Death Not Poetry

Death stalks my sisters,
And I, having courted death all my life long
Know if I were given a death sentence
I'd feel relief that it had now been taken
Out of my hands, my need for relief from the illness
The longing for relief from the illness stalking me
Finally done with living, done with pain, done with
Longing dead at last

Yet I take the drugs that keep me going
Without which my heart would kill me
My mind would have killed me long ago
Gassed like Sylvia poisoned by the life I'd led
The bad bad bad daddies and my only Mother
The genes I carried for crazy crazy crazy hearing
Voices of grief so filled with sorrow
There is no room left for life

I'll take to my bed with a book and read this sad life away

©2010 Peggy Pendleton

Sisters (for Jojo)

We are sisters under the skin
We are members of a tribe of knife wielding women
Fierce in our understanding of trust and what it doesn't mean
Betrayal becomes the thing we do to keep from ever being left again
Or vulnerable or lost or used again and tossed away like a used condom
Like the scalpel, like the stirrups, like the old man looking who says
"Mind if I give it a go?"

©2010 Peggy Pendleton

Robert Graves I Covet

This link... turned me into a thief
Perhaps I always was a thief coveting
That which I never had like that poem The Cool Web
The one by Robert Graves who lived on the island I coveted
In that one too short day exploring Majorca. May I not live here too?
Why only you?

In 1965 it was the place to take my breath away
The sheer beauty of it all, the men slitting glances so like
Predator and prey. And you were there writing love poems on that day
Like the cool web the island cast on me. Writing love poems to whom?
Why not to me? Had I only known then what I know now, I would have left the ship
and looked for you. Why not me too?

©2010 Peggy Pendleton