Just as I have selected a blank page
I discover a big black ink blot
We’re only separated by a table and two coffee mugs
And we’re oceans apart
The photos record each look, every hidden glance
Between my audio and your visual, there is a reality we will both manage to miss
You’re sitting back, delicately observing
As if I’m perfectly pirouetting on Pointe
I’m actually an elephant in high heels
Attempting to sit on a tiny red footstool
My tutu is sagging and you keep complimenting my sense of style
I could just say, “you’re everything”
But I must protect my heart
You’re taking these moments too lightly or maybe a little too deep
We’re speaking so smoothly
Flawlessly articulating a performance that can never actually sustain
My heart is a pile of glass shards
Yours might be, too
All we need is to find the one with the matching jagged edges
To make ourselves whole once more
I opened one more wound
Just to prove I’m willing to love again
The tornados are churning and all you suggest is we close the blinds
We’re reaching for each other and you’re threatening to just walk away
The last thing I want to do waste your time
The anticipation built as I combed my hair
Chatted nervously about you with my best friend
Carefully selected the outfit that would never reveal that I carefully selected it
And I waited
You never came
Behind your smiling and my razor-sharp wit
There are magnets locking, and you keep forcing them apart
I deleted your words just in time for you to invade my dreams once more
I want nothing more than for you to earn your second chance
Of course, I never stick with a metaphor long enough to warrant a response

The Metaphor That Wished He Was a Smile
By Crystal-Lane Swift

MORE POETRY

I Pray and I Take
By Stacey Levinson

as my eyes see fit, as my lips would touch
in shadows,
in symphony,
in sighing sweetness of roses dark with bloom
I take my right of you
as my fingers can find of you,
as my lungs can breathe
in essence of you
from the traces of shapes of you
from the cradle of your cheek,
the curve of God’s horizon of you.
In my daily fix of you,
my nightly remembrance of you
from that time before your breath and mine
when my skin first drew life
that I might know of you
again
and again
in these suns,
these sounds,
these oldest of souls,
I take my piece of you in my life and this love.

BERLIN
By Milena von Oda

Ocean Berlin. 12 years.
Earth, water,
home
I am looking for my home
Earth, water, wind
I was dead
I was sleeping in their cemetery.
Berlin.
In the crack of its gloomy lights
Berlin, I was dead!!
Cry.
Believe me by breathing hard
that was me
restless, looking for me,
my home,
on the cemetery?
I walked sleeping
lines of life
wrong all -.
I robbed me a life
the dead people
there
crying in my hands
forever,
milions years of cry.
Ocean Berlin.
On the moon are also dead people?
Restless for the rest of life
no, no more
strangeness
in you, baby!
Bombardements
of the city,
concentration
camping among the dead people
camp of the concentration.
I was dead,
think of me!
The human heart
lived for years, called „dead“
ready for the leap
to the clouds,
called infinite place
home!
Of happiness,
forward
over the ocean.
Warum war es so schlimm, so viele Jahre?
12.
Tears of the „Irrtum“. Mischief of life?
And many many bottles of drunkness.
The stranger in you died,
when you left the tears in the ocean.
Berlin.

Exonerated
By David W. Keffer

I pissed away my youth
Like it was a Natty Light
And nothing more
Took for granted all the freedom
And all the people
And all the opportunity
Drank the love
Drank the open road
Drank the money
And then pissed it away
Because I wasn’t smart enough
To indulge in it
Be fat on it
And save some in the reserves of my heart
nstead all the parties
All the walks in the park
All the games
Just passed through my system
Churned in my stomach
Corroded by my bile
Processed into some analytical protein
And then discharged
As if none of it were important
Had I indulged
Had I elated
Had I savored
The moments
Cured them in a vat of salt
Maybe I could have preserved them
Instead of excreting them
And flushing them to hell.

“The Math”
By Allina Hakim

“He desired to taste the air she breathed.
For her lips looked rather sweet and delicious.
Boundless thoughts evaporated into his mind.

He needed her.
He wanted her.
He wanted more.

“Is black a color?” he thought
For black ink was all he knew.
All CAPS while she was cursive, curvy and elegant.
Proper demeanor from a low class resident.
The improbable according to the mister,
Until he saw it.

She was imperfect with set imperfections,
Yet she was perfect for him.
The positive to the negative imbalance he lived,
Was stuck in.
She loathed him.
He loved her.

Opposites attract,
But the difference in their contracts was city limits and organic matricies.
The policy of fine print.
Plastic to poetry.

The Jones the Mr. Jones had never encountered love.
Never felt it,
Never tasted it.
Love is an embellishment of the heart.
An accessory for the accessorized life.
Additives.

Prescription for love is dysfunctional mind.
An equation he was not fond of.
Not a follower,
Of.

“Love is for fools” so he thought.
Relationships come in shipments of two and parties of five.
Multiples of reactive physics labelled as “feelings.”

But Mr.Jones never felt for he was numb.
Disconnected by the doctrine of tap plastics.
So how did it come to this?
This exact moment?
The right here and the right now?

Variables of disproportionate angles, axis and quantum mechanics?
Can this be true?
Could this be true?

GOT POETRY?
Feature your poems during
the DTLA Art Walk with
The Gallery Row Art Walk News: curateme@thegrawn.com