Dandelion Saviors for the Starry Eyed

 

They sit on Chicago

stairsteps like pretty

trinket jars waiting

to be stolen or broken

into a thousand sorrows.

 

Little girls of Edison Park,

glitter roses, who have

only read the book of innocence

where wolves are tame,

and costumes don’t have

pockets filled with dark riddles,

imagine castles and gardens,

not abandoned brownstones

painted with the shadows of weeds.

 

Life is a grizzly bitch who teases

with ribbons and shatterproof dreams,

but carries a loaded tongue to turn

bright eyes into empty light sockets

when stars don’t fall in answered wishes.

 

Yet where the blackened chewing gum

mars the concrete sparkle there are angels

who carry candles for the moonless youth

who’ve been torn from fairytales.

 

Mentors of the psyche who have lived

their own errors open their books

of misspent and share with the anxious,

life is a tattered shirt that will take patience to mend.

 

 ©Susie Clevenger 2022

Shay's Word Garden List ~ Ric Masten

 

Lessons from a Mockingbird

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Harper Lee

 

I’ve stripped to my bones

to try and feel the weight

of another’s skin, crawled

out of my own thinking

to explore foreign thoughts

alien to the landscape I’ve

made my home.

 

In the brine of history

my spirit burns with the scars

of those shackled to prejudice.

The walk of chains allows only

as much freedom as the length

inhuman allows it to roam.

 

In the everything repeated nothing learned

anger blooms from the same well-tended root

of hate’s tree never pruned.

 

I walk the cliff edge of hymns where

the slave song is now a chant,

“No Justice No peace.”

 

In a savage shaking I awaken in my privilege,

look down at my skin, and know nothing

will change if I remain content to live

in my city of silence.

 

©Susie Clevenger 2020

The Wednesday Prompt ~ Word Crafters