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 Apr 2015 JAM
Ranger
Little flower
 Apr 2015 JAM
Ranger
Little flower with petals so pink
Like blushing cheeks

I saw you sprouting
Trampled and broken

Wilting and crushed
Under boots of an uncaring world

I feared for you nightly when the sun fell
Your leaves cut, a ragged sight

I mended you and nurtured you
Encouraged your growth

I have seen you bloom and blossom
So beautiful and demure

But now you have changed
You draw blood with thorns

My flower my rose
Well she is no more

You protect your self from touch
And feeling afraid of the world

Fearing being trampled again
Crushed under foot

An elegant rose sated in loneliness
Pushing away those who admire her so

I can not touch you
Only see you from afar

And remember a time when
we didn't have so many scars

I wanted to reap you
Snatching you from the earth you grew in

But knowing I couldn't
Not yet maybe not ever

But I still stood next to you
Giving all that I could

Wanting to watch you grow
And reach for the sun

I don't regret it
Not a single day

I just wish you know tho I might be gone
My heart will always stay

To this flower
I am proud of you still
 Apr 2015 JAM
Awesome Annie
Hell
 Apr 2015 JAM
Awesome Annie
I struck a match and held it close, setting it all a blaze. Watching it on bended knee, observing through the haze.

When all this is finally over, I'm hoping that I can cry. Been waiting to escape for so long, that I can't remember why.

Smoke fills lungs to steal my breath, choked I can not breathe. I know that I am absolute, to love is to deceive.

I see it all in ruin now, as fire erupts in euphoric waves. Every dream I ever had, now lay in empty graves.

Wild it burns with furry, warming my pretty face. Smoldering all the hope I had left, leaving me cursed to this lonely place.
 Apr 2015 JAM
Mike Essig
How To Speak Poetry**

Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you. Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data. It is not an opportunity for you to hover, soar, befriend flowers, symbolize beauty and frailty, or in any way impersonate a butterfly. Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and **** your head to one side when you talk about death. Do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love. If you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. If ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material.

What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet.  Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. Step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad ***. If you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the **** have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights. You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on.

This is an interior landscape. It is inside. It is private. Respect the privacy of the material. These pieces were written in silence. The courage of the play is to speak them. The discipline of the play is not to violate them. Let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. Be good ******. The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition.

Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse. Do not get a hard-on when you say *******. Do not get all shivery just because of the towel. The sheets should not provoke a dreamy expression about the eyes. There is no need to weep into the handkerchief. The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes. Don't peep through them. Just wear them.

The poem is nothing but information. It is the Constitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers' Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honour you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps ans sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.

Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you're tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.
Not so many people are familiar with this one.
 Apr 2015 JAM
Seán Mac Falls
Weighty lightness, solid levity,
Primordial soup,
Some ancient rite, draws me
To the foam.
Its celestial colour,
Its effervescent overflowing,
How it teases my buds,

Not like water,
Like honey
As an insect encased
In amber
I am within,
The tears of sunshine
And Olympian folly.

On dry days
I seek the incendiary agent,
Brooding bout,
Pint-sized, el niño
And his brews
Come soaring
After the downpour,
As high-tiding winds,
That **** contented days
And spin spirals round
Cups of complacent
Hours, the whine
Eternal,

Only seems
Like spilling
Blood.
Draw me, the dram.
The dram of what?
Ale's the thing!

Falling,
Overboard,
No drowning man was so ever
Esteemed,
Ever so buoyant.

How the vessel becomes
His captain.
 Apr 2015 JAM
Momo
demons
 Apr 2015 JAM
Momo
They come and go
but never for too long
they feed on the broken pieces
of my poor soul

They enter through the scars
that once were unzipped
with a blade
oh my poor soul

they push against the flow
of the unstoppable current of blood
finding their way
to my poor soul

They come and go
every now and then
feeding on my everlasting
*oh so poor soul
 Apr 2015 JAM
Mike Essig
If all the politicians
died tomorrow,
it would be a blip.
If all the scientists
and engineers died,
it would be an apocalypse.
If all the poets died,
so would god and love..

  mce
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