Anna Libet, Poet

Anna Libet
--Poet, writer--

These are some of the past poems of Ms. Libet.
All poems are copyrighted and cannot be used without her express consent.
____________________________________________

The Untold Version
The phone keeps on ringing The relatives keep on calling Calling on you to care about the story They listen to your lines Vicariously composed All pre-supposed Carefully edited Shaped for ears that are ripe For self-deceit The news of the lines is pre-fabrication Polished and perverted For a personal lubricant of friendship It only pacifies relations For the sake of your appearance The expectations have asserted their grasp But the paper is still printed Officially misrepresented Forsaking any knowledge Of self It is as a publisher would mercilessly Dismiss As he downgrades your perspective As if of no importance And squanders your front-page story of the truth With a replacement version Much more appealing to the ear It is their alienation That writes your wrongs aright As you overhear his voice in theirs "Stick this one inside someplace" Forcing your story to revert itself Back to a hidden place Inside yourself, unseen.
by
Anna Libet, Poet

Indecision
I always knew it was a trap A predictable path An uncompromising middle An appointment to the bench of anonymity
To be led forever into tomorrow By the hands that are not your own
A figurative curse A future I held it In my hand The best laid plans Always smelling sweeter on the wind Not underneath the ground Cultivating like an impotent courage rotting
In a hermit’s false dilemma In a traveler’s bane I awake to a familiar dream: Freedom knocks Security answers “Go away, we cannot afford you here”
So security slithers away Hiding from freedom’s path Because it blocks the way of wandering
So I renew my vows with poverty For the great enlightenment And fly across the world in a book Never witnessing a single page But something turns The every-ones have moved away And I sit in mocking triumph Because I stayed
Eluding a confidence Betraying the evidence That I know not Which path forsakes my
True wish But I demand answers of a hollow frame While I walk in obstinate commitment Yet linger to discover
Which will lead me to a dream
Of true reflection and correct possibility
Without the shackles I seek it
To be unleashed Released. From the paralysis of indecision.
Of something I call my own My life.
by
Anna Libet

A Trip on a Writer's Public Display
You sit in the wings High above the fray Passively observing what takes place every day But you think you are special with your pen now in play Though inconvenience has written your substitute stay As you reflect on the lives that go Un-noticed each day You stand back in critique Predisposed in your seeking of wisdom As you belabor the obvious to all who live here Ignoring the nomads who must play In these parts for Engrained is their nature of life in that sphere Everyday each re-living his lines They hear The noise all too well But none to you they appear To you, the pulse of the city is a story worth telling Elevated to a narrative description It is attached to an all too human recognition But you missed the counterparts of your newfound reflections Never once do you acknowledge the protagonist's convictions Those bound to this play Who ride everyday In a tiredness spread Over their faces like lead Moving back and forth Not enjoying in the least The predictable haze and decay and delay But you will return to the sanctuary From which you came Where there is freedom and luxury To feel this private dismay.
Anna Libet
8/26/02

A Prodigies Wish (Dedicated to J.C.)
If I could write a poem for you How easily the words would come All at once, on a train, in the dark Where no one minute passes to imitate The light of you Or glances to brush The Heat of you On mine, this aloneness does it justice Your brilliance marked on me A thousand words Conveyed in silent harmony Tell me, what kind of melody Will I ever find in thee? For you, the private one Once walking in the setting sun with me Just as quickly you would fall Into the shadows AWAY Bowing eloquently into my faint future When pathos has its day But I still look for you in crowds, When elusively, that train Would stop for me When it would wait And satiate all that lips have longed for A moral high ground is the only thing That speaks, to separate Your mystery From this surprising youth Under the moon, deceased Burning in my age old hands A myth naïve to coveting A love so pure and reckless I now see Upon a folkloric offering it hinges The unexpected gifts - We always keep Lying distant before you Open to accept your strange Emissive ways While you closely, watch Your Travelers awake And that is why I passed along that trail With them, bursting in an unmarked grave Wet and still Like the sky That brings rain too often And When I cry I know My weakness I see it bare But when your voice cries, what does it mean? Other than in my dreams An unsurpassed longing You would have for me But of all my thoughts Most significant and fluid Why is it the ones of you Are always proven false In one eradicating blow? To ebb and flow To silently turn the other cheek In my hand Praying for a sign As fragile as a moment to see you Now breaking Please, let my dreams be Lest an innocent dies To be your swan song Presently.

A Salvation's Vision Sometimes, // The world seems so ugly except for the sky// a dim, caressing, deepening blue interrupted only by broken clouds of gray // And small lights flashing, signaling travelers across the sky // In twilight, so elevated beauty seems Undaunted// It contradicts how we walk, our faces to the ground -- look up... // To see in a mind's eye What beholds us all// A wish to flee for what's beyond. []

three poems by
Anna Libet

Who Owns the Light… I look around the room and there's God everywhere He's in people's mouths, and in their sighs in their laughter, in their cries He's made a home in all their memories, and in all their wisdom, and in all their silence // Before, we were lost. None of us knew how to live Now every chair is thankful and humble We say a prayer May you find him now The money can is passed around Then no one says a word Because everyone's been touched // We walk outside Now God is in the backseat of their cars When they're driving off to work He's lying at the foot of their beds Making sure they sleep and wake He listens every time they lie And tells them what to say to make it right // He's there in the good He's there in the bad He's in the air, and the sky, and the wind He's everywhere// Thank God for the paycheck Thank God, our boy's come home Thank God for blessing this great nation Thank God for everything Thank God for the sun// The voices in the room say All moral compasses align with His No matter whose morals No matter whose compass He will show us the way// Now maybe I'm blind But can everybody see the light? Where is the light? Will someone tell me where is the light?//

_____
In every city
In every raindrop
Falls a silence

For someone's mind
Living alone in the sky
Longing its predicaments

Where to blow,
To move, to break,
To fall Longing to remove
All earthly voices

The tired heat, unnatural smoke That suffocates His every pore Burns his skin Stabs his ear
The size of years
He's taken to comparing
What could have been On illustrious nights Alone

Imagining every city
Every raindrop
A cold hard wanderer

Take Leave of Me
No, please take the car I insist And the house and the beach And the walks I missed I implore take your dog That does all the old tricks And the placating birds Caged, repeat after me I insist Take your honors And tailored made suits That have grown While I shrank In medication well spent To soothe my age As you ignore yours For that new woman is sovereign gold To your claims And your wants to be born again So take what you are - Your lies and your debts And go mortgage her future And leave this one be I insist Take our land and our trips And all my memories split And before you forget Please, take the scars on my wrists. I insist.

Evil
In the old, inferior In the transition, against god In the present, a ploy// We know that inferiors are defined by Their Superiors And that God only defines the devil And for this reason The word is not for mortal man To use in a scheme,// Never once was it designed To inspire any respect In a stage to wage war In the name of the good Against the darkness Which we know is in our hearts// And that we, ourselves, have created the term As a ploy to protect The superior With God Against man. And now we know that evil looks the same Regardless of the face on which it stands.[]

Down South
If you ever want to know her Then breathe into the wind That rocks an empty chair Or fans an empty field Still wet with moss And beaten with footprints The ripe purple flowers No longer bloom at midnight As the wind whispers the sound Of what's come and gone If you ever want to remember her Then stare into the sun And then run with your eyes burned out Blinded by the powers that beat their drums In a heat that deserted even the strongest Ones, the youngest ones And if you ever want to feel her Then take a walk into the darkest Corner of your fears Into a tomb that never rises Above the shores of its lake Because it is too tired to speak Too weary to drown And too shameless to die In a flooded garden of dead relics Burned by the emptiness and the darkness Into a steam that rises Into a victim that passes Through Her voice, if only history would listen.

Shame
A mission for you I have found To have failed// To kiss the innocence Never the frown Of the frail Who is jaded and fearful Of letting you down// Now you visit her Under the ground As she wails And pales next to your morals and deeds For the public humanity needs// But her misery loomed in private A cold mountain bound to the sea Of your sound And I still anger at the sin Of her sickness and honesty Bound to your fervor burning To protect That woman You once knew and loved In your laments I once had respect// But never I could And no longer I can// Stand too close to the sun To be shadowed by you// And your staged regret Now left in neglect for that woman// Laid down by the criminal mind And so quietly silenced like an Invalid bound Fallen and helpless Your eyes now look down In shame For your mission of failure In her death it is found.//
four poems by
Anna Libet
(c) Copyright 2002

The Kidnapped
It was always that way for her Waiting, waiting, waiting. By the bed and underneath it She hid Trying to disguise what blankets could not hide For the monsters always creep in the dark, they know no boundaries But her monsters were imagined, versions of fantasy Until reality bruised and battered that soft darkness Because someone pierced through the night to render death The assaulter of nothing - a violence of his void A man who cuts across the darkness To engulf the waves of innocence The timeless, boundless, continuum of youth He vindicates by destroying what he never could have been As he stares into the face of all that should redeem him But without seeing the hearts of children, there is no heart to see And his heart is dead, but still beating, looking To take another one from us. Next time he thinks of taking one pure soul He should think what he has taken from himself All the hope in the world And he should remember - That blind fools never profit from their blindness And demons are not gods by wishing It, and who are you to take them? Who is anyone?
by
Anna Libet, Poet

The Politician
New heroes rear ugliness Through half-opened windows On rails cross country Rolling out over days They sell a cheap ticket to catch the bouquet; Paltry offerings thrown out, hurled every which way This one, he's burdened let's say By his strength and his weakness Heavy with slabs of bankrolls on his back Look, he's coming our way To relate How he worked in the menial sector Once and how he's from a small town Just like you and me A friend A man A champion Whistling his discordant melodies All the way to the end of the line Homes for the poor Breaks for the rich Prayer for the fervent Lies for the tempered War for the hungry Borders for the frightened Guns for the protectors Home and abroad Rights for the children Of hard working families And rations for everyone else Peace for the sake of moral diplomacy Prosperity in the name of a moral majority A temporal force On the scene Makes its debut again And why not, it's easy when you're riding away.
by
Anna Libet

Meeting for the first Time
There is question behind your eyes and desire upon your lips but your hands rest still// There is silence in your smile and wind in your breath but your voice stays shallow// There is running in your steps and beating in your heart but your limbs hang low and faltered…// If I stand here long enough can I shout: I have the answer! And will your unmoving senses listen and awaken and move to me? []

Incentive to be Better someone's mud raked around the grounds// raked around and down to little children they once were flailing it at the steps of poor houses // into rich reputations they grew and were accepted at the expense// better shut out the world from these little ones who won't see you hiding in huddled corners, whispering, saved from the flooded mess// for they still age well feeding on misfortune and indiscretion and deaf ears// to the incentive Living on a mountaintop alone, when will it rise up? to speak aloud for the other little ones who hide there slighted and cast out by the storm…. []

Make Susan Lie Still
The bed's a'shambles It's morning and the birds Are at it again with their nests Making hideaways for their chicks There, beyond my window Where I can't see them

I'm too small to see out But I imagine them like dreams The ones that live in my dollhouse They can run up the little staircases Out of the windows, Onto the roof, fly out into the yard, Down the block, And out of the secretes forever

But it's morning And it's time for me to clean my room Which is just as well Because there are lumps in my throat The size of apples, And I can't talk to my daydreams

I always wonder - what's the point in fixing up? All the curtains are drawn Like me, towards the inside And no one can see what a mess he's made

It's windy outside today I can tell by the leaves That scrape against the side of the house And I wish I could breathe steam And make paintings on the glass But someone's calling for me To fix breakfast It's him

He's calling - but not how he calls to me in private When he talks to me in the third person Like he's talking about someone who's dead While momma looks the other way - Out her window someplace

I'm hungry but I can't make it down My legs are cold as stumps I'm walking slow, Spindly like my brother says He jokes I'm getting old, That I walk like an old lady

Netta, my littlest doll, is asking me to pick her up "Susan lift me, lift me…" But I throw her to the side She's all ragged anyway With down eyes and a torn petticoat And nappy tangles in her hair That are too thick to brush

Maybe I am old I sure do feel almost gone When I hold everything in Like the sky holds rain.

Netta, you know I just want to burst and die!
When daddy holds me down and whispers, "Be a good girl… Don't breathe and don't tell
Just close your eyes and Make Susan lie still…"
Anna Libet

To the Man Who Passes By
I watch your steps From the cold and the deep Still water Reflects the heart that is silent// Steady and stoic My roots fill their reach Growing a home To brush the sun across your feet// You've lingered by me many times Where this river passes its life to the sea But I'm home to creatures that fly away And hope is different in the shadowy depths Siphoning pools that leave deep prints Storing them away in lonely rings// Until I'm old, I stand alone Hoping for the sun But afraid of fire's breath That would burn my silence down Leaving a place for you to rest In the open part Of me Unprotected.

The Summer That Failed Two little girls knew it well Investing young breath In the willow wisps When first to learn The nature of a wish How things fly And how things fall // This is how to tie your shoe This is how to tell the time This is how to kiss goodnight And wait for the tooth to fall out// This is how to play a game To eat your food To wipe your feet This is how to say hello to strangers, We're still a family don't you know?// This is how to tell the truth To clean your room and watch your mouth This is how to be with us How our new life shines Without your mother Here// Now this is how to board the plane To call us when we're far away And this is how to say goodbye To ask for food, a game, the kiss, the time// This is how to forget we've gone Through the winters long We've made for you.
Two poems
by
Anna Libet

Window into Soul's abuse
Mirror, mirror on the wall Who debases one and all? /When treason is the name we call /Who tortures one/ To punish all This glass will break/ Where blame should fall/You mock me mirror on the wall/ How dare you question one and all?/ As life is short and deeds are foul/ Oh, mirror, mirror on the wall/ I spite the soul who sees it all/ Like the innocent's eye I cannot lie/ And wish the day when you would fall/ Like mirror cracking on the wall/ To your soul's witness/ Your reflection is afoul/ As your deeds reflect in every action/ Your child lost to sick compulsion/ Sees mirror, mirror on the wall/ And now that child breaks it, one and all./ Like Your abuse, it fractures all.

Intentions Change
Before I wanted nothing/ And now I want everything/ Before I only wanted your hand in friendship/ And now I want to hold it/ As in a caress on my face /Before I only merged my mind with yours/ Like friends on an old familiar street/ Passing time with memories that speak to us /From some balcony above/ But now, I seek your eyes with mine /To look into the windows and out of them /Like a sole intention for light to rush in/ Perhaps, on a park bench we would meet /Discussing yesterday's news /As it blows away in the wind /To remind us of how our lives have been/ Separated And yet, /The familiar with us becomes a new ground/ That we could grow in /But like in a forest cut /The life support is weak/ And the want endangered /So as new life replaces old extinctions I must admit,/ I intended to be right/ But I know now that I was wrong /And that my dreams /Of you have /Never left me /Especially tonight.

Life Support
Put down the bottle/ And come to me /Put down the poison /You must be freed /Your life is going to fall I see it all /The light in your eyes Is fading/ To black despair now waiting /For your sick destiny to rob you /Of the beauty that changed my face to love /The disease in your eyes /Bring death's shadow to your door /And you speak no more /Of passion fire brilliance /Of The day we met When I fell into your heart/ Into your breast /That now lies shaking on the floor /What happened to you?/ My dear sweet one/ Yesterday you were a rose with thorns /Today you are a beast unborn /To die in shameless arms/ In the smoke and mirrors /Of your suicide waiting /Your tired wasted mind /Now aching in your lunges/ Your breathless sobs /They Are nothing compared to my broken hope /As I watch you climb the walls of your prison/ Of your addiction /Of all the tragedies you speak /I now command in desperation /Let go your grasp on death /And fall into my arms/ Instead of falling into your grave.
three poems by
Anna Libet

The Wrong Part of Town
They say love follows its own invitation In this town where the wind and the cold run free But we are tired of knocking down doors In a plea to ignite the wrongs of the moment - Under layers of stone Where shall we find fire's warmth? For feet that are tired and torn Can never walk far enough Through chandeliered streets Where dismissed as immigrant beggars We are slow to find strength But quick to find weakness In neighbors who have never found a true light Even burned out ours frighten them night after night So we will find our own home Away from the prison of being polite And where we don't have to search To find right.

Inside the Glass
With glaring indifference I watch them Drifting away from the natural light They swim in their autistic lives Mindless and lost we are one for tonight They watch my swelling cheeks And writhing fingers Flustered with a tired motion Of relief crawling up in vain They seem to portrait all my features As I await my time to float under the lights So much time they have to tell me How to live like them - Where every hour promising nothing But another hour And new eyes peering into you Must I learn to be like them? With painted faces that never falter Even in a cold, forgotten state Or will probing force diseases out? Through fearful nights that turn exacting into day Cut from within and without I pray, let me out Or else, like them, I will die contained.
Three poems by
Anna Libet

Half Life
So long you've been gone And so long I've learned To live without Our emptiness Measured into bottles we cast out Into a mixture of insecurities, We would shout Concocting rationales, Until it was just us - A sad discovery Too old for weak memories To doubt *** At first a morning after Cringing under dismal skies And crying At your departure I crawled into disease Limping one step forward Falling ten steps back And slowly growing an appendage of disdain For temptation robbed of its counterpart Never stops calling your name Until a raging fear Forced me into place And ensconced each day A struggle to stay away; A weakness I discovered is forced to live apart From the whole - And now you're back Missing the friend you Who loved you most Like the wind Once allowing you to rush in Curing of your loneliness - A feigned illness Like your absence disappearing But memories of you I refrain from touching Like bruises on this body Never quite healed And now the part that only feels like half When we are one is running away…

by
Anna Libet

Without You
beads are stone and glass is night through this tomorrow without your light I spoke to wings til when at last they flew their flight once gleaming by my side…they hover and weep away the night so is their love so weak in might. []

Estranged, Per Annum
He played his part and so did she Their kinfolk laying out the scene// Behind closed doors, for them tradition's footsteps fell Quietly concocting their bread to break and wine to soothe ill wills// In rented rooms of wood and clay they passed the time, reading their lines// Until the curtain fell and costume dolls ran back to windows eyes// Each year, The actors leaving behind Parts of cheated memories and minds.

Supine Morning
It was the way I moved with her. // Her, at every angle Open to me And prone to her wishes, I lay// Watching the folded warmth drop its shape of her into gravity and dust// Across a moment Where my hands would not reach to disturb its shade Still from her essence// But her sun would not keep away the day As she opens us to lie naked in the sky While I, linger slightly behind Remembering. . []
by
Anna Libet

Words Are Not Enough
When I think of you
Blank sheets appear
To absorb these lines
Only meant for your ear //
So I lie on my back
And let the needle glide
Scrawling out a longing
Only lovers to themselves describe //
But the blood is drawn for others
In rhymes like horoscopes
Written for the world
Not as sacred whispers
But aloud, and by consumption spoiled //
And the desire I privately wove
Is now worn like a stranger's tear
Evoking sorrows of another's wants and fears //
I would throw all declarations to the wind
To confess For a moment
My silent mind
That needs to consider no heart
But yours//
Because what I wanted to be seen
Was only meant for you:
A love that speaks with my eyes
Never with my words.

In the Writer's Circle
Disgusted or impressed Moved or dead I tried in rooms To breathe with humbled breaths To open ears to other's depths// But what in shallowness Bestows their awe New light of color's Blooms, first blush Where excess revelation Runs amok Should interpretation be a crime?// All too soon, I long to rest In the musing shade, the patient web Not here encroached By dry, offensive stings -- Analysis, genre, impression, art form, love, moral, metaphor, defeat Surrounded by impassioned wants Swelling to extremes of song and story All too fantastical for life// I hear nothing Of vibrations true to this Their buzzing frenzy made me deaf Flocking to overripe Flowers that have died In this writer's circle In this writer's nest// How I'd like to catch The blood of what is said With a pen that sharpens Pragmatics to the point So I hide on the wall Where patience still holds The spider to his wasp And silence marks The struggling mind for death

Poverty's Road
On common threads We walk thin lines Made wide// Our voices clenched Retell a nightmare Of ghostly streams That flow under the door// Beside the mansion, cold is plight Whose dream trembles In the air, on the ground And underneath, Where living things breathe night// Bleak and solitary years
Anna Libet

America, Inc.
Paid to fill a vacant lot It stands and breeds// Marking the territory where feudal contracts make a modern comeback// Where bloated useless stations creep over ground as we would their walls so high and white to camouflage a stain // Silently enforced by greed helping the crippled mind extend its seed to every lot all over the world experimenting with our tolerance for a new death of equality exploiting us down into a centrifuge of devolving thoughts// Now every child grown who could feed the world outside a dark and poisoned room into a natural light through natural pursuits is lost bred and led to decipher the machine that never sleeps obsessed with the lubricant it brings free to awaken all the deadly sins on every corner all over the world// We are living in a Cheap Hotel a home away from home some growing our identity there meant for small rooms and hearts that don't care// Science and money might keep it alive but not us staring like stones walking like tombs and pretending to dream// In a respite from imagination no sign of any dirt or pain with base amenities provided and four more walls - cloned reincarnations of the New World Order again //
This time around there's no soot , and no ash, and no blacked out tunnels yet we still force ourselves to breathe// Because it is bigger than us Because it is us The excess of us The waste of us// Welcome to the new distraction Welcome to the new revolution Welcome to America, Inc.
by
Anna Libet

"Portrait of Imposture You said it wasn't love"
To the hollow of my back Where your hands shook to hold// To my faraway stare Where your mind fixed to gaze// To the sheltered eyes The unopened smile To the curious beauty melded behind// To the stroke that eased me To paint my life on your skin As touch searches within// To the arch of my neck Where your mouth threw back Your desires drawing in// To my insides where you gasped Relinquished in the heartbeat Where no words utter On stranger's lips you pin // To this canvas spread This core exposed It appears that you have found your quest// But to every caress To every surrender// To every image burned Under your hands Over your skin You tell me once again// This picture of a thousand words Inspires only lust For love in naked silence Is the forgery I trust.//

"Where Will I Be, When You Are Gone?"
Where will I be When you are gone When you bestow Your smile on another one? When "you and I" Are only "you", and "I"? Will I ever Dance again beneath the sky? Where will I be When "us two" seem To live only In a shadow land of dreams? When faded ghosts Recall the hours When my sweet love Fell, drowning, in your powers? What can I touch If not your hand, Your lips, your hair, And breathe the scent of you? What time will it be When I'm at the Curb, and the bus With you on it never comes? How long will I Stand waiting, for A fleeting glimpse Of your marvelous, flashing eyes? Where will I be When I am old And you remember Me no more? Will I exist- If you forget? (I was never Made to be loved Like you, like I love you. And still, I do.) So where will I be When you are gone? When your light shines on another one? A shriveled hag Standing, waiting For a bus with You, that never comes...until I disappear and Fade to empty, Blow away on The softest breeze--Goodbye! For I was never Made to stand in The light of one Like you, so I am undone. What will I do? I do not know. But my love will Follow you on the wind Wherever you may go.
(For "Papa", from "Wildflower")

Angela
5/20/02

How an Intellect Survives
It gives its love In the natural time And takes pain to the heart Despite the hour To revise past endeavors As they wistfully wilt through apathy's eyes Incomprehensible cries To articulate It uncovers the lies To the next, and the next, and the next, To the us, and the them, and to all It sees only one Like an inspirer Circling the globe Unraveling, and undone It navigates Through caves in the dark And craters in the heart For behind its head, Is a map With all roads leading back To their source Wherein lies the hope And defense The mind Now speak yours, While the world revolves And devolves It is time.

The Power of a Voice
Command of me what you will I have learned to listen To your slow deep breaths Like roads untamed They roam through small mountains and circle quiet, desert lakes Where creatures small embrace and kiss your wily words to bless their rescuing effects for all that was foreign and once claimed dead is now beseeched to lie awake breathing memories to stir and break// I know what restless passions apprehend these wild rooms your travels would elude in this mistake of present comprehensions Where violence stirs a heart to sound LOUD as the wind you once carried through crowds on dusty, open peaceful nights// Let the faults crack away our loss of years, our timely rakes, and plows to war Formed now by enemies Underground// Let us live instead on stale bread, fortuitous On gales and Gusts of wind the old, forgotten strife to mend Entreating every crevice towards the end of woe with your breath against this sin Not calm another year, this year// As I listen to the howling now though your footsteps speak no more The echo of you is long and bare And one would cry just to soften the earth until no heart is spared to listen to your imprint , ending once our love affair with death made silent, longing, and struggling for the air. []

Worried Mind
The illness was a new thing. Not new to humanity, but new to her // It was no mystery As when a child senses fear, and cries We know the reason But we cannot eradicate the cause // It came and went In waves Brought on by distress External.// The nightmares which were not her own Spurred them-selves on. In darkness, She was the light of all lights The mother of all mothers.// And so she carried that illness, that Distress for them; for her children Close to her heart, And it pained her // But in her own body of water She was a mystic, a saint, a wanderer. She was what the elders had become: a resurrection. []

Faith in a Love, to Be
If ever I thought he once cared not, while walking through these clouds of doubt where shelter broods and breeds contempt// I would shudder at that thought seeping through the hourglass of night, without his arms to wrestle me as caged birds do their own captivity whispering, beckoning an insecurity toward flight … // If ever I heard he listened not, while calling deeply in his ear where time would stop all history of fear I would still feign to promise all my closed, destructive thoughts, and replace them with his as my other mind has caught "Hear not, my sorrowed one who broods, and breeds un-believed, and so distraught."// It is all some little birds can do to seek solace in familiar language, That which they wrought But open is the rock where flocks of his would stand coming clean with his hands even as he fights his war with me and all the others cracked alike in youth lonely as the sea// Though his words might fade, in battle to wash another of their grave his message speaks everlasting, Though to some still unheard as knights are to a knave… "To righten the earth with your presence is what I am told, by me, will be and you must listen to wisdom when it speaks to you as it does to me…"
Three poems by
Anna Libet Archives

Will you reclaim our destiny?

Three Poems

Surviving the Instinct
Twenty angry wolves Roam howling through the streets Preying on the weakness of mind and flesh Yours they have chosen To roam without fear For they sense your craving For tribal engraving Marking this victim endangered Smooth grins show sharp fangs Waiting to devour Your innocence of better judgment As it creeps away Frightened by solitude The wandering emptiness Where no one belongs Resolve collapses Ravaged to the bone Hollow cheeks white eyes shaking hands Obey nerves in raw torment Grasping the box of weak comfort The twenty beasts now beyond your control You bite your own feeding your own But the ashes in your lunges settle their disease In your eyes In Your heart hungry for air Night's black hole ties rings around your throat Rings of fire Howling screaming In this ritual sworn to kill The nomad within seeks A meditative trance To revolve your mind away from death's dance But the wolves breathe fire into you When the pack lights you up It is a break in your light The fragments The sound Are the echoes of your rebellion The vibrations of every faulted emotion Now muted in the fill of its hot desert death A sound of your clan Brings shame to your lips As you hear your mother calling "Come home, come home" Clutching to the tragedy You still cling to your youth As you run up the stairs Where safety embraces Breathing in breathing out It takes all your strength To break away from the fall From the moon From the wolves As you watch them dying alone.

The Betrayal
I walk into the room Through the doorway Beneath the romance Of the lights That were ours Once It is walking through all the doorways of denial I remember Till I found the lock That sealed my dread My despair My faith smothered under our pillow Where another man laid his head Is this someone else's house For I fear that it was never my own And I walk through the door again Over and over Whispering, "Come to bed" As I always have But there is no answer For there is no bed And no romance under This glare of infraction You inflicted But what a sacred fool I was To be burned by the darkness I created Where you were alone Neglected And now I am alone Vanquished And as the threshold escapes us Truth speaks through the glass For within these walls The betrayer is betrayed
Two poems by
Anna Libet
5/13/02

"Your Place in My Heart"
Someone came over last night Someone with no name and no face Someone with no past and no meaning Someone with no feeling, no affiliation, no bond// I talked for hours to the nameless, faceless, meaningless shape Before I took him to bed wondering who is the stranger here?// That is what I have to say today Hiding, hiding, hiding Behind my walls Underneath my bed Slithering away into the night Like some guilt-ridden dream Relieved to be awake We are in the morning And all is right again// But years from now, this is what I will have to say// My married ex-lover came over last night The man with every name and every face The man of my past and the man of my meaning The man with tortured feeling, deep affiliation, bonded forever.// It will be another decade before I talk to his shape But before I put him to bed I wonder who are these friends? That forgot to say, I love you.// If we could only tell the truth without telling it That's what we pretended, that's what we said.

Another Life In another life
you would be mine. In another world, we would be happy together. In another universe, we could do it all over again. We could be the images of ourselves We could be the ideal. In heaven, we could be saved. In hell, we could be educated. On the other side of the sun We could eclipse our desire On the dark side of the moon We could wage war If time could stop We would be frozen together If time could begin again We would melt into change Perhaps with a love like ours We need another earth - the one that we created.[]
Anna Libet
5/27/02

Face of an Epidemic Whatever happened to Cancer Alley? Nested in a forgotten place A diluted, polluted tragedy Scientifically blamed on poverties vices Waits High profile champions Rallied its cause, bringing light To darkened, isolated rooms Evidently they sit in pools of chemical waste Where foul illness breeds And pleads its case But how different its place Relative to more enlightened spots Suddenly wise to the cause Advantage uncovers A temporal savior from stagnating rivers They rest for the moment on an elevated fate Scientifically blamed on mysterious toxins They don't have to wait To avoid an escaping prodigal mutation Equally inflicted Unequally treated Of pustules and sores - Some quiet and scarred Some angry and spreading And flowing with tears A true diagnosis sees multiple wounds Never unburdened by our disregard They all look the same on a weary face Revealing a mindset of deeper illness That will mercilessly resurrect all the others…
by
Anna Libet

How Innocence Dies Raincoats, turnkeys And tourniquets Tightropes and spider-webs How Fragility falls Into innocent graves At first stumbling, fumbling Shaking and sticky Locked in an intruders unyielding grasp They lie helpless Choked by a misery's vengeance Strangled is their happiness Through lessons of pain and deception Let the games begin Fighting to cross love's non-existent lines Where pride assembles in crowds Watching their demise - A paradoxical flight To a ruined image Between birth and death They do not run down a future But wastefully elevate to jaded skies Full of needles Puncturing the naïve smiles So sweet and slowly they bleed Without opening Into a labyrinth of shrinking acceptance Controlled by red-hot siphons of mistrust They will give up To the bitter end Clinging to a moments revolt Of immunity and hope Just before they close their eyes Forever denied And buried.

Lost Without You
It's hard to see your horizon Without the ocean before it Deep and frightening//
Just as it's hard to dream Without drowning In fears of living Without you to protect me//
Once we strayed from the shore Lost in immense waves Predictably breaking us down until It was too late to exchange navigations You had gone//
And when I saw you swimming away To save yourself, I blamed you Not nature for my treacherous, And mistaken wanderings// Now the horizon is no longer yours And I weather all storms alone As a selfish creature Devouring the life of the sea. []

PARTING THE SEA IN AFRICA

Deep in a Continent Cyclical tyrannies put their feet up trading away the earth for greed/ 'Go fetch me my cane', they bark 'I'm feeble but not dead yet.'/ I watch them all day long limping backwards Waving that cane like the enemy/ 'Go fetch me my gun I can still drool at the hunt I just can't stand this New world we're in A colossal whim breathing down your necks.'/ As chained, riled, useless men watch them, harnessed into passive death/ Amidst a crawling parasite of settlements looming in their foreign element rotting and bewildered parting to the sea/ 'Go run, you strange animals this is our domain now as old as I am in this new jungle.'/ They tore themselves down Dreaming of these civil outposts: a money-making machine driving out all life forms stooped and wretched down to the dead trails parting to the sea/ And I watch them all day long tearing back and forth waving pens to account their sins; A dream with Europe's consciousness written all over it/ It is as useless as I will always be now, caged by white ivory powerless as a dead lion, haunting men from beyond the grave/ Go us, with our lazy gut, We are ruinous, and without sense Run, and fetch a retreat for that back to our cold, white world sulking in our lonely waterways in our own destruction parting to the sea… []
by
Anna Libet

In Support of Silence
Eyes, eyes, eyes, What do they see? The face down carefully The floor making friends The walls rising up In me// Can they see the years I've spent avoiding The reasons why I don't buy flowers Or make the bed Or take a drive down the coast To romantic caves in the rocks// The hands fold to resign Can they see the scars? From the years I've spent working To atone for poverty Separated lives A Father's disappearance A Mother's disapproval A failed bout with middle class norms // Are they looking at the awkward smile? Of a young naïve girl, flustered I must look so insecure To them With their peering kindnesses And their silent hugs// Do they know I hold a geyser? Hot with steam That would have killed those years Brought down the house My parents hearts Had I chosen to let it // Don't they know it's too late to reinvent The force that keeps the water underground? That cares Not about the us Or sharing wisdom Or shedding tears But about the woman Who has lost the sense In dropping fruit on others' fields Who has grown too old To bother reliving the heartache// How long will they wait For these eyes to look around offering a hope of openness As I close the lids a little further down The wounds are tired Of being inspected The blood is the blood Let them watch and wonder
by
Anna Libet

--All poems copyrighted--

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About Anna Libet
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