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These are not the times
for poetry…
For lofty prose or
roses budding in
warm sunlight
to gently perfume
the wind with
a delicate reminder
of tenderness.

These are the days of
****** knuckles;
chipped teeth.
The days of beating the truth from strangers,
then strangling that truth
with a piece of garden hose.
The bad days, the ugly days
when poets take up fighting and
fighters take to ******.
The goddammitfuckyou days.

Welcome to the clinched fist.
Beautiful things must be whispered.
 Apr 2016 Bill Higham
Leaetta May
I needed something profound
and you showed me a sunken ship
the depths of which I had never known
but that is so like you
shining other people's lights
for me to see the way
checking out poets I follow, led me to more light than I expected
In Florida sometimes it rains so hard
that you believe that it can't possibly stop,
that it will just rain and rain forever.

Sometimes I'd wake to a storm late at night,
and I'd sit out on the porch.

You could smell the lightning, and the coolness of the storm would
make your hair stand;
I'd feel so alive.

Some nights I'd go out, and my father
would be sitting on the porch already.
Lost in the storm
or maybe
called to it.
We wouldn't talk,
but we'd be lost together
in the rain and thunder.

Sometimes I wonder what of him
is left in me.
I am not sure
if I am more afraid of there being
very little
or of there being a great deal,
but when it rains
I think about him on that porch;
 Mar 2016 Bill Higham
Zak Krug
Ringing in our ears,
wild haymakers throw us off balance.
We are The Smoke.
Eyes jump and jive,
dancing,
to the music of earthquakes.
we stick and move
through terrain so tough,
The Devil himself gets tangled.
Feet pounding on yesterdays dreams.
Thundercats roar towards the sky.
Forgiveness is not given to the weak.
Hammering on,
always look twice before the fall.
Remember what it is like to fall and
forget the taste of strength.
The birds are hungry for their pound of flesh.
Move!
We run.
Left, left, right,
two forward,
three back and
once to the side.
The birds are closing in, watching with red eyes.
Swollen,
we run and
cross
this path,
leading us to the spit soaked floor and
broken chair.
Another round
and round we will go.
Hands cracked with every minute the clock beats down.
Forgetting the taste of victory.
Our lungs are filled with smoke.
We fall.
The wild ones smash through the Heavens,
warriors through and through.
We must forgive ourselves.
For glory,
we will shake The Smoke.
 Mar 2016 Bill Higham
amrutha
I still remember the sound of that stillness
Gentle, careful like a lullaby
caressing the dust rising and falling on my skin
The warm sky sang her broken songs
blew her ***** May winds through the village
ever so passionately


The sun shone dark by the dying river
he wept silently his purple evening tears
into the narrow streams underneath
The fragrance of that temple, hard to forget,
Hard to leave behind anything but pondering footsteps..
Yet I walked
into the womb of that scent
forgetting my age old fears
of facing the friction of time,
of dreams, of hope,
of separation.

I collapsed onto the bare earth before I entered
and stared at the air uncouthly
like a barbarian

Moaning, singing, breathing in ecstasy
that old familiar temple fragrance
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