XII

take my senses

strip me my emotions

burn my body

and my belongings

and even claim my soul.

and once again

when i am nothingness

¡ shall return,

a shadow,

and remove my memory, too.

it was wonderful

XVIII

those melancholly moments

in the water

with all those sundrops

licking our faces

revealing shimmery beaded

little tongues...

and there was silence

and the drama

of two souls

in a deserted studio

as day approaches...

coming all at once in a vision.

i never would have left that pond

so lacking in tenseness

the tenseness that devoured

all I knew of life,

had you not confessed that

it had not been a pond for years

but a storehouse for your tears.

P. A. Griffin

Nature Poem

Shades of green

Outlined by shapes and sizes White blossoms peeking through Breaking the monotony of color.

A black bird's feather shining in

the dull light of dusk

A rabbit sits, still in the grass

The water being pushed by the wind, folds

As it captures the place's beauty in its mirror.

Debbie Gosh co

POETRY

dreams erupt

IX

at three o'clock in the morning

eastern standard time,

and though i feel them

violent and thrashing through my skin,

i hide them under my pillow

and read them in the morning at my leisure

BLEEDING STREAM

Dear stream are you bleeding?

Bleeding for the hearts of men who pump sewage into

your veins?

Clutters of debris are along your cemented tubing; A trickly

A trickle now...

Collages of skipping stones create patterns for

children who can no longer play.

Cren

Cremation of bodies take place on the banks of the Ganges.

Has time passed so?

The gorge you cut in the past, will it now be your grave?

Hoping for a better world you let us use you. Pathetically abused...

Water wheels were stepping stones for accelerated electrons and gamma emmission.

Your funeral is taking place in a scummy hole of chemical foam. Kitty Koelliker

P. A. Griffin

THE PERSONAL STORY OF A WOMAN

waiting for a stranger to come,

wishing i wasn't waiting

wishing he wasn't coming

already planning the words i will say

to keep him away

because my short-sight didn't see this coming

or did it?

i wonder where my strength is

i'm afraid of this stranger

i'm afraid of the stranger in myself

what can i lose tonight?

nothing but a potential relationship that's already giving me discomfort

my heart is beating so very fast I'm planning defenses and escapes even before the question is asked

what have i got to lose? then why this awful nervousness why do i hate this waiting?

i fear proving, once again to myself

my weakness-not of wanting too much but the weakness of my inner turmoil

why aren't i waiting for someone i love? why am i waiting for a stranger? where is the power i sometimes feel?

god, give me the strength to shrug off this fear

and to come out of this airless darkness

to not be a hypocrite speaking of "woman power"

page4/What She Wants/August 1974

question after question

will i ever find myself?

what am i trying to prove, and to whom?

to be a wizard with the power to know myself and honesty in all situations-

i am nothing less than i know myself to be

i've spent so many years trying

to break out of this plastic shell

poured over me so many years ago

i'm still fighting the transparent boundaries trapping my spirit, no wonder "independence" is such an important thing to me

it is an illusion i stand for, an illusion because

i am not free of myself--it is not only

the man i am with i need to fight

oh foolish, foolish child

how can you live, how can you love

when you always fight the wrong person?

how absurd, i've been with this cause for freedom all along

claiming the title "liberated"--ha

sometimes i think i need a strong man to answer my questions

for me-but this can't be so,

they would be his answers

it is not liberation from a particular man i need but it is to be liberated from myself, and all those crazy fears of "not-independence"...

waiting for a stranger to come

i wish i could be alone, to fight myself in private. why add a new face to fight?

kathy ende

Mood Poem

Like a grain of sand,

1 live.

pushed about by currents of the forceful life around

And given not a name but of what I am. Debbie Goshco