Dudes with Pens

April 25, 2006

Lean On Evening Once Again

Lean on evening once again
Sense the weight of sunset sinking low
On the blustering spare plain
Before dawn calls like dismal crow

Fields of green-gold set aflame
While the world runs and spins apart
From the small home with tiny frame
On a prairie wide enough to break your heart

-Bethany, UHill


Seeing Things

Lonely woman neighbour
in a night-time long with stars
she swears are dimmer than the once were:
Her wrinkled fingers shiver
only just perceptibly
as she sits slurping coffee
on the porch,
Letting memories slide by unchecked.
She sits in a cracked white plastic chair,
But doesn’t really sit there:
Her wary gaze protects emotion.
Potted plants all around run wild:
Stringy cacti like dreadlocks;
Her hair free, frazzled, tired, her eyes bright.
Though night sits silent,
And must seem cruelly quiet to her,
It hasn’t always.
She rests a moment longer as every bone aches
and she lingers.
Lovely woman,
Porch creaks, screen door clicks.

-Bethany


I Love Foggy Mornings

Bellies full of unbreakable and artificial:
We ache, or we think so,
Without knowing if we’re people people anymore.
Not a lot of sun shines now
just shadows stay, with dusty windowpanes reflecting.

I wear earplugs whenever I can,
Anxious and lacking a concrete life plan,
Without soldiers, shield, armour,
Pink and tired, curled up in fears.
The world wears earplugs and sits tight while
Only the walls have open ears,
And we live in fear of them
Though we need not.

There are no secrets, no personal, no understanding core
As the media dumps information on us like salt on a bleeding sore.

But I need nothing actual, I don’t need to know:
If I was more attentive, I’d fear my own folly still more,
For expressions of love so often sound senseless,
So unoriginal, unreal, or untrue:
Plugged ears and this unlucky fog are safer.


The moon hangs lower than it ever did,
But let’s not box it away or place a lid
over the heavens the way we have everything else.
You left a lot behind from back when you were a thousand things
at once before you were too many, we were too many,
and we came into this plastic space.

Confusion is sweet after all,
though perhaps dull,
Even idiotic in itself, but at least I know how I want things,
if not what things,
And I resolve I will still get along
without the tears and the rain,
Without caring if my features, my love, my poetry,
and even my thoughts are quite plain.

-Bethany, UHill



do I? (have cabin fever)


do I? (wander)
walk (in circles) round
(the wind) the winding streets
(with all the sky rooting me,
placing me, knowing me)
more than I think./?//(I do?)


do I? curl
a seed (embedded)
a child, a baby, a cell
(buried here) in warm dark
(and red fear)
knowing anything much./?//(I do?)

do I? sing
(dancing on the razor edge)
with all I never know
(doubting who I am today)
on a cliff in June
(plane screams past)
clouds shudder, recombine and drift
shall I drift (or fall)./?//(I do?)

I would, I am
for anything today,
loosed and lost and trapped and (?) //…

-Bethany, UHill


quickie haikus

my teeth are too sharp/my tongue is too soft, today/my tongue is in pain

my legs are all lead/the anxiety destroys/cool self-confidence

the day is too long/so goddamn long it hurts you/or is it just me?

brains are so gravy/I think they're good, good to think/but watch out! zombies!

-Garren, Killarney, age 16

posted by dudeswithpens @ 10:44 a.m.