how many tattoos
before I’ve said all
I need to say about me?
etched into my skin
definitions I don’t want
to forget.
when I’m seventy I won’t regret
having been inked,
even if wrinkled and faded,
they’re lost in the folds.
I’ll pull my skin tight
and there
I am.
I won’t ever be lost to myself.
by LISTENTOTHEBABE
© All rights reserved 2015
What happens beyond ‘They lived happily ever after’?
Ever since Pinocchio lied to the customers 9-to-5,
under the terms of his employment contract.
Now his nose doesn’t provoke peals of laughter,
Pinocchio’s settled down and even has half a mind to wive.
Yes, Pinocchio achieved everything… but something he has lacked.
That’s why on Sundays he secretly runs away to the wood,
leans against a tree and whispers silly tall tales.
He strikes roots, he revels in blissful repose…
And with foolish raptures, like in childhood,
Pinocchio looks at two magpies with long tails
that have nestled down to gossip on his branchy nose.
by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2016
here I stand upwind
with a dead bird in my hands
in barren Eden
and look at the sore plucked backs
of my deserting brothers
I yell after them
“omens are a pile of crap!
who can blame people
if hosts of heaven act like
credulous aborigines?”
wind snatches my words
and mixes them up with sand
nobody believes
that cold grey ash in my hands
is an arising phoenix
by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2016
unbolt me 