Postcards from Inside...Poetry

Postcards from inside

...like fingers with eyes...

Through more openings,
echos of the familiar, marking, rounding,
falling short
still failing to define
the follower of an uncertain path.
Sustained by pain and freedom to express
the passage
runs like blood unending...a sign of living not death
seeps through the words, thick and warm and
red.
words
like fingers with eyes in them know where they're
going....reach
deep and find pieces that have been missing for years
.....almost threw them away...thought they were obsolete
Who needs them anymore?
What were they for?

....dying in dark corners with other unused parts
of the past
forgotten....almost but how quickly remembered
as if yesterday

A rush of wind takes my breath like high altitude does
and wants to make me
think again,
I will do that, but not feel so...
hard to see why...
the ending makes her cry.....
.....

...no place to go,

A while ago she wandered close, and I called out ..."beware...

....it's no place to go, if you want to come home"

And now she's a wanderer....
in a forest of words and thought
small dapples of light and
colored leaves always changing
would confuse,
if she hadn't been there before
.....

...sorry...for nothing.

At first she thought it would never work..
there was too much unseen, hidden,
perhaps...dangerous
Just another step forward being careful
...yet, no need...
really, she knows her life...herself..
can't be painful...no investment.

Then the words...like spider silk
...attach where they touch.
No matter, only words like anyothers,
until they hurt inside and under skin of thought and memory...
invaded captured bound alone surprised confused
and...sorry...for nothing.
.....

...be easier to breathe...

what are they the shapes I see...
seems like some music directs them...
they flow like smoke through one another
...nothing to hear...
...passing in silence...
would be easier to breathe if I went with them
...wordshapes, weaving, shifting, changing...
.....

...today is yesterday...

Don't I know you?
Not you...but you've been here before,
the welcoming does not change the invasion...
but the welcomer and the invader.

One and another

one another

...one...
and no other...

It's the same thing, but Antoine said it better
and new is really old
...remembered.
.....

They Ride...

...they ride
they ride the back of evil...the devils ride....
come like so much black around me
the scent of despair and sadness,
confusion
drawing them
it is their food
so many
come to sit and peck and whisper
in my ear......you are a fool
this is the truth they say
listen to us we know
pecking at my eyes
can't you see, we speak the truth?
they say
all the while blinding me
they cling, they find the openings
cut and tear
shredding me
the salt of tears and blood
mixing
they drink
it is what makes them strong it is what makes them stay
what door did i leave open to them?

.....

some...words

what is it about some...

words that can form a curtain
woven so tightly that
it is hard to imagine
what is hidden and why
there is never any
revelation?

words that hold you paralyzed
with no strength it seems
and won't let you
walk away
without finishing all
of the words?

words that make you look at them
for a long time before you swallow
because you know they'll
hurt going down
and they might
just make you sick?

words that slide in your eyes
when you read them
find where you are
make you sorry
you live there
and not where you want to be?

words, the kind of words that
run around
your brain with sharp knives
cutting...then fall out your fingers
carrying little pieces of you
with them?

.....

hung all with rags...

Clever...
yeah the fingers with the words you
build some things...all tight are..
some hold water...
carry even minds they have.

Know by words...think you, build
an image thus? a shape...some form...?

What shows the heart the eyes the hands
the voice -
a tear...?

Shells on the shore rolled over and over are empty...

No me like that...you see no eyes or feel fingers brushing...
breath
or sound...
only strings of words...as these...

and are no tears and cheeks down to run for you to
know by,
so...am hung all with rags of imagination that
tell no truth...

.....

Let all that is Indian within you die! The U.S. Reservation School System, 1870-1928

One America - A Presidential Sham

Genocide and The Land of the Forgotten...

One America and Cultural Diversity

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Sonja Keohane
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