




So I am nearly done with Human Shaped Verse. It’s Time to ask again. What do you think should be my next volume?





So I am nearly done with Human Shaped Verse. It’s Time to ask again. What do you think should be my next volume?

Kids say the Strangest Stuff
By Patricia Harris
Why do we grow out
Of saying the most fun
Things that can come to mind?
Hurry up and save the toothbrush,
Avoid the trip to the planet
Made of stench and stinky feet…
Be made of turtles if you need to.
Why did you stop talking to
The monsters in the closet anyway?
Kids understand the world,
The wonders that keep it alive…
So though they say some of
The strangest things,
I think the kids see more than
Anyone else does in a lifetime.
*Poet’s note. This is absolutely inspired by my friend Jenny’s Dante. She messaged me three things that he said and it reminded me of the moments when my kids were little…and I realized that kids have a magic that we tend to forget by the time adulthood comes.

Building Walls
By Patricia Harris
Everyone is so busy building walls
that we forget the reasons why
we try to hide within.
Keeping your heart from feeling,
keeping it from breaking,
is safer than trying to live
don’t you know?
building walls in front of my dreams
stops the pain from ever entering,
it stops people from touching the tender places
that I can’t heal from the other hands
that left me broken.

Bitch with me
By Patricia Harris
The urge to just complain,
Not that you want to
Really anything change,
Just venting steam to release
And start again.
This is in the nature of the game,
Instead of fixing the problem
Whine and complain,
To feel better again.

My Faults
By Patricia Harris
In my head
my faults are mountain sized,
built from the moments I have
so often tried…
and seen the inability
to make it work…
so the blame was in me?
because where else could it be?
instead of seeing the struggle
I have endured and the learning curve
that me was set before,
I assumed that I was flawed.
Overcome the world laid at my feet,
every issue did I defeat, just not in perfect grace,
so I listed my own flaws in litany
because I saw the struggle as my disgrace.

Bone Tired
By Patricia Harris
When does sleep
Finally catch up
With the tired
A lifetime long?
It’s not that I am complaining,
For life is full, and I am aware,
But more than three hours
Would help feel like
I have been mauled by a bear.

Humanity
By Patricia Harris
Define for me
That which makes us human?
The bits that keep us from
Being defined as animals
Or monster…
Remind me,
On my dark days,
That all that is within me
Is still humanity…
Even if I wonder if I ever
Was human at all?

In the middle of madness
Lay the verse,
Written down to try to explain
Something dark and perfect.
That the world can be seen
With eyes shaded by dark things,
Or overgrown with flowers
That bloom in nightshade.
All of this is just an expression
Of poetry and the truth from
What a heart can bleed.

Until dawn
By Patricia Harris
Staying awake for no reason
Until dawn approaches
Produces the same dreams
As if you were to crawl into
Bed as soon as the night falls.
Telling the self that life
Must fit in the schedule
Given by social settings
Only creates a guilt
Unnecessarily.