A poet’s curse
Is writing about love,
Sensing the darkness it expresses,
The beauty it reveals; understanding
It’s a complicated feeling,
Misunderstood, difficult, full of
Words, thoughts, and misconceptions.
Most never see, nor value
Its true nature, yet we recognize
Its inner beauty within the
Gloom, always craving it
Never seeing it.
When I was a little girl,
I dreamed of being a poet.
As an adult woman
I learned that to write
the most beautiful
of love poems I
had to let my heart
break into a thousand pieces.
Perhaps it is true, that the poet
carries a spell to pen,
the beauty of love, but
never is able to attain it.
What does word have
that gesture doesn’t? We each sit
in an experience, stand in a way of living.
We express our life,
prioritize what we feel we must –
Gathering the world together
onto a white board, listing the order
of our day, our reflections,
What can be done with lips
can be done with hands, no barrier
holds language back, it is a flood.
We are bubbling with expression.
Early morning
Taste of poetry is
Like a nectar for me
Good morning
My poems are
Of me
The prose
Though spare
Reveals layers
That characterize me
As a living being
To myself
To others
I am my words
They burst forth
From my
Untold self
Surprising me
And perhaps others
With their authenticity
And emotions
I can reveal
So much
With just
A few words
That identify
Where and
Who I am
In the world
Words affect me
Expressions
When scripted
Become who I am
On any given day
I am my words
Even if they
Remain just
Passing thoughts
Hovering in
My brain
Until I write them
My poems
May expose
Where others stand
In my life
They never deceive me
They are my words
They are
Who I am
The moment
I expose them
Cross a “t”
or dot an “i”
and keep your toes
on the dotted margin party line.
Succinct.
No unwinding scrolls,
nor loose semicolons.
Keep it tight. A locked door.
Abbreviated daylight
pours in. Continue,
young comma.
—–
Alyssa Trivett is a wandering soul from the Midwest. When not working two jobs, she listens to music and scrawls lines on the back of gas station receipts. Her work has recently appeared at VerseWrights, In Between Hangovers, Your One Phone Call, and Spillwords. She has fifteen poems in a poetry anthology entitled Ambrosia, released by OWS Ink, LLC. All proceeds from the anthology are being donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (afsp.org). Digital link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/742799. Amazon Kindle link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074WCLD69/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk.
When the demons come out to play,
I’m a comma, free-floating,
collecting pennies per minute
of sleep I’m wishing-well missing
as red numbers slam dance
on the alarm clock
and try to bribe me in Zs
and window breeze to
close the shutter eyelids.
Instead, I stand one-footed on
the library ladder
mixing up words on post-it notes
at odd hours,
like the watering time-frame of suburban lawns,
only worse.
—–
Alyssa Trivett is a wandering soul from the Midwest. When not working two jobs, she listens to music and scrawls lines on the back of gas station receipts. Her work has recently appeared at VerseWrights, In Between Hangovers, Your One Phone Call, and Spillwords. She has fifteen poems in a poetry anthology entitled Ambrosia, released by OWS Ink, LLC. All proceeds from the anthology are being donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (afsp.org). Digital link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/742799. Amazon Kindle link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074WCLD69/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk.
For love
of poetry
I sat on ledges
a stone gargoyle
of hesitant
romance
I hid my face
gave myself
a new name
kissed
a storm on its
booming forehead
made peace
with more than
a few excuses.
