Stolen Words – Annette Kalandros

~ Annette Kalandros ~ Leave a comment

I am honored to be featured on braveandrecklessblog.com

Brave & Reckless

The tinge of sadness in your words

Told me you had stolenthese words

From another to whom you had

Given them then turned and gifted them

To me, and I—I pretended you had

Freshly written such lovely words for me,

Letting the ink of your stolen words

Blanket me, comfort me with something

I needed to feel— if only for a time—

The street huckster wraps her wares

In three day old newspapers to cushion

Them from breakage

And once home, I peeled the molding

Paper off my skin to find it stained

With the cheap ink of your stolen words

Soap, hot water, and good scrubbing

Wore all the stains away.

My skin refreshed and oiled,

I sigh heavily with pitynow

For you mustnot feel

Anything much that is real

Who must constantly steal

And steal away again your now

Cheapened wordsto give to one

And then another and…

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The Gift of Mercy

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 5 Comments
Image courtesy of Pinterest

The jigsaw puzzle of mercy

fell to pieces today.

 

The dogs saw it crumble,

alerting me before I could

gather, prepare, ready–

anything—

For this, this seeming simple thing.

 

The dogs ran, back hair bristled—

I ran after,

yelling, yanked their collars—

the dogs listened, stood back, panting.

All the construction of houses around us stopped

it seemed for a moment—

for a moment only us—

the four of us—

my two dogs, one on each side of me,

standing back, as they’d been told,

me, and the small bird now in my hands.

 

I had not stopped to grab anything—

no gloves, no towel—

had not thought of viruses, bacteria—

this bird was still alive—

limp, though nothing seemed broken,

yet its eyes wild.

I held it lightly,

thinking it stunned

it would surely fly off—

just stunned is all–I thought—

just a moment,

give it a moment, it would fly.

It had to fly.

By God, this ordinary grayish brown bird,

shaking, breathing hard in my hands, had to fly.

The bird closed its eyes—

It would not fly—

I knew it then—

 

I would have to gift it– mercy,

and so did what needed done—

Broke its neck in two.

 

No. No. It doesn’t help to know

I put an end to its suffering.

 

But I learned mercy makes for easy talk,

yet it is a suffering thing to do.

 

accidental tourist – Annette Kalandros

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 5 Comments

I am honored to be featured on BraveandRecklessblog.com

Brave & Reckless

I entered life an accidental tourist.

My mother’s body served an eviction notice,

But I ignored it and burrowed deeper

Into placental warmth.

My twin, however, weaker,

Entered the world a clotted, bloody,

Gelatinous mess on the white tile

Of a bathroom floor.

The doctor told the man,

Who wasn’t really my father

But thought himself to be,

There was still a heartbeat,

Still a baby left. 

I felt the absence of my twin,

the lack of another’s heart

beating a rhythm to match my own,

racing toward emergence, light, life, breath.

A ghost-like memory I carried with me

Always– Even when I, who survived

By claiming squatter’s right

To my mother’s uterus

As it tried to evict me

And who had never been told

Of my twin’s existence, would

Turn in childhood play and talk

To my twin sister.

My mother asking to whom I talked

And I answering—My…

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Questions

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 3 Comments
Image is my own

Originally written for Sammi Scribbles Weekend Writing Challenge- Using Question in exactly 84 words but I didn’t get back to edit it down until today. 

Questions hang in the air
Like heavy coastal fog
On cool autumn mornings

Eternal questions of humanity:
All the whys, the wonderings--
Never answered prayers--
Laying pressed between the
Pages of a book like brown,
Dried flowers—forgotten,
Having lost their sentiment.

Speak the differences
Among roses, weeds, wildflowers—
Inconsequential answers
For inconsequential questions.

Could sense of counting
Out the hours be sliced 
Like blood, blooming meat
To find truth absolute
Like high priestesses of old,
Scry the answer 
In a blood filled bowl?

Modern Prometheus becomes the Little Stranger – M.A. Morris

~ Annette Kalandros ~ Leave a comment

Written for last year’s challenge when I still used my pen name.

So now we know, You told me I wasn’t, But I was— Your creation. Said you loved me Just the way I was— But was it true? Yes, I was perfect Just the …

Modern Prometheus becomes the Little Stranger – M.A. Morris

The Widow Sings

~ Annette Kalandros ~ 2 Comments
Image courtesy of CanStockPhoto.com
The widow colors the sky

The ground, the trees,

The winds with cold and heat

Of all that cannot be spoken,

Of spirits tethered to stone.



You may never know she is there.

She may wear the red nose.

She may laugh with you.

She may hold out her hands to help.

All so you are not overwhelmed by her presence.



She hides within her weeds.

Sometimes she hides within the willows.

She may smell of pomegranates 

Or roses at midnight,

The scents betray her presence.



But you will not see her arms and hands 

Covered in thorns and trickling with blood, 

The tears of her body, dripping away, 

Speaking in tongues no one can understand,

As she stands alone. 



She sees history through a broken prism

Of her words never strong enough to bind

Love to prayers weighted with magic enough 

To fly straight to God’s ear, to be heard, 

To be answered, to raise flowers of miracles.



In the end, the widow is left, 

Singing colors of grief.

When all the praise singers have left her

In the muddy soil leavings of wicked tongues,

Gone on to daily lives, the day to day,

The widow stands,

Singing colors of grief,

Covered in thorns.

Frankenstein; The Modern Prometheus – Annette Kalandros

~ Annette Kalandros ~ Leave a comment

I am honored to be featured on BraveandRecklessblog.com

Brave & Reckless

That is me
I am of my own making.
Rather than ignore, pretend
A pretty sky for my façade—
I chose to make of myself,
A real thing, a living thing,
A patchwork quilt of scars:
Sown together scraps of terror,
Of pain, of suffering,
Of the dark wells into which I fell,
Of the dark wells I clawed and crawled,
bloodied fingered, nails torn off,
Out from the depths,
Of the wealth of human darkness
I have known, of my failures, of my triumphs—
Follow the stitching with your fingers
If you wish to understand
The quilt that I am
Though the batting be made
Of my tears, my blood, my skin,
My scars, bits of my spirit, bits of my soul—
The quilt that I am
Can offer you more
Than any villager can.

Photo by Dhilip Antony on Unsplash

I am a retired teacher, enjoying everything that…

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