I made you love me
With treacle, tricks and tonsure.
I was so sure of myself
I could dissuade you from anyone else
And elves would come
In the night to bewitch you more deeply.
Sleepy, sleeping, not seeing
You would fall under my loving spell.

And well would I use you
Truly dragging you along unaware
Of my witchery, jiggery-pokery
Jokingly, or seductively
Instructively guiding you to please
Easing you into your role;
Solely in charge of the play
Saying sweet, flattering words
Heard in clutches and hugs
Drugs for the lonely, the needy.

And you became convinced
Since I am so good at my craft
I drafted you into my dream
Seemingly all your idea.
My Galatea of sweet, smooth skin;
Sin for me to commit gladly,
Madly, I did not care what you wanted
I flaunted my talent brashly
Trashily uncaring of the scorn
That might be born of my ego;
My need so ugly to see:
Me, playing god of love.

I’ve got a lot to be thankful for
I want to waste no time in *******’.
I may not drive a fancy car
I have no mansion to be rich in.
But I got fingers
And I got toes
And sometimes that’s
Just the way it goes.
I wake up in the morning
And jump out of bed,
And just be thankful
That I’m not dead.

I’ve got clothes on my back
And shoes on my feet.
A place to lay my head
And enough food to eat.
There’s plenty in my life
For which I am grateful.
And absolutely no reason
For me to feel hateful.

I see a lot of people now
Gripe about what they want.
I’m sure when they’re dead
They’ll want a better house to haunt.
It seems they waste their time
And they fail to appreciate
The hundred times a day
What they have is truly great.

I’ve got a lot to be thankful for
I want to waste no time in *******’.
I may not drive a fancy car
I have no mansion to be rich in.
But I got fingers
And I got toes
And sometimes that’s
Just the way it goes.
I wake up in the morning
And jump out of bed,
And just be thankful
That I’m not dead.

Today is my birthday
And I don’t have to do a thing.
Not if I don’t want to
I can go on lying around loafing.
I can get up way late
And go to bed as late as I want.
I can watch cool movies
And I have birthday cards to flaunt.

I can have ice cream
And copious amounts of cake.
I can eat like a pig
Until there is no more I can take.
I can sit in BVDs
Or less if I so decided to do.
It feels so good to me
I may take off another day or two.

It means I am older
But it all feels the same to me.
I will change the number
But I don’t feel any differently.
I still like chocolate
And chicken fried and breaded right,
And good sci-fi movies;
Maybe two or three each night.

So sing me the song
And I will blow out the candles.
I’m ready for the party
And all the fun we can handle.
It’s not about presents
It’s all about the celebration
And one more year
In joyous, grateful continuation.

I want to sing love songs to you
And recite poetry all I can
But I must not and I won’t
Because you are a Republican.
I want to sit at the shore;
Watch the gulls and pelicans
But that isn’t going to happen
Because you are a Republican.

We could go out to a bar
And sing old favorite songs.
We could sing and dance
Our friends could sing along.
But that won’t happen for us
Because hope for it all I can
The bottom line to all of this
Is you are still a Republican.

If they took a twisted family tree
And put it into a cheaply built can
Then added some bile and lies
You’d have canned Republican.
You could open it and pour it
Away from good, decent Americans
Because we’ve had it hard enough.
We don’t need more Republicans.

There’s a brand of human mutant
Arises when times are better than
The starvation and degradation
When the nation went Republican.
These mutants make war with poor
And unemployed and dependent man;
Blame everyone else but themselves
Mutants mentioned here are Republicans.

I want to sing love songs
And recite poetry all I can
But I must not and I won’t
Because you are a Republican.
I want to sit at the shore;
Watch the gulls and pelicans
But that isn’t going to happen
Because you are a Republican.

The man stood on a box
In the middle of the park,
When people walked by
The old boy would bark
“It’s in the Bible,” he cried.
And some people would ask
What is in the Bible, sir?”
Prepared to take him to task.

“Everything’s in there, friend!”
He answered with a smile
Feeling the people there
Would stay and listen a while.
“Well, that’s an easy answer!”
One of the onlookers said.
“You have left nothing out!”
The orator nodded his head.

“The Bible has answers for you
To any question you can say.
It will be your salvation, sir
No waiting until Judgment Day.
It tells you what to eat and then
Tells you how to choose a wife.
It tells you how to go to heaven
When you reach the end of life.”

The questioner replied, “Yes, sir,
And it tells of women made of salt,
And a fellow who walked on water
Another brought the sun to a halt.
It tells of a boat quite big enough
To have two each of every animal.
And people floating up to the sky.
Don’t you find these things incredible?”

“Not all,” the soapbox man said,
“God can do any holy thing at all.
He has made the planets, the sky,
The heavens and the waterfalls.
God knows everything and he is
Who speaks to you in your heart.”
The onlooker shook his head, said
“So, when does that stuff start?”

“What stuff, sir?” the orator asked.
“The part where God speaks to me.
I haven’t heard a word from God
And I have been listening, you see.
That would be a truly wondrous thing
For this God person to finally do.
But, if God speaks to all of us
Why the hell do we need you?

you don't understand how long some people have been here
you don't understand the changes we've seen
you don't understand how much we've longed for the people to
be who they be
you don't understand how it breaks our hearts
to see such infighting
bought to our world from other pages
used to back biting
you don't understand, for us
that have believed from the start
that Hello Poetry was once a place
where we always laid our heart
we gave over our life to this place
we endured every change
when you see something different here
know we have suffered more than this strange
once upon a time
in an awesome time and place
when people googled
Poetry
they found this space
they found inspiration
they found laughter that never ends
they found confidantes and a place
to plant
a never ending garden of friends
So if you're from another site
drawn here by the skin of tooth
sit a while in our midnight garden
and I'll speak to you a truth

Hello Poetry has been my best friend
for over 5 years, and all the friends
I've found on here, they've danced beneath my laugh, and held onto me so tight
that if I ever fall so wrong, they'll make
it all right

And that's the saddest thing
about Hello Poetry today...
is that most don't try
to make true friends
really real friends
or interact with them
in any meaningful way