The Web Poetry Corner

Erin L. Roe

of

Everett, WA, US

Home Authors Alphabetically Authors Date Submitted Authors Country Submission Rules Feedback

If you have comments or suggestions for Erin L. Roe, you can contact him or her at:
troe@IX.NETCOM.COM (Erin L. Roe )

Find a book store near you, no matter where you are located in the U.S.A.!

...the best independent ISP in the Twin Cities

Departures and Broken Doors

by

Erin L. Roe

Light comes
Smelling of all the departures we hold in our hands like silence.
We are ready,
our shadows full of knives
and beyond that, lampshades.

Light comes
Smelling of all the things to which I bid goodbye;
my love, fist in a blanket,
a bulb without filaments,
cut from me by grass
smelling of idols
smelling of all the tongues we hide in our pockets.

Light comes.
When I woke up you had cut off my arms,
but left my fingers,
without which I can no longer weave the threads of ignorance.
And you have gone like closed eyes,
heading in one direction
but instead becoming all points on a compass;
I see your shoelaces on every horizen,
tied with the threads of my ghosts
my statues,
with whom I have not shared one streetcorner.

The Scissors of April

by

Erin L. Roe

You
Who would move in the shadows as if you owned them
Leaving your cloak of cracked mirrors as you go
The mouths of your footsteps are sewn silent
By your needles with loud voices

And I in my tears
You in your reasons
Leave trails of broken glass
Swimming through the months as if through mud
Their closed doors laughing in our faces

Now I live in the shadow of a sunset
Bearing my crown of memories like a rosebush
Without roses
We drowned ourselves in promises
Yet now the taste has left our mouths
Like all the words I only wished I could say
Or all the words I wished you would
Now we speak silence like our native tongue

State of the Union

by

Erin L. Roe

There they are
Come again for all my debts
But I'm still thinking the same thoughts
Choking on the same doorknob
I opened all those years ago.
I owe the trees my intestines
But dead carcasses nothing;
They are like twilight in a snowy hill.

When the sun comes back
Like dreams of open doors and shut promises
I will have my money ready
I gave everything to their golden homes
But they still say
"Remember my embrace"
And my pockets are empty again
Like new houses
Spent like horny lovers
In different hotel rooms.

The grime of the future sunsets beg my promises
Which are pawned like T.V. sets and leather purses
Knives of knowing nothing stab my like newborn grass
We take the wisdom of a thousand summers in our pockets
But we wait like unpaved roads for winter.

I remember once when I was caught
In all those empty freezers
Like a key in a lock
And no hands nearby

We have lost the seedlings of fresh lights
So here we are, nursing a spent bulb
Sucking in the darkness like spaghetti

We pave the way to our statues like steam rollers
But the same ghosts we trapped in fairy tales held us back
We lead the lives of a thousand trees
Swaying in the wind of a changing season

Omniscence and the Death of One

by

Erin L. Roe

When the wind blows
That's when they whisper
Like old men exchanging war stories and fishing tales
They rock forth and back and laugh
And we think they aren't watching