Poetry Blog by Alexandra Rockwell Lorenz
Sunflower
She grew in my hands
until I could no longer
hold her weight
and her flower
eclipsed my face
I cried as I buried her
and the earth swallowed
my tears with thirsty gulps
she drank from me until
I was dry and I was dry for weeks
Proudly, she stood under my window
sill, with bright petals and a strong stem
she waited for me to come again
But I did not want to ...
Tuesday 18th December 2018 11:45 pm
Ocean and the key
He locked her in a tower
kept the key in a box
with the weight of the ocean on top
She swam in her tears
forgetting she was the sea
and the box was at her mercy
Friday 16th November 2018 1:05 am
Death of a Flower
Bid to unfold
The bud turned to blade
The flower was cut
No petals were saved
She grew into herself
The girl with no name
Though cold to the touch
She is quick to awake
Child at heart
She stops just to start
And longs for the chance
To love and to dance
Flowers are fingers
To live is to linger
And death is a friend
Who's come once again
Tuesday 13th November 2018 12:40 am
Graveyard Trees
The trees lay down
In monstrous grooves
in the forest ground
They are nestled there by flowers
As if each branch were a headstone
Handsome
He walks there in the evenings
Counting steps and trees
He walks until his fingers freeze
And the air fills his body
As the stars the sky
The land is old and worn
From feet like his
flattened by boots and steel
An...
Thursday 8th November 2018 5:29 pm
This Too
It's just for now
it's not forever
The pain will pass
And joy will enter
Your heart will grow
And then you’ll know
How wonderful
life can be
Thursday 18th October 2018 5:53 pm
Air Quotes, also known as sarcasm, Spoken from the Other Point of View
They command us to be silent
Until they take our silence as consent
“You may speak!” they shout
With their hands over our mouths
“Just stop being so divisive
Your words are too harsh
Too inconvenient
Too plain to be true
Not quite what we wanted to hear”
“And your pain is manufactured
And inappropriate
And uncorroborated”
“And your bodies are not you...
Thursday 11th October 2018 11:57 pm
I am who I am
I became what I thought I was
I wasn't what I thought I was until I became it
My estimation of myself is always one step ahead of where I am
As a child I thought I was unbreakable
I became unbreakable and thought I was broken
I broke and thought I had died
I tried to die and thought I was living
I became everthing I thought I already was
Until the day I stopped becomin...
Wednesday 3rd October 2018 9:20 pm
Productivity at work
The delete button is my enemy
he chews away at my phrases
and laughs as he swallows my words
My pinky is drawn to him
they do a silly dance
tapping away, my thumb fights with the space bar
trying to regain some ground
I’m caught here on this blank page
in two-dimensional space
as if I’ve been steamrolled
my nose pressed back against my cheek
lips curled inwards
...Thursday 13th September 2018 8:32 pm
choice theory
I used to think concrete meant real
that if I could touch the words I spoke
they would settle into the earth
and grow like flowers
Soon I learned that real is relative
that cement blocks collapse
under the weight of our perceptions
leaving only dust
These crushed particles of reality
float at random past our eyes
obscuring our ability to see one another
...Wednesday 4th July 2018 2:13 am
Pacification
they float down the river
my soft pink Thought petals
which fell with grace
from the stem of a wilting flower
and are now plucked from the water
by my mind's eye
like paper soldiers
shot in the foot
they cannot walk
cannot bear the weight
of their own impotence
they are limp and
troubling to observe
but one by one
they line up
along th...
Monday 25th June 2018 5:35 am
This is not a poem
It never occured to me that I could simultaneously want to be invisible and famous.
But that's where I am right now.
stuck on some weird branch of limbo in a forest of solitude
just trying to keep my balance
Sometimes when I don't know what word comes next
I stare at the letters on my keyboard and hope they'll speak to me.
Sometimes I am convinced that I know the stranger scoopi...
Wednesday 13th June 2018 5:20 am
Ugly Beauty
What am I to you
your little pet
your sidekick
certainly not a threat
such an ugly fraternal twin
as I am
all the secondary features
I've collected in my little jar
and pull out and try on
in gross combinations
as you applaud my effort
flexing your brutish beauty
in the face of every passerby
mixing toxic potions
with your slow tongue
such disbelie...
Monday 21st May 2018 4:01 am
Withdrawn
I have withdrawn
to the smallest corners of my mind
I sit in a little chair
nose in the crack where two walls meet
cheek in tongue in cheek
I have withdrawn
from all the things I love
paint has splintered with dried inattention
words have shriveled with silent derision
the moments cherished in deepest memories
feel so far from me
over and over I extract myself fro...
Thursday 17th May 2018 10:56 pm
Therapy
I remember being restrained
Though he never put his hands on me
His gaze froze me in my seat
And he may as well have tied me
Questions flew like spears, hardened and cold
Flew through the air, wild and directionless
Flew right through me
As if I weren’t even there
And catch my heart on their way out
Now I walk like the dead
With feet so heavy they drop to the ground l...
Thursday 29th March 2018 12:47 am
I Came Here
I came here with so little to my name
A ravaged wanderer
Battered and worn to thread
Barely able to lift my head
Tired of the paths I walked
And the mountains I climbed
The bags I clung to
like a sailor to a buoy
Were empty
And yet they pulled me to the ground
With their weight
All hollow and heavy
and I could not set them down
I came here with nothing in my ...
Monday 26th March 2018 10:37 pm
Mislead Conqueror
I ride the waves of my mind's great sea
like the canoes of lost explorers
Jagged peaks in the night
illuminated like gleaming daggers
the moon captured in reflection
the sky a perfect mirror of the ocean
shining, white crests
sharp as knives
fall to the deep wells, black as felt
swallowing and spitting themselves out
in endless repetition
I steer t...
Tuesday 20th March 2018 9:13 am
Bone Dry Drowning
I was drowning in a
lake with no water
It was really a
pit somewhere below my heart
I lay still because I thought that
might stop it from growing
And in the nights, which became days,
I swallowed my tongue
Thick with evaporated words
I could not speak, only moan
And the pounding pounding pounding
In my ears and in my chest
Kept all the music from me
...Wednesday 7th March 2018 7:14 pm
The Gardner
I woke from a dream
in which I was playing in the garden
I walked from bed to bed
and buried my hands in the earth
The sun bestowed its warmth on me
and the trees some patchy shade
and in my little heaven
I let the plants guide my way
Speaking in the language of livng things
they told me what they needed
Safety, security
gentle touch, and nourishment
...Saturday 24th February 2018 2:13 pm
The World and the Word
I am in love with the world
And her curvy lines
And irregular shapes
I am confused by our obsession
With making things straight
But there must be a place for it
For we are part of the world
We are her product
I wish we loved her like we love our birth mothers
Having made ourselves separate
I feel like we have forgotten our gratitude
We try to create
Imitating h...
Sunday 18th February 2018 11:32 am
Dear Temple University
We are not invisible
We are not disposable
We are more than your thoughts and prayers
We are here before the act
And we need you to see more than the aftermath
We are praised and honored when we are gone
Why not while we are here?
We understand the difficulty
We live it everyday
Let us help ourselves
Let us show our strength
We'll show you how we survive
We'll t...
Tuesday 13th February 2018 10:45 pm
Yo Ho, Yo Ho
My mind has performed a mutiny
I am both prisoner and guard.
My heart, I heard, was complicit
and watched as they tied me to the post
I pray to the gods to release me
soon realizing the brutal futility
of arguing when your word means nothing
Thursday 8th February 2018 4:02 am
I Love You Donald Trump
I love you Donald Trump
Not because you are beautiful or smart
or because you are generous or kind
Not because we like the same kinds of music
or because we have much in common at all.
I love you Donald Trump
Not like I love my father, or my best friend
Not like I love my heroes.
I do not love the things you do
or say
or believe.
I do not love how you govern
and I do not love th...
Wednesday 31st January 2018 6:44 am
Wishing I Were Sad
I was drowning in a lake with no water
It was really a pit
somewhere below my heart.
I lay still because I thought that might stop it from growing
And in the nights, which became days, I swallowed my tongue
Thick with gluey, unspoken words
They told me to write and so I picked up a pen
And a useless limp sheet of paper
And I almost got through the first line
Then I remem...
Sunday 28th January 2018 9:38 am
Recent Comments
Alexandra Rockwell Lorenz on choice theory (Fri, 22 Mar 2019 01:12 pm)
Alexandra Rockwell Lorenz on choice theory (Fri, 22 Mar 2019 01:11 pm)
Tommy Carroll on choice theory (Thu, 14 Mar 2019 01:41 am)
Alexandra Rockwell Lorenz on Sunflower (Thu, 20 Dec 2018 12:10 am)
Paul Sayer on Sunflower (Wed, 19 Dec 2018 08:58 pm)
Jon Stainsby on Sunflower (Wed, 19 Dec 2018 04:50 am)
Taylor Crowshaw on Ocean and the key (Sat, 17 Nov 2018 06:57 am)
Alexandra Rockwell Lorenz on Ocean and the key (Fri, 16 Nov 2018 01:01 pm)
Big Sal on Ocean and the key (Fri, 16 Nov 2018 12:52 pm)
Alexandra Rockwell Lorenz on Death of a Flower (Wed, 14 Nov 2018 07:34 pm)