Escaping the Window

 

What offense your eyes hold when you look through me

to a window that mirrors only your reflection.

 

Anger shapeshifts through the sea of blue dreams that sail

my eyes where tomorrow is not our horizon.

 

Does love expire like moldy bread ignored on a shelf

or fade when sunlight turns bitter on your lips?

 

The coldness of detachment marches cigarette burns

through my mind as I fight demons dancing on scars.

 

I hate goodbyes, the breathless lingering hope feeds

that one more hour can rewind a broken clock.

 

I am enough…more than enough…Your blindness

is not my curse, not a sentence to serve because fear is my familiar.

©Susie Clevenger2021

The Sunday Muse #152

Prejudiced Tunnel of Dead Ears

Swallow your wings…

forget the madness of freedom…

the sky will never remember your name.

In the prejudiced tunnel of dead ears

cries for justice are smothered

in the throat press of violence.

We shall overcome sings in tattered notes

as history repeats, and anger lights another match.

How will this end? How will this end when

white is the darkness that measures a soul’s

value by the color of skin.

©Susie Clevenger 2020

Inspired by a Word Crafters Writing Group

Fool's Fruit

Proserpine ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti 

A fool bears the fruit of a heart

sacrificed to the arms of stone.

Promised love I endure his eyes gorging

on the pale skin of another woman’s blush.

Pruned to be a silent rose, I am a wraith

cast out to roam a smothered wail

where nothing grows but sorrow and anger’s thistle.

But my lips reject the dirge humming in my throat.

Must my spirit die in the hope of resurrection?

It was not my mirror that failed his eyes, but his

that hungered for youth he could no longer conquer.

For now, I dress in midnight’s sapphire, a shadow

formed from the dark side of the moon.

When night frees me to roam sunlight’s match,

I will dance on flames that burn him from my dreams.

 ©Susie Clevenger 2020

Inspired by Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting and his sister, 

Christina Georgina Rossetti's poem, After Death

The video is the new release from my friend Samantha Fish.

Poets and Storytellers United - Weekly Scribblings #20

Straddling the Divide

Anger/Fear…

I sit astride

an emotional fence

trying to stay me

in a war of words

no one can win.

In red white and blue America

bruising is the new normal.

©Susie Clevenger 2019

Real Toads ~ Just One Word: Halved