Intrepid Magpie [poetry]

C. M. Sweatt

[intrepidmagpie]

Loose threads

You were clear as you could be

I wouldn’t care

But for my empathy

This tangling web of unreliable suitors with trails of webbing dripping down

They sweep in sweet like flowers and matching astrology signs

And then rip their own mask off at once

I never liked when they were around

And you never cared if I cared

You only did as you did

And wanted as you wanted

Could I blame you for the trauma you suffered ? I think not

Could I blame you for choosing wrong-

I bite my tongue so much it might be bitten off

Not expecting perfection

Only from myself, I’m a flightless bird

I drag out expectations elastic

And then snap unexpected

And fall spinning to the ground as loose threads

-C.M.Sweatt

[intrepidmagpie]

Crossed Over

You asked me did I see you

Crying into the void, and you wept did I come to you

As you wept

Or Because of it

But I was only passing through

And I don’t pray the way you do

I never weep for judgmental gods

As you weep

I came to this room, my thoughts as shards of glass

Falling into my laundry basket like a faucet

I didn’t want to confront

But you made me look in wonder

Now I standstill

Confusion on my countenance

Were I a liar I might comfort you then

But it would be like light through holes

So paper-thin

I step forward to the next room, sigh into my hands

And carry on as if I

Never witnessed

You crying

Pitiful

-C.M.Sweatt

[intrepidmagpie]

Vent poetry

To Whom it May Concern

Dear, creepy older gentlemen

Imply that my job is not important again

I’ll make it my new favorite hobby

To tear your balls from your body

Pull you back by your gross thinning hair

Open your misogynistic mouth

And shove them

DOWN YOUR THROAT

_____________________

:)

No

You smile

Don’t tell me to smile

Unless

you want to walk a mile

With my shoe

Up

Your

Rectum

-C.M.Sweatt

[intrepidmagpie]

Anyone who knows what love is

You can blame me

Try to shame me

And still I'll care for you

You can run around

Even put me down

Still I'll be there for you

The world may think I'm foolish

They can't see you like I can

Oh, but anyone who knows what love is will understand

I just feel so sorry

For the ones who pity me

Cause they just don't know

Oh, they don't know what happiness and love can be

I know, I know to ever let you go

Oh, is more that I could ever stand

Oh, but anyone who knows what love is will understand

Oh, they'll understand

If they try love, they'll understand

Oh, try and understand

-Song lyrics, Irma Thomas

[intrepidmagpie]

Winter-lull

Because of the silent snow, we are all hushed

Into awe.

No sounds of guns nor overhead no rushed

Vibration to draw

Our attention out of the void wherein we are crushed.

A crow floats past on level wings

Noiselessly.

Uninterrupted silence swings

Invisibility, inaudibly

To and fro in our misgivings.

We do not look at each other, we hide

Our daunted eyes.

White earth, and ruins, ourselves, and nothing beside.....

It all belies

Our existence; we wait, and are still denied.

We are folded together, men and the snowy ground

Into nullity.

There is silence, only the silence, never a sound

Nor verity

To assist us; disastrously silence bound!

-D.H.Lawrence

[intrepidmagpie]

I love this story. Here's a long excerpt

Putting the car into reverse and backing out,

I began to seriously wonder why I was still alone.

I thought about the boyfriends I'd had. There'd been

One or two who were at least maybes. In the end

They'd just opted to spend their lives with somone

Other than me.

I replayed thier blow-off lines in my head, deciding it

Must've been the cosmo's way of balancing out my

Usually optimistic attitude.

"You're great and wonderful. I just don't think we're right for each other."

What did that mean? I was too great

And too wonderful for him to deal with on a daily basis? No it meant:

I like you, I just don't love you.

Then there was the "you're just too perky." I'm sorry, but someone who'd

Pissed the last ten years of his or her life away could not be considered perky.

Perky people are doers, which I most certainly was not.

What he'd meant to say was I'm not cynical. Just because I didn't

rip other people to shreds behind their backs didn't make me chipper.

I just wasn't the antichrist.

There was the ever- painful, "I don't think or chance for longevity looks very promising." All that time and I never knew I was dating a fucking psychic.

What else could one expect from a freakin' Gemini?

There had, of course, been a plethora at the other end of the spectrum: the deceivers.

God I hated that moment, the one where I'd wake up three months into a relationship and the man lying next to me would look at me. I'd look at him and smile, still anxiety-ridden over morning breath. He'd open his mouth and speak.

I'd look at him funny.

He seemed the man I'd spent all, this time with, but then suddenly sounded and acted differently.

Several days of this would go by, and I'd be thinking.

Evil twin? Alien abduction? Then it would finally dawn on me: it was the real him. The one he'd been concealing.

The sweet, loving, melt-my-heart man I'd thought I'd landed was really,

A conceited, narssasistic, phycopath I wouldn't want to be caught alone with in a dark alley.

The most depressing part of it all was that I couldn't help feel as though I would've been happier if an alien had split open the guy's chest and scurried off down the hall.

At least then he could've remained the perfect man I'd envisioned him to be. Not the man who'd lied, concealed, and tricked my heart, but the victim of a horrible, wretched, brain-numbing, mind-boggling accident.

Then I'd be able to play the widow and wear a bitchin' black veil.

Laugh if you will, but don't think for a minute I wouldn't find a way to wear the veil.

I'd be able to cry, sob, and have people say

They were so in love.

-from As You Are, by Ethan Day

[intrepidmagpie]

The Queen of Winter

Sweetly chiming little bell

Hung from the branch of a narrow tree

Storm that gathers no longer swell

And chime return to me

Burried in her drift of snow

With snowflakes in her hair

The Queen of winter

Who's fallen now lays there

Wake her gently god of sun

Wake her with the heat

Rays fall down and warm her skin

And then return to me

Melting ice, melting snow

Swirling with the mist

Melt away the barren cold

With a soft summer's kiss

- C.M.Sweatt

[intrepidmagpie]

Future love Paradise

"But if only you could see them

You would know from their faces

There were kings and queens

Followed by princes and princesses

There were future power people,

From the loved to the loveless

Shining a light 'cause they wanted it seen

Well there were cries of why,

Followed by cries of why not

Can I

Reach out for you if that feels good to me,

And the riders will not stop us

'Cause the only love they'll find is paradise

No the riders will not stop us

'Cause the only love they'll find is paradise

Don't you know that, racism has a minimum future kids

Can only lead to no good,

Besides, your sons and daughters,

already know how that feels

One day

All the queens will gather round,

Spreading love and unity so it can be found

Well then all the riders say it's all to do with drugs

Well inject me

With your love-

Inject me with your love, alright

And the riders will not stop us

'Cause the only drug they'll find is paradise"

- Futrure Love Paradise , lyrics by Seal

[intrepidmagpie]

Crooked Tree

On the abrasive corner of time,

A crooked tree stands

Above the rise of the relentless tide

Striking in its heartbreak

It laughs inside, it cries inside

The bark

All covered in the greenest vines

Like rope wrapped

Around the arms of a child

Deep roots teathered in rocks

Sun bleached and calloused,

Weathered and full

Alone with wet salts

Together, with every bird

of the morning

There withstanding

Balanced on the cliffside

A crooked tree

That is you

A crooked tree

That is I

-C.M.Sweatt

[intrepidmagpie]

A Day

I'll tell you how the sun rose,--

A ribbon at a time.

The steeples swam in amethyst,

The news like squirrels ran.

The hills united in their bonnets,

The bobolinks begun.

Then I said softly to myself,

"That must have been the sun!"

But how he set, I know not.

There seemed a purple stile

With little yellow boys and girls

Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,

A dominie in gray

Put gently up the evening bars,--

And led the flock away.

-Emily Dickinson

[intrepidmagpie]

Bonfires

I was given wine

We're feeling okay

And quite all right

You wash my tears away

And make me wanna stay

And bonfires lit up the shores

Walk far far away

To go beside you

Is where I want to be

Walk far far away

To laugh, to love

Days of roses and wine

Drifting astray

With your hand in mine

You stroke my fears away

And make me wanna stay

And bonfires lit up the shores

Walk far far away

To go beside you

Is where I want to be

Walk far far away

To laugh, to love

Walk far far away

Where to go and hide?

We're going to the sea

Walk far far away

To laugh, to love

And this is how it went;

I am here to stay

Roaring with the wind

There's life within'

This is what I give

A circle is complete

Another circle spins

There's life within'

Within'

-Blue Foundation, Bonfires lyrics

[intrepidmagpie]

When the Men Go off to War

What happens when they leave

is that the houses fold up like paper dolls,

the children roll up their socks and sweaters

and tuck the dogs into little black suitcases.

Across the street the trees are unrooting,

the mailboxes rising up like dandelion stems,

and eventually we too float off,

the houses tucked neatly inside our purses, and the children

tumbling gleefully after us,

and beneath us the base has disappeared, the rows

of pink houses all the way to the ocean- gone,

And the whole city has slipped off the white earth

like a table being set for lunch.

We set up for a few weeks at a time

in places like Estonia or Laos--

places where they still have legends,

Where a town of women appearing in the middle of the night

is surprising but not unheard of. The locals come to watch

our strange carnival unpacking in some wheat field

outside Paldiski- we invite them in for coffee,

forgetting for a minute

that some of our own men won't come home again;

and sometimes, a wife of two won't either.

She'll meet someone else, say, and

it's one of those things we don't talk about,

how people fall in and out of love,

and also, what the chaplains are for.

And then, a few days before the planes fly in

we return. We roll out the sidewalks and make the beds,

tether the trees to the yard.

On the airfield, everything is as it should be--

our matte red lipstick, the babies blanketed inside strollers.

Only our husbands look at us a little sadly,

the way people do when they know

they have changed but don't want to say it.

Instead they say, What have you been doing all this time?

And we say, Oh you know, the dishes,

and they laugh and say,

Thank God some things stay the same.

-Victoria Kelly, Southwest Review

[intrepidmagpie]

Song

Let me sing, dear heart,

In these dark hours.

Let me suck the chilled wind

Through the spaces

Between my teeth.

Let me follow you

Past the trashcans

Stuffed with oily rags

As you strain under

the awkward weight

Of the metal ladder

and traipses the peremiter

Of the house, lean it

Against the roof

Where it will sing

In the weak, brief sun,

Rung by tin rung,

And I'll hold it steady

While you climb,

My beloved, to the gutters

Of dead leaves, sodden

By rain, swarming

With worms and bird droppings,

And scoop them

In your gloved hands

Like a wild-haired surgeon

Excisising gobblets of decay,

Pulling the dark muck up,

Proffering it, glistening

To the light, before christening it

A clogful, burning, hurtful stuff,

And flinging the muddied clump

With a delirious thud

Onto the bright new grass.

-Dorianne Laux, River Styx

[intrepidmagpie]

The Electric Queen

Grovel low on blended knees

Before the Electric Queen

Spread her words and secretes

Without disgrace, across the face

So reign the Electric Queen

Conspiracy and arguments

Follow rumors and false debate

Her full extent without regret

Neglects your lackluster frame

So reign the Electric Queen

With loud laughs

And be rights backs

With winking and smiling face

So sweeps the void

Never ending questions and ideas

Wondering where you are

Who you're with

And if you'll always be

So reigns the Electric Queen

-C.M.Sweatt

[intrepidmagpie]

Yourself

Mischief is yours.

Sorrow is also yours.

But virtue also is yours,

And purity.

You are the source

Of all purity and all impurity.

No one purifies another.

Never neglect your work

For another's,

However great his need.

Your work is to discover your work

And then with all your heart

To give yourself to it.

-Shambahla Pocket Classics: Dhammapada, The Sayings of the Buddha

[intrepidmagpie]

In the Hall of Grief

I plaited my long dark hair with trillium and elderberry, too.

And that was much less successful.

As I recall the trillium died before the morning was over,

And the berries left my braids sticky with juice.

But at the moment of leave-taking, when I went upstairs to give Great-grandmother

The respect I owed her, I felt the proper griever.

And she turned in her bed, the one with the carvings of wreaths on the posters,

The one in which all of the women in the house have died.

Then she looked at me with luminous, half-dead eyes.

"You will make them remember me?" She asked.

"Great-grandmother, I will," I replied.

"May you lines of grieving be long," she said.

"May your time of dying be short," I awnsered.

And the ritual was complete.

I left, for I was far more interested in the Hall of Grief

and in my part in it than her actual moment of death,

when the breath leaps from the mouth in a great upward sigh.

That is a private moment, after all, though grieving is all done in public.

Still, I know that all our mourning, all our grieving, all the outward signs of our

Rituals are nothing compared to that one quick moment of release.

-from Tales of Wonder by Jane Yolen

(My Great Grandma's funeral was today. RIP)

[intrepidmagpie]

Landslide

I took my love, I took it down

Climbed a mountain and I turned around

and I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills

'Till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky

What is love

Can the child within my heart rise above

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides

Can I handle the seasons of my life~~~

Mmmm mmm mmm

Well, I've been afraid of changing

'Cause I've built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I'm getting older too

Well, I've been afraid of changing

'Cause I've built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I'm getting older too

Oh I'm getting older too

-lyrics, Stevie Nicks