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Best Poems Written by Rose Melo

Below are the all-time best Rose Melo poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Rose Melo Poem

A Creator Variation: 1, Part 1

A Creator Variation (1)

Part I:
When I was four and
You, precognizant either of our DNA or
An epidemic rippling through the stomach fat of the nation,
Enrolled me in gymnastics, I was
Not so young that I didn't know
My preferences.
More specifically, I knew that
Bounding the trampolined length of the room was fun and
So were skin-the-cats
(Despite the overtly cruel, cruel name).
Days when the heavens-bound rings dropped to
Lift our feet in one, brief swing of fairyhood
Were treasured as one might costume jewelry,
Or as the memory of that lump of brown sugar,
Tasted just once, when mother thought it would satisfy
Rather than create a craving.
Some authorities discourage letting your child flip
And tumble with abandon, while 
We breathed more breaths as
Our young, disadvantaged lung capacity struggled
To keep pace with our bouncing.

But balance beam days were bad days.
When you can still walk under the balance beam without
Ducking or concussing yourself, I don't see why
They make you clamber atop it twice a week when
You're just going to fall.
After us kids had enough of braining and winding ourselves,
We would swing from the beams,
Suffering the sand paper because we preferred
To land on our feet.
We felt quite capable of walking in a straight line,
But sensibly we did it on the ground.

Details | Rose Melo Poem

Inventory I

What have you stolen?
What tic, what response from me
did you palm and put in your pocket?

What have you stolen?
Did you collect the bits of paper you tore off
and paste them back together
on a blank page of your notebook?

Did you use the shreds as easter grass,
or as packing material?
Did you do something useful with them?

What have you stolen?
Do you cherish the fragments you’ve collected?
Do you have something fond to look back on?

What have you stolen?
Was it my eyelashes? my nerve endings?
my proprioception? my cartilage?
my chewed-off fingernails?

Do you keep a formaldehyde jar-full
of my intestines?
Do you hide them in a rotting shoebox?

What have you stolen?
Did I ever have something so precious
that you had to sever it from me to keep for yourself?

What have you stolen?
Was it difficult to choose?
Was it difficult to carry?
Was it difficult to hide it from me when I came looking?

Did you take everything from me
that you meant to?
Was it worth the effort?

Details | Rose Melo Poem

What I Meant To Say

What I meant to say was...

I'm sorry, and
I miss you,
And I forgive you and I hate you
I meant to tell you that I want to work it out 
between us,
And it could never work between us, 
because
There's this thing between us,
Though you have my whole and soul
I listen for your whisper at night,
All day,
I sickly dread crossing paths
I promise you I meant to talk to you again,
Unless I got in my way
I cry to you, at you, sometimes for you
But nevermore in front of you
You've made me stronger than that, though
I do love you
I meant to tell you that you're scum

What I meant to tell you was that
I can still feel your love
Your lies
Your kiss
Your sighs
The quiet way you left me in the night
Or the messy way I ripped you from my side
Your wish to die
Your guilt, my guilt, my lies
Nevermore I want to cry

What I meant to say is I'm drawn to you
For love of danger, or neglect
Not for love of myself (or is it?)

What I meant to say is that I love you,
But I choose me.

Details | Rose Melo Poem

Blind Faith

And the people were fascinated by the
sssa!
Lava touches water,
cools.
Water heats.
Water wraps its hands around the melting
earth, to choke it, smash it, crush it.
Reduce it to its powerless state.
Then
sssa!
Earth and water consume each other.
Water, flown apart, simply rises.
Earth must be quelled, drawn downward.  Gravity does this.
And the people only see the
sssa!
The people bring a lunch, make a day of it, camp out.
And soon, the people cook over the earth’s heat.
The sun would blister their backs, make them
fester, make them
cook like lobsters,
but the sun gave up.
And the people let their eyes blister away, just
staring
at the inner earth,
listening.
Concerned only for the coming of the
sssa!
And the elements mingled, found each other
in the earth, melting.
Then found each other again
as noxious vapors.
And the people sat devoutly as their
eyes, ears, and fingertips
melted.
Now.  There is no more
sssa!
Water has won its upward passage,
winding mistily towards a more celestial target.
The people sit.  Still.
No eyes but burn marks, still singeing outwards.
No ears to speak of, no tongues to hear.
And the people believe.
The people still hear the
sssa!

Details | Rose Melo Poem

A Cold Question

Alaska
Is what her parents named her
Cause when her parents named her they were baked
I think that
They must have had a premonition
Cause I'm sittin' round here wishing
Her excuses weren't half-baked

But when the air turns cold
I think I'll ask her once again

Alaska
Is what her parents called her
But who would want a daughter cold as ice?
And although
I've begged her to reconsider
I'm doubting she'll deliver
Cause the summer's not so nice

But when the air's no longer gold
I'll ask her once again

Snow is convenient
For sledding and skiing
For playing but not for keeping in your heart
Alaska, sincerely, I'm waning, I'm freezing
To sleep or to death

Before we even start
Before we even start
Before we even start
Resuscitate me, please restart my heart

Alaska
Has a problem with commitment
No kidding

But when the air turns cold
I think I'll ask her once again

Details | Rose Melo Poem

The Jig Is Up

When Irish eyes are smiling,
And the gymnast smile extends to curve her petal-red lips,
That's when she'll let her waves fall down with the grace of 
a faerie.

If in a wheat field the sheathes would glow ember's 
orange,
And the stalks rippled hypnotically in the air's current,
Under the sparkling current then you'd know,
Sunna was making things in her own image,
And that Freyr sent my love.

She came to the North --
Well, going east really -- to train dogs,
But instead she found this puppy.
This lost puppy with this transmutable, caravanical home.
And he rolled onto his back and pouted and stuck out his 
tongue,
Although she had not come North looking for love.

The gadje girl couldn't find a caravan with open doors, but 
it was okay
Because she housed the puppy in this chamber.
She'd been using the space, but she was sure the puppy 
wouldn't encroach
On that vital process.

I had long hair but hers was longer,
Especially when she'd release the current to drift warmly 
through my belly.
That petal-red, crescented acrobat would swing lazily 
through the air,
And slowly bring her arc briefly tangential to my own, easy 
fool's smile.

I'd trail my finger across her milky surface,
Tracing declarations I hoped would not simply ripple out 
to rejoin the glassy surface.
Someday.
My trailings would sometimes provoke a peal of laughter,
My professions mistaken for a frog or a fish
Unnoticed until the water plinks at its reentry.

Dark black Faerie had followed her to Finland.
But it did not try to tempt me with its own bruise-like 
stain,
Nor would it taint ribbons of rot through the wheat 
sheathes.
It took on her guise and sunny disposition, unnaturally,
And to this hazy realm I found myself drawn.

It was a summer season and I,
Surrounded by sun near the top of the world,
Craved to be in sunspot's queer shadow.
But the heavenly sun moved on in her orbit and my 
earthly sun neared again,
And I noticed the cracked guise of Faerie could not 
illuminate my nights.
The pale moon-reflection grew paler with strife.

Sunbeam's full-blooded heart closes around something 
and feels constricted.
Her puppy has become parasitic and clots her chamber 
now.
He punches through walls because he knows
The jig is up, but footwork won't work now that he's 
worked up.

She'll see me and beam upon me for a moment,
A blinding, binding, tortuous moment.
The North is pretty desolate this time of year.

Details | Rose Melo Poem

Scientific Treatise

If love is a chemical reaction in the 
brain
If attraction is simply chemistry
If the right substances binding and 
exploding,
Combining and conquering,
Coursing through my effervescent 
adolescent veins,
Conquering my conscious and 
unconscious actions,
Consuming and possessing me, 
caressing me,
Turning my blood against my better 
judgment,
Compelling me toward a clearly 
catastrophic,
Clearly cathartic and exotic end,
Can make me a doe-eyed, 
endearing lunatic,
Then...

If I'm just along for the ride on a 
careening mind trip,
Then let me stop to sniff the 
flowers.

Details | Rose Melo Poem

A Quandaring

Wise men in love sit back on their haunches,
Letting their hair curl, developing paunches.
They darest not act 'cause they've got rationale,
They state as their eyes flick from gal unto gal.

Philosophers study the love of some things
They say must be thought and not strummed on 
heartstrings.
To ignore what's in front, they will gaze up above,
'Cause they know that a fool is the wisest in love.

Details | Rose Melo Poem

Out-Side

The grower's child and the picker's child want to run away
They want to go to Duluth, the most exotic place they know
We fear he'll get amoralous and ruin us, ruin us
Here the rain is falling, straight as pokers
But never piercing the laconic plane of air
A sudden wind will blow it sideways, straight into eyes
It is too warm to stay in one place, but to follow --
I make up my mind before the gate hits me on the way out
They call for me, but I run, I run

I've run
Weeds underfoot buoy me to the sky
My age doesn't matter now, nor my circumstance
Only my good feet, my big lungs to take in the blue
My calves
I know the laws of the universe but there's no reaction
Not here or now

Details | Rose Melo Poem

By the Wayside

Remember third grade,
When the raciest book the teacher 
read out loud
Was Wayside School Stories?
Maybe because my mom was all for 
wholesome stories,
But hearing those books was a 
weird guilty pleasure.
It was my first introduction to the 
bizarre:
The Gothic novel of children's 
stories.
Sometimes people disappeared into 
alternate dimensions,
But more importantly, Bebe Gunn 
was having troubles with her 
brother Ray.
Today, I remembered the ice 
cream.
The teacher at Wayside made ice 
cream flavored like each student,
To teach the importance of diversity 
and individuality.
And I remembered this today 
because I found your shirt,
Kicked under the stage, and I 
picked it up.
As I shook off leaves and other 
debris of neglect,
Your shirt let forth your essence to 
tease my nose.
And later I thought about how over 
time,
I would have probably grown 
immune to that smell.
I thought about how this must be a 
computing error in the universe,
If you truly don't notice that primal 
connection,
Like you don't seem to notice your 
agonizing attraction.
But at that moment, I had to walk 
away
Before my tear ducts could become 
inundated with particles of scent,
Because the craving I got was more 
than a chocolate-coated addiction.
I am suprisingly literal here, but
You would be my favorite flavor of 
ice cream.
Only then you would still be here to 
comfort me.