Paperweight Poetry

Dear Lost Boys, Is Wendy as nice as they say she is? Is Michael that little and John really a wiz?  Maybe I could meet Tinkerbell Because I know she has some different stories to tell  I'd like to know if we really get to fight Captain Hook And if he is really that bad of a crook Dear Lost Boys,  Are their real mermaids on the rocks  Did the alligator really swallow that clock?  With just a little belief in fairies and trust I heard we can fly with pixie dust  Do you think Peter Pan would let me fly high and low As we look for his shadow? Dear Lost Boys, I don't mean to intrude But mommy said I might be coming there very very soon So where is this Neverland that you speak of?  Where you never hurt, you never age,  just love?  I heard we always get to play  And we aren't in pain for another day? Dear Lost Boys, Is Peter Pan coming soon?  Because the doctors say I might not make it past...

Take a sip of my warm indifference As it stains the dog-eared pages of your hopes  Discolors your coffee table with wet rings like crop circles Signifying the alienness of us, of that once love  I hope you bury it in sugar, the suffocation of sweetners Strangle it with tea bag strings and syrup  And I laugh hysterically as you toss salt in, thinking its sugar I hope you gag on the lukewarmness of my love  The bitterness of letting the tea bag steep for a little too long So that you may suffer never knowing if I loved you a little more than I hate you or hated you a little more than I loved you Because indifference is the in between, but mine is tender Sweetly torturing you over if I loved you more or less Like love and hate, stalemates at the blade Pushing and pushing a little here and a little there For a little more sugar, and a little less sugar  Is the indifferent tea that we taste.  -anna sluder

I want to know that we are more than daydreams and wine tasting in Italy More than sluggish hot days and the taste of salt on your skin I want to know that we are more than another coin tossed in the Trevi fountain or a waltz in the rain So let me know if this is only a dandelion seed in the wind Tell me now if you want me in the past Because after all the love I've given I'm damn well not coming out last.  -anna sluder

We are the furnaces shushed, quieted, and etherized in the summer  The boxes and boxes of childhood toys toted away to the attic with a lock They tell us "Shh Shh! Don't remind us of the cold, don't remind us of our past." We are the sufferers when everyone else chooses the ignorance for bliss Everyone doesn't want to hear the cold hard truth  Like a slimy stone that if you'd swallow would sink you to the bottom of a river  So they tell everyone we don't exist, the cold hard truth doesn't exist  So don't worry, go on drinking until the bottle drinks more of you Until you are so numb, that the ache of numbness hurts more than the pain you were trying to numb to begin with Until you are gurgling on your own vomit, your hair cleaned by only your drool  Until you fall asleep to the lullaby of a humming phone trying to tell you,  That you still have a wife and kids waiting at home  Go on complaining and whining until they build ...

I whisper to Hope "Save me! Save me!" Sweat dribbles down her dark cheeks  And she waggles a meaty finger at me "Baby don't you know?" My kneecaps clatter to the gritty ground As I tug at the corners of her African robes "Save me! Save me, Hope!" She grips my face in one large hand,  Her brown eyes ripping at the seams  "Baby don't you know?" she repeats  "I'm nothing but a dream." -anna sluder

Let us make art with our lips Dip our tongues in vibrant paints  Write novels with our songs  And poems with our kisses  Invite the universe into our mouths To show off the gallery exhibits in our cheeks  For even compared to the stars, we are the grandest art So always love the people with mouths wide open For those are the ones who won't sculpt death and decay But will paint the brave man sailing home to his love on a ship  They are the rarities with museums between their lips.  -anna sluder