From the collector's notebook of substitutions - Conchitina Cruz

[writtenbyhand.livejournal.com]

Say grief: things that wander with the intention to return

Say maybe: things that entertain the possibility of always

Say afterthought: things that haunt rather than invade

Say souvenir: not erasure, but palimpsest

Say disappear: letter, sans serif, white, umlaut

Say collateral: not risk, mere substitution

Say document: proof and signpost

Say never: things that breathe easy elsewhere

Brother And Sister

[edellin.livejournal.com]

(ok I haven't posted anything here for such a long time so here are two poems that are supposed to be connected. If you haven't read the tale "Brother and Sister" by the Grim Brothers then you will most likely not understand this)

The Sister

do you remember, brother

those days in the wood

when you ran with the deer —

falling bloody on my doorstep at dusk

stepping from the skin

grateful to be a man?

and do you know, brother

just how I longed

to wrap myself in the golden hide

smelling of musk

blackberries and rain?

tell me that tale

give me that choice

and I'll choose speed and horn and hoof —

give me that choice

all you cruel, clever fairies

and I'll choose the wood

not the prince.
 

— Terri Windling

The Brother

you long to run in musky rain and princely skins

but, sister, I have sped that hidebound marathon

wearing golden hides that warped my hands to hooves

and broke my scalp with a crown of horns —

I've run through thorns and thirsty fens

through wolves that bite and cats that catch —

those blood-dried hides of hoary kings

scoured raw my skin and

deadened my heart with hammering —

when I reached your hearth I shucked that hide

and faerie hands unveiled my sight:

ever beneath that scouring skin

proud, callow princes were scraped away

revealing numb and bloody men below.

but no more hides and no more hurts

run, sister, if you must but no more marathons for me

for I choose this hearth, not the princely hide,

and I will let my skin knit smooth.
 

— Barth Anderson

(I haven't seen anything like that... so I hope you like it... I certainly do)
(And I certainly advice everyone, of all ages, to read the tale!-If they haven't-)
Ow and a request if possible... any poems about friendship, the love of two friends would be nice ... and some feminist poems... I am in the mood for both so I can't choose