Sample Poems by Christine Brooks

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beyond

sometimes I ‎ remember
wishing to live in a place
beyond the paneling

but then I remember ‎ that
I would live there too

---

paper bag ‎ butterflies

I thought you were elegant
thoughtful, even a ‎ gentleman
and even more than that, I thought you were
a special kind of ‎ man

the kind of man that laughed & hugged & cared
when it mattered most in a ‎ time of desperation
& isolation
when the only face I saw was that of a poet
on my ‎ computer screen and
the man in the moon

you reached out, concerned more for ‎ my safety
than your own, but
perhaps because you believed that you were too ‎ mean
to catch a hoax,
so, comfort was easy for you

I believed even in the ‎ timing of meeting you,
and acted brave and put together so you wouldn’t
hear me ‎ complain,
hear me sound needy
weak

but you weren’t any of those ‎ things
you were no Monarch
you were what you had always been
a paper bag ‎ butterfly

floating on the dampness of a
March night

nothing more, ‎ nothing less

---

Jericho


I was grateful to him, ‎ then
and still for
visiting when no one else could
and for changing his ‎ name

because

a dream chose that and
he believed that dream and ‎ so
he became
the kind of person the kind of poet
the kind of believer
that ‎ without even knowing it
gives hope when there is none
because that’s what ‎ words
and dreams and dreamers
do

---

the stone

I ‎ have a bleached beach stone
that with enough whiskey and weed,
looks like a ‎ heart

so instead of punching
trashcans garage walls windows toolboxes
I hold ‎ that stone that fits so perfectly in my hand
it’s hard to imagine the maker didn’t carve ‎ it
just for me

feel its coolness softness strength
I imagine the beach I found it ‎ on
and the wave that I must have caught
touching the stone to my face I ‎ remember
the burn on my cheeks
from sun and wind and frost
—probably

I can hold all of that, but I cannot punch
when
the stone is in my ‎ hand