Anna Libet, Poet

Anna Libet
--Poet, writer--

These are some of the past poems of Ms. Libet.
All poems are copyrighted and cannot be used without her express consent.
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The Untold Version
The phone keeps on ringing The relatives keep on calling Calling on you to care about the story They listen to your lines Vicariously composed All pre-supposed Carefully edited Shaped for ears that are ripe For self-deceit The news of the lines is pre-fabrication Polished and perverted For a personal lubricant of friendship It only pacifies relations For the sake of your appearance The expectations have asserted their grasp But the paper is still printed Officially misrepresented Forsaking any knowledge Of self It is as a publisher would mercilessly Dismiss As he downgrades your perspective As if of no importance And squanders your front-page story of the truth With a replacement version Much more appealing to the ear It is their alienation That writes your wrongs aright As you overhear his voice in theirs "Stick this one inside someplace" Forcing your story to revert itself Back to a hidden place Inside yourself, unseen.
by
Anna Libet, Poet

Indecision
I always knew it was a trap A predictable path An uncompromising middle An appointment to the bench of anonymity
To be led forever into tomorrow By the hands that are not your own
A figurative curse A future I held it In my hand The best laid plans Always smelling sweeter on the wind Not underneath the ground Cultivating like an impotent courage rotting
In a hermit’s false dilemma In a traveler’s bane I awake to a familiar dream: Freedom knocks Security answers “Go away, we cannot afford you here”
So security slithers away Hiding from freedom’s path Because it blocks the way of wandering
So I renew my vows with poverty For the great enlightenment And fly across the world in a book Never witnessing a single page But something turns The every-ones have moved away And I sit in mocking triumph Because I stayed
Eluding a confidence Betraying the evidence That I know not Which path forsakes my
True wish But I demand answers of a hollow frame While I walk in obstinate commitment Yet linger to discover
Which will lead me to a dream
Of true reflection and correct possibility
Without the shackles I seek it
To be unleashed Released. From the paralysis of indecision.
Of something I call my own My life.
by
Anna Libet

A Trip on a Writer's Public Display
You sit in the wings High above the fray Passively observing what takes place every day But you think you are special with your pen now in play Though inconvenience has written your substitute stay As you reflect on the lives that go Un-noticed each day You stand back in critique Predisposed in your seeking of wisdom As you belabor the obvious to all who live here Ignoring the nomads who must play In these parts for Engrained is their nature of life in that sphere Everyday each re-living his lines They hear The noise all too well But none to you they appear To you, the pulse of the city is a story worth telling Elevated to a narrative description It is attached to an all too human recognition But you missed the counterparts of your newfound reflections Never once do you acknowledge the protagonist's convictions Those bound to this play Who ride everyday In a tiredness spread Over their faces like lead Moving back and forth Not enjoying in the least The predictable haze and decay and delay But you will return to the sanctuary From which you came Where there is freedom and luxury To feel this private dismay.
Anna Libet
8/26/02

A Prodigies Wish (Dedicated to J.C.)
If I could write a poem for you How easily the words would come All at once, on a train, in the dark Where no one minute passes to imitate The light of you Or glances to brush The Heat of you On mine, this aloneness does it justice Your brilliance marked on me A thousand words Conveyed in silent harmony Tell me, what kind of melody Will I ever find in thee? For you, the private one Once walking in the setting sun with me Just as quickly you would fall Into the shadows AWAY Bowing eloquently into my faint future When pathos has its day But I still look for you in crowds, When elusively, that train Would stop for me When it would wait And satiate all that lips have longed for A moral high ground is the only thing That speaks, to separate Your mystery From this surprising youth Under the moon, deceased Burning in my age old hands A myth naïve to coveting A love so pure and reckless I now see Upon a folkloric offering it hinges The unexpected gifts - We always keep Lying distant before you Open to accept your strange Emissive ways While you closely, watch Your Travelers awake And that is why I passed along that trail With them, bursting in an unmarked grave Wet and still Like the sky That brings rain too often And When I cry I know My weakness I see it bare But when your voice cries, what does it mean? Other than in my dreams An unsurpassed longing You would have for me But of all my thoughts Most significant and fluid Why is it the ones of you Are always proven false In one eradicating blow? To ebb and flow To silently turn the other cheek In my hand Praying for a sign As fragile as a moment to see you Now breaking Please, let my dreams be Lest an innocent dies To be your swan song Presently.

Take Leave of Me
No, please take the car I insist And the house and the beach And the walks I missed I implore take your dog That does all the old tricks And the placating birds Caged, repeat after me I insist Take your honors And tailored made suits That have grown While I shrank In medication well spent To soothe my age As you ignore yours For that new woman is sovereign gold To your claims And your wants to be born again So take what you are - Your lies and your debts And go mortgage her future And leave this one be I insist Take our land and our trips And all my memories split And before you forget Please, take the scars on my wrists. I insist.

Evil
In the old, inferior In the transition, against god In the present, a ploy// We know that inferiors are defined by Their Superiors And that God only defines the devil And for this reason The word is not for mortal man To use in a scheme,// Never once was it designed To inspire any respect In a stage to wage war In the name of the good Against the darkness Which we know is in our hearts// And that we, ourselves, have created the term As a ploy to protect The superior With God Against man. And now we know that evil looks the same Regardless of the face on which it stands.

Down South
If you ever want to know her Then breathe into the wind That rocks an empty chair Or fans an empty field Still wet with moss And beaten with footprints The ripe purple flowers No longer bloom at midnight As the wind whispers the sound Of what's come and gone If you ever want to remember her Then stare into the sun And then run with your eyes burned out Blinded by the powers that beat their drums In a heat that deserted even the strongest Ones, the youngest ones And if you ever want to feel her Then take a walk into the darkest Corner of your fears Into a tomb that never rises Above the shores of its lake Because it is too tired to speak Too weary to drown And too shameless to die In a flooded garden of dead relics Burned by the emptiness and the darkness Into a steam that rises Into a victim that passes Through Her voice, if only history would listen.

Shame
A mission for you I have found To have failed// To kiss the innocence Never the frown Of the frail Who is jaded and fearful Of letting you down// Now you visit her Under the ground As she wails And pales next to your morals and deeds For the public humanity needs// But her misery loomed in private A cold mountain bound to the sea Of your sound And I still anger at the sin Of her sickness and honesty Bound to your fervor burning To protect That woman You once knew and loved In your laments I once had respect// But never I could And no longer I can// Stand too close to the sun To be shadowed by you// And your staged regret Now left in neglect for that woman// Laid down by the criminal mind And so quietly silenced like an Invalid bound Fallen and helpless Your eyes now look down In shame For your mission of failure In her death it is found.//
four poems by
Anna Libet
(c) Copyright 2002

The Kidnapped
It was always that way for her Waiting, waiting, waiting. By the bed and underneath it She hid Trying to disguise what blankets could not hide For the monsters always creep in the dark, they know no boundaries But her monsters were imagined, versions of fantasy Until reality bruised and battered that soft darkness Because someone pierced through the night to render death The assaulter of nothing - a violence of his void A man who cuts across the darkness To engulf the waves of innocence The timeless, boundless, continuum of youth He vindicates by destroying what he never could have been As he stares into the face of all that should redeem him But without seeing the hearts of children, there is no heart to see And his heart is dead, but still beating, looking To take another one from us. Next time he thinks of taking one pure soul He should think what he has taken from himself All the hope in the world And he should remember - That blind fools never profit from their blindness And demons are not gods by wishing It, and who are you to take them? Who is anyone?
by
Anna Libet, Poet

The Politician
New heroes rear ugliness Through half-opened windows On rails cross country Rolling out over days They sell a cheap ticket to catch the bouquet; Paltry offerings thrown out, hurled every which way This one, he's burdened let's say By his strength and his weakness Heavy with slabs of bankrolls on his back Look, he's coming our way To relate How he worked in the menial sector Once and how he's from a small town Just like you and me A friend A man A champion Whistling his discordant melodies All the way to the end of the line Homes for the poor Breaks for the rich Prayer for the fervent Lies for the tempered War for the hungry Borders for the frightened Guns for the protectors Home and abroad Rights for the children Of hard working families And rations for everyone else Peace for the sake of moral diplomacy Prosperity in the name of a moral majority A temporal force On the scene Makes its debut again And why not, it's easy when you're riding away.
by
Anna Libet

Meeting for the first Time
There is question behind your eyes and desire upon your lips but your hands rest still// There is silence in your smile and wind in your breath but your voice stays shallow// There is running in your steps and beating in your heart but your limbs hang low and faltered…// If I stand here long enough can I shout: I have the answer! And will your unmoving senses listen and awaken and move to me?

Incentive to be Better someone's mud raked around the grounds// raked around and down to little children they once were flailing it at the steps of poor houses // into rich reputations they grew and were accepted at the expense// better shut out the world from these little ones who won't see you hiding in huddled corners, whispering, saved from the flooded mess// for they still age well feeding on misfortune and indiscretion and deaf ears// to the incentive Living on a mountaintop alone, when will it rise up? to speak aloud for the other little ones who hide there slighted and cast out by the storm….

Window into Soul's abuse
Mirror, mirror on the wall Who debases one and all? /When treason is the name we call /Who tortures one/ To punish all This glass will break/ Where blame should fall/You mock me mirror on the wall/ How dare you question one and all?/ As life is short and deeds are foul/ Oh, mirror, mirror on the wall/ I spite the soul who sees it all/ Like the innocent's eye I cannot lie/ And wish the day when you would fall/ Like mirror cracking on the wall/ To your soul's witness/ Your reflection is afoul/ As your deeds reflect in every action/ Your child lost to sick compulsion/ Sees mirror, mirror on the wall/ And now that child breaks it, one and all./ Like Your abuse, it fractures all.

Intentions Change
Before I wanted nothing/ And now I want everything/ Before I only wanted your hand in friendship/ And now I want to hold it/ As in a caress on my face /Before I only merged my mind with yours/ Like friends on an old familiar street/ Passing time with memories that speak to us /From some balcony above/ But now, I seek your eyes with mine /To look into the windows and out of them /Like a sole intention for light to rush in/ Perhaps, on a park bench we would meet /Discussing yesterday's news /As it blows away in the wind /To remind us of how our lives have been/ Separated And yet, /The familiar with us becomes a new ground/ That we could grow in /But like in a forest cut /The life support is weak/ And the want endangered /So as new life replaces old extinctions I must admit,/ I intended to be right/ But I know now that I was wrong /And that my dreams /Of you have /Never left me /Especially tonight.

Life Support
Put down the bottle/ And come to me /Put down the poison /You must be freed /Your life is going to fall I see it all /The light in your eyes Is fading/ To black despair now waiting /For your sick destiny to rob you /Of the beauty that changed my face to love /The disease in your eyes /Bring death's shadow to your door /And you speak no more /Of passion fire brilliance /Of The day we met When I fell into your heart/ Into your breast /That now lies shaking on the floor /What happened to you?/ My dear sweet one/ Yesterday you were a rose with thorns /Today you are a beast unborn /To die in shameless arms/ In the smoke and mirrors /Of your suicide waiting /Your tired wasted mind /Now aching in your lunges/ Your breathless sobs /They Are nothing compared to my broken hope /As I watch you climb the walls of your prison/ Of your addiction /Of all the tragedies you speak /I now command in desperation /Let go your grasp on death /And fall into my arms/ Instead of falling into your grave.
three poems by
Anna Libet

The Wrong Part of Town
They say love follows its own invitation In this town where the wind and the cold run free But we are tired of knocking down doors In a plea to ignite the wrongs of the moment - Under layers of stone Where shall we find fire's warmth? For feet that are tired and torn Can never walk far enough Through chandeliered streets Where dismissed as immigrant beggars We are slow to find strength But quick to find weakness In neighbors who have never found a true light Even burned out ours frighten them night after night So we will find our own home Away from the prison of being polite And where we don't have to search To find right.

Inside the Glass
With glaring indifference I watch them Drifting away from the natural light They swim in their autistic lives Mindless and lost we are one for tonight They watch my swelling cheeks And writhing fingers Flustered with a tired motion Of relief crawling up in vain They seem to portrait all my features As I await my time to float under the lights So much time they have to tell me How to live like them - Where every hour promising nothing But another hour And new eyes peering into you Must I learn to be like them? With painted faces that never falter Even in a cold, forgotten state Or will probing force diseases out? Through fearful nights that turn exacting into day Cut from within and without I pray, let me out Or else, like them, I will die contained.
Three poems by
Anna Libet

Half Life
So long you've been gone And so long I've learned To live without Our emptiness Measured into bottles we cast out Into a mixture of insecurities, We would shout Concocting rationales, Until it was just us - A sad discovery Too old for weak memories To doubt *** At first a morning after Cringing under dismal skies And crying At your departure I crawled into disease Limping one step forward Falling ten steps back And slowly growing an appendage of disdain For temptation robbed of its counterpart Never stops calling your name Until a raging fear Forced me into place And ensconced each day A struggle to stay away; A weakness I discovered is forced to live apart From the whole - And now you're back Missing the friend you Who loved you most Like the wind Once allowing you to rush in Curing of your loneliness - A feigned illness Like your absence disappearing But memories of you I refrain from touching Like bruises on this body Never quite healed And now the part that only feels like half When we are one is running away…

by
Anna Libet

America, Inc.
Paid to fill a vacant lot It stands and breeds// Marking the territory where feudal contracts make a modern comeback// Where bloated useless stations creep over ground as we would their walls so high and white to camouflage a stain // Silently enforced by greed helping the crippled mind extend its seed to every lot all over the world experimenting with our tolerance for a new death of equality exploiting us down into a centrifuge of devolving thoughts// Now every child grown who could feed the world outside a dark and poisoned room into a natural light through natural pursuits is lost bred and led to decipher the machine that never sleeps obsessed with the lubricant it brings free to awaken all the deadly sins on every corner all over the world// We are living in a Cheap Hotel a home away from home some growing our identity there meant for small rooms and hearts that don't care// Science and money might keep it alive but not us staring like stones walking like tombs and pretending to dream// In a respite from imagination no sign of any dirt or pain with base amenities provided and four more walls - cloned reincarnations of the New World Order again //
This time around there's no soot , and no ash, and no blacked out tunnels yet we still force ourselves to breathe// Because it is bigger than us Because it is us The excess of us The waste of us// Welcome to the new distraction Welcome to the new revolution Welcome to America, Inc.
by
Anna Libet

"Portrait of Imposture You said it wasn't love"
To the hollow of my back Where your hands shook to hold// To my faraway stare Where your mind fixed to gaze// To the sheltered eyes The unopened smile To the curious beauty melded behind// To the stroke that eased me To paint my life on your skin As touch searches within// To the arch of my neck Where your mouth threw back Your desires drawing in// To my insides where you gasped Relinquished in the heartbeat Where no words utter On stranger's lips you pin // To this canvas spread This core exposed It appears that you have found your quest// But to every caress To every surrender// To every image burned Under your hands Over your skin You tell me once again// This picture of a thousand words Inspires only lust For love in naked silence Is the forgery I trust.//

"Where Will I Be, When You Are Gone?"
Where will I be When you are gone When you bestow Your smile on another one? When "you and I" Are only "you", and "I"? Will I ever Dance again beneath the sky? Where will I be When "us two" seem To live only In a shadow land of dreams? When faded ghosts Recall the hours When my sweet love Fell, drowning, in your powers? What can I touch If not your hand, Your lips, your hair, And breathe the scent of you? What time will it be When I'm at the Curb, and the bus With you on it never comes? How long will I Stand waiting, for A fleeting glimpse Of your marvelous, flashing eyes? Where will I be When I am old And you remember Me no more? Will I exist- If you forget? (I was never Made to be loved Like you, like I love you. And still, I do.) So where will I be When you are gone? When your light shines on another one? A shriveled hag Standing, waiting For a bus with You, that never comes...until I disappear and Fade to empty, Blow away on The softest breeze--Goodbye! For I was never Made to stand in The light of one Like you, so I am undone. What will I do? I do not know. But my love will Follow you on the wind Wherever you may go.
(For "Papa", from "Wildflower")

Angela
5/20/02

How an Intellect Survives
It gives its love In the natural time And takes pain to the heart Despite the hour To revise past endeavors As they wistfully wilt through apathy's eyes Incomprehensible cries To articulate It uncovers the lies To the next, and the next, and the next, To the us, and the them, and to all It sees only one Like an inspirer Circling the globe Unraveling, and undone It navigates Through caves in the dark And craters in the heart For behind its head, Is a map With all roads leading back To their source Wherein lies the hope And defense The mind Now speak yours, While the world revolves And devolves It is time.

Surviving the Instinct
Twenty angry wolves Roam howling through the streets Preying on the weakness of mind and flesh Yours they have chosen To roam without fear For they sense your craving For tribal engraving Marking this victim endangered Smooth grins show sharp fangs Waiting to devour Your innocence of better judgment As it creeps away Frightened by solitude The wandering emptiness Where no one belongs Resolve collapses Ravaged to the bone Hollow cheeks white eyes shaking hands Obey nerves in raw torment Grasping the box of weak comfort The twenty beasts now beyond your control You bite your own feeding your own But the ashes in your lunges settle their disease In your eyes In Your heart hungry for air Night's black hole ties rings around your throat Rings of fire Howling screaming In this ritual sworn to kill The nomad within seeks A meditative trance To revolve your mind away from death's dance But the wolves breathe fire into you When the pack lights you up It is a break in your light The fragments The sound Are the echoes of your rebellion The vibrations of every faulted emotion Now muted in the fill of its hot desert death A sound of your clan Brings shame to your lips As you hear your mother calling "Come home, come home" Clutching to the tragedy You still cling to your youth As you run up the stairs Where safety embraces Breathing in breathing out It takes all your strength To break away from the fall From the moon From the wolves As you watch them dying alone.

The Betrayal
I walk into the room Through the doorway Beneath the romance Of the lights That were ours Once It is walking through all the doorways of denial I remember Till I found the lock That sealed my dread My despair My faith smothered under our pillow Where another man laid his head Is this someone else's house For I fear that it was never my own And I walk through the door again Over and over Whispering, "Come to bed" As I always have But there is no answer For there is no bed And no romance under This glare of infraction You inflicted But what a sacred fool I was To be burned by the darkness I created Where you were alone Neglected And now I am alone Vanquished And as the threshold escapes us Truth speaks through the glass For within these walls The betrayer is betrayed
Two poems by
Anna Libet
5/13/02

"Your Place in My Heart"
Someone came over last night Someone with no name and no face Someone with no past and no meaning Someone with no feeling, no affiliation, no bond// I talked for hours to the nameless, faceless, meaningless shape Before I took him to bed wondering who is the stranger here?// That is what I have to say today Hiding, hiding, hiding Behind my walls Underneath my bed Slithering away into the night Like some guilt-ridden dream Relieved to be awake We are in the morning And all is right again// But years from now, this is what I will have to say// My married ex-lover came over last night The man with every name and every face The man of my past and the man of my meaning The man with tortured feeling, deep affiliation, bonded forever.// It will be another decade before I talk to his shape But before I put him to bed I wonder who are these friends? That forgot to say, I love you.// If we could only tell the truth without telling it That's what we pretended, that's what we said.

Another Life In another life
you would be mine. In another world, we would be happy together. In another universe, we could do it all over again. We could be the images of ourselves We could be the ideal. In heaven, we could be saved. In hell, we could be educated. On the other side of the sun We could eclipse our desire On the dark side of the moon We could wage war If time could stop We would be frozen together If time could begin again We would melt into change Perhaps with a love like ours We need another earth - the one that we created.
Anna Libet
5/27/02

Face of an Epidemic Whatever happened to Cancer Alley? Nested in a forgotten place A diluted, polluted tragedy Scientifically blamed on poverties vices Waits High profile champions Rallied its cause, bringing light To darkened, isolated rooms Evidently they sit in pools of chemical waste Where foul illness breeds And pleads its case But how different its place Relative to more enlightened spots Suddenly wise to the cause Advantage uncovers A temporal savior from stagnating rivers They rest for the moment on an elevated fate Scientifically blamed on mysterious toxins They don't have to wait To avoid an escaping prodigal mutation Equally inflicted Unequally treated Of pustules and sores - Some quiet and scarred Some angry and spreading And flowing with tears A true diagnosis sees multiple wounds Never unburdened by our disregard They all look the same on a weary face Revealing a mindset of deeper illness That will mercilessly resurrect all the others…
by
Anna Libet

How Innocence Dies Raincoats, turnkeys And tourniquets Tightropes and spider-webs How Fragility falls Into innocent graves At first stumbling, fumbling Shaking and sticky Locked in an intruders unyielding grasp They lie helpless Choked by a misery's vengeance Strangled is their happiness Through lessons of pain and deception Let the games begin Fighting to cross love's non-existent lines Where pride assembles in crowds Watching their demise - A paradoxical flight To a ruined image Between birth and death They do not run down a future But wastefully elevate to jaded skies Full of needles Puncturing the naïve smiles So sweet and slowly they bleed Without opening Into a labyrinth of shrinking acceptance Controlled by red-hot siphons of mistrust They will give up To the bitter end Clinging to a moments revolt Of immunity and hope Just before they close their eyes Forever denied And buried.

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About Anna Libet
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