't sign this contract called life because I didn't know that when I said "I do" simply by taking a breath and therefore deemed alive it meant that it would turn my face blue So I need a way to signal that I'm not okay but since the worst crime I could commit is to say that I'm not happy and be convicted as the woman who took life for granted and since there is no officer with a safe way out and a code to mask the

please, somebody. lock me up before I speak again box me up before I can say these thoughts because I am just acting like a fool telling you about the incessant noise that drums against my skull and calling it literature when we all know that I'm just a crazy fool finger painting unknown languages in my blood across the wall because we all know I'm just squeezing a sponge over your heads gripping your head like a blind man and wailing as my soul drips down your face wailing "do you get it? do you see me? do you understand?" when the last thing I should be is forcing you to my tune I should be bleeding and screaming to understand you otherwise, I'm just a crazy fool. -anna sluder