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the water and lily

by Angela Stevens

The comfort of still structure numbing;


taking a rest between the barred attachments;
between my yellowed teeth and rootless tongue
mother nature gave me; force-feeding compacted
powder, chemical gems, waterless white cakes,
they offer no sympathy being placed into dry
mouths; the risk of electric shocks in the dark.


it was a form of medicine odourless and unquenching
but I swallowed it down with a gallon of lake water -
the after taste of a thousand reeds coating my throat.
Felt the swelling of lonely suicides in my joints
a skeleton breaking free of its flimsy casing, all
hip bones jutting outwards, the grinding of bone splints.


tiny strains of truth lying weakened and exposed on
silt soaked floors, like a flayed creature staring idly
I’m trying to realise the difference between bed and
this concrete slab; the water is all grey; the reeds
entangled and shifting in gentle movements, the view
of surface has gone away & so the reeds grow their grave
around me


the ceiling is the only company I have here.

06/16/2011

Posted on 06/16/2011
Copyright © 2024 Angela Stevens

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Elizabeth Shaw on 06/20/11 at 03:01 AM

me likes

Posted by Gregory R Schelske on 06/22/11 at 04:28 AM

Stunning. Perfectly eloquent and elagant. I wish I had written this, but I am grateful for having read it (five times so far). Thank you for sharing.

Posted by Adele Cameron on 07/12/11 at 05:42 AM

For me this read's like it should be spoken aloud, drawing in everything compact and pushing it all out again. it's good. real good.

Posted by Philip F De Pinto on 08/16/11 at 01:42 PM

a lovely concoction of flavors for the mind to savor is what you have concocted here, Angela. as well, what is stored twixt the words is contemplation galore for the soul to contemplate o'er and o'er.

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