Paperweight Poetry

Charmless boys get nowhere They say Flirtless girls get nowhere They say Charming boys get nowhere They say Flirting girls get nowhere  They say Than what is there left to be A loose confederation of hopes and dreams? A pink paper doll tearing at the seams? No, you want some mass of muscles and skin Flopping about unopinionated and numb  You don't like us fish out of water Questioning your frilly expectations Because we are too slippery to grasp Bouncing about not easy to catch You think we just want to rebel, but we just want to breathe Not in the water, not in the air because nothing is ever clean  So give me your one way mirror rules and rules  And I will saturate them in your own filth, unreadably wet And in that moment with the disintegration of words I will not be charmless or charming, flirtless or flirting  I will be a girl or I will be a boy Finally breathing in the space between the funeral of rules. ...

These people they mark their skin  With permanent ink in an impermanent life Perhaps so their willful scars will outnumber the unwillful ones And they will feel somehow stationary, unbudging In a much so budging world  Where we are as fleeting as pinstripes in the thirties As ephemeral as the loose change given to the unwanted man  So yes, screw it, we will always be cursory  But let's mark our cheeks with freckles from kisses from the sun  Let's tattoo our passports with foreign cities  And scar our hearts with neophytic loves  Because no one wants to see the word love carved into your skin They want to see it carved into your heart.  -anna sluder