3 Poems by Linda M. Crate

broken and bleeding

this moment
i hate with the passion
of a thousand suns,
just being here brings back
bad memories that haunt and cling
like barnacles of the sea; i wish
i could will it all away —
not everyone gets all their bad choices
thrown in their face time and time
again as i do, as if all the good things
i've ever done or will don't matter
as if they never will; i hate this place of
winter and snow, this domicile i have
that is without you —
judgments rain down upon me harsher than
God's, and they call themselves Christian
i thought Christ was love
not ripping people to pieces as they do
like carrion feasting on the flesh of their fallen brothers;
voice drowned out by their wind, i'm subject
to their mercy time and time again
not once did they ask how i felt and it took them
two months to notice the depths of my sadness and loneliness
of missing you —
there was a day where i shown scarlet sunset
in autumn, once we kissed so passionately it startled the leaves
off the trees; i miss the girl i was that moment,
i miss those times i spent with you
truly i wish i could be trapped inside that still frame
if only to prevent my heart from breaking in
this place of jagged rocks and snow.


dusty granite

you were my jewel that sparkled in
the sun, a shimmering diamond to cut
through the deepest pits of my despair -
yet today suddenly you grew colder
than a winter's wind and so aloof
that i could barely stand by your side;
i rather doubted that you'd notice my
absence so transfixed as your mind was
on other things that you would not share -
i sucked in a dozen tomorrows waiting
for the answer of today, but all you gave
me was a handful of granite and dust.


burning

shadows burn me in their stare, crows scowl at my voice. i wonder what manner of monster i am to make the whole of the universe despise me so. twist and bend and break and shatter only to repeat the same cycle another day, a different order. i must take after my father, they tell me he was a beast. oblivion sings me nightmares only stars can remember, i shudder the circumference of trees. once i shown like gold shimmering in the stillness of waters waves, now i am charred crimson turned to rusty black of fallen angel's wings. every night i burn, every night i fall again. i wonder if sometimes life is hard because it has to be or because we live in some video game the politicians play, whose cords won't be so easily broken as the music i shove away to the back of my mind when it rains.


Bionote

Linda Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh, but she was raised in the rural town of Conneautville. She attended and graduated from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English-Literature in 2009. Her poetry, articles, reviews, and short stories have appeared in several journals online and in print.