“You have the right to remain vibrant,
anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of love;
you have the right to take this journey
if you cannot afford it, one will be provided for you by your mate.”
These words you said to me in your cruiser
as my hands writhed in your silken cuffs,
my eyes held fast between your lips.
My tongue danced on syllables across your icy kiss.
Your hands escorted my angles as you interviewed me,
centrifuged me to the rhythms of the bars
where you imprisoned me behind your fingers.
You took my heart as evidence and took footprints of my tongue
while I accused you of stealing the sun and keeping it in your eyelids.
You booked me for possession of spirit so I told you to blow
and called you the resurrection of my dreams.
I rolled my cup across 12 bars of blue,
you lashed my hand with your eyes.
I accused you of brutality with words of yellow silver.
You kissed me on the cheek and said,
“So sue me, ” with your slitherin’ tongue
dancing between your piano-key teeth.
The cage was irony, your voice was sireny as you tried to silence me.
I sang like the jailbirds you romance by day
and hissed like the vampires you drink from at night.
Time oozed by like molasses, my dreams sped by like ghouls,
your voice a ping-pong ball in my skull,
your piano-wire hair pierced my eyes like a flood,
your thighs cuffed my knees, I caught you like a disease,
but I was the one who wasn’t free.
I was under house arrest in your head,
I looked out of the world through your eyes.
Visitors came and prisoners went, paying the fines of your love.
The pupils of your eyes were badges, your nametag was my mouth.
I knocked on the bridge of your nose to get out
but the doors of your lips remained closed.
I tunneled out through your ears, scratching, digging with my pencil.
I scrawled depositions on your brain. You issued a warrant for my arrest
and a restraining order on the same document,
while my heart bleeds in your hands in the evidence locker.
Jesse Ellsbury's Other Poems
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Poet's Notes about The Poem
Comments about this poem (The Warning by Jesse Ellsbury )
Still I Rise
The Road Not Taken
If You Forget Me
Edgar Allan Poe
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
A Dream Within A Dream
Edgar Allan Poe
(4 April 1928 - 28 May 2014)
(1 February 1902 – 22 May 1967)
(March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963)
Edgar Allan Poe
(19 January 1809 - 7 October 1849)
(10 December 1830 – 15 May 1886)
(12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973)
(16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002)
(28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827)
(16 August 1920 – 9 March 1994)
(7 June 1917 – 3 December 2000)
- Still I Rise, Maya Angelou
- If You Forget Me, Pablo Neruda
- The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
- I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
- Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
- Dreams, Langston Hughes
- A Dream Within A Dream, Edgar Allan Poe
- If, Rudyard Kipling
- Phenomenal Woman, Maya Angelou