Soft footsteps in the forest,
padding softly, far away,
closer, closer, come and go,
unseen voices whisper secrets,
soothes the heart and soul,
wind singing inside my ears,
trees dance to their songs,
and the sun shines playfully
Tusks digging
Ears flapping
I’ll keep my distance.
Donkey loyalty
I’ll carry mine and your weight
You can keep on fighting
I don’t know pain
The elephant
ablunder
Elephant
Asunder
Elephant
Down under
Thoughts of you
swirl in my mind,
and remain stagnant in my heart.
Oh, how they haunt me so.
There are so many words
left unsaid by me;
words that may
never reach your ears.
These words would bring
to me much needed solace.
Simply said, they would dissipate
the shadow that
follows me everywhere;
this same dark shadow that makes me
question every step I have made,
and every step I am about to make.
My words left unsaid
will remain as such,
as time is needed
to heal the loss I now feel,
before I can face you and say,
word by word, what I feel -
what I will always feel.
“I love you, I miss you,
and I need you.
I want you in my life.
I am sorry for my indiscretions.”
When these words
have finally been said,
I hope, we both find comfort
in knowing that as your friend,
I will always be there,
wishing you well and
hoping that life fulfills you.
Vicki A. Zinn
2008
A Sunday and she will not eat
cabbage brew
or the plethora of stale mush
stuffed within
her trusty rusty biscuit tin
even tea stained
and netted dishcloths wane
like fossil flies
on toffee streamers that were baptized
with gravey drips
of the Irish stew from her whitewashed crypt
and papal’s sprogg
plays housies with the dog
we keep shtum .
When threadbare ears are in the room
cull the conversation cull
Go Moe less scale, leather hull
until our hallowed family makes
familiar curiosity and lemon cakes
she’s broke down so give her a push
Maybe ninety two.
It’s Monday and she will not eat.
old makeup spilled on my floor
dirty clothes strewn on my floor
You can hardly see the carpet for all the clothes carelessly being trodden on. Blue holiday lights are strung around the mirror. I am watching Andy Warhol eating a hamburger on a new, thousand dollar laptop, slick-as-a-whistle, paid with a swipe. For the past six months, I have had less than four hundred combined checking and savings, and that number dwindles by the day. I have no groceries, but I've got fistfuls of orange prescription bottles, and I was handing pills out like candy (but they are needed, much and every day).
Where did all these bills come from?
Suddenly, it costs money to breathe.
Eating? Oh pshaw, that costs money, and the store's six blocks away.
I pout on my throne of dirty cotton, thinking I get what I ask for, when I ask, and it always comes--at a price! It's always over a hundred dollars more than I could spare and brings bad luck, moreso than a couple broken mirrors would, even if they were smashed over a the back of your mother's black cat.
"Quick! Let's do designer drugs with the paltry change given by our parents! I wouldn't feel like I wasn't nothing, nothing at all," I say, batting my eyelashes, "Wouldn't they feel proud of our feelings of entitlement to the greater things in life and consciously responsible adult-like decisions?"
I crack open my father's checking account with the swipe of a magnetic strip,
it makes me seem responsible when he sees I just use it for pills and foodstuff.
(I prove I love him and he loves me this way)
Now, together, we will buy strawberries with his money,
they must be four dollars, at the very least, then we eat like the bourgeoisie (!)
I kiss the cheeks of my reflection in the bathroom
tousling my hair, tipsy, as I touch up my face by
licking the tips of eyeliner up like a cat's little tail,
the ends of eyes, coated with eyeliner as black as
my tightest velvet pants and dark, dark heart.
We go together.
You should move to a big city
and I'll come call, prepaid, with
a voice that is thick and ripped,
chattering of sugar-white beaches
as I cross the seas all on a plane,
all the while drunk on red wine,
twirling my fingers around, with
bags under eyes, a little anemic
(I think it adds to the glamour)
We will go out to a dimly lit place
We will go out dancing then after
I will put on dab perfume under my ears and on my wrists,
I will wear black tights for pants, but first, do a little cocaine
and you will fasten the clasp on my silver necklace tonight,
while I smoke, before helping me put on my favorite fur
And we will go see Andy, at the factory
I hear he's doing something
with that Basquiat fellow (!)
I will go follow false luxuries, come with me.
I will gamble with you in Monte Carlo or Las Vegas,
just as long as you pay my rent at $695 per month,
until I die, or something else.
It has been two months
And more
Since I moved my mouth around
Your name
It clanked on my ears
And it
Tasted rusty on my tongue
Funny
How one syllable
Is so
Hard to think about saying
I kind of fell into this 5-2-7-2 pattern and I liked it.
......................................................................................
Toby Wilmont Hollingford
Wears his socks upon his head,
And will not relent to
Put his socks away.
Toby says his ears are cold,
And will not do as he's been told.
So afraid he'll catch a
Death of cold today.
Toby wears socks on his head,
And he wears socks on his feet.
He will even wear them on his nose
As he's walking down the street.
'Germs are everywhere, ' says he,
'And I'll not let them get to me.
I am one of a kind,
And I'm almost unique.
Germs won't get
The best of me!"
But his Mother did not agree,
And said,
'Toby, please take
Those socks off
Your head.
They are dreadful.
They are filthy.
And they smell.'
But Toby felt the winter chill,
And perched upon the window sill,
Said, ' But they fit me
So very, very well.'
Indeed!
Toby dressed himself quite well,
Rather well for May,
With socks protecting every hand
He took with him today.
He wore two socks on
His two feet,
And two socks on
His ears.
For the wind outside had
That biting chill
That penguins all
Revere.
He stepped outside
To test the cool,
And the coldness made
Him shiver.
And he breathed the frost
That nipped him
Just as winter
Would deliver.
Serenely, and with a
Nod of the head
He turned
And went back inside,
And said,
'It's cold out there,
Far, far too cold
To justify this action.
My knees, they tremble,
My elbows hurt,
And my shoes
Haven't the traction
To make it to the mailbox,
Oh, I've dared the
Great Outside!
And it's dismal, Mom.
I give up.
But at least
You know
I tried.'
Copyright © 2010 Richard D. Remler
....................................................................................................
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ..."
- Louis Hector Berlioz
....................................................................................................
My love for music will make me deaf one day.
That, and my lack of experiance with recording equipment and amplifiers.
I stand next to an amp, with a bass in my hand plucking to the beat of the drums, and dancing like Paul McCartney.
I sing as loud as my can, but I still can't hear myself. The sound of the band over rides my bare voice.
I feel the bass in my chest.
It's amazing, the thrill of the music and the rush makes me forget.
Then we stop playing, and I feel the ringing in my ears. I can barely hear.
My passion will make me deaf one day.
in the backs of cabs that reek of stale vomit,
blue salt specks are dragged against their will to rest in the ridges of the floor mats.
fluorescent confused cubicles of light flashing by-
your mind fighting to make shapes out of the blur.
it’s january, this is everyone’s mood.
fingers folded into fists, stuffed into nylon pockets,
catching your breath and watching the scenery swirl past
like the entire horizon is made of melting wax.
you’re replaying day old conversations, analyzing cryptic eye movements
and body language of those people that strike you so suddenly.
those strangers that have pushed and shoved every defense and nestled themselves
into every fiber of your being. you sicken yourself with these sappy adolescent romantic bouts
but they’re the only thing keeping you alive.
you don’t know these people.
you don’t even know yourself.
the cab driver mumbles something over the radio and your attention is brought back to the present.
he’s on the phone-
that’s illegal.
you’re a little concerned-
your life does lie in the shivering hands of a stranger who boredly grasps and curves a wheel, after all.
but you play it cool, you turn to nihilism- it’s easier this way.
death is fine.
the cab driver is passing your house while you’re swatting at questions.
you uncomfortably raise your quiet voice for a few hesitant notes.
“Here is fine!”
you urge to the driver while a fumbling hand shakes down your pockets for a twenty.
there’s your house- standing just as you left it
through the white mystery patches on the back window.
chock full of memories and problems and decay and warmth.
everything seems to rest so calmly in the palms of the bittersweet.
tell the stranger to have a goodnight.
he returns the favor.
everyone needs to hear these things-
it’s january, after all.
It hit him hard
and he was left dizzy and reeling
from the collision between his ears
and Penny's mouth
Still laid up in bed
she had been there for almost a year
a year since something else
hit her hard
Every day Kyle had visited
and waited for her to wake up
and the doctors warned that may never happen
but here she was
What were her first words when she woke up?
"Kyle," she asked.
Her voice was quiet
almost deleted by the hum of a dozen machines that had watched her as diligently as her husband had
but to Kyle, they were the bells on their wedding day
"Kyle," she asked, as he grasped her had tightly
the hand that, for the first time in a year, held his back,
"Where's the baby?"
