Good morning. Wednesdays are what I affectionately call “Therapy Thunder Dome” (would have a better ring if it were “Therapy Thunder Dome Thursdays” but we work with what we have). So since my little peabrain will be too tired to blog well (as if my rested brain does it ‘well’) I’m recycling an old poem from a supposed former contributor. Here’s what I what once wrote:

“Today’s poetry comes to us from a former and continuing contributor to The Beautiful Stuff’s Poetry Anthology. Ms. Byrne has a knack for gripping the guts with her poetry and, as an almost graduated student at the University of Boulder, she is finding her way with a powerful voice in the world.

Elliana spends her days reading (sometimes for fun…most times for class), daydreaming, and writing. She studies English Lit and dabbles in short stories and poetry when possible. She enjoys life best curled up with a good book and her cat, Gil. You can read her work in last year’s anthology “No Small Things” (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1692331558/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1“

The truth is that I am Elliana Byrne. And I used the pen name because some of the poems I had written felt too visceral to put out into the world. But after having gone through this last year, I’ve realize life is nothing but visceral and I don’t have a problem trying to hide the gory truth of what it sometimes means to be human in all of our messy failings. So…please enjoy, and think about what masks you’ve worn, and if maybe, in light of these lives of ours being unbelievably short, if it’s time to take them off, and just be unapologetically you.

And now this:

Clean Slate

I want to wipe away 
the grievances of your skin
and its heated strokes against mine
and darken the unforgiving universes 
of your eyes
that know and
do not know me

But the treasonous mind
casts wayward glances,
over shoulders turned cold
and the love and ache of wounds
that should be healed over
still echo in weakening heart beats

this disloyal heart
casting out lines 
into currents that have battered the boards 
of my ship
and sunk it deep, 
where it now lies 
desolate and quiet a tomb
on the ocean floor
waiting, in vain,
for a tug of interest

treacherous
and dissonant soul 
vibrating in time
to the sound of yours
even when the harmonic waves
shake my teeth and
dislodge my brain
and seize my nerve endings

I will sit in this heavy deep
and wait
for reason or worse
divinity
to tell me how
to clean you off
by needle or by blade
I will close my eyes,
turn my back
and huddle in
to the shipwreck of me
and cut lines
until
i bleed clean
again