Paperweight Poetry

You can't tell me you're not beautiful  When I see the way the wind plays with your hair The way the sun dances upon your cheeks How when you smile the stars circle around to stare And the way life blushes at your heart As if it had to be concocted from magic potion So don't tell me you aren't beautiful When I am a seashell to your ocean.  -anna sluder

I love you If only my hand could stretch across nations I would lift you up out of the hills of bodies  Out of the land of bombs and brokenness  For I know at least my heart does And I would offer you a place in my chest But instead I am here in my perfect four sided box house  In this perfect four sided box country Watching you touch your face with your hand, look at your hand covered in blood And you not knowing that we saw the blood on your face before you did  That our entire country is watching you at this moment Watching you be so quiet that at a moment of tragedy and ache You cannot even scream, you cannot even cry For the bombshells have dropped all around you, spitting metal under your skin, welding you into hardness  Or perhaps you think the camera we point at you is a gun  And that is why you are silent, desensitized to submission So even if you are far away little boy, I just wanted to say that I love you And I ...

Tonight I captured the sunset  With the shuttering of a lens The methodical click of buttons Of gauges and knobs turning inside my soul And the lens snapped close Like jaws biting down on the colors Chewing on juicy meat The sky running pink and red And then it swallowed it up But the sunset quaked  Rattling against the inside walls of the camera Sunsets always were a little wild  Like a baby in the belly giving a little kick Tugging on its mother's cord But we knew it had to stay there Preserved inside of a memory So that when the sun dips below the horizon  Vanishing from the sky It will only be the sun that escapes And the moment will get to stay.  -anna sluder

The unforgiving taste of a promise  That you know you cannot keep  Like downing a bottle of wine And saying you won't open the second Or the third Because promises are easy Like drinking alone But what if you were told Every promise you made and didn't fulfill You would lose a limb, an arm or a leg Cut off and given to the person you let down If that was true then most people would have only their organs And a pile of arms and legs of other people Trying to sew and stitch them onto their own bodies To the places where they wouldn't fit Because promises are mismatched pieces That will never fit by the words of one and actions of another So we are just limbless masses  Bleeding on the floor Choking on the ignorant hope of a promise.  -anna sluder

My nails crack trying to claw my way out Drumming my fists to the walls, this is more than locked Yet you till me not to complain, that this is a pretty nice box But how could I love a box when you promised me the world.  -anna sluder

These scars I wear are my stripes  These bullet holes, my stars  I gargle on my own blood So that you may gargle on your mouthwash  Complaining that it is overpriced and then slip quietly into bed While I slip quietly into death Never once thinking that this is overpriced Dying for you, because you are more than worth it But still I would like a little more when I march home Than a disgusted stare at my missing arm while I buy my mouthwash  For I didn't know that the bullets that my skin stretched across countries To block from ravaging you was only worth a fifteen percent military discount  I didn't know that all I would get on my door when I walked home from the airport alone  Would be an eviction notice instead of a banner screaming "welcome home" I didn't know it would be spit in the face by some and an aversion of eyes by the others When I took my shirt off at the gym revealing the Jackson Polluck painting of bullet hol...

Let me kiss your bruised knees And you can kiss my wicked heart Because I didn't mean to make you fall Or push you down, or hit you,  Or slug you until blood ran like a labyrinth between splintered bones Yeah you know whatever you want to call it  And yes maybe it was more than your knees It was those clumsy hands of yours  And those dirt ugly ribs that jut out like you haven't eaten in days When God knows I haven't starved you for more than a day  And maybe I broke your pathetic teeth that never smile for me It's just you're too focused on yourself  You never want to do anything for others  So quit laying there all limp and your skin red and dripping with self pity  So get up damn it and kiss me.  -anna sluder