life: acoustic & amplified

my way

I stopped going to therapy
because I knew my therapist was right
and I wanted to keep being wrong.
I wanted to keep my bad habits
like charms on a bracelet.
I did not want to be brave.
I think I like my brain best
in a bar fight with my heart.
I think I like myself a little broken.
I’m ok if that makes me less loved.
I like poetry better than therapy anyway.
The poems never judge me
for healing wrong.

❤
Clementine von Radics

When I get old
I wonder if I will hide my stuff in weird places.
Will someone cleaning out my living space
find things like
my baptismal certificate from 1932
in a plastic Oil of Olay box
mixed with various items
like eyebrow pencils,
miscellaneous change,
and various sizes of
finger nail clippers?
Will I place a baby hair brush
in a bag wrapped in paper towels
with coffee filters
and refrigerator magnets of all sorts?
Will I hide my telephone and address book under my mattress,
and my bills under the bathroom sink?
Will I buy more shampoo than I have years left to use it all,
and put cans of soup in my entertainment center?
What will I do when i get old?
I’m sure it will be eccentric and unusual.
I’m sure it will seem totally understandable to me
when I put my socks and underwear in the bathtub
and keep my kitchen cabinets completely empty.

❤
Amy Lloyd

Don’t you wish they would stop,

all the thoughts swirling around in your head,

bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage.

I should rake the leaves in the carport, buy Christmas lights.

Was there really life on Mars? What will I cook for dinner?

I walk up the driveway, put out the garbage bins.

I should stop using plastic bags, visit my friend

whose husband just left her for the Swedish nanny.

I wish I hadn’t said Patrick’s painting looked “ominous.”

Maybe that’s why he hasn’t called.

Does the car need oil, again? There’s a hole in the ozone

the size of Texas, and everything seems to be speeding up.

Come, let’s stand by the window and look out

at the light on the field. Let’s watch how

the clouds cover the sun, and almost nothing

stirs in the grass.

 ❤

Thinking by Danusha Laméris

To be nobody but yourself in a world doing its best to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight.                      ~ E.E. Cummings

after the four Miles had come and gone

and the three tenors had paused abruptly 

my two legs stopped to design some landscapes 

plant a few hedged borders

build a moat 

or maybe several 

the forsythia’s flame had burned to the ground in minutes

I had no cake

so I sat eating a protein bar by the ocean

(Literally…

tho the sensual strength of it makes me smile)

sand, definitely, all up in my business

I lay, watching blue and white swirls

birds up high – teaching me to trust 

the sun making a last stand atop the tree-line

water…well, what more do I need to say..

breathing deep

achieving serenity

smelling favorites 

the erotic mixture of charcoal and meat

mixed with freshly mowed grass 

I float in tune with the laughter of children 

fading in and out as they just run until breathless

<there was nothing sexy 

about the couple loudly talking staff meetings 

beside the waters edge>

but the feather left on the path in front of me 

on my way home

spoke of wisdom meant just for me

I carried it home in my pocket

I used to miss you on a Friday night

now I make an important discovery 

as I slowly make my way home

between sitting on freshly cut stumps

and old stone bridges

writing poems on the path

Now Im much too busy to miss you

 being at peace

with my own lyrics

being in love

with my own shades of life

❤

Amy Lloyd