Paperweight Poetry

Yellow wet faces with yellow wet mouths Squawk open like birds beaks screaming  And fluttering against the sides of the cage from the outside Pecking at the flesh and juice trapped inside of it  Cheering as blood cataracts like red wine over lips And their coaches drench them soaking the blood pink Diluting the violence as not that bad with a bottle of water dripping down their scalp Come on man, get up there, keep your hands up Make your own knuckles bleed just to make another man bleed Until his skull only a fourth of an inch thick rattles back and forth  Like a bobblehead breaking  And the lightning pumps through their fists  Flashing in synchrony to the camera clicks And he screams through the retching of blood  As the other man carves into his chest like the carcass of cow meat And the birds flicker and squelch  As his body chokes on bruises and ruptured veins  Life contorting into misshapen angles as thunder...

Maybe pressing my foot down on the accelerator Until the world whizzes by like a merry-go-round And the streetlights crinkle up like yellow origami flowers And the wind whirs like a whine in between the motherly arms of the trees Is my way of screaming in a world intolerant to noise  And anything louder than monotony  And there is machine and man breaking the boundaries of ground and air Like cracks spreading across a frozen lake As we fracture open the road as an earthquake And all we can taste is carbonized breaths cold against the night And air swims into the open windows like an ocean filling a drowning car But instead it's making us fly And as our arms flap like pigeon bird wings out the window Gravel spitting out of coils of rubber on a late night city drive Wondering if this is it If this is the moment we feel most alive.  -anna sluder

You were the one  The highest reach of love a human can be The kind of love that poets have dedicated their lives to writing about And people have pined over tales about But no one could ever quite be  Until you And you were the love that made us all believe in love In a love where there is no conditions, no fears,  No end.  You were the one.  A love that stretches past time, wraps around its corners And laps infinity time and time again Yet never tires and never asks for  anything in return The story of a hero with a rise but not a fall You were the one  Because your love has never left, never abandoned It holds true time and time again Thank you for showing me that fairytale love exists And that it isn't always a prince on a white horse  For sometimes it is the warm touch of your grandmother  Telling you stories until you fall asleep   You were always the one, Grandma You are the one.  ...