sharon wildey

What is true friendship? She pleaded for an answer
It is a dance, he said, Trust is the rhythm
Tentative steps to the tune
And in building confidence in our partners
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You did not live a day
Without food on the table and a roof over your head
You did not lack for medical care
Your teeth grew straight
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Suicide lady
Comes every day
Sometimes she stays a long time
And sometimes not
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I planted my brokenness under an avocado tree today
Fertilized it with my self-critic that I shot between the eyes last week
And buried in my compost heap
For just such an occasion
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Mothers Day
The day the entire nation gets
To pretend
They care about their mothers
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Do my grandchildren call you Grandma
Like my children call you Mama
You who produced nothing but heartache
You who never knew me but
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Where is the freedom
When you grow up in a small town by the tracks
And must live by their rules
Or they drop you like a piece of the manure
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Born to nothing
Opened her own door
And Ike walked through it
Ike like all the others we married
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CHARLIE’S POEM
I breathed my song into the air
I showed my heart to the sun
I raced the stars and touched the clouds
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What happens to diamonds when too much pressure is laid on
They shatter, Maya, they shatter
Just like the dirt and the coal and the fossils
They shatter, Maya, they shatter
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Dear God
I know that I have prayed
In the past
When I believed
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Erase the Christmas tree
With your favorite ornaments
You know the ones you put on the tree since they were little
Since they were little, loving and easily amused
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I took my broken soul up to the mountain
Channeling Moses
I went to the mountain top
and cried out to God
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There is a rage in women
That will not be quieted
Or shut up
By shushing and such
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Is homelessness just about not having a place
Is hunger just about not having a full belly
Or loneliness about solitude
Or is there a spirit within that knows
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Wandering around the house
Room to room
Trying to find myself
Lost
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Yemeni girl,15, 'burned to death by father
Did you hear her screams
As the flames began to char the nerve endings in her body
As the pain flashed through her eyes
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In the end times
when the self is scattered over the years
left in the care of other people
and forgotten occasions
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Walking into the cool embrace of the woods
She is smiling
Raising her fingers into the V sign of her time
Moving on
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