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Logan Robertson  Jul 2018
Here
Logan Robertson Jul 2018
there's a fisherman down by the sea
sitting on the wharf
watching the sun sink into the western sky
a frown frames his house
he looks out the window
at his pole, gear
and especially that of his net
emptiness
metaphors that weigh on him
uprooting his garden
a garden of no delight
one lonely row of forget me not
and regret
all wilting
his foundation
lost
never found or realized
he pauses
runs his hand over his pole
like a belt without any notches
his grip slipping into the abyss
as the last of the orange
sinks
bleeds also
at where the sea  meets the sky
where his day slowly turns to night
somewhere out there he sees his image
in nature's mirror
at his crossroads
for deeply
and some may say shallowly
he looks onto the sea one last time
and he means what he says
and throws his fishing gear in
tears welling in his eye
as he watches his teddybear sink
lips gurgling
seemingly asking why
... why
he answers back
there were no fish or bites
in his lonely sea
or wind at his back
... there
his window opens wider
the sea not singing or dancing
he sees the ambient light
correlations
... here

Logan Robertson

7/06/2018
If one reads between the lines the poem reads like a eulogy with a
harbinger to come.
It's hard to hide a smile
When you should feel defiled.
Is it wrong to give my soul,
act as a ***** in the bed and
reconcile your acts as nothing but
worthwhile?
My skin and mind are afire
we're lying side by side respirating shallowly
admired, reviled and inspired I let myself wander
with thoughts of our beguiled afternoon.
Love affairs are seedy, needy and just
without my lover I'd feel nothing but bile
for the man I let slip a band on me.
I want to stay awhile, but the room will
be needed by the next coupling.
And, until next time I have to veil my
vile, yet necessary secret
And that I do with guile and style.
© JLB
David Ayres Apr 2013
A blast from some dark past sounds quite murky. Swampy shallows we shallowly swim in, like ***, my brand new $2000 dress just got *****. Spend another $1000 on a trendy fashion, or 30. This poem sounds funny, but your selfish ******* sounds quirky.
A little birdie flew by and chirped for me to share the mashed potatoes AND the turkey.
Good advice guy! Once bitten, twice shy they say. Oh my! Nice try.
I'll look up at the sky and wish to live and not die. Wallow in YOUR misery and fry, the fish for YOUR mind.
Blame YOUR ****-ups on the World while millions perish in the night. **** YOUR fright.
Let's fight the good fight, while we step out of the dark, and into the light. Sounds tight!
You ***** and complain, while others are tortured in blind sight. You only focus on your muscles and might.
I'll focus on my mind, cause I'm right. Here's a cigarette, need a light? Pay it forward, while the Sun is still bright.
Might I inquire to en-light a lost flame? Take your baggage and keep walking, cause WE are all the ******* to blame.
This lion will never be tamed. **** over greedy people and feel shamed. I'll switch my face and my name and wash the past away in the rain. Pain makes you stronger. Never let your patience escape down the sink, or the drain.
Refrain from the wall that reflects sunshine from the stain. I hope this poem speaks to your brain, like ancient wisdom to lost claims.
Insane in the membrane, feelings are brought out in the day. Saying what's on your mind should not be thought lame.
I'm Dave and let's pay it forward and be brave.
Natalie  Aug 2018
Deluged
Natalie Aug 2018
Her mouth sits agape,
Shallowly wafting stale, dank air.
Each breath drifts down to her lap,
Resting there in a sour cloud.
It reeks of dead fish and swamp mud.
And her middle is drowned in feelings of despair
Which seep sluggishly through the chambers of her heart.
The drunken reflux stains her linen black—
Black as the bottom of some lifeless lake.

She rises from her place at the edge of her bed
Wading through her sorrow—
Through her own viscous thoughts...
She does this
With what little spirit she can muster.

It is the last of what she once possessed.
Marie Warner Apr 2013
How do I hate thee? I can't count the ways.
I hate thee like a puddle on the street
As shallowly as water touching feet;
Only a time span of just a few days.
I hate thee with a foggy level-head
And a logic that makes no sense to you.
I hate thee passionately without truth,
I hate thee sincerely with words unsaid.
I hate thee with an affection that's stalled
Where faded love blooms into a new mess.
I hate thee with a heart that's like night fall;
Dark curtains hiding light with a fake kiss.
I've tried to hate you, but I don't at all;
Not slightly, or even a little bit.
kyle dionysus Jul 2017
I was dog tired. Just keeping my eyes open was tough. My timid body was drunk with fatigue. Staring for a whole day at a computer screen and typing as if in a trance, had left my mind blank. My skinny hands were frostbitten in the cheap artificial leather gloves, as they clung to the motorbike handles. My heart raced as I looked at the ominous black clouds.          I tried to focus on the gloomy scenery as my mind drifted in and out of my dream world. Winter had turned the green hedges into lifeless shapes with razor sharp thorns. Mud from previous vehicles had turned the hedges into the edges of a war zone. The trip felt endless as my threadbare tyres skated round the bends. After driving for a hour, the icy chill of the evening air had made me regret not putting on my old trusted army jacket. My rusty red Honda 500cc motor cross motorbike kept up its duel with the dirt road as its exhaust barked continuously. The beam of my headlights kept stabbing the gloomy sky.               With my frostbitten hand, I switched on my CD player, in a desperate effort to focus on the road. The words of Golden Earrings Radar Love pierced my eardrums  "...almost there, gotta keep cool". My goggles started to fog up as I echoed the lyrics. I started to breath shallowly like a chain smoker, to stop my goggles from frosting further. I had just became used to the soothing distraction, when the motorbike gave its last bark and gradually coasted to a stop. I got off my stead, with my joints feeling like a geriatric patient that had completed a rodeo. I surveyed the bust engine as my cursing breath formed little clouds in the gelid air. I dug around in my shabby jeans, whipped out my cellphone, only to discover that there was no reception. I salvaged my flashlight from the bikes saddlebag and popped a "Life Safer" sweet into my mouth. I realized that I had to walk to the nearest town.                 I started down the road, remembering my fathers reference to isolation, being between "hell and the hotel." My flashlight reminded me of load shedding and sudden darkness. As I walked past a small lake, the clouds parted, revealing  a crescent moon that hung in the air like a haunted vessel. The moon reflected in the lake, to a watery grave for the sailors. I got the eerie feeling as I walked, that someone or something was following me. I stopped and swallowed the stale cold coffee that was left in my hip-flask. The howling Arctic wind had ceased and I could hear my own heartbeat. Ledd Zeppelins Stairway to heaven started smoothly...
Madisen Kuhn Feb 2019
keep me awake
i keep falling asleep

i keep forgetting 
that i have
fearfully crawled
into places filled
to the brim with
heartbeats and
suffocating heat
just to find myself
with dry palms
and a soft jaw
minutes later

i hold my tongue
only to cut it off
when i hate
the feeling of it
inside my mouth
and leave it for
him to hold
all pink and slimy
and frantic and cruel
and wonder
why it’s hard for him
to read my poetry

and every night
i lie my head
against the chest
of indifference
and swear that
i can hear the
lazy thump of
his affection
resting shallowly
below thin ribs

i am kept awake
through the
loneliness hours
considering
my own
self-inflicted
wounds
instead of dressing
the deep cut
we both share
CarolineSD  Jan 2021
Jerusalem
CarolineSD Jan 2021
A dark sun pulls heavily within
These long minutes of isolation
A vortex opens
A chasm in the lungs
And it makes the abrasive air thin.

I am breathing shallowly like one
Feral thing caught in a trap
Nowhere to run
And thus forced to rest right next
To the parts of myself that I hate
The parts that can’t escape their own
Internal blankness
Though they faintly remember how to sing or

The remote and shadowed trail to Jerusalem

Call me home
There is music in the bones of the forest
And the wild reeds are dancing on

The banks of Babylon  

We should not fall and
Lay our desecrated souls across an altar of darkness;

No, if you listen very carefully at the precipice of dawn,

There, where the mountains lift the thickened fog into a brightening sky

There is still the quiet drum of hope
And the flutter of so many unbeaten hearts
Like butterflies reborn

Dancing

~
Inspired by this uplifting song out of South Africa. To me, it brings a sense of finding hope, finding a home for our worn souls <3 The words are in Zulu and mean “Jerusalem is my home, rescue me, walk with me, do not leave me here, come with me, walk with me” and these little dancers are a dance crew from Kampala, Uganda <3<3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euOJw3v7R6w
I captained logs lovingly across
a musky pond
to hang stars on this date
when so much happened.
Let’s wake in the missed-me morrow
and I’ll try to recapture it.

6am

My aroused heart pounds with the eager
pecks of new world sparrows
feasting on a found pile of saltine *******
crumbs.

With these easier pickings, they can gloss
over hypothetical seeds lost
and the unfortunate insects
still trapped in their tightly wrapped buds
while emitting
a silky trickle of pollen sweetened tears
I might have once confused as joy.

8am

My mouth is a cast iron bell
robbed of its moistness
and the service of a tongue that would rather be
surgically cut without
the requisite anesthesia
than extol with slithering anticipation
the downfall of cold-blooded prey.

A grubby grimace can’t
switch off the cockle-less warmth
gazed by an elegantly impolite swan,
but amazingly cottony soft escapes can
be ginned with the bait of a choirboy’s tender
“Have mercy!”

10am

My nutmeg brown irises are diced
fresh and tossed into a ***
where spiced hot they’re shown
the urgency this yet-to-be plucked rose feels
when the mid-morning light
accumulates with enough heat
to bake the earth chocolate.

The tattered edges of her puckered lips
glow an ardent shade of pink and make
a beacon, signaling kingly butterflies to abdicate
their aimless flutters and jet
directly toward her alluring realm.

Noon

My usually cool tips can’t maintain
their aloof trance and they trip
red with sudden blushes over the damaged
clasp on a school girl’s lunch box
crayoned with lemonade kittens,
their wordless greetings.

It’s unlatched to reveal no magic
pressed in the chunks of pickle loaf,
but the foetid and desperate
fruits of a wish for can’t-stay-at-home mothers
to be released from the wages of others’
drudgery.

A squirrel drags her white bread
and dappled meat onto the play lot
where the child’s storm-cloud stare
breaks with the flash
and low rumble of laughter.

2pm

My soles crave the touch of loose-dirt
roads, but it’s my ankles that meet
brambles and are torn by their tiny kisses
from which a rubbery
beauty of sappy drips trails back
to grow pastel primavera blooms.

Their long, tapered necks
and delicate, glassy horns blow
the modulated notes of an icy hymn.

Its diamante flecks freckle
the hovering blue before falling
to press these young,
painted plants into a frieze
and free them from wilting.

4pm

My nape aches for the subtle
weight on not supple joints
between thick fig branches
powdered with a maquillage of snowy dust.

No one care can snap them
or keep them from sheltering
the grazes of constantly bleating sheep.

Candy floss wool is tinted
jonquil then apricot then cherry
as the distant and fiery ball of a sun
slowly descends to the quenching
splash in its night-deposit bucket.

6pm

My unencumbered back gently rolls with a raft
adrift on ripples raised
when unknown aquatic creatures
stir in a shallowly cupped liquid.

Their pleasant plunks and gleeful gurgles
are carried on the crisply creeping evening
air to wash away
the unsavory wafts of salty rumors.

Here I can’t scent the far-removed
oceans racked by hunger’s
chilling frissons and the pundit’s
raging rants to at all-costs maintain
the elevation of market-priced pap.

And I drifted off...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Brent Kincaid  Dec 2015
DALLIANCE
Brent Kincaid Dec 2015
Having him near and not touching
Was decidedly tough.
In the end I realized that loving him
Was just not enough.
He liked making love and exploring
The bodies we had
But not enough to fall in love with me
And that was sad.

I knew this heart-pounding affair was
Just for a few days.
And while I was falling very hard, he
Would son walk away.
He mumbled something one time
About being a free spirit
But in those moments I didn’t know
What to do with it.

It was not information I could take
And put someplace real.
It was a kind of romantic connection
That I could not feel.
It didn’t fit with the movies and books
And the fairy tales.
It didn’t end with a swell of music.
It ended with sad wails.

It made no sense at all to me then
How anyone could be
A totally involved ****** machine
And act so shallowly.
How can someone throw themselves
Into such wild action
And have it not mean more than just
Physical satisfaction?

He was the first, there were more.
This kind of guy shines,
And knows how to attract the fools
With attitudes like mine;
People who persuade themselves
To proceed blindly
When these one-night lotharios
Treat lovers unkindly.

Of course, it was not love, I know,
Not even for me.
It was just something called lust
That captivated me.
A gorgeous body and talented talk
Easily woos youth
With so much seduction I would not
Look hard for the truth.
Hurry gravedigger

The ground is frozen solid, sir

And this sack is heavy, you cur!

I need a *****, a drill would do!

Dig, you slug or I’ll send you through and through...

The snow was deep, the graveyard barren

not a wreath on a stone. The dead were alone.

You should have brought her in a box, sir.

I laughed like a lunatic.

The ***** deserves no better than a sack

her cocktail dress a mess, alas.

Suddenly, her head rolled out.

My God, I said, Her lips are red.

My big concern was her corpse would

sprout in Spring…

Perhaps sir, beg your pardon,

it may be sooner than you think.

I blinked and blinked…

her cheeks looked rosy pink.

What did you give her sir?

Slow acting poison in green liqueur

Hum…she seems to be moving.

What a wicked smile.

A twisted thorn branch hit my side.

A red drop of blood hit the snow.

I tossed the branch aside.

This woman was destroying

my writer’s pride with ***.

She climbed out of the sack.

I took off my coat and wrapped

her tight. Divorce would have taken

all my money away.

Well darling, she said, attempted

****** is now on the list to rid me

of your writer’s fits.

I began to feel ghastly faint. My

stomach turned I vomited in pain.

Grave digger, she cooed,Keep digging.

A shallow grave will do. After the news,

the prodigal writer son will be shut away

in the family Museum.

The bewildered grave digger nodded

then watched his master fall to the ground

seemingly dead.

I don’t understand, the gravedigger said,

he claimed he killed you with slow acting cyanide.

Yes, in my favorite green liquor.

His rabid fondness for liquor obscured the switch.

He drank my drink.

Is this ******, madame?

How so, dear boy? he simply killed himself after his novel

fizzled. I simply took him quickly outside, buried

him shallowly and only for a while so the smell

would not offend the party inside.

la belle dam sans Merci

What did you say, old man?

The angel of death and all her wiles

leads men to death with her beautiful smile.

I should report these goings on…

I think your thinking days are done.

She picked up the *** and shoved it hard

into the old mans mouth. Blood dripped from his ears

and eyes. Then carefully cut his vocal chords.

The old man fell to the ground. He tried to speak

but not a sound. She kicked him down the hill with

her spiked heeled pumps. Picked up the coat

and wandered through the headstone maze.

She stopped. A headstone caught her eye.

A silver wreath hung ore the name, diamonds like

icycles  dripped their bracelets from the branches.

She was in disbelief. She pushed aside the wreath

to see the name. She stood up shuddering.

It read: For my Belle, I made you up now I

take you down. One hit by a club of steel.

She didn’t feel the blow. A trickle of blood at

the corner of her lush red mouth. The grave

was ready with head stone too. I tossed her in

and locked the lid  then dropped it all into the

pit. Tomorrow the grave diggers would do the rest.

I was mild proud of creating a character so

clever, No more. I was free. Free of my own creation.

Free of having to prove myself as a writer.

They will find the stone and believe I died a drunkard's

death, a second rate writer with an empty

bank account. What a New Year joy. The money in

Tahiti and so will I…writers can change their name.

What’s in a name anyway?
KM COLBY 2009 @

— The End —