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[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

Wear and Friction 4/4/24

Wrinkled like the hand your grandparents

Still clasped for 70 years

Faded like a kick ball

Left in the grass for the neighborhood games

Worn like your old favorite pajama bottoms

Thinned and loved 

ripped on the edge

Dusty like an old leather bound book

Created to be held and poured over 

Melted like a household candle whose 

Wick reached it end but wax remained

Dripping like an outdoor faucet

Over used for garden hoses

 and water balloons

You are mine like wear and friction

Permanently altering me 

Like love is supposed to do

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

[Untitled Poetry] 4/4/24

Serenity like a soft wave

glazing the rounded worn rocks

and filling up tidepools 

teaming with little lives

skittering and dispersing away

Serenity like a handhold

and two pairs of wet footprints

on the sundried pier 

overlooking the shallow bay

Serenity like salt spray

prickling my face

and your’s 

and our’s 

pressed in embrace

Serenity like laughter at dusk

catching the last 

of the cloud’s orange and pink dyed shapes

Serenity like knowing

this is where 

we both will stay

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

This morning I awoke like normal. But it was not a normal day.

Today I awoke to an email informing me that two of my poems have been selected to win an award.

Is this what success feels like?

Am I on my way to poet infame?

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

Revisit of old Poetry

[Untitled 10/13/22]

I stepped into my coffin willingly

Someone was here before

Their scratches still line the inside of the lid

There’s no point in an attempted escape 

An old friend of mine led me here 

As Emily would protest against

I stopped for his scythe 

I can never be Ms. Lucy Westernra 

I'll stay in my coffin this time

Besides, everyone saw her

Everyone loved her

Why is love from all an unwilling trait

Is it corruption that we all flirt with? 

A waltz to our demise? 

It is forfeit to admit that I am Gatsby

I don’t even know if that is true

I understand his plight

An internalized galaxy 

spanning into a false fabricated reality

I gave in 

long before he did

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

[Untitled Poetry] 2/15/24

Into the sun

I watch you fly

But it's not an icarus

Landing that I fear

But being left behind

My hands coated in beeswax

My heart dripping in lavender tea 

Up through the sky 

A glimmer twinkling 

shining 

Whirling in your eyes

And a smile 

On the lips of mine

A promise a hope

A compromise 

An experience

Of a lifetime 

And the home 

For my heart

Far away from mine

Festooning wings 

Of dreams and turpentine 

 Never actually taking off

But ready to swoop in

If i’m needed this time 

And you’ll come back to me

Stories in tow

A hand and an embrace to hold

And afterall

I’m happy to see you go

But I’ll be happy when 

Your eyes once again

Lock with mine

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

El Vuelo 2/15/24

Nunca 

Nunca soleamiento 

Sin ti 

Tu 

al otro lado del mundo

Donde mis manos no pueden alcanzarte

Vuelas de yo 

Vuelas a un nuevo tiempo 

y aventura 

Espero que te divertidas

Hago 

En realidad lo hago 

Pero

Te necesito cuando estás sobre el océano

Y un pais lejos

Adios mi amor 

Voy a ver otra vez 

En tiempo 

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

I Took a Canoe to See You (2/6/24)

I took a canoe to see you

A two person canoe

With only me

I rode across the Atlantic sea

A paddle

A fishing rod

And bag of mending tools

Seeking along a kelp highway

And a water roadway

Days I spent adrift for you

Before a storm came

And marooned

My tiny vacant canoe

And the salt spray

Prickled my skin

And I laid cocooned

On a deserted island

far from you

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

The Spires that Hold 2/6/24

The spires

Iron 

Metal

Chain 

Caging

Pulling

Pulling away 

Ankle shackles 

Wrist restraints

A manacle stifling

A heart beat 

I know what it's like 

To be forcibly held away

The metallurgy seeped

Into my blood

Mixing with the 

Already present iron

And lead

Just to survive the poisoning

I let it harden me

And stopped

clanging at the gate

And became the metal

That made up

The bars and chains

But you took the file

You took the chisel

And the metal you tore away

Curled and flaked

But the bars that once held

Bars of land and sea and gravel and iron

Are forming once again around me

if I bare the pain

And I yell and I scream

Perhaps they won’t become me

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

[Untitled Poetry] 2/1/24

2/1/24

An ice age 

And

An asteroid shower

Cracked the ground

Drying it out

Destruction 

Sustainability in the crag

is unachievable

by an extinguished cultivator

so used to the craters

and so used to the hard freeze

Even the grass struggles

to regain it’s life

But the farmer’s hands

are calloused and gray

And their lips 

can never again

cry out for help 

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

The Performance (2/9/22)

Her wrapped feet

Lifting and falling 

Twisting with twinkling stars

Her stage dark dreary, with one single light 

following her

tracing her silhouette.

Not a single hair pin out of place

Not a one.

Every move a performance 

every breath - staged 

Never taking a break

Her life a ballet 

In a language she’ll never speak

Dancing up until the curtains close

Collapsing with their awed applause 

“Marvelous” “Brava” She hears them call

As her puppet strings pull her spent body away

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

Snip The Ends (1/9/22)

The frayed ends of the rope

Intrusive pulling 

Imagining the fray wasn’t there

Grasping yanking longing

Once we’re unraveled there’s no going back. 

I should have snipped the ends.

I will now

The rope is thinner 

I pulled and I tugged

Why did I want so badly to find something

Snip the ends 

I yell and I scream

I miss the pristine rope

I can’t find the scissors

The fray, its magnetized

I pulled too much

Run grab the scissors

It’s gotten out of hand

Finally, at  a little more than a strand

I snip the ends

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

[Untitled Poetry] 1/23/24

—--1/23/24 

“I didn’t know you had gills” 

My words lost in the outcry

Of wasted bubbles

“Just keep swimming forward”

Unwilling to say in the water

They can’t interpret me

“I didn’t know you had wings” 

I squawked out 

Keeping my nose 

from pointing toward the ground

“Just keep flying forward”

Excusing my mumbles

For the rush of winds 

“I didn’t know you had fur”

Teeth Chattering 

through frostbitten lips

“Just keeping pushing forward” 

The rush of the snow storm

Tumbling my chewed up words

“Why can’t you keep up

Its easy”

My guides all turned to me.

No gills

No wings

No winter fur

And still only a single step behind

Mistaking my smile

And my mind

For having everything

I need to survive 

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

[Untitled Poetry] 1/23/24

—-1/23/24

I peer through the tall grass

Only to see more tall grass

In the time I was meant to cut 

back the undergrowth

The roots only took more hold

Their gnarled fingers

Wrapping slowly

feeling like a light touch

Before yanking me back down

My hair spanning out

One and the same

In the dirt

That covers my face

And the prairie around me

Stretches on 

Boundless as an ocean

And suffocating as one

But there’s no grasshopper

No mouse

And my eyes feed the soil

But can’t sustain it’s lustrous green shine

You had the clippers

The lawn mower

You trimmed your hedges

All in a line

But the wildflowers

And blooms

Did nothing but 

trick me

And trip me

And the grasses all in expanse

Are dry and brown

 but bring only

imprisoning immortality

The moon and the sun

Continue their intrepid waltz

And I watch 

Back to the earth

Stomach to the sky

Letting the breeze

Move the grass

the brush

the lavender

But never once propelling me

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

[Untitled Poetry] 11/28/23

Hope shimmers in an IV bag

Thick and glittering down the plastic tube

Entering my blood stream like sludge

begrudgingly replacing the black tar

that made up my blood

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

[Untitled Poetry] 11/13/23

Have I done it again?

Taken my needle and thread

And stitched myself

with painful tight thugs

into your skin? 

Is it supposed to hurt this much

when I just want to love you? 

[persuasivestrawberryafternoons]

[Untitled Poetry 11/11/23]

I fell like a feather to you

slowly

drifting back and forth

falling where the breeze took me

floating peacefully down to you

willingly freeing myself 

from all that I knew before you