Featured for Fall: Mia Alessandra

Of herself Mia Alessandra writes:

I have been writing for as long as I can remember. It has served alternately
as escape, refuge, solitude, and love. If it were not for the power of words in
my life, I would have much less of an appreciation or passion for the every day
moments that make up the fabric of my life. Words weave and hold me together
like a security blanket, and in utilizing them I have been both warmed and been
set free. 

Nitrogen

Days like this I miss you the most–

Watching the rain wash the world,

Having my head bounce in rhythm to the shaking walls.

Boom.

Boom!

BOOM!

Last night I dreamed about Adam Levine.

He held me like you did that time at Walgreens…

Like that time at the soccer field.

He didn’t quite know the spot that felt the coziest.

I wish you were here to hold me the right way.

We’d stand in the doorway wrapped in blankets

Watching the rain wash the world

Sticking our tongues out at each other and

Receiving a bath of acid rain.

There’s nothing sexier than soaked clothes

Revealing everything–

Even hearts beating in rhythm with the thunder

Under thin chests speckled with goosebumps.

I can be struck by this kind of behavior.

I am the victim of a lightning strike of passion,

And I’m liking the side effects.

Nitrogen charging the Earth and our souls,

Soaked muscles tightening in anticipation of what will
come.

We are the brain child of lightning and thunder

And our rain tastes sweet on the lips of others.

I can see the electricity in my periphereal vision–

The flash of a triple lightening explosion.

He’s  jealous of the things we’ve done.

He tried to mach our voltage and failed.

Iron and Wine is playing in the background.

It entertains our wandering thoughts.

I want to kiss your rain soaked lips.

We don’t have to be in love to do this…

But it would help.

We are going to have amazing lives.

They will be like the movies.

They will have a soundtrack.

They will be separate.

I am lightening; you are thunder.

Someday I hope we’ll meet

Under circumstances sweeter than the parting

I want it to be soon, but it will be later if ever

And if never, if you’re gone forever…

I’ll remember.

I’ll remember you in the thunderstorms.

I’ll remember you in my heart rhythm.

I’ll remember you in the musty smell of rain

Which affects me more than any endorphine.

I’ll remember you in the lightening.

I’ll remember you in the rain.

I’ll remember you in times like this

Forever until you fade.

Unanswered Questions

I want to write a poem for this Place but I can’t find
the words to express

The excitement I feel at discovering new spaces, meeting
new faces,

And finding my place on the map. But I wish it was us.

I wish I could share it with you but it’s enough to for
me to know

That you fill the recess of my mind with what you
would say if we’d had more time.

So go live your life; know that I’m living mine,

And if some day our paths cross I hope that this time

I can look you in the eyes with mine dry and say,

‘I wish you the best.

I hope you find the girl that can witness

The amazing person I was able to see if only from a
distance

Of looking through the brokenness another left behind

And seeing past the flaws to a brighter state of mind.

Please know that I love you for the person you are

And I’ll always hold on to the times that we shared.’

But right now I’m hurting and the words would be false

So I’ll retreat to my silence and create my own distance

I hate to be here in this place and position

But my mind has been filled with unanswered questions

Like,

What happened to the values transcending unrealistic
ideals of romanticism?

Criticims of who we are face us daily in the mirror

And we don’t like what we see.

They call our lives the human race because we’re on the
fast-track to erase

The evidence that we ever felt anything at all.

What happened to the time when our Fathers were our all?

I want to grab my bat and ball

And call over my shoulder to the Father, now gone,

‘Come on, Dad. I’m on the front lawn and I’m waiting for
you.

I’m tired of the other boys that don’t know what you do–

That think a grope is a hug and third base is something
you touch rather than run to.

I want to go back to the time  when my world was as
big as you…’

Five feet ten inches; I remember my hands were the size
of dated sidewalk imprints.

What happened to a striving or a passion or a struggle,

A cause to be devoted to more than just the cause for
survival?

Our primal instincts are to be the best that we can

But if we slow down and breathe for awhile maybe we’d
understand

That most of our best moments were when we were at our
lowest

And we let a friend be strong in place of us… just
once.

What happened to the energy we all had as children?

We only lost that because we lost something to believe
in.

We’re told magic isn’t real but I know that true love
exists

And if that isn’t magic than I don’t know what is.

What happened to respect for the ears of our elders?

Everything is fuck this and fuck that to prove we’re not
sheltered

But there’s beauty in responses that are free of our
cussing

So why don’t we try to use language and say fuck to
fucking?

What happened to the innocence of hands held and kisses
kissed?

Degenerating instances surround circumstances I once
thought were true.

I don’t know what’s real anymore but I know what I’ve
been through,

And I’ve learned that my mind is see-through around you.

So I’ve learned to avoid you

Because I’m tired of the fallacies surrounding our
attemptes to move on.

Honesty and sincerity are all but gone

In an attempt to find ourselves again–

I want to call after you, “Please, Love, come back
to me.

We’ve lost so much time playing grown-ups and make
believe

I wish I could be all that you want me to be

But I can’t change who I am in the hope that you’ll love
me.”

So we’ll make love on a bed made with sheets of regret.

I say we ‘make love’ but it’s really just sex;

I look over your shoulder as you kiss my neck

To the girl on the wall who you’d rather be with.

So I’ll close my eyes and retreat to my silence

Silently repeating to myself and the darkness,

‘The relevance of innocence is in a sense gone

And abstinence has been remiss and we have moved on

To lies that keep us satisfied until the orgasm ends

And we return to being puppets in a play of pretend.’

Creativity is shunned and the world has become infused by
sex

Instead of word poems that seek to express and give voice
to who we are

Rather than who we sleep with. Yet I believe that love
exists

And ‘true’ and ‘loyal’ are with love interchangeable
because without one

The other ceases to exist in pure form. This love is rare
for the forlorn

But it is my solemn vow to find what’s left of it on the
horizon.

Every Sunday I hold a three-month-old. Looking into his
eyes I know

That his world is no bigger than my hope that he survives
in the unknown.

Singing him gently to sleep with all the sincerity I
could muster

It reminded me of the time when your head was on my
shoulder

And for a brief instant we were completely together.

My world was no bigger than your voice teasing me to
sleep.

Now that your voice has ceased I’m looking for something
bigger than you and me

There are greater goals in the world than searching for
the next fix of locked lips

And yes, I do miss you so

Why do you think I chose this song for this poem

I miss your laughter and the the feel of my hands as you
hold them

I miss the blue in your eyes but lately I’ve had to draw
on my memory

Because I can’t remember the last time you looked at me

I cried with you once and I cared enough to wipe my tears
off your cheek

Rather than expose my heartstrings for you to pluck and
find weak

I am tired of the reverberation of questions regarding
bad timing

I realized last week you’re gone and in time we

Might be able to be friends but that would be pretend for
me

So I’m stopping here, saying, ‘Goodbye, please remember
me.’

I want to reach for the sky on the swing set at Penny

Warmed by the filtered sunlight of a friday-night twlight

Wrapping me with greater sincerity than your arms ever
could for me…

Because it was me.

What happened to my own sense of reality?

I’ve learned to define beauty by what you think and see

And I’ve since ascribed value to valueless things.

I’ve lost the love and respect that used to define me

Your absence and neglect only serve to remind me

That the words ‘I miss you too’ are too often misused

In the ruse of saying ‘I have no time to make time for
you.’

So I’ll pick up what’s left of my time

I’ll pound the pavement of this city searching for
something

Stronger than your lifeline and I’ll learn to rewind

Every regret (even the ones I haven’t had yet)

And I’ll define myself by the beauty you first saw when
you first saw me.

I’m tired of my sense of reality.

Filled with practicality…what happened to my journey

Of finding wide open spaces, new places and unique faces

Surrounding my cerebrum and always keeping it fresh?

One day I’ll learn that there is certain value in
unanswered questions

But for now I’m left behind you asking…”What the
hell happened?”

For Solitude

This is not for you.

This is for Solitude.

I went back to the place of the first night,

Yet tonight there was no moonlight–

Only dim orange glare and the drip, drip of a rain-bucket
reservoir.

You told me this is where your ex-girlfriend comes to
write poetry.

That made it real for me.

We climbed the willow and laughed at the awkward position
it put me in.

When it was time to get down, I was scared–like the kitten I always am.

Yet I would not let you help me. I was not ready to fall

Into your arms…In love.

If I crane my neck and turn my head just right I can see
a star

“…Light, star bright,

The first star I see tonight;

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have the wish I wish tonight.”

I reminisce…

We are back on that mountain

My car parked in the side of El Oro.

We see stars bright

We see stars die.

And on their death we make a wish

But I didn’t let you kiss me.

I wasn’t ready.

This is not for you.

This is for Solitude.

I don’t remember the night I fell in love with the idea
of us,

Just like I don’t remember the details of our first kiss

Because I didn’t know it’d be our last.

But in that moment, I realized,

Covertly sexy, you are my sublime catharsis

The quivering nexus to my solar plexus.

You are my wonder-bright obelus,

Dividing the walls that are between us.

And it is obvious that I love you.

Above you or below you I only seek to

Throne you in the castle of our wonderland.

And we’ll fight dragons with plastic swords.

I’ll stare them down with my eyes,

You’ll tame them with your words.

We’ll hold hands and make believe with childlike
innocence,

Our hearts beating with the resonance of divine
instruments.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The snap back to reality, realizing the narrative isn’t
real for me–

You didn’t want to be a part of my story.

But still, a girl can dream.

This is not for you.

This is for solitude.

And it’s solitude I embrace

Because it understands my mind.

I don’t have to expose myself to find

An emotional connection with an idea.

You were an onomatopoeia ‘splat’

On the canvas of my brain.

Even though some residue remains,

All my sources say that in time it fades.

And one day I’ll escape

From every memory that brings you back to me.

Every other corner of this city

Someday will release me.

But for now,

“I’m a creep.

I’m a weirdo,

What the hell am I doin’ here?

I don’t belong here…”

I wipe away a tear that found a track down my cheek

And get up and weave my way back toward the street

Secretly wishing I was back on the bear, on my car, in
your arms,

Observing a dying star

And wishing a different wish with a different attitute.

But this is no longer about you.

This is for solitude.

Withdrawl

I feel you.

Somewhere near my
imagination’s metaphorical sacrum,

You travel up my spine until you reach the back of my
mind’s eye.

You stop there.

Unaware that my body is craving more you stay glued to my
irises until,

Tired of this, I push you past my tear ducts and you are
now rolling down…

Down…

Down.

I taste you in my mouth.

My tongue used to dance in anticipation of the sweet salivation of your kiss.

Now it resists.

It recoils at the bitter contaminate that is you,

But still your liquid germinates a dry and barren plain

That hasn’t seen the light of day since its first kiss;

It appreciates this.

You have permeated everything from the neck up. People
say in my head I’m sick, but…

We know better. It is only you,

Riding the waves of my brain,

Controlling the patterns of my thought,

Sending messages like twisted effigies causing my muscles
to do things they otherwise would not,

Like loosening up and allowing you to invade more than my
cranial passageways.

You are still stored on the back of my tongue,

Which cannot decide if it wants to swallow or spew.

Let’s not give it time to reject you–

Glide down my throat quickly.

Let me digest all the ways we went wrong.

My esophagus squeezes all the excuses

That time pleased to place in my brain

And adds the necessary acid to make them refrain from
torturing me.

Still I feel you inside of me.

My bodily functions dysfunctionally attempt to expel you
from my being.

I’m not used to being bought with sweet words that taste
like honey

Yet sour in my stomach. You are my acid reflux.

Your burn, which used to be a fire of inexperenced bodily
commotion

Now reaches my legs and tingles like sewing needles

Embroidering endless poems of, “I love you. I miss
you.” along delicate flesh.

My flesh scars easily. It tells the story of me.

The time I cut my head open when I was three.

The time I skinned my knee on my tricycle.

The time vanity put a curling iron burn on my arm.

The time You left a hole in my heart.

A perfect circle right in the middle filled with all the
ways you used to attract me.

But, tiny and wounded as it is, It still beats.

My clogged arteries resound with your memory

Pushing it from my cardiac muscle and out to my
extremities.

You circulate in me.

They told me I had a heart murmur and I agreed.

My heart murmurs to me all the things I would be better
off not knowing–

Like why you chose to steal my first kiss and put it on
her lips?

Why you didn’t realize sooner that you didn’t like the
way I tasted to your mind?

Why you still insist on being in my life when you’ve
tried so hard to leave it?

So many questions. When did love become as dangerous as
addiction?

I haven’t had a dose of you in so long I’m starting to
lose your taste

My body is rejecting you as it tries to maintain stasis.

Places that once longed for your touch recoil at the
thought of the

Ridges of your fingertips coming into contact with my
amenities.

I no longer want your dead skin cells near me.

It’s a sad kind of relief because this addiction was
my sweet

Companion and shooting you into my veins made me less
lonely.

I guess you could call this my withdrawl.

I thought you were supposed to miss addiction–

Sweat, hyperventilate, and writhe until your next fix,

Exult when you get that first taste of it.

I thought that I’d take you forever,

But you don’t do the trick anymore.

I overdosed on you and

Instead of the genuine excitement I used to posses

At every playful text and heartfelt comment

 

Now…

 

I’m bored.

 

RAVEN DRAKE, Featured Poet for Spring 2011

Raven Drake is originally from Boston. Nine years ago he moved to Grant County, New Mexico where the mountains and open spaces have provided him with a great deal of inspiration. He started conjuring poetry when he was eleven years old. Within recent years his explorations of mythology and etymology have helped to fuel his writing ambitions.
 
Mr. Drake’s work has been featured in the 2004 Ink Spot Anthology of Poets, Las Cruces Poets and Writers Magazine, Tales of the Talisman, the Fall 2006 edition of Illumen magazine, the March 2007 edition of the ezine Aoife’s Kiss, and the Summer 2008 edition of the webzine La Lune Bleue Planete. Some of his newer material will be featured in the April and June 2009 editions of Decanto magazine, the June and December 2009 editions of Apollo’s Lyre and the August and October 2010 editions of Decanto.
 
Raven has held readings at the Silver City Public Library, the Bullard Street Bazaar, Jess Gorell’s Studio Space and Gallery, Isaac’s Bar and Grill, the Marshall Memorial Library in Deming, Air Café in Bayard and the Casa de la Cultura en Santa Clara.
 
His work reflects an ongoing exploration of and fascination with assorted mythic realms, and multi-dimensions of the imagination. For years, he’s been interested in poetry as an act of conjuration or spellcraft, taking as a given that archetypal space/time is fully inhabited with various aspects of the soul/self.
 
He is currently working on a more articulate vision of the myriad paradoxes and enigmas that exist within that barely visible continuum, giving shape to various psychic forces and attempting to manifest the often unseen, calling forth the unknown and perhaps unknowable into the realm of the known.

In the Shadows

It happened overnight
The city became an overripe money tree
A forest of overripe angels
Stinking up Heaven

It happened in our sleep
The city became an oven hatching primal fears
A desert of primal fears
And virtual tears

Strange lights emerged from the parks
Where ghostly shadows danced and embraced
Lovers bartered time for a kiss or a handshake
Strangers burned memories for food

On the other side
They drained an ocean to build a city
Where electric girls could escape in the summer
And give birth in front of flashing cameras

A ghost citizen hovered in the park
Bartering and baiting the light on an angel’s wing
Certain souls became content to wander
In dreams, in awe, between memories of spring

Fortunes were made and lost across nations
The streets were remade for shadows
Electric girl shadows roamed empty, silent malls
Built near abandoned parks and dream graveyards

Meanwhile in the cookie jars and libraries
Souls without voices communicated by fire
Air-dispensing robots inhaled the winds
Strange lights went off in their eyes

Small birds got caught in a sky machine
Suns were extinguished by the gatherers of daylight
Memories of school dances were exchanged for water
And photographs of electric girls in the winter

It happened in our hopes
The city became a haven for gangs of ghosts
A bought and sold memory
For strangers escaping the flesh

It happened in the shadows
The city became an open pit for the mall-bound
A streetless shadowland of overripe money lenders
And electric girls embracing ghosts
 
Written by © Raven Drake

Exile

Mother immortal, bride eternal
Beloved death of my body
You feed my hunger and starve my love
 
I embrace the pain you speak in the shadows
Summon ghosts to feed the terror in your eyes
Knowing that only the dread of you might keep me away
 
A wordless barb darting off your tongue
I was ejected from your mouth
My ancient syllables splitting from your scorn and silence
 
I remove my body from this shadow I carry
A memory, a mirror of your rejection
The one I embrace in dreams
 
I whisper to you, wind of a mother
As you scatter the remains of a healing hand
Fingers, bones thrown to the hounds of doom
Return the body of my youth
So that I may once again be your groom
 
I catch shadows of your smile
Still smell the odor of betrayal that spirals up from the bog and swamp
Your old hangouts
You are the only memory of daylight I have before the bombs fell
Before the clocks took over
 
Even the treachery of demons and thieves is no match for your silence
I find but then lose sight of your name
Written in blood between the pages of my eyes
 
I forsake the web of lies that is your love
This trivial pursuit of home and hearth
I toss your greedy laughter from my lips
When you break through
My body trembles, my sex eludes me
 
I have become a blur
Reshaped from the holy clay you smuggled
From the depths of sea and sorrow
 
Mother immortal, bride eternal
Return my voice and shadow
I can no longer sleep standing up in this open grave without you
 
Written by © Raven Drake
Published in Apollo’s Lyre

 

Bedlam



Bedlam devoured by man-made borders
No one remembers your sweet chaos
We hovered above the working bodies
Searching for centuries for your daughter

Daughter of Bedlam
You roam the market bleeding
Your sweet and sticky blood drops
Fertilize the dawn and bone dry pastures

Our eyes tease wonders from your ashes
The flesh you solicit provokes our doom
Your hair untied sends comets flying
But we still take refuge in your tomb

Sister Bedlam, Disorder’s daughter
You show up late for every slaughter
Your graveyard dancing brings life to order
Drowning forest fires in torrential waters

Mother Bedlam, the dreamlord’s bad gene
You taint the half light with the dread of night
Your tireless fingers jam fatal triggers
And draw out voices from brain-dead singers

Your widow’s wisdom resides in hearts made cheaper
In the germ fed brains of wall street bankers
You tour the vaults and drive the galleys
Homeless vagrants wear your face in city alleys

Bedlam brought forth by cemetery prowlers
No one doubts your impenitent will
It is not our right to rule your weather
We peak only to wither with every thrill

Bedlam driven to boredom by hope and freedom
Someone calls out to your waiting shadow
He whispers his cold winter song of exaltation
And you arise like a black sun, a shiny new catastrophe
For the wandering hordes of exiled nations
 

Written by © Raven Drake

 

From The Air

I remember when we could find words for her
The whole neighborhood knew her name
On Monday it was hope or expectation
By Friday it was disaffection
A forlorn bride with a loaded gun

She could wear love’s shadow down
Swallow the sun between sighs
She responded to no name on Sundays
Exchanging the breath of desire
For the silence of a quenched fire

I remember when we needed no religion to persuade her
She would appear in our dreams on time
At noon she wore the face of a straggler
By twilight she became a mother
The first and last without a cause

She dug out bowers with a hook
Yanked asteroids from the air
Cried an ocean between centuries
Unearthing the seeds of germ-war fear

I remember when we could call out for her
Without false echoes resounding
The tempests of Heaven spoke with her voice
At one world’s end her words were small
At the birth of Hell on Earth
They overshadowed mountains

She could promise you a life without death
But she wasn’t very good at lying
She returns souls to their proper homes
Some are rented and some are owned
But by forever they are hers to loan
 
Written by © Raven Drake
Published in Apollo’s Lyre