Beauty of nature
Everything in harmony
The blossom can’t wait
to become a flower
To show her colors
To attract the bees 🐝

Shell✨🐚

A quiet field of snow
untouched,
unburdened -
I leap through it,
leaving large footprints
and nullifying the stillness
which had graced the field before me.
Luckily,
there is always more grace
to be found in nature;
and so I plod onwards,
my stride slow and heavy,
but joyful as it finds
and matches the tracks
of the moose and ptarmigan
who frolic through this valley.

There is, after all,
an answer to the meaning of life
and love and joy.
And it lies in the valley of snow before me
for all the world to bear witness to.

They stitched me up and sent me out
with a world-class, white-toothed smile.
Tradition sewed with thick black string
until its thumbs went numb and calloused.

Truth tarnished the needle and burned my skin,
but who was I to talk?
If you don’t have anything nice to say,
you best not say nothing at all.

Grandma prettied me up and dried my eyes,
said I should talk with God.
He’s an awful bad conversationalist;
The Saints remained silent night after night.

When that town was done, I was a right lovely thing:
delicately embroidered, just enough flourish.
Unsung secrets where a soul should be;
I guessed Blood was overrated anyway.

Now seams have ripped and sutures popped,
revealing gruesome wounds and ugly verity.
Momma, I’m sorry, it didn’t last;
I am not as strong as you are.

She’s built of divinity.
Mother Earth birthed her,
sculpted her figure.
She’s the generations past;
She’s the collective future.
Her voice carries over the crests of waves,
harmonizing with the wind,
uniting the stars.
When she cries,
her tears rain from the heavens,
eroding sharp cliffs
and rough quarries
She created nations from dirt,
and power from her hands.
She is Woman.

pony-tailed playmate
head tucked in her shirt
gazing steadily down
at her toes in the dirt

chaos tiptoes around her
naive oblivion
journeys in far away lands
just west of the meridian

watercolor fairy tales
bleeding outside the lines
unaware of the danger
unaware of the signs

let me sit with you, darling
in the dampened flower beds
and paint a new world
for us in our heads

Our husband
Thou look in my eyes no more
I reek of old wine
Thy mouth spaketh
But thou saith nothing

I hear drums
Ceremonial beatings
Your smile I longed to behold
The peepings of the crowds
Your attire I longed to touch

Favourite of thy bossom
I know your heart
Belongings of another
Stories at the market square
Thou findeth thy favourite

Old clothes
Thou look away
Old heart
Thou embrace no more
Longing afresh a new favourite

Welcome
Our husband knows your heartbeat
Preparations of thy entrance
Our husband's favourite bossom
Welcome, our new wine

Written by Tosan Oluwakemi Thompson

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   The Epistemology of Lies


                               Above all, don’t lie to yourself.

                  -Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov


The problem is not in detecting a lie
But in detecting that which is not a lie
In a fallen world in which snakes twist and writhe
Around the golden apples of our youth

Through our garden they slither, shiny and smooth
And at first softly, susurrantly, soothingly
Assuring us that that we don’t know what we know
That we should trust them, follow them, obey them

And if we pause to think, they bully us all -
And one by one the golden apples fall