The pin is standing on point

Right on the edge

Finally quiet enough

Waiting for the fall

That will shatter the glass heart

plastic cups and bottles
cigarette stubs and ash
and scattered powder
heaped as white as snow
amid bunched and ***** bank notes
and piles of wine washed cash

Upon a cracked and half-full crystal glass
A smear of lipstick flashed as red as rubies
and there, upon the littered, dusty floor
lay banana peels and half-eaten apple cores

The blonde girl, with the ashen face
painted nails, and scarlet bee-stung lips
lay there amid the crushed potato crisps
and the flattened curry sauce smeared chips

Her eyes, dilated pupils shrouding grey
stared upward at the rain washed light
of Wintery day, filtering through each
hand -smeared cobwebbed window pane
at light that she would never see again

That morning, after the party, the room was quiet as death
disturbed by a black moth that flew from behind the curtain
settling upon her face, brushing lips parted with her final breath

Sadness is a burden
Sadness is a weighted rope
Sadness is a black hole
Sadness is the absence of
all joy and hope
Sadness is a moth fluttering
inside the darkness of a broken heart
Sadness is a crawling centipede
its seemingly endless creeping feet
tearing your insides apart
Sadness is a leaf left
to rot upon the earth
Sad ness is a fetus never
given birth
Sadness is the absence
of softly shining light
Sadness is the need to flee
with never the chance to take flight
Sadness is the rose
with no perfume and no petals
just a broken stem of thorns
Sadness is the lonely bird
that sings a plaintive song
in the darkness of a thousand
winter dawns

Passionate feeling that arose in the mind, in-voluntarily, turned into a life-long obsession and overwhelmed everything else.

Rows of bright
red roses

violets tulips
or tomatoes turnips

and carrots
too

in brown loamy
soil

is there structure
or is it a pallet

of assorted
smudges

grays
or flash and colors

Giverny
or a Victory Garden

we are
what we cultivate

and what and who
we feed

whit howland © 2021

Poetry has lost its allure for me.
However, jotting one or two lines makes me as happy as having one or two pints of *****.

When you don't acknowledge others' role in your life, you're denying your own existence.

The dust storm
Whipped the world red
Trees all freaked out, I and my brother
We climbed up the solar panels
On the roof
And laughed
In the face of the sky

The city swirled
With the drunken stars
And lights bled
In our flooded eyes
Laughing does that to you
We did not weep
For the sky did
And darkness
Was a horde of wasps let loose
It devoured our sweet,
Ripened day

I grabbed his wrist
And spun him around
Our feet kissing
The grumpy, old ground
We blended
Like ink in milk
Stirred round and round
And round ran the heavens

We laughed
Laughed our stomachs
To painful exhaustion
And the gusts hissed on
Rain sneaked down our clothes
Ran soft touches
All over

Do you ever settle down
On the edge of the world
And watch the beautiful
Oblivion chase itself?
Do you ever laugh
Even a dog moves on from its tail
After a while
Or whisper
“Will you not stop? Will you not stop
For I am here
I have climbed a thousand peaks
And slaughtered many a ravenous
Creatures
In the valleys of time
to get to you
Will you not stop?”

A gust of hues.

It says something
And you grasp it, you
Grasp it almost
Almost
But what is it
If not an oblivion?
Unfathomable

And a voice comes
From around, inside or
Maybe somewhere in between
Maybe
Maybe nowhere at all
It ruffles your hair
And pats your cheek
Have you forgotten your place
Little human?

Winds then shushed
The clouds away
From their beloved sun
And gold gleamed
Up, below, and in between
Every pearl that plummeted,
Blushing
I watched the sunset
Peep out the night
And I wondered
If rain was overrated

Have you forgotten you place
little human?

Because when the euphoria dies down
And cold begins to bite
You watch the raindrops
Beat the world to silence
And day breathes its
Last laughs

You wonder
“What now?” What now?
You wrap an arm around an arm
And shiver
What now?
Even a dog gets tired
Of whirling

What now?

Nothing,
The hues whisper
Now sit on the edge of oblivion
And we will do our magic

And maybe the world
Still chases its tail around
But you forget
For a breath or two.