Lady & the Tramp “You’re so lucky” The words leak from mouth With no regard for their specific origin or meaning An intended compliment Entangled with the unintentional undressing Of all labor that is actually poured Into this thing that you understand as traveling You see, with virgin eyes Cocktails at sunset Warm linen sheets Entangled within a timeless scent of love You see the revolution of alarm clocks no more Aqua white waves Crashing upon a sandy shore Like the teeth of a jester And yes, it is all this and more But implore you I must In addressing the other side … That is war Traveling Is the days, months and the years Of grueling clock-ins amidst the summer sun Saving faceless pennies Unattended parties Before the journey has even begun Traveling Is a claustrophobia of re-filtered oxygen Swirling around in plane for five days in a row They call this globe trotting Yes This, with a mask and a smile I have done And I know Traveling Is an exorcism of social anxieties When directions must be asked in the deep of the night When hands are held out Unbeknown in reaction Of prosperity or of fight Traveling Is a stranger Following you in alleyways Void of love And of light My traveling Is packing up light Two shorts Two tees Two shirts A dress Some underwear, maybe And toiletries It is an exiled desire Of every single damned thing That keeps me in comfortability There is no tea or coffee in the morn And, at times, breakfast doesn’t happen until dinner If even at all There is no refrigerator in my backpack of journeys No cupboards filled with luxurious treats Of macaroni and cheese dreams There is no needle and thread To fix my drafty Tattered seams Traveling Is in itself A harsh poverty It is the cold of the night Creeping whilst you sleep on the streets It is the lion’s growl within gut When strangers sit beside you In large bellied feast It is the trampish stealing of scraps When you think nobody to see My travels Are the rain soaking through Clothes, bone and soul It is the shivered roughness Of being out in the world alone It is Christmas day Spent among strangers with no home Traveling Is a forestry of hairy legs Pungent armpits without shower for weeks It is a self-inflicted cruelty That you have never yet dreamed It is your one pair of trousers Being washed Down the stream Traveling Is a masochistic choice That I have made with intrigue For yes, after every darkness there is light And each of these wars carries sight Into the makings of the fabric of my being Traveling Is a homeless man On Christmas day Buying you a kebab It is an acknowledgment And an honoring Of the strength You never knew you had It is a restoration in humanity Restored against an ever changing backdrop Of druggies And men of mad I am a lady I am a tramp And lest I tell you now dear friend … That luck … Hasn’t got a damned thing to do with that! Written by April Lee Fields

The Unknown The air is familiar in its calamity The scent of childhood follows me Towards indecisiveness Your touch, reminding me of presence Grounding and reassuring An uninsured explorer My thoughts foresee The winds of change Howling at my skin Distracting a heart Unaccustomed to the warmth And I’m somehow lost within I walk upon the stepping stones to your heart And sit down at the door Unsure If ever I had an invitation To begin with Stacking thoughts upon the pros and cons As I rustle through my purse In search of self-assurance Because I want to leap Though the side is undecided I beg for you to take my hand and lead the way Though these wishes must remain Within their silent cave Drowned out by the crashing of waves For I know that there are things one must do alone I can’t be shown Nor comforted I just want you to understand That there’s a deep-seeded restlessness within me That no love can ever tame! And though happiness, I know Not to be perched upon a hill somewhere Amidst wish-dusted stars and rainbows I know that there’s a part of me That I must interpret on my own My thoughts; Just a message in a bottle Floating out to sea Trying to follow the currents Of what was once upon a me And I wonder this to be A life defining moment? Or just me Creating havoc Within my very own psyche Little green men have me surrounded With plastic guns and nameless faces And I wonder … Do I surrender? Or soldier on? Like the little army man that I keep in my wallet For this is a matter I’m accustomed to A matter of the self A progressive interpretation A deciphering between fool’s gold and wealth There’s an intricate world holding me upright And perhaps it is my curse That I hunger for its exploration And yours … … That you feel the cold and empty draught of my worst Still, there are parts of me That you are yet to see My unsettled Semi-obsessive dreams A definition of self, it seems A DIY of self-esteem Though your fragility … It breaks me in two Because in some unannounced way I have become your boogey man And when you try to dream at night Perhaps my outstretched hands Shall only haunt you An invisible Unforeseen fright I have gone nowhere in my self-reflection No reconciliation Or attuned connection Just a girl walking stepping stones of misconception Scared of dying young April Lee Fields The Unknown is a piece from Aprils book of poetry, Wild Flower available on Amazon.

Algebraic Love Love Sits on the forefront of my mind All day long Sat up high on a heap of bricks Stickin’ it To the man To the shams To the humpty dumpty spectators For we have all had great falls What else do I know … If not for this love? Well … Really, nothing at all I don’t divide fractions But I understand the mathematics Of a you Plus a me Multiplied Into ten thousand rose petals Divided in soul symmetry Then blown out to an eternally salted sea Make a wish And I will kiss It to life Lord … help me Maybe I should take up rocket science Or quantum mechanics for a spell Get me out of my heart here for awhile But somehow Still All the atoms and the electrons Would bring themselves together In a magical dolphin frequency Pulsating right before my very eyes An unfathomable display of God’s divinity Shown just for me Somehow I would still find romance Within these spherical happenings And measure myself up against their curved love bubbles Emotional intelligence runs me round For miles and miles I exhaust myself to no end So, I entertain the possibility of robotic foundations Not caring Just going through the motions of the dead But to feel That, it is said, is the realest of the real Therefore, any exhaustion in this calculation Shall not outweigh my determination And so … I love fully With my entire heart And maybe a little less head Unless, of course It is the kind of head with wet tongues Born of an eternally salted sea And laid out before me Upon the soft of your bed April Lee Fields Algebraic Love, a piece from April's book of poetry, is available on Amazon.

Like a Man She will hide her face And tell the truth So that you are not distracted by fleshy lies She will speak as if she were born a man And words, without beauty Shall suffice For she knows that beauty; Despite its warm and pulsing truth That beauty is also a lie Beauty is an intoxicating affair That holds captive a simple and impressionable soul Cutting off locks of illusion from her golden hair Ageing gracefully into an inevitable old Despite the words that she is speaking Only the fullness of her lips will be seen Whilst you witness her skins phantom desire to undress To be touched To be fucked And to be seen When the reality of this story Is that she simply needed to breathe A woman’s body is a complicated riddle That man will gladly spend his days Such is the diversity of femininity In that there constantly stands A complex vs concave Her hair is long Her skin; pale as a winter’s morn Whilst she stands and clasps her hands in a reserved tone Yet, you think them far too nimble To ever be alone Whether you have a hero’s kind of courage Or a desperate longing from the start How could you ever genuinely understand The truth of a woman’s heart? What whispers would stir your secret self From such a dormant sleep Whilst she lie there smoking Like a man Giving nothing at all For you to keep Written by April Lee Fields Like a man, a piece from April's book of Poetry, Wild Flower, is available on Amazon.