Poetry Blog by Alexandra Rockwell Lorenz

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 ...

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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 

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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

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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...

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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

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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...

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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...

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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

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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

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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

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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

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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...

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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...

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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 

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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...

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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...

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