Two poems today, dear friends! Both by Cameron Awkward-Rich. One read by me and one that you get to hear in the poet’s own voice. Sending you love, Hope
ALL MY FRIENDS ARE SAD & BRIGHT by Cameron Awkward-Rich I think door & there is. Open & here’s a room where everything you’ve lost is washed ashore. We’ve seen the news. We know the story. How even our bodies hurt us sometimes so much. Room of broken mirrors. Room of salt. Room of marigolds & it’s your party, baby here’s a crown, here’s a gown & no man just around the corner, all your eyes on you. I think gunflower & here’s a field. Here’s a room where every bullet planted blooms. Boy with flower. Boy with metal rose. What’s done is done. What fire fords you. I was a child once. Anything could be my kingdom, all I had to do was say - Here’s a room of water & gold & nothing else. A room in which a man takes back his blood. Good-bye blood. Good-bye stars. Good-bye dead light troubling the dance your body does all by itself. I was by myself once, beside myself, breath fogging up a window & what’s on the other side? Only everything you wanted & here’s a room of everything you wanted. Think peppermint & myrrh. Think loved & you don’t even have to die.
CENTO BETWEEN THE ENDING AND THE END by Cameron Awkward-Rich Sometimes you don’t die when you’re supposed to & now I have a choice repair a world or build a new one inside my body a white door opens into a place queerly brimming gold light so velvet-gold it is like the world hasn’t happened when I call out all my friends are there everyone we love is still alive gathered at the lakeside like constellations my honeyed kin honeyed light beneath the sky a garden blue stalks white buds the moon’s marble glow the fire distant & flickering the body whole bright- winged brimming with the hours of the day beautiful nameless planet. Oh friends, my friends— bloom how you must, wild until we are free.
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