Like mustard gas,
suffocating.

Better keep me contained,
Don't get me on your hands.

My home is a death chamber,
a spider's web.

Like the naked man running out of
Jeffery Dahmer's apartment.

Like the poison apple
offered to Snow White.

Better leave that money on the ground,
you don't know where it's been.

It's a predictable cycle
Peaceful Nature.
The hum of the streams
layered by the whistle and the **** call.
Sunning spring green grasses
dew soaking their new season's blade.
A croak interrupts the morning,
calling us out to the field.
Only we hold our position listening in anticipation.
Nature excites us as though the unexpected will appear momentarily,
Only it's the regularity that surprises.
Our nervous system is poised for action,
until we realize the day is relaxing, breathing deeply,
Sat in prayer and obedience.

It's a predictable cycle
Peaceful Nature.
The hum of the streams
layered by the whistle and the **** call.
Sunning spring green grasses
dew soaking the new season's blade.
A croak interrupts the morning,
calling us out to the field.
Only we hold our position, listening in anticipation.
Nature excites us as though the unexpected will appear momentarily,
only it's the regularity that surprises.
Our nervous system is poised for action,
until we realize the day is relaxing, breathing deeply,
sat in prayer and obedience.

It's a predictable cycle
Peaceful Nature.
The hum of the streams
layered by the whistle and the **** call.
Sunning spring green grasses
dew soaking the new season's blade.
A croak interrupts the morning,
calling us out to the field.
Only we hold our position, listening in anticipation.
Nature excites us as though the unexpected will appear momentarily,
only it's the regularity that surprises.
Our nervous system is poised for action,
until we realize the day is relaxing, breathing deeply,
Sat in prayer and obedience.

Because there is no cause to hurt one another,
I will stand miles away leaving you in each of your days,
Your full laughter filling your airs.

I will stand on my side of the line,
Staying hidden here in the years,
Turning right down this ally
In my city, straying farther in the opposite direction.

Only providence could force us to meet,
Because there is no cause to hurt one another.

Intensity of life
When you look into my eyes
do you see a shallow child?

Depth-
into the dark caverns of the soul
where people roam lost
onto trails in black woods
of uncertainty
wandering blind
newborn
looking for their answer.

Their seriousness,
they were real, worth your time,
worth your commitment,
Something about their lives
touched you to the point of allowing yourself to experience pain.

A beauty found
in the lines of their eyes
mouths, the color of their hair,
the motion of their figure,
moved you to blend yourself
until your colors all ran together.

Then there is us.
Some of us are simply clouds,
puffy, white, silently passing by.

simple gestures of remorse like two words
held loosely in the mouth so with a whisper
they float upon the breath as you hum them
through on a song from your heart.

My small life mini, tiny, micro,
barely memerable save one,
maybe two.

It's like
a story we can't tell
it's like
we ****** ourselves into pain and risk on purpose.
It's like
we don't look before we leap.
It's like
we run into the fire.

Only now
I am stopping
before the edge of the cliff.
I am not jumping
straight away,
I am looking
over the edge and listening first.

taking a very long listen, I've heard that wind before, no, I am not mesmerized this time. This time I will observe for a while and believe my soul when it runs away from the inside.

The only person who calls me today is
the creditor man.
God told me I was supposed to date him from now on,
and I guess I'll listen to him this time.
There was a fear I had at 25, that I would crawl out
of an old apartment house each day,
stinking of agedness.
People, that fear is about to happen, and I don't know
how to stop it.
Death has me in it's grip, and despite everything
Christ promises, I can not feel the light.

Here is an image of me  walking down a long staircase
stone stairs
cool and dusty in the shade of the rising sun
chalk white stairs
Maybe somewhere in Greece or Italy
Birds sing their morning song
The air is cool
of course I am wearing white
my hair has somehow returned to it's chestnut brown hue
because now I am young again
walking down these stairs
strolling in the day
with nothing to do
except think
and now I will mourn all the losses I've ever known
the weight of them
rested in my heart
and I'll not feel poorly for feeling sad
because sadness makes life real
and I could even be the deity of sad
because it is like a blessing to hold sadness
living with it,
accepting it,
and living the next day with it.

What makes things sad?

Why is the grey on the streets sad? Why is the song in our minds miserable and slicing up our spirits as we walk home from school?
Why do we tell ourselves that we are no good, a failure, ugly, untalented? Why do we **** ourselves or think about killing ourselves on a monthly basis? Why are we no good?

Water,
The ocean is the most desperate vacuum
Where I can ride out over it’s dangerous dark water, driving the boat towards an unreachable port, sailing on into forever, sobbing into the wild Atlantic winds, running away from misery, boundaries, barriers, and dreams impossible to achieve.

crying in the darkness or light
you tears falling out of your eyes
onto your cheeks
sobs

the silence after you weep
rings
and you think
God must be watching.

But in life,
only pain follows sadness
cloaked in robes of temporary joy,
waiting to undress
and reveal itself once more.

It's then you realize,
God only watches,
it is Satan who listens.

I am.
they say this is a false self,
clinging to my feelings.

but they are there, I feel them.

"The poet, the wise philosopher, and the saint not only reach a wide luminous consciousness, but they gain certain knowledge of substantial reality." says Patanjali.

but this poet clings to her self, because she feels, and they say this is wrong, I am doing this wrong, this wisdom, this living.

I know I am doing this wrong because I keep getting kicked out, exiled, left out, forgotten, ignored, smeared; and so my feelings keep happening, and I continue to cling, to cherish, only myself, because no one else does.

"What do you do?"

"I create shelters for peace. Places you can go to when you have no where to go. I buy shacks in the desert."

He nodded, looked to his friend. Their social class hung on their East coast shoulders as they lifted a paid for beer up to their pampered lips.
  
I said, "If it is not something you need, it has no value to you. Much like a Bonsai or Christ."

I felt secure, knowing they couldn't grasp the feeling of being lost in a Western desert.

Poetry is the voice of the simple.
Even the simple understand grief
abandonment
terror
devastation
surprise
elation
satisfactio­n
delight
resolve
surrender

A long time ago we spoke.

my dearest poetry world of poets,
did you know there are anti feminists out there
who hate women who moan and ***** about their good men?

Did you know there are German supporters
who cry for the shed blood
after WWI.
Germans massacred by armies
bodies melting in the asphalt.

Horrors certainly.
Death of all men,
except those who should die.

Loss of value of all men,
women should love their men more.

I sit in the dark on these issues,
until just recently.
The illumination burst in my eyes,
I was shone the annihilation.

Yes, men die, they are whipped by the tongue of the woman,
they are wasted and not cared for in a manner suited by men.
Men have a life, so much so, we may not play a role in the show.
We may not fit their needs,
and so to the slush pile with us we go.

Did I tell you today how sorry I am?
I remember eating that last loaf of bread,
black bean and brown rice,
down Cherry Street one morning while I walked
myself to work.

Days gone by like tap, tap, tap down.

All my bad, bad days crept up on me.
Tears are fallin' now.
New days with snow light a way,
It's the big give away sale now,
Promise i won't crave what they were made to have.

Not mine, not mine,
do not covet, do not want.
Blessed with a cup of joe and a good son,
I do know what all that is worth.

Hold my hand please,
I'll need you in my hours of needs.

Time now to wait this out...
Life down for the winter.

Every moment I feel the gaping hole that is the home I once owned.

The earth under its foundation, the moisture of the air surrounding it's log walls, the history of tiny feet padding over soft mud.

My heart dies when I understand I can never re-earn that wealth.
That I am too old to recover from this loss.

And I know, whatever gain you found from the dollars collected from this cabin can not be equal to its true value on the earth.

I find myself stranded, dangling, isolated, unrepresented.
I am a woman, though I won't march this January.

I believe in equality amongst all nations, races, genders
although I have no argument for the lack thereof.

The outrage of vibrant young ethnic men and women
is not mine to share, my white skin paints me guilty.

I am poor, have been my whole life.
I am not mad about it, had I worked harder, read more, wrote more, even cared more, I might have enjoyed the spoils.

I realize there is a stratosphere where dazzling ebony dancers,
stained with dye, decorated in braids, colored like Amazonian royalty
move their minds through a dreamspace whispering the laws of tomorrow.

I do not have an access pass to this heaven.
I can not feel it,
hear it,
find it.
I see it, I  stumble upon it from time to time, only to watch it
envious.

One woman said
Clean yourself up
with a cocktail napkin, so here I am
in the bathroom.
Sounds of the party.
Sounds of one man
pretending he gets the joke.
Oh, he gets the joke.
He just didn’t think
it was very funny.
I can understand that man.
The bones of Tom’s hands
made a fist
and told my nose
a joke, which is to say he
hit me. The resulting laughter
was quiet, but
well-sustained. People decorate
their bathrooms
like I would rather be at the beach
than in this bathroom.
I’d rather be watching swans
mate for life. Well,
not actually mating.
Okay, actually mating;
you can hardly tell
what’s going on. Unlike
*******, or unlike
a wedding ceremony. Or, no.
The wedding ceremony is more
like swans. I thought
I was just watching two people
hold hands
in front of a candle.
The people deciding
to wear flowers in the winter,
disrespectful of what the world,
bigger than us, said we could wear
or eat, like the asparagus hoers d’oeuvres
insisted it was a good time
to feel like it was summer.
At the wedding I was quiet.
At the party I was quiet
until Tom found me
offensive. The homeowners
long ago had decided
I’d rather be somewhere golden
than in this bathroom.
Outside the sounds
of people making promises,
or rather, hushing a room
to condone the most public
of promises made
in front of a candle.
When I’m cleaned up
I’ll find, if he was invited,
the man who played the *****,
or the priest who wears soft shoes
so he doesn’t disturb the holy
spirits resting in the rafters
when he walks through
the resting cathedral,
stooping at times
to pick up flowers.

By Hannah Gamble

I've always wanted to record my poetry and maybe set it to music.
My brother is a musician.

Here is me, playing around with poetic sound composition...

https://youtu.be/RapNkrkIdho

$139 to get to Puerto Rico.
Arms squeezed in between two solid arms,
Seats could not be more than 16 inches on center.

Brown people going home,
White people going to get brown.
This is a 3 hour and 39 minute flight. One quarter of the time it takes me to drive to Kansas.

Why does it matter if you start something
by starting something I mean creating something for yourself
a job, a project, a goal, an art

When I look out at people who are optimistic, who seem to be carefree, I see they are starters, they work for themselves, they look for the answers, they ask themselves questions.

What else do they have?

There is a tide,
I need a conversation,
my language is empty
because I have no one to talk with.

In order for life and art to flourish,
there must be nourishment,
food given through moments of lust,
passion, devotion, desire, and hope.

My people have abandoned this
moment in time, found color in famous shops
and deserted poverty.

you won't take responsibility in the role you played
in destroying my relationship.
You invaded my sacred home,
I let you in loving you.
Why did you enter in the first place
when you knew it was the home of another man?

A feather table: reckless gratitude.
It is that-there that means best.

White the green grinding trimming thing!
The disgrace, like stripes.
More selection, slighter intention.

Rosewood stationing is use journey: curious dusty empty length.
Winged cake: the cake, the plan that neglects to make color certainly.
Time long could winter: elegant consequences monstrous.
So much and guided holders garments are—and arrangements.
Staring then that when sudden same time’s necessary, that circular
     same’s more necessary, not actually aching.

And why special?
Not left straw, the chain’s the missing, was white winningly and
     occasion’s entirely strings.
Reason is sullenness: it’s there that practices left when six into
     nothing narrow, resolute, suggests all beside that plain seam.
Pencils, mutton, asparagus: the table there.
There reddening is not to change that in such absurd surroundings.
Considering clearly, a feather’s large second heat is there.
There that thing which smells that whistles that there’s denial,
     difference, surfeit-dated choices—everything trembling
imitation.

Imitation?—imitation is a joy gurgle.
Best bent, likely disappointed.
Cake season’s not more than most.
That cake makes no larder likely.
Not a single protection is even temporarily standing.
Sugar and lard there are sudden and shaming.
That single set comes orderly.
There the remarkable witness made no more settlement than
     blessing.
Increase the way steak colored coffee.
Wheatly that music half-noisy.
Reason’s decline is not a little grainy.

This means taste where toe-washing is reasonable.
Salmon carriage?—action hanging.
Scene bits and this nervous draught don’t satisfy elevation,
There is no change.
Much was temporary behind that center and much was formerly
     charming.
Then the then-triumphant showed their disagreeable hidden worries.
The chair asked the speech be repeated, supposing
     attention-resemblance.
It is just summer.
Another section has a light likeness to pedestrianism.
Which is light?
That used this there.
The chair’s justice: nothing-colored mercy.
No, perhaps some is likely.

That is not a genuine bargain.
There preparation so suits white bands’ singing and redness that the
     same sight’s a simpler splendor.
No, not the same.
Wishing the same is not quite the same as a different arrangement.
Any measure washed is brighter than an occasional string set.
A precocious nothing discolors that extract sooner than showing its
     starting.
A bag place chain room winningly reasons with shining hair.
What with supposing without protection, no wound is sudden.
Coloring sullenness rushes bottom reason in gilded country.
What if it shows?
Necessarily, the whole thing there is shining.
Is that anything?
More single women stitch tickets.
To show difference exudes reliability.
Inside that large silver likeness, Hope tables thick coal.
Coal makes morning furnaces darker,
Joy and success are exceptions.

Four suggest a sadder surrender.
Pretence and cheaper influences are staining tender Pride there.
Sort out that little sink.
Why is the size of the baking remainder something that resembles
     light more than cutting?
This cheese is more calm than anything solitary.
It is still an occasion for bottom anticipation.
Reason’s season cracked that which was ripe.
Nearly all were neglected by blessing, not without nervous actions.
He’s readily beginning to seed the cheese and estrange the Whites.
The celery curled its lashes at the slam.
Not-so-heated reason will be little able to satisfy another.
This was formerly much used as a charming chair.
Pedestrianism showed itself triumphant and disagreeable.
That which was hidden worried them.
They asked that her speech be repeated.
Summer light bears a likeness to justice.
Then the light is supposing attention.
That section has a resemblance to light.
Is it a likeness of the justice chair?

In the shadow of the volcano,
fresh from the dark sands of Siberia,
the brown steppe eagle circles and waits,
watching for weakness, searching
for carrion, leg feathers bristling,
shoulders hunched like a hunting wolf.

Exultant, it swoops down
on a yellow wagtail,
barks like a crow as it revels
in the taste of blood. I see
the bright buttery feathers
sticking to its wet tongue.

I can feel my leg still,
cut off still,
bleeding still.

My leg looks like a cabin,
a dark shingle, logs rotting
from being loved.

Phantom cabin pounding
my frontal lobe, I hear the hammer
pounding still to build.

What do you do when the world stops encouraging you?
You've passed the nubile age of 18-24
you are no longer a fledgling,
in fact, long past that point.
You have no charm in terms of possible potential
you've aged out of that category
Now you are only an uncomfortable, wierd old person in the audience
and God forbid if you try to get on stage,
embarressment, boredom, pity
that is your comeuppance.

What do you do, then, when the world has no more encouragement for you?
By now you should have succeeded, or be on your comeback tour,
not still be in the gate!

Breath, hold in the hate, dissolve back into understanding, breath again.
Your chance hung there like a celluloid moment
on your twenty-third year, you were daring.
When the Midwestern plains rolled by undiscovered still
Preserved innocently in a Laura Ingels Wilder novel.

Rolling green waving grass
sunlight burning warm to my skin
sweat beads down and wets my cheaks
no where to go, everything to be.

The intellectual saddness of Camus was found by only by those diving into the abyss in search of divinity.

Bow your head, take one more breath, release...
your life had mistakes, fear, weaknesses you let rule the day.

I say, "tell your story!"
No matter how many times it's been heard
Refuse the critics dogeared comments
about broken records,
get out of your rut,
let it go.

Our story is our pleasure
our experience of breath
Lived despite the presence
or non-presance of tragic moments.

Cut foot
bad catch
wrong number
missed bus

small instances of life:
lost job
low pay
Lonely Sundays
no friends.

Let me know, tell me each minute.
Share.

On a solo flight long along the longitudinal
Her, his? scouting mission made a stop along this forest openings way.

Low cloudy day gray skies
as a quiet woman planted seed.

Her circling, I'll call her a her,
as we girls keep our eyes on survival at all times,
rounding and then slowing
while her flapping wings settled her in for a landing.
A landing I'm most certain all aviators study.

She called out through the wilderness,
calling every gander and fellow goose,
"I've found this settlement, this safe place,
with gentle whispers of the wind in the pines."

She waited, paddled, then lifted to flight.
Away, she'd made this known.

The day ticked onward, sun rolling down the sky,
clouds swelling thicker, rolling lower into fog.

The gardener girl gazed up from her work,
listening to a cry flying in from the North,
laughing at the new arrivals, two this time,
welcoming them in to this summer home.

Twilight time,
be it day's rise or fall,
brings our cherished companion,
our life's source to us or from.

In hues like kingly plum,
a shy girl's blush,
the Indian turquoise,
diving or surfacing,
it merges through delicate moments.

We wait in it's seamless motion,
watching each second and half,
putting all other details on hold,
soaking up the last or the first of the day's heat,
as the crescendo of light flashes upon the sky.

Turn it around in the grass
it's summer, I'm getting' older
Sun's up hot who knows
If life does get better.
When will all my friends show up?
Today I'll stay level,
Just enjoy the normal,
No need for exceptional,
It's so flighty
And always flies away.

Tender
hearts on tiny
thoughts leaving for other
circles of people, searching
for love.

Terrible for all the days there
is nothing a fortune teller can see
Between sundown all the way to marching into our
last breath.

Waiting, we shall watch, foxes all,
like calculating merchants ticking out pennies,
wiping our counters, holding onto towels moistened
by water dripping off the glasses of laughing diners.

After hours we walk out the kitchen door,
sit down on a stool in the alley way,
in the glow of the low tangerine sun.
Exhausted, we are, from dreaming all the day.

This body needs a break,
heart muscle beaten down,
went tragedy from risk,
made hatred from adoring gaze.
Thought I'd spared his life,
turns out he a casualty.
Enemies all around,
light life flew far away.
Now grief builds in my center,
hardly a breath can leave my chest.
Love lost, never gained, all options just shut down.
Only God can heal this pain.

Today is a death, I remember two weeks ago as I listened to poetry, it was a birth, a start, there was an addition that propelled me and fueled my search and discovery. I finally had someone to share my knowledge with, my discoveries, my growth. Now death has covered that breath, like a ****** in a night and my home feels like a crime scene. The thrill of the attraction that filled all the moments until I saw you is dead now, killed by my own hunger for you. You were a quick meal I devoured or a prey that escaped my death clutch. I had my teeth in you, drinking, vampiric like, not really wanting you to suffer my fate, to live 1000 returning lifetimes, only you survived, got away, back to your own, to meet your people again, and I am left alone, standing alone, hoping again this aloneness comes to life again somehow with electricity and the mystery of discovering a whole person. But it won’t, never again with the same flavor, sound, hum, storyline. That song is sung

It’s the death of who I was, who I might have been, who I could have been. Your eyes will never see me again. It is the loss of everything that might have been, but blown to bits from drink. I’m wilting, my garden is more dead now. You looked and looked away. You saw and left. It’s okay. Not everyone buys.

And I’m left talking to myself again.

The days are almost done, yet still I will beat into tomorrow.

There is a window through which I climbed
out towards an edge that promised me
pain and painted lights and desperation too sweet
to pass up the taste, a lust, a danger, a disaster
of life and I wandered happily out towards it's calling song.

Singing repeated songs, the strong arms of men,
playing around and around as I sifted through the moments
of thought and image flashing in day by day.
a young woman swept up in the transience of the traveling musician.

The tornado that lifted me out of my shelter
never did settle me, and I fly still, gazing down upon the
distant patterns of grids and circles, laughing
with a miraculous hysteria,
at what the breeze blows in each day.

If you
look at me
as though
you
have something
to say,
Tell me,
Say it.
The pause,
with an expression,
gives me
little
to understand
only much
to fill in
with my
own story
of
what
you
want
to
say.

I can hear him laughing from his grave,
he found a way to take back the cabin.
He sent an emissary from Hell
to conspire,
a ***** Demon riding on the same fiery wind
the Hells Angels fly upon.

God called him home,
I can hear the violence in the house of the Lord.
He refused to go through the gates,
Instead, sailed into the flames,
swan diving into the raucous-
heat, sweat, blood, and laughter.

A throne awaited him.
While he sat in the high backed seat,
gorging on the sights of sensuous agony,
red devils dancing like gypsies upon his lap,
he laid his plan. He sent a dark messenger
to whisper in the ear of the demon soldier,
animating his eyes until he found me.

Out to plunder me. Devour me.
Trap me. Convince me. Surround me.
Bait me. Test me. Sample me.

How many of them were there? How long
had they been watching me?
Sniffing me, digging around,
until they heard the words "the cabin".  

The ***** Demon had the job of waiting.
Of seducing, tempting, arousing, convincing.
And steadily, with solid consistency, with daily reliability,
like the morning train into work,
like a husband who comes home every night,
he sent lyrical promises,
called me "baby",
kept me swooning with his stillborn smile.

Even when I knew he was a lie,
like a fiend scratching the street
for a dollar to buy a hit,
a gambler who can not quit,
I kept asking the sky, "what if he is real?"

But he wasn't, he was sent,
by the other who would not rest,
until he wrestled from my grip,
the cabin.

The people you keep in your life are the people you love.
Only them. Only them.

If I didn't care who loved me, then I would wear my hair any old way, curled, ******* in knots, shaved, I would try a new style every six months if I could.

I would be fat one year just to see how that felt, and see if I could get back down to skinny again.

I would dress up in costume and wander through town singing loudly operatic.

I might speak at an open mic, publish my poems that didn't sound too good, laugh more at things I thought were funny, not worry if things were cool or chic or hip or fire.

I would enjoy the sun for just what it is, a great glowing ball of fire.

I could be content in my skin and comfort others struggling with surviving because they can't see their own value in the eyes of all the others

Someone asked why (if you write) do you write.
Well...

I can't say I have a cause anymore,
I'm not an activist these days.
I've given up on the fight between good/evil
right/wrong
big/little
rich/poor
Let them all win, let them all lose
the side to be on changes too quickly
and in one slow word, I am the enemy.

I am not after being the ***** mystery.
I don't write to be a *** symbol, ******, a **** poet
It just doesn't work for me.
My boyancy deflates,
there is no pucker to my lips,
no pout on my face.

I hesistate to declair writing "fun".
It isn't, well, it can be if you don't care if it is "good".

It's not that I even have anything to say to the world.
The World knows much better than I.
So why?

No reason.

GO OUTSIDE!!!!

three women looked in at me
one black man barely glanced,

I couldn't step onto the stage
that year, or any other year.

thirty thirteen year-olds
moved into the arena like cattle

wearing too much lipstick. unstoppable.
385,000 babies entered the world that day,

all crying. I became irritated, anxious,
like I needed to go back in time.

I kept reading, losing my breath, until I had to leave the room.

Hello strangers
wishing to just share
a tiny moment
to fellows
without really knowing you
only joining in camaraderie
of being alive,
and tormented,
and seeking refuge
without ridicule,
or chastisement,
or lies,
or false words.

I sought this place,
for days and years,
only to have never found one
small corner.

So here i stay
persecuted
spied upon
teased
and stymied.

I only hope there are a few
unknown eyes with whom I might
share my song.