She was so pretty in a flower print dress
I didn’t really notice the rusty stains
I could imagine her pride the day
Her mother pulled it over her head
She’d loved it so much she vowed
She would never take it off
Here she sat in the park
A soda can by her side
A greasy chicken bone in her hand
Slight smile and a twinkle in her eyes
I saw no parent or guardian
So I approached just to ask if she was okay
I moved slowly not wanting to frighten
Knew not what traumas her little head might hold
Shock filled me as she looked up
Widened her smile and leapt
I felt pain as she pinned me to the ground
Started chewing through my ankle
Shared my tendons with her doll
Made tea out of my bodily fluids
Yet I thought feast away precious girl
I can’t be upset if you are the last thing I see
How can one be angry at the cutest little zombie
1986
The year I first found love
Only to be stalked by heartbreak
When LSD could inspire me
To compose pages of soaring prose
Or push me to hurl
All the things she’d given me
From a 3rd floor dormitory window
To crash on to pavement below
Precious pieces
Tokens from her heart
Reduced in an instant
To shining symbols of a broken life
It was the year the path I was on
No longer offered branches
The year everything I was
Rolled away like the ball
That trickled through poor Bill Buckner’s legs
When all my hopes and dreams
Became nothing more than those precious pieces
Scattered about the pavement of my shattered mind
The stream flows while beneath its surface
poison slowly seeps.
Those who look don’t see it,
or choose to ignore, as they proclaim
its innocence and its beauty.
I bathed their once, long and deep,
in its cool crisp waters.
I cried over it but my tears could do nothing
to dilute the toxins that had taken hold of its soul.
I wish to know it still but I cannot,
for each time I reach out, I touch it, it burns
and kills me a little more.
I know I must not look back,
leave the woods where it flows,
where I once danced and sang.
I loved it once but have no choice
but to turn my back and walk away.
Why should I battle my demons
When I can instead dance with them
Hold their hands to ring in the harvest
Sing the songs that long ago
Would soothe both their hearts and ours
Why shouldn’t I listen to their tales
Of those past and nearly forgotten days
Times when we knew we were all the same
Before we changed and pushed them away
Made up reasons to call them different
Used our anger and our rage
To turn them into the creatures we see today
Peter Kaczmarczyk is a lifelong writer who only began to seriously pursue poetry in the last few years.
Raised in Massachusetts, Peter was willing to leave the comfort of Red Sox country when he learned there were Dunkin Donuts in Indiana. His writing is assisted by cats, who think they can do better than him by walking across the keyboard. Sometimes they do. Peter’s work has been included in several dozen journals and anthologies and he has published two chapbooks. He is co-creator of the Captain Janeway statue in Bloomington, Indiana.
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