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Best Poems Written by Kathryn Sweeney

Below are the all-time best Kathryn Sweeney poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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By the Hair

You thought you had me by the hair,
While you tossed my heart
To and fro
Across a tennis court 
Just because 
I was your insurance policy 
That you kept in your back pocket 
Or so you thought
Until that frigid morning 
I disappeared 
Halfway across the globe 
Just so I could 
Untangle my long blonde hair 
From the harsh grip
Of your twisted thoughts.
Maybe body surfing 
Did the trick 
Right into the salty waves
That slammed the soft sand 
With a certainty 
That right then 
You became a history book 
A scary chapter 
That sealed itself shut 
With a hammers blow 
So that 
I could never take a second look 
While you thought 
You had me by the hair.

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That One Man

I want to be with the man 
who loved me for being whole,
a free spirit flung
from the top of a mountain like last winters white out blizzard.
The man sits drunk in his living room,
paralyzed in disbelief 
that his mother last sat on that black leather couch,
before I came and his spirit told him that he knew my soul,
he was a casual friend
of that unbending security guard that held watch over my
taped together heart,
its secrets exposed
after his third bottle of homemade red wine,
that dribbled down his throat like a miniature river
of blood
coating a liver that sat like a putrid sponge inside him.
Praying 
that he would depart too numb for pain.
And we slept
like shadows of the children we were long ago,
in the sweat of New Jersey's choking midsummer,
our souls sliding down that slope together,
on a red wooden sled,
innocence lost,
and our last lifetime clear as ice.

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Food Lure

The art of cooking never changes,
it's lure to us debates
taste vs. smell,
then it all rises up in memory like a colorful dream,
one of art that has been raided by veterans of the old country.....
My grandmothers never ceased to feed us,
"eat!" they would scream, 
and their work worn hands would bring forth Polish and Ukrainian feasts of 
pierogi, borsch, babka, and love,
blended into a holiday festivity that never disappointed, fresh from a sea of hand picked ingredients.
New York City was our place of initiation to that congregation of food and loud, loud people who thrived on second helpings. 
I reincarnated this time just to be one of them.

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Ship Moved On

(and now the ship moved on....)
She took us like a valiant steed,
from coast 
to islands free,
where Tongan tapas decked the halls,
of South Pacific glee,
Marquesas, atolls, 
reefs and pearls,
far away lands
grass skirts, dancing girls!
(and now the ship moved on.....)
The dream fulfilled,
we headed back,
her wooden body held wind slack.
We heard her fate,
she sank one day,
that boat was old, she had her way....
(and now the ship moved on)

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High Tea

My heart cartwheeled 
Inbound,
Like the white stag in a fairy tale long, long ago 
And for a moment in time 
It was swept into a sea of grief
Like a duckling in the king tide 
Then further I went, tumbling now, 
Down, down, 
Into the rabbit hole,
Where Alice held high tea, 
Her blue dress faded, 
From a century of guests,
(Even the Cheshire Cat looked weary)
And in her hand, was a deck of cards,
The tarot,
She threw them on a Snow White floor of glistening marble, 
While she smiled at me,
It was my turn, she said, 
And the outcome was revealed as a star,
One like Bethlehem,
A path into a world less travelled,
Where I’ll go and change 
In a split second,
A reflection of eternity, 
And never die.

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Jersey

The man planted and watered the garden,
like he did always in his weathered dungarees, as he told the girl
no,
     no to a day down the shore...
The phlox and peonies thirsted for his touch, screaming for the tilt of the watering can.
     The girl stood at the screen door, mid summer New Jersey heat sweltered at her bare feet,
she clutched a glass of whiskey while he whistled at his pink and yellow crop.
     Raindrop tears rolled off her chin, dissolving with the trail of salt into the booze, her black lace nightgown glued to her thin body. 
The bees circled his flowers, not caring for tears or indifference.

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Geese

Those wings of the Canadian geese
strap themselves to my heart,
removing the dark barrier of northeast landscape
and where I reside
in a charred picture of scenery,
a modern day reflection of the masses of breath who make more and more,
and evacuation is the norm.
The geese go south and then north again, gliding in a thought independent of
gridlock.

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Disappointment

How disappointed he must have felt,
when the epiphany rushed in like the first salty water 
of a tidal wave,
and he knew he loved this one,
that he had found her,
the one, 
that chosen girl,
but his thick,
black velvet cocoon,
marked Damaged,
was the stopsign,
that red lollypop of a signal,
raised up like a snarling serpent,
tearing up dersire like a paper shredder.
How disappointed he must have felt,
when he saw her on tv,
that girl,
the one he found and lost in a day,
her rosey cheeked face big as a Montana sky,
when the newsman interviewed her,
asking her opinion on the woman's march.
How disappointed he must have felt
when he turned his back 
and collapsed into the structure of his tiny day.

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Sea Free

The waves crashed onto the beach,
becoming translucent blue tunnels as they proclaimed freedom.
Nearby starfish curled into the pink sand, soft as liquid sea glass, wiggling a slow cha-cha as porpoises did a spinning dance, grinning like "through the looking glass" cheshire cats. 
As if he knew she'de go, the curly haired poet of the seventies, her first love, found solace with his friend Jack. Daniels. 
And as if he knew she'de go, the dull husband found a girl ten years younger, whispering sweet nothings into her ears as he white knuckled his buried anger every night. 
And then that boyfriend, the sallow faced Hollywood stand in actor she nicknamed "warbucks" watched her walk away as she clutched a green umbrella he had found  on the ground at the gay parade. She disappeared out of the cab into the San Francisco night, dark with fog tendrils and Golden Gate mystery, lost to him forever.  
She stuck her big toe in the sea. As the dawn broke on the first day of her new life, all she could see was an endless horizon of Pacific blue, her eternal waltzing partner.

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Home

It looks like home,
that pint size village
in the heart of Jersey, 
teased hair and the Sopranos are so thick with memories,
that even the Robins are fatter.

It feels like home,
riding my bike on flat streets, 
easy as pie to pedal 
as the timely fall foliage creates it's own 
fire.

It smells like home,
the grease filled diners
on the routes next to the interstate,
lure in weary travelers,
french fries
drowning in gravy that's thick as soup,
erodes resistance to caloric intake. 

It sounds like home,
the locusts that appear after a decade,
their buzz like construction of a fairy kingdom, 
reflecting the slow breath of the locals,
who secured their plots in the local graveyard
decades before the real estate boom.