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Phillis Lovefred Poem
The last living souls on Earth
will be the ones who lie and deceive.
Humans have painted a portrait of
humanity that exemplifies the worst of us,
and instead of hiding it away,
have turned it into a museum.
One painting to represent one body of work.
Humanity has forced itself into evil;
Cheating and lying and scamming and stealing
to get out of what we have created ourselves.
The last living souls on Earth
will be the ones who ripped humanity’s heart
out, attempting to meld it into a kidney.
Essential, but easily replaceable.
And trust,
It will be replaced.
Copyright © Phillis Lovefred | Year Posted 2021
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Phillis Lovefred Poem
A life short-lived, but a life lived regardless
A cavalcade of those once loved marching backwards
Black light glinting through the eyes of the ephemeral
A shining, black casket filled not with despair, but hope.
An ephemeral hope, but hope nonetheless.
Copyright © Phillis Lovefred | Year Posted 2021
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Phillis Lovefred Poem
I am a dog: panting, suffocating, dying
Clawing at the door of the car
You trapped me in.
I am the next act of the play you’re watching;
You knew I was coming, but you chose to
Leave the venue before I came on stage.
I am all the days that you choose to ignore
I am the Sundays, the Mondays, the Tuesdays,
And the Wednesdays, but never the Thursdays or
The Fridays.
I am never the relief, never the sun, never the spring,
Never the hot tea on a cold day.
Instead, I am the dying dog trapped inside
your car, the worst part of the movie,
The disappointing end to the book you’re reading:
I am never what you look forward to.
I am the cat on its ninth life, the tortoise thrown
Into the bottom of the lake, the tiger with its
Teeth torn out.
I am nothing, nothing but trying
Trying to break the glass that covers your frame,
But instead of broken glass I am left only with broken hands,
Bleeding and broken from the picture,
The picture that I couldn’t be in.
Copyright © Phillis Lovefred | Year Posted 2021
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Phillis Lovefred Poem
It’s dark.
The sky is a mixture of deep navy blues
and dirt browns. Stars are littered across the sky,
Thrown out by passersbys unnoticed,
Impossible to see without looking.
I am sitting on a swing.
There is no one in this park except me,
And it’s just barely sprinkling:
The first instances of a storm incoming.
My eyes are on the dirt below the swing.
My feet move back and forth, creating
An ugly pile of misplaced soil that would
Otherwise have been smooth.
My eyes feel wet. I can’t tell if it’s
the rain, or if it’s me, or if it’s my
hair, soaking from the heavy
showers that happened earlier.
You walk in.
You are standing behind the swingset
From a comfortable distance, staring
At my back as I look into the soil,
Sitting on the swing, unmoving.
Hair soaked, eyes wet, and unmoving.
You stand still for a bit.
You can imagine the sounds the swing
Would be making if I were moving.
But it’s just echoes of the children
Who were there yesterday.
Happy, hair dry, eyes glistening, running.
Then me,
Hair soaked, eyes wet, and unmoving.
You walk away.
Copyright © Phillis Lovefred | Year Posted 2021
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Phillis Lovefred Poem
I built the Machine. So did my friends.
So did my parents, and so did theirs.
People I don’t know built the Machine, too.
We all helped build the Machine.
The Machine helps us.
A line stretches a long while. We are all at the Machine,
And it will give us our daily order.
After waiting a while, I get to the front of the line
And I have arrived at the Machine, which my friends,
My parents, their parents, people I don’t know, and I built.
I click a button and out comes a receipt, reading
“Do [X] today to earn [Y]. Have a good one!”
I am unsurprised. I take out the receipt I received yesterday, reading
“Do [X] today to earn [Y]. Have a good one!”
I go back home. When I arrive home,
I look up. There is a corkboard on the wall lined with
receipts, all reading the same thing.
“Do [X] today to earn [Y]. Have a good one!”
I wonder why the machine says that.
Nobody programmed the machine to do it.
There is frequent maintenance done on the machine.
We don’t know who does the maintenance, but we assume
that it is someone qualified to do it.
My neighbor once tried to get a job at maintenance, but
He was rejected immediately. I want to wonder who works there,
But I don’t have time. It must be someone qualified, I thought.
A sentinel flies past my window. It retraces its flight
and arrives back in front of me. My face is blank.
I already did [X] today. I assume it is here to deliver [Y].
The sentinel taps my window and I open it.
A dark, gray claw hands me a receipt. My face is still blank.
I say nothing. The sentinel does not blink, and neither do I.
The sentinel flies away to give a receipt to my neighbor.
I look down. Holding the receipt up to a looking distance, and I open it.
“Your receipt for [Y]. Please enter it into
the Machine tomorrow to receive it.”
I looked behind me. The corkboard.
It all says the same thing.
My face was blank. And my mouth was a straight line.
Since then, it had slowly curved downward.
The machine told me to have a good one.
But today, I didn’t.
Did I ever?
Copyright © Phillis Lovefred | Year Posted 2021
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Phillis Lovefred Poem
you broke my
heart.
but you were too far away
to stitch it back
together.
Copyright © Phillis Lovefred | Year Posted 2021
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