Paperweight Poetry

The children grow and grow  and take on the countenance and face of another picking bits and pieces of others and taping them to himself and the women hear another speaking of art  so they venture in circles rambling of Manet claiming something is beautiful only by the validation of another and then they care about the poets because someone read a poem from their mind and they all inscribe a few phrases on the backs of their hands  never knowing what the poet actually meant growing and cutting their hair over and over like weeds turned to flowers than back again the children grow and grow  growing drunk on imitation  and they shake my hand at graduation and say that I’m all grown with the syntax of a declaration, but the tone of a question and I look at the tops of my shoes  waiting for the wind to press the gown out of the way so I can read and then say with valiant impersonation, Yes.  -anna sluder

Perhaps there are words for you and words for me just as certain as the sun knows where to shine and where not to  And in the nakedness of the human machine a contradiction of life and vulnerability we make our place by past not fate the noise of souls howling words around a fire  so that those words clump like clay in poems and into meaning Vulnerable shaves down to bones of what we are past shaves down to bones of what they were And as much as we claim a singularity as a planet with things that cry and feel and breathe and speak  unprecedented among the others  we are still a planet, still connected to past like a mother with an umbilical cord of stars we cannot remember  For the knowledge of past is present therefore past is still present  as long as we know of what it was, it still is  Books can be burned, but the feeling of words cannot  so perhaps there were groves of meanings meant for you and another garden of them for me for a rose is a ro

I wonder if you can buy happiness on the black market it fits all the qualities, rare, hard to get, sometimes fraudulent I think seven billion people on the rise would pay an arm and a leg for it well probably more than that because an arm costs $385 and a leg costs similar on the black market And I know people who would pay a million just for a sip of feeling alive of joy sliding down your throat into your stomach like warm wine I wonder how'd they steal it and who even has it to steal from perhaps they extract the songs from the vocal cords of lovers collect them in jars in the back of a van what a place to keep happiness trapped perhaps they steal them from the bellies of children while they sleep they always were so innocent but then maybe the sellers would just want to keep it to themselves in a sweeping gesture of desperation they'd drink every jar I think, that in one way or another, we all just want to be happy. -anna sluder 

We're afraid of the things we cannot control The wild things that grow like weeds between normalcy Like dandelions the flower that society refuses to call a flower Like four leaved clovers the shrub with legends in its bones They spread and butter the lands like a plague Wild things we cannot tame "Are you afraid of me?" I ask He pulls me close, so that I must read his breath for words against my neck "Yes" -anna sluder 

We drank outlawed wine made love on the pages of forbidden books permeating through the papyrus love of forbidden words became an idea that danced like light but tasted like bitter tea I hope you know you'd have to slit my throat Let all the ideas like little stars floating in my blood pour out before you could bring me back to oblivion, my old friend for I have lived out life, like corners of pages curling with age drying and crinkling under the sun after being wet I have heard things, beautiful things I have tasted wonders and there is no way to wield it out of me they are a part of me, you might as well try carving out every freckle that has bloomed from where the sun has kissed me every weed that has grown despite for I have seen things I have loved things And a soul refuses to forget. -anna sluder

Maybe you wouldn't believe the words "I'm fine" if you heard the way my heart thuds to the ground is crushed underfoot into white noise and white sound Life getting high off my agony, as it snuffs up a line. -anna sluder

Hope gave me a quarter for the jukebox I played John Lennon I think you know which song. -anna sluder

I danced with chaos went a little too heavy on the vodka with mayhem had a one-night stand with anarchy he didn't call me back neither did madness But I suppose that's okay, they weren't great kissers anyways. -anna sluder

I have found footholds in the stars drank nectar from the moon and you, you and your feeble soul have the audacity to expect me to come back down and convert to the ordinary as if I could forget all that I've seen? -anna sluder