Runaway Dreams

in #poetry5 years ago

she thinks she sees you on the telly, running away again, reflected ghost in the panes of glass beside the boys you would have liked
the boys heroes that run down the street with chairs crates & crowbars
shoos the kids outside, rewinds & painfully goes back

was it you

you with your Lamborghini dreams
low slung dress, sequined & hollowed out spine
carved from arching backwards with lips apart and folding in two to rub blistered heels
on the way back from the dance
damn those heels - the ones you saved for begged for stole for
you left her in a country pub with the tab to pay
she sat sipping cheap shiraz - clipped red nails stone chipped skin freckled frayed forlorn
your blood wondered where you'd gone
imagined you with arm extending - dark highway city bound better life bound

you

you could have had a better use for the gold that slapped itself across the line of trees on the other side of the railway line in the late afternoon light
for the admiration of magpie crowds who warble warble in aurelian dawns
or the cool creek draped like a silk kimono over bare legs in the summer
sparkling tinsel shawls draped over stolen pine branches

the left behind sister folds the kids pajamas over the twine that ties itself in knots
where the front porch chime twinkles in autumn gales
she notices nothing pairs and everything is frayed
rewinds to when you were a little girl with mismatched socks - with stiched unicorns
& one with a tiny heart
hurts as she wonders where you bin these last few years

wonders if you got your sparkle dreams, arms dripping with chains of fools
gold 24 carot oh my gold jangling circles down fake tan arms
He took you to Fiji, you scrawled smudged purple ink
hard diamond glinting, she imagines, island sun piercing the rock on your left hand
on the other side, white sails - a lie of a post card because you would have signed it

she burnt your scrapbooks last winter on your birthday, the ones with your longings for escape, the cut outs of princes and towers
the love heart lasso the imaginary beaus paper mansions & illusions
of silly girls dreams, she knows

now, because she saw the city lights once, looking for you
they had nothing on the spread of stars, that bright twilight one in pink skies
the lanterns strung between the blue gums, fireflies clinging to muddy dark banks
and the bonfires in winter, sparks dying on wet grass

what's happened, they ask, when she returns mascara running
runaway plans runaway girls runaway dreams
she rubbed acetone hard, the cotton balls fell away crimson
you left her there and stole the last of the silver, so she hitched a ride home & life became

without you

she searches every filmed angle
she was sure you were there, no sequins sparkles or handsome man with hand in the small of your back

oh get back to halycon fields where the shadows don't come in until it's very late
and the cicadas are rubbing their wings
toes in the riverbed and stolen cider and mum's benson & hedges
gilded foil inserts sharp origami'd into ibis

the edits remove all trace of the long gone sister in reflection - mistaken, perhaps
now she can only focus that young young man blue flash blue eyes dripped crimson blood on Sydney streets after killing a girl in a hotel
they pinned him down with a milkcrate, there was a man there with a crowbar roaring, shouting you killed a girl you dog

you killed a girl

who are you, he says
he doesn't know where he is
she doesn't know where you are

his eyes are blue
your eyes were blue.

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Image by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

I'm not sure where this came from. Yesterday's papers were filled with a man who walked down a Sydney street dripping blood from knifing a woman in the back, and killing a woman earlier. Men rushed down the street to corner him and stop him, pinning him to the ground, a milk crate over his head. He looked so young and so confused, and his eyes so very blue. Whilst they cried terrorist as they always do, he was just a young man in need of help, and my heart went out to him, as well as his family. One guy with a crowbar was ready to kill him - it was frightening. Compassion for all beings is hard to practice when they commit such atrocity, and my heart also goes out to the young woman who died - but I wasn't able to forget his eyes. And then this poem. I don't know. Poetry is a strange thing.

I do hope Partiko bloody lines this poetry up properly. If it looks like one long paragraph, I hate Partiko. It won't look like that on Steempeak. I hope!

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Very powerful poem! I am left bereft. The enormous hole, made smaller by a fire I hope. At least she won't have the memories every time she handles your items. Will that make her pain less? I hope so because so much of it was unbearable.
I think I could talk about this poem for hours.

Oh wow thanks so much. I havent written a poem like it before, so I am really chuffed you like it! Xx

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Fantastic poem you've got here, mate. I must commend your mastery of the pen. Cheers!

Thanks soo much. Your comment is really appreciated. Xx

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wow this is powerful and so sad and terrifying as well. this incident seems to have brought up so much for you. It is really tragic what has happened and why t had to happen as well, it brings up so many questions which you portrayed so well in this poetry. Really really brilliant xx

Thank you so much. I watch the footage and the bright blue of his confused eyes really hit me full stop here's a kid with mental health problems being called a terrorist yet he is so young and so ill. I started thinking of all the other lost ones and somehow this poem took it's shape on the page. It is a mystery to me really how it came about but I guess that's how the muse works right??

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Love when she comes back and takes off her nail polish.
Here are some of my questions. You don't have to answer these questions, I just want to voice them. These are the questions I am asking myself:

Did she ever paint her nails again? Are her children two daughters? Does she blame herself?

Or does she blame you?

Is she too numb to blame anyone? She burned the stuff after all. I don't think I could have done that. Not ever. It would all stay in the family until there was no one left who remembered you.

Excellent poem! An entire novel in a few words. Maybe I'll try to turn it into a haiku haha

I don't think she ever paints her nails again full stop to me the nail polish and the shoes and the dress represent those kind of Dreams young girls have for Fame and fortune and love, but they don't necessarily bring happiness. She was lucky being left behind because the real value for her is in the beauty of the place around her which wasn't good enough for the Runaway sister. I can see her being upset and angry at being betrayed and by taking off the nail polish she is rejecting the sister that brought her along for the ride but then just left her there.

I don't think she blames herself all the sister but she thinks of her all the time and misses her . so she looks for her everywhere. When she sees the news report with the blue eyes of the killer, she cannot help but think of the eyes of her sister and whether she is safe and ok. She imagines her sisters life is a lie because she hasn't heard much from her, and knows that she is probably just one of many Lost Girls in a city that she may never come back from. If she really had achieved her dreams the Left Behind sister would have heard from her.

I think she Burns The Scrapbook as a way of letting her go because it has been such a long time. By burning The Scrapbook she is also burning her dreams or the ones that childishly existed that day they ran away and for some reason the sister left her, probably because she was selfish or maybe even she was abducted who knows.

When I saw the news report I was struck by the beautiful blue eyes of the murderer. He clearly had mental health problems and was terribly confused. I thought of the families who had young girls like the one that was killed and that held breath until they get the phone call to say they are ok. So I guess I was imagining someone who hadn't heard from their sister for a long time and feared she was the one that died but I don't think she does or that she will never know really.

Sorry about all the random capitals I am using speak to text.

Oh and the kids question mark no idea I think they are just there to show that her life has moved on and she has a family and might be doing it hard but there are things that she treasures that might be very separate from her memories of the sister full stop when she said that the gold light on the trees or the sounds of the Magpies weren't good enough for her sister I think she is reflecting on the beauty she has in her life that has more value van Lamborghini dreams

Thanks so much for your questions I actually really wanted to talk about this poem. You probably know the feeling being a writer yourself, where the story and the words take you out of yourself and touch your heart at the same time and you think where the fuck did that come from? It isn't even my life.

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Wow! I gotta say, you nailed your vision, wherever it came from, in your poem. Isn't that incredible? I find poetry, especially any that took you out of yourself and touched your heart at the same time and you think where the fuck did that come from? can create pictures far better than a thousand words can. You so did that.

I didn't even read your explaining blurb after the poem in the post. I didn't even see it. I guess I was too eager to get into the poem to finish reading the post. Remember how afraid I was that it was autobiographical? Freaked me out that poem. So good.

Sometimes I have dreams that I go.. way, that'd make an awesome story. Ypu have reminded me to put a journal by my bed.

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And it doesn't look like one long paragraph. The bits have power.

the left behind sister. Feeling hollow and grasping for words after several readings of this. Trying not to be numb as maybe too many parts of this resonate.


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Oh gosh. If it it made you feel then I guess it works. Sorry if it pains you. Thanks so much for reading. Xx

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Great poem

one dumb blue gaze
bared her perception
and you came back

A little haiku about you and her.

I go by @bananafish's mizu no oto "rules" that English haiku should have fewer syllables than the 5/7/5 form allows.

.

Oh really? Cool!! But I would go blank blue....

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Yes blank is much better.

So:

one blank blue gaze
bared her perception
you came back

That has an improvement also for a quality known as kireji, a cut of some sort between two of the lines.

Snared her attention? This is fun!!

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one blank blue gaze
snared her attention
you came back

I like bared because it gives a sense of anger, as in bared teeth. but bared her attention doesn't quite work. "bared her perception" says "moved her instantly to flights of painful emotional fancy" to me.

I know. I LOVE writing haiku. Try @bananafish's mizu no oto contest.
here's a link to one of my haiku and in that a link to mizu no oto
https://steempeak.com/haikucontest/@owasco/mizu-no-oto-every-image-has-its-haiku-edition-35-english

snared her perception though. that works.

Yes!!! High five. Xxx Love it!!! Honoured. Love cross fertility creativity!!!

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Yes blank is much better.

So:

one blank blue gaze
bared her perception
you came back

That has an improvement also for a quality known as kireji, a cut of some sort between two of the lines.

Like enjambment?

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late to the party but finally got around to this. i love the dreaminess of it, the slight confusion and different angles, the fine details of the narrative. theres so many unanswered questions...

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