~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Amanda Leon

Empyreal

My muse

Eternal flame

Words can’t describe you

How I twiddle my pen in ire

Between my forefinger and thumb

To bring you to life

For every breath we take is a steadfast march towards death

Fast and faster still

I take these small powers of a minor god

And make you immortal on the page

For you are sweet

Your blond hair soft under my palms

Warm eyes

Forever, we promise, as death bears its war drums around us

Forever, forever, in this life and the next

I hope against all hopes that the next time I open my eyes, you will greet me

As I take my last breath

You wait with death on the other side

Baptism by Fire

True feelings aside I ask myself if I can live the same life twice

How many lives can I experience in this body?

I see you and I feel brand new

I am scrubbed clean of past experiences, my cynicism drowned out by possibilities

The wheel of fortune turns

And I cry out, remember everything I tried to bury

Disappointment rings in my heart

And I taste blood on my tongue

Watch a past mistake rear its ugly head,

I see it again and leave

Vow to never love again

How often I haunt myself

How I can love anyone else

Everything around me is hazy shadow

I am desperately seeking out

Light without the darkness

Will anyone ever love me the way I fought to love myself?

Will you love anyone like the first time you loved someone else? A voice in my

     head whispers and I fight that prophecy

I fight that cynicism as the wheel of fortune turns yet again

I stand in front of another

I imagine the light, shut my eyes against shadow

I want to believe that lightning can strike twice

That I didn’t ruin my one and only chance at love

That you ruin everything you touch

Set fire to any potential

But fire purifies the bad

A phoenix must first burn, yes?

I’ll scorch the earth around me

But I won’t settle

How have I gone through it all and settle for another who has never watched

     everything they loved succumb to flame

Know that in its destruction, something new came better

I can do better

Alone but I didn’t suffocate

The smoke purified my lungs

Flames cleaned my skin

I am newly whole, ready to take on the unknown

The wheel of fortune turns

In my favor, at last.

 Testament

It’s quiet in the nighttime

I climb the ivory tower

Ignoring the winds at my back,

the whispers of those who don’t understand

I isolate myself

The only noise is the tapping of my keyboard, sounding like an out of tune piano,

rusty and yearning to play the right notes

I think of Ray Bradbury

Who wrote in the basement of a university library,

Paying the typewriter for more words

He crawled beneath the earth

I climb toward the sky

I don’t forget those who came before me

I write it all down

For the girl coming after me

I am writing the best words for my generation

They flow, and I type furiously, making sure I don’t miss a single letter, a comma

     that would shortchange this vision in my mind

I am my only constant

People pass me

I walk fast, their closed mouths and shut eyes boring me

If I hear another pleasantry directed my way

I might scream

I want chaos

I want the fear and ecstasy of the possibility of losing something

Traditionally

Women are the muses

Men are the artists

So who am I?

I am my own muse and artist

I am brilliant and go farther than those around me

Their fear holding them back

Their complacency

More in love with the possibility and talking about the process of creating

Than getting down in the dirt

Spitting blood out of your mouth as you make something bigger than yourself

Words that will live longer than any of us

Men want to impress me

Woo me and romance me

They string their words clumsily

Their sweet nothings awkwardly constructed, on the verge of falling apart

I could do it better

All this greatness

And I have to settle for mediocrity?

They come and go

But I stay

My only constant

I am writing the best words for my generation

To leave a testament behind

We write it all down together

For the those coming after us

Amanda Leon is a poet and writer from Miami, Florida. Her work has appeared in Velvet Fields, Unfiltered Magazine, Antifragile Magazine, among others. She graduated magna cum laude from Florida International University with two Bachelor’s degrees in Digital Media and English Literature. Email: contactamandaleon@gmail.com