betsyjane

Journal Poetry Day:
One I wrote a long time ago and my favorite poem by someone else:

The one by a younger me:


Somewhere smoking is permitted

Through the glassless window the sunlight shone on baby
trees who didn't care the building was condemned.
It also shone on two young kids who felt its warmth was
just for them.
With nature's heat on his fair skin he still retained his
anorexic chill.
But she didn't mind his cold hand unbuttoning her shirt
It was just so nice to feel the breeze on her thighs
which he said looked fat
(though it may have been true that day he still shouldn't have said it. And though it may have felt right that day - she still shouldn't have done it)
It was nice to be a secondary mark of life in a dead building
In a hospital that housed the lives and deaths of those whose
birth certificates listed their "colour" as White or Black or Yellow.
Downstairs files like these were moist - scattered everywhere.
Before venturing up to the rooms containing beds she had read a fat yellow coroner's report lying on a stretcher
It was of a woman whose body was said to have been relatively free of scars.
Her 15-year-old body already was severely scarred.
Self-inflicted markers of a time when there was no breeze
When she just wanted to feel
Something
She can't recall the sense of his touch that day,
but it was nice to see that sunlight still shone on even the most forgotten of places.
And to know that a certain kind of love could still shine on even the most forgotten of people.
Mostly, it was just nice to be somewhere that still had
a sign declaring: "Smoking Is Permitted".



The One by someone else (Richard Vela) - I found a canadian poetry anthology on the street and this was in it - I have never been able to find anything else by him!:


Something like the waves

You can't believe how hard
they rub the shore
until that smooth
blue jewel I want
to hang around your neck
turns out to be a broken
bottle that maybe
just two weeks ago
could have slit your throat.