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the glass half empty
  is often the milk
of human kindness

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SoulSurvivor aka
Write of Passage aka
Invisible inc
(C) 2/7/2016


TRUTH
 Nov 2024 betterdays
Lizzie Bevis
Beneath the Eiffel's iron lace,
A tabby cat prowls with feline grace,
Past Arc de Triomphe, she sets her pace,
On moonlit nights down the Champs Élysées.

Prowling around cafés and bustling streets, She slips into wine-soaked conversations, Witnessing love's soft declarations,
While dodging bikes and hurried feet.

Her whiskers twitch at fresh baguettes,
As dawn breaks on the Seine's calm flow, Lounging, watching artists come and go,
From her sun-kissed, with a view parapet.

Notre Dame's gargoyles watch her pass,
Through shadows of restored spires,
In all its reverent wonder, to be admired
As pigeons scatter on morning mass.

Up to Montmartre's charm and winding ways,
She naps peacefully on warm window sills,
As church bells toll from sacred hills,
Lost in the wonders of her Parisian days.

©️Lizzie Bevis
Even over here, at this far corner of the world,
The impact rendered most of society....quietly astounded!
Most of the people I spoke to couldn't believe that over half the population voted in the dunderhead, the ego maniac, the destroyer of sanity,the causer of chaos.
And when he lined up with all of the old enterage, it was like a dull, time warp. Nothing had changed.
Four more years of monosylabilic utterance, four more years of caustic repetative rhetoric. Four more years of waiting for the axe to fall.....and it will.
You will all have plenty of time to reconsider the wisdom of your choice...(Those that made the choice).....and take it from me, that time span is going to drag and cost like you would not believe.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
 Nov 2024 betterdays
Nat Lipstadt
this trip
homeward bound,
riding the Q (subway) train
from the messy grime of a
never fully repossessed
cesspool misnamed as
Times Square,

to our apartment
near but yet far,
a poem short & sweet was
born complete, on an 8 minute
fast track victory lap to periodic
successful urban planning,

that even and
even though
with and/of
which
no speedy highly
disrespectful witch
on a broomstick,
nor a midnight traffickless
auto trip,
could ever hope
to compete
<>
roses red, violets blue,
all the passengers, revelry tired,
both becostumed & be plained,
Hallowed eve festivities
again, lesser than expected,
life be, eager awaited
legal moment of crazy-
-inness-inward-permissed,
never quiet or as good
as hoped,

we tired riders
all look worn from the
aggregated
infidelities of a
a hoped-for
missing-out happier life

nearing midnight,
the new immigrants,
in subway platform
patrolling,
offer us candy for sale,
their toddler children,
beside them
at this midnight hour,
to drive home
the desperate willingness to

survive in a city oft hostile

no longer eager to be
beacon beckoning
to the world, we rethink
to our minded selves,
our Statue of Liberty
engraved invite:

"Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door”
<>
we exit the underground rout(e)
and the walk from subway to front door
is another 8 minute travelogue segment,
we cover the quarter mile on foot,
covering a skimp of distance that
our urban transport  
of many mileage covered
in the same units of minutes
in flyer miles

<>
late at night,
we walk fast, with eyes wide,
our lives to hide,
from the risks of the
unpredictable
when the street parade
of stragglers
gives not the comfort of a
rowdy crowdy,
and the existence of crime
is not
entirely fabricated

<Did>
I offer short and sweet,

Oh well I only misled,
the trip 16 minutes
and the poem
in my head,
complete emerged
with minutiae attending
et. al.,
in far far less mini~minutes,
for it was
a product of
silent back labor,
from first staggering
screaming pain
to
successful unexpected birth
that can take maybe
minutes five,
to mentally survive
plus,
physically complete the birth,
introduce this poem to life.
when the photos of my mined mind
make images from negatives
into words,:

collect, sort and report the
output picturesque
now in colors black & white,
of a trip from a Broadway theater
through to a high rise building
astride the river
which gives me
a theoretical cleaner space to breathe
<>
rather than short and sweet?
I really reseed,
redeed it as/is:
not too long and a tad
bittersweet


a night in the life of
the mixture of successes and
failures of our troubled world
in
living technicolor,
a few seconds of film
of which one could fairly,
and in fairness
bless/write/curse/
each sight
twice,
uttering:

”mine eyes have seen the glories,
as all come to look for America”
a composite of many trips, that took ten
minutes to type with my left foot thumb
between 1:23 ~1:33AM
to spee,, review, pay its overdue
minefield fine
and send forth into the atmosphere ionic

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Emmalazarusengraving.jpg/800px-Emmalazarusengraving.jpg
The shiny apple looked delicious
But it was high up in the tree
We jumped to reach it but we couldn’t
We found a ladder in the field
And carefully climbed up it
The rungs were covered with thick mud
And got our hands and clothes all *****
But we craved that shiny apple
Hungry as we were so long
Reaching out through tangled branches
It was in our grasp at last
Careful going down the ladder
So as not to drop the prize

Now time to take that first big bite
And oh how sweet the juices flowed
We’re stealing an admiring look
When suddenly we spot the worm-
It’s bad enough to see it there-
But what remains is only half
And something tickles in our throat
Will we fling the apple far away
To retch and spit and beg a mint
Or stay and eat around the worm.
ljm
Time will tell.
A tiny feather small and soft
makes little impact
when it floats aloft,
ten thousand feathers
make a bird
which sings out loud
and can be heard,
it’s hard to be a single feather
but we are strong
when we fly together
Aquila is latin for eagle
 Nov 2024 betterdays
Jill
Drenched in feeling
Eyes drink the landscape

I could swear that each colour was
emotion-tinted
sorrow-toned
anguish-textured

How many stretched hours of living
made each heavy brush-scar?

What volume of rinsing tears
for each change of shade?

Why did the artist know instinctively that the people
were so small
in such a vast, pigment-thick world?

From this distance they feel like children
But I know that they are grown
At least on the outside

Agony
and aesthetics
amalgamate in
assembled alchemy

Are these thoughts
artist-intentioned
landscapist-birthed
painter-engineere­d?

Or are they my thoughts
reflected
by brush strokes?

Designed to elicit, not instruct
To return, not to teach
To cast-back, not to create

This open canvas
in muddy colours

A perfect, terrible mirror
Helping me gently
in my now softened
sadness
©2024

BLT Webster’s Word of the Day challenge (amalgamate) date 4th November 2024. To unite two or more things into one.
have walked along a road
That not many will take on
I have carried heavy loads
I've done right. I've done wrong.
I have held a pilgrim's pack
So long... so long...


Chorus
I am now a living stone
In a house which no one found
And I have felt my spirit groan
With no one else around

Alone
Alone


And I am still a living stone
I gave up, oh, all of Me
I am just a stone that stumbles
And I am a stone thrown free

Chorus

I am just a part of castles
In the sky & on the brink
I'm a stone cast on a pond
Skipping there at last to sink

Alone
Alone

Through many trials, Toils and snares
The slave trader came to know
Like him I know I brought it in
With the rock & with the snow...

But...

I know bruised reeds He will not break
A gut'ring lamp He won't put out
Though I'm rejected by the world
Here am I to scream out loud...

I'm not alone!
I'm not alone!

I'm not alone...


Write of Passage
3/18/2021
 Nov 2024 betterdays
Nat Lipstadt
the thought seizes me awake,
after a heart powered hour of sleep,
rise in silent reverie, nary a peep,
though my heart rate breeeches
150 miles per hour, each beat

yesterday wrote of the eloquent
sensibility of simplicity, its natural
native appeal, and when I think of
things that world needs most urgently
which is, for poets a de rigeur activity,
fyi, that more common than uncommon,
sobelieve in my expertise,
we need badly, another Hobbit movie pretty please!

we need rallying after the tallying,
we need fellowship among the species,
a crossover inclusive of the animal kingdom,
require fearless leaders who value selflessness
over personal gain,
less optimism rhetorical,
and some plain honesty to give the world
the equity of equality,
what it wonts,
and not what pro poli’s
tell you think
which slogans sell…well


whent to the corner store,
bot all kinds of fall
colors of berries and tiny flowers,
went all-in unreasonable
on clot colossus seasonal,,
oranges, yellows and quiet quilts of
hardy little greens,
bread, OJ, larger uncaged eggs
a-dozing,
and though my impossible orders all fulfilled, the boss,?her list defeated,
by crossing off
my abbreviated illegibility scribbling,,
it was still insufficient for missing was this:

what the world needs a fresh Hobbit triumphal,
where self~sacrifice always come first, and duty rightly prevails, over evil,
always a close call,
and the chill of fall,
the dint of wint-
er
is warmed away by
love,  justice for all,
besting every close call,
and for a replay of the
World Series where them
Yankee underdogs emerge
victorious and the city lifts
its chin, and says OK to the
new day, week, and that
extra hour of…mmm…
daylight
sleep


call me naive,
it is an honorific
terrific,
great fully
accepted
a chill Nove three 948am
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