# Anonymous May Challenge: “Abandoned Places/Things”



## Chesters Daughter (May 6, 2021)

*May*


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## Chesters Daughter (May 8, 2021)

Spring Training 

Legs steady
spine straight
shoulders squared
she stood at the door,
those with nowhere to lean
learn never to be lax.
She spun on her heel and left

for a date with a bunch
of blue hatted strangers
surrounding a slim table
in a freezing room,
but where was her groom?

Ah, yes, splayed on the sofa
watching whores disguised as dancers
while he worshiped Reverend Stern.
Howard, that is.

Dressed in a linen truck's best,
she waited for her number to be up,
err...called,
watching a muted Jerry Springer
chastise kissing cousins.
Hours passed, as she, alone,
cultivated hatred with each inhalation,
until the orbs beneath her brows
became ebony glass
absorbing  every beam of light
to keep those home fires burning.

Surely Satan would have begged her
to be his decorator
had she deigned to give him a peek.

She rolled off through swinging doors
into a fluorescent sunset,
grateful for the peace of dreamless sleep.
Rudely awoken to appendages
wrapped in wires,
she never tired
while battling the biggest guns
in the apothecary.

At six hours
she walked with the legs of a toddler,
at twelve,
her stride was as strong  
as a striped horse stampede,
at twenty four,
her slippered feet
left indents a foot deep
in the immaculate tile floor.

Quite stoned, but still sane
she left the house of pain
only to return to another
where the sadist reigned…

but he was no more.

Yes, his carcass still cluttered her couch,
as his undeserving
filth filled lungs
siphoned precious oxygen 
from her air,
but she had dismissed his essence;
like a parasitic nit,
she'd finally plucked him from her hair.

She stood at the jamb,
a gentle smiling lamb,
and with chin held high
issued a single laugh.
Certainly, he thought her daft,
but then he didn't know

in four or five months
she wouldn't need him for a thing
and both he and that couch
were going to learn the meaning
of the word swing.

Not the dance, of course,
a noun wouldn't do,
it's the verb she'll teach,

assisted by a bat or two.


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## Chesters Daughter (May 8, 2021)

In With The New

Aged bitter man earning dollars for time
You'll get your pay, but the rest is mine
Your children canvases upon which I will paint
They will worship my God and revere my saints
Stare at your screen until your eyes burn
Those same screens are training replacements in turn
The tired retire with little dreams left,
which are dashed by the crash of medical debt
Now pop your pills, watch your shows, and forget,
lest you scream as you fade with nothing but regret


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## Chesters Daughter (May 8, 2021)

*This Child*


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## Chesters Daughter (May 9, 2021)

*The Lane*


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## Chesters Daughter (May 9, 2021)

Ties That Blind​You were shooting for the stars
I held you earthbound with
red balloon strings
and knotted kite tails
night lies whispered against
bruised skin

The poetry we wrote
disguised our Band-Aids
ink stained my skin when
you ran trembling fingers
through my hair

Blinded by verses you
engraved on my bones
we clung to our battered yellow
parachute as it plummeted
your words swept away in
free fall chaos

But I can hear you scream

You are tangled in me
entwined in our dead end trip
destined never to make it to the stars

I look into your stoned
shattered eyes and see
blue butterflies battered broken
swirling in a hopeless vortex

I cut my string


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## Chesters Daughter (May 11, 2021)

*Roots*


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## Chesters Daughter (May 11, 2021)

Derelict

Stuttering voices,
laughter, loud
banging dishes
twittering sparrows
picking seed grains in the backyard;
all these sounds haunt me.

Brushing, dusting,
white wash, varnish
all this nurturing,
I cry for it.

I can't choose amnesia,
for the new ones do not choose me.
The loneliness has turned stagnant,
towards lifelessness.
" Door hinges, bolts, windows' frames ",
slowly and slowly,
the joblessness is turning them dead.

So I have chosen to starve.
Ceilings, walls, floor
to all wither, to all perish.
Plunderer dear looter an eye on me,
plunder, whatever will be left for their use,
to leave back no sign of me
because nobody owns me now
derelict.

A home into derelict
lover turned stranger
awaiting the moments
of his last breaths.


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## Chesters Daughter (May 13, 2021)

The Visitor​Jagged teeth springing from clifftop edge
are softened by proximity
to dull grey stone with mossy love
in tipsy instability.

The long-forsaken graveyard stands
in ragged domesticity;
dry flower urn reminds itself
of a loving lost felicity.

A ghostly chapel bell still rings
with muffled regularity;
the sound, below the storm-ripped sea,
connected momentarily.

The ruined tower in the weeds
creates a soft despondency
in one who visits now, as then,
in loyal canine constancy.


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## Chesters Daughter (May 15, 2021)

By the Light of Lost Stars

Climb fast, quiet as a moon shadow at the rise of the Bleak Tide
toes mutter secrets to the jagged stone stairs that go too high.
And at the topmost plinth, sits a fox, mourning as his stars died.

Deepest tints of the soul’s despair bleed into his pilled sock hide,
ears drooped with the weight of the weary, as sleep comes nigh—
Climb fast, poke a hole in the sky, mold it, find the Firefly Tide.

Socks fox bereft. His stars, those stories, nonsense voices chide.
Climb fast. Hold true. For he waits, listens for a flint edged sigh
to find the plinth where he keeps vigil for a star that refuses to die.

One star left, a world being consumed by torrents of injured pride.
Look to the sky as it weeps for its lost stars. Find the star. Try—
Climb fast. Feel the face of the stones, heed the thrall of the Tide.

Catch a glimpse of Turtle’s gleam, take a leap, and catch a ride.
Shut your eyes, take the light of lost stars, trace stories in the sky.
Touch the plinth, there the socks fox waits where his stars died.

In fits and starts, star by star, Lores in the constellations still hide.
Touch a tale, set the stars alight. Blow a wish on a dandelion sigh.
Those words, his stars, Star Socks Fox shine, reset the Firefly Tide.
Ride, hold tight to Turtle, rise. A constellation that will never die.


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## Chesters Daughter (May 15, 2021)

This challenge is now closed.


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