Paperweight Poetry

The countries lined up like beads on a necklace, spitting words out like international and order, some of them ran together; And they promised us, never again. But there is foam gurgling out of children's mouths as they writhe and convulse, their faces pulled taunt and blank, like a doll's face, eyes unflinchingly wide, pupils tight, as life is drawn out of them, like a demon leaving the exorcised. You lied, because the countries line up like beads on a necklace, spitting nothing out, just wordlessly shaking their heads at the hundreds of people already dead; And the only thing you're promising is that there will probably be more. But you said, Never. Again. You cannot politically correct and excuse yourself of the word never, or title the hope you gave, a miscommunication. You lied, and there is foam at their mouths, and if you don't climb out of your silk sheets, soon it'll be on the world's, and there will be no international or order,...

The words that I waited for, were different than the words that arrived,  and there was melancholy inside of my chest, it looked like a bottle of blue paint gurgling as it spills out,  like poison that doesn’t taste like poison until you swallow it,  doom that you are unaware of until you’re on the edge of it.  I wonder if I waited for the unlikely,  yet expected the lonely, because I knew that someone that beautiful, with such a cunning taste for words, couldn’t have a mind that was anything but a terrible place, couldn’t stay with anyone that the moment you said hello, he started unpacking his suitcase. So I think you knew too,  which is why you chose blue paint  to let cataract and plunge over the wreckage, over the apocalypse in my chest,  because you knew, out of all the hellish states of mind, l oneliness would taste the best.  -anna sluder

I’m the kid who tried to find the end of the rainbow, I’m the kid who went running through sunflower fields and meadows, slipping on flowers that squelched open like bottles of paint, that bound leaves and petals together, to make you a crown, so that you could be a thing that is wild and true.  And maybe I never found the end of the rainbow and maybe the flowers dried up and fell out of the crown, but maybe I lived in a way that you never knew, For I believe that if we just love the world, it’ll love us too.  -anna sluder

I wonder what makes up the frigid shiver that slithers down my spine, why gravity is so unfair, and why I wake in a cold sweat to dreams that aren't even real and never will be. But I also wonder where the lightning bugs go in the day, I wonder how the trees cannot speak, but yet they tell me things, and how I don't know so many things, but I'd like to. -anna sluder

My first metro card, was my first ticket to any other place, but here; a rite of passage on a sticky subway brimming with swaying bodies  of all different colors and places, some were lonely, I could tell, and others were in love with people or with the world, and I was the latter. My first passport, was my first ticket to the world, and I went any other place, but here; an initiation rite on a plane  brimming with buckled bodies of all different colors and places, some were lonely,  I could tell, and others were in love with people or with the world, and I was the latter. My first space helmet, was my first ticket to the universe, and I went any other place, but here; a wormhole on a ship  brimming with untethered stars of all different colors and places, some were lonely; I could tell, and others were in love with other stars or with the world, and I was the latter.  My first tickets to life, were pressed ...

How different i know you would act, if you saw how they lined my chest with yellow tape  after you left it, how they outlined my remains with child’s chalk, the kind i used to draw horses with, pink, and blue, and purple across the pavement, because i was too pure and too young to be told horses couldn’t be that color, but you were the rain, that came down like punches and slanted eyes, and swirled it like cotton candy, so that I thought you were good, until it turned to red and I realized it was my blood. Maybe you would act different if you saw the crime scene, if you saw a documentarist cock his head at the strangely terrifying and beautiful way, that blood clouded around the back of my head on the sidewalk, where I used to draw my horses, like a thought bubble in a comic strip, as if I had something to say.  Maybe if you saw the way that they pour water over the blood, until it turned pink, like a smeared chalk horse caught in the r...

Sometimes songs come from other places than church pews and they are low and swallowed like wine or they are loud and impenetrable like the way life should be, and I think God is okay with that too. I think the music is more than  the recording studio where harmony and melody make love, for I can hear it in the trees, in the small unprecedented way that they shelter me from the rain, and it is not only in split branches, but in the sound of grain pouring out, the slick sweat between bodies,  the moss I scrape off the rocks, there is music inside of smiles and laughter, and children popping bubble wrap, the juice running down a chin from a peach.  I hear music without melodies, songs without harmonies, and they are everywhere  and they are good.  They are in the littered plastic bags dancing like ballerinas in the wind, the knot of a wet shoelace tightened, the late afternoon sleeper’s exhale,  and I hear it in yo...