Samples from Poetry Zine #2

Stabilized Words

© Love Beth Drew with illustrations by John Schultz

Cover Image

Tiny Radishes

Pasty pale
Sunlit Glove
In a garden; a grove
You take its ivy vines--
A strangled Utopia.
In waterways,
Rusted empty gateways
How would it feel?
The last chance at an
Experienced Euphoria.

My Life as a Boy

My heart is holy
My heat is glowing
No looking back
No waiting late
No porch lights on
firefly's decimate
I inhale, sweat liquid surging veins
My heart is holy

Drink in the rarity of me
All that I could be as we
A million rebirths, one lifetime
Spirit reflection in my mind
Dance to solemn sad refrains
Breathe the damp kiss of cold waves
And I take and I destroy
All vestiges of symbolic toys
I descend
As I end so
I begin
I begin my life as a boy

Full I am and bright
Dream for wishes on this night
A cloudless sky
Burnt cold and sallow
Deep set eyes
I chance to follow
I exhale, extinguish fluid flames
Full I am and bright

Hate The Beautiful

The morning glories are still blooming at 3:33 PM.
The breeze makes the curtain dance. Snap and shake and twist and flutter. The breeze is forceful and strong and almost abrasive in its coolness. There could be so many opportunities. If others would just close their eyes. And follow the changing patterns underneath their eyelids. It would lead them away from the rage. The silence is blissful and disarming. The pressure is stable and feeding. Sucking energy through a long straw. Of licorice stuck in a cup of pop.
There is beauty. In its cage. A sadistic rampage. I wouldn't be my friend either if I were you. You'd just get in the way. As in pain. Or Complaint. It would be easy to be someone else if you didn't have to be. There is agony here. It is discounted. As juvenile and pathetic. Everyone has it worse on some scale, of course. But I am not you.
I am not me.
I.
Am.
The water keeps flowing north to south. And East to west. Backwards up pipes and down throats and around bends and curves and cuts and bruises. There is nothing to be drunk on. Smear ink like song. Dance away the night entire long. The moment is ripe. Beyond ripe. Turn to decay. Tea and symphony. The voices hum like hummingbird wings in mid-nectar flight. Dainty flower. Wings and Beak. That snap as easily as a fragile ego. Hooded in smoke and entry. And confusion. And rejection from all sides of the box. Spilling forth doctrines of mumbled cyclical debate.
There is so much beauty here. Separate and apart from it. Reaching out for it. It in the color of eyes unseen. Closed. Wrapped in gauze and words. Whispered. A soft cushion for the head. Blinded by the brightness. Reflected off the walls of the asylum called. Home. Sanctuary.
The world tips its balance. Come spilling its fruited labor on knees. Bent and scabbed and bloody. Resting on trays. Crooked and wobbling. Just freshly washed. Scrubbed clean. And still dripping. And in the distance. The thunder rolls again.
I am not beautiful.
The ugliest person you will ever ever ever meet. Dream is in shades of grey. Faded green with exposure to others' realities and viciousness. Leading to a paranoid concrete evidence. Of substitution.
And.
I.
Am.
The morning glories are wilting at 4:04 PM.

All That I Own

She’s My Sky
My Sky
I don’t know why
But you can’t have
Any piece of her

She’s gone
Looking
At waving arms
Brushing
Against the Sky
My Sky

You can’t have
Any more
Parts of her
She says
You treat her wrongly
It shows
She can’t cry anymore
Oh My Sky
My Sky

She’s lost
Reaching
With long thin fingers
Up and over
Overwhelmed
And at peace
My piece of
My Sky
She’s My Sky.

They All Want Super-models

All that happened was destined to happen.
I should have been ripped apart.
Left for the vultures.
Left for the wolves.
My teeth pulled out
My hair shaved off
And burnt on a pyre.
The pieces in me deemed unworthy
Sacrificed to the Gods
With the Plea,
“Keep the Ugly from our midst.
We beseech thee
We beseech thee
We beseech thee.”

Modernly,
Even when they lie and say there’s no such thing as beauty
Ugly is not accepted any other way
Except through disguise.
They lie then roll around in it.
(Rub my face in it
Like a dog.)
Sweetly savoring the best bits for last.
The juicy indecency is the fact that they have what
They are supposed to have
What they have been trained to beg for
Like a dog.
Loneliness I would trade for a moment of vague affection
Unconditional love within set standards.

I have learned my place
I tried. I tried someplace else.
The winds blow me
Back
To the normal state I’m in
To where I started
Tired and afraid
Sacrificial
Self-incriminated
Self-perpetuated
Absenteeism
Momentary lapse
Loopholes collapsed
Vision blurred
Heart explodes
Inside the body
Fluids collect
Coagulate
Conceal the debate
Become irate
Sedate
Hermit.
Instead of Condemnation
I get the Evil Eye.

There is no truth, only Truth.
There is no altar to Great Ugly.
I have to walk the procession alone
Alone
Lone
One.

I used to be imagined
As an angel
My approach
Free
From appearing dust
Only some scale model
Has by her picture
Blurred the masterpiece for them.

The future is a darker place than
The unknown past could ever conceal.
Tunnel of love vision.
A ruined pathos of dreams that never should have been.

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