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 Aug 2015
Donall Dempsey
You were older than me
now I am older than you

can ever be

(forever 18 &
forever dead) .

I felt so guilty
when I passed that age

wishing I could exchange
some of the life I had

so that you could experience
the life you never knew.

I used to talk to
your grave

as if it were you...

Always beginning: “Hiya, kid...”

Now I find you
everywhere instead

the sunlight on the garden

smiles like you did

the ladybird stumbling
over the furrows of my fingerprint

has the same graceful
awkwardness

your body lent to every movement.

You are younger
than me
& will always be.

And I
am older

than you

...will ever know.
* * * * * * *

The sound of my sister's voice.  We lived in a house not made of books.  The only  texts existed in the texture of the telling...my sister finecombing my hair and soothing the pain with...shussh...stories.

'The little toy soldier is covered with dust...'

...exists only in my mind and the vague trellised traces of Junie's voice.  It is here breath against my skin as I fall asleep. It has never entered my mind through print yet it is printed irredeemably...indelibly in my mind.

'What is it again? '

I am following my father...gogging my Dad doggedly for the words of a song.  I scrawl the words across the page of my mind as exasperated his patience explodes:

'As down the ****** glen one ****** Easter morn...how many times do I have to tell you! '

My sister Moira is slightly tipsy.  I glow with pleasure as the pattern unfolds.  When she is more that slightly tipsy she will softly and sadly sing.

'I know my love by his way of walking and I know my love by his way of talking and I know my love by his eyes so blue and if my love left me what would I do...? '

I am drunk with her words.  There is a slight smell of loneliness off her breath.  I hang   on   her   every    breath.

I have had four teeth pulled and my world fevers and frets. The smell of sausages sidles up the stairs and seduces me to the top of the stairs.  When I am safely ion danger the smelly magic no longer supports me.  I fall and float down the stairs.  Junie comforts  and croons.  I am lying in her arms in her bed.  Again she sings.  'Again! ' I plead.  She sings again.

'Black is the colour of my true love's hair...her lips are like...'

Her body vibrates with sound and the words echo through me and echo through the memory of me.  For a long long time
the only way these words were written down ws in the breath entering and leaving her body.

When I remember to write...

I write to remember I write to forget.

I write to recover what has never left me but exists in a someplace of my mind.  I write to find out who I am and if I ever was. I write to discover where I went when the wordl went away.

As the bus crashes the book is torn and burning.  The world dies.  A child cries.  I WRITE TO REMEMBER I WRITE TO FORGET.  The book leies strewn across the motorway.  It's spine is broken and its leaves flutter away in dismay.  The book is burning.  It is unreadable as it reads itself to the night's wind. It is an image torn from a dream that is really real.  Its spine is broken and pages turn themselves over and over in the night.

I write...to remember...I write...to forget.

Sunlight streams through the bedroom window...sculpts a sister.  Creates Junie.  She is telling me the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Every time I cry.  She says she will not tell me again because it always me makes me cry.  I promise not to cry if she promises to tell me again.  She tells me again.  I cry  every time.  She is not dead.  She is telling me the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.  She is created of sunlight.  Dust motes dance in attendance.  It can not be...more real than this. I write to remember...I write...to forget.  I write to recover the times of her not dying...when she is sunlight and breath.  When she was my book.  When the sound of her was all...around me.  Writing to remember...I forget so much.  I write because I am - lost.  I write to find an exit door in my mind.  The book is broken.  The book is burning.  Pages...fiery pages flutter like lost souls escaping into the darkness.  I write to reach the light.  I write to enter the darkness.  I write to escape the sound of the book burning. I write to forget...I...write to...not forget.                             Remember.

* * * * * *
 Aug 2015
DaSH the Hopeful
I've been looking for you all around

I can't find you in old photographs
And sometimes I can't reach you by phone
    But when I look in the mirror and see my smile

*I know I've found you
 Aug 2015
K Mae
so many words
yet not enough
to breathe with scented wind
see colors and the space defined
in fractal symmetry
our footfalls on the path
this mind is full of pulsing me
with words push your way in
I flood and overflow
don't stop this
spilling where I am
 Aug 2015
K Balachandran
I saw me walking alone, along the path
feeling upset, I followed me noiselessly
curious, to find out,  what would happen, next,
with my heart relentlessly  pounding my chest.

I rang the bell of the house I lived as some other,
the door wasn't closed, so I could see
I have already gone, leaving the place,orphaned,
to that  destination, mysterious.where another tale begins.

My home once, is presently empty, signifying this :
"I am this, also  that and the other, the  next too,
I am multitudes, in everything I am present as a wee bit"
When I was alone, I wasn't, in fact; while moving away
I didn't go anywhere, all the while,ecstatically, "I am that"
*"Ï am that"(Tat twam asi Or Tatwamasi")
The consciousness in me is  part of the whole, cosmic consciousness"
 Aug 2015
Amanda In Scarlet
The first time we make love
I will die.
Do not be afraid.
It is a death borne of joy.

I move into the future
And feel the press of your skin,
Hear your urgent moans,
A heartbeat before you enter me
And I expire.

I cease to exist, and am reborn in you,
A child of us,
Birthed into a new space,
Welcome, welcome, welcome home.
 Aug 2015
olivia larson
i hope she was worth it
i hope she makes you feel like the only star in the sky
i hope she makes you laugh
i hope she tells you her ***** secrets
and i hope she accepts yours
i hope she kisses your nose
and gazes at your crooked teeth when you smile
because you're so overwhelmed by
how much you love her.
i hope she mindlessly strokes your hand
and never lets it go
i hope she wraps her legs around you
and falls asleep on your chest
i hope you love the way her hair smells
and i hope you feel safe.
i hope she lets you scream songs in the car
with the windows rolled down
i hope she makes you feel invincible
i hope she makes you feel a constant roller coaster
of nothing but good vibes
i hope she makes you laugh your true laugh
the one you hate hearing
i hope she absolutely loves it
i hope you love her with every fiber of your being
jesus christ
i hope she was worth it.
and if all my hopes come true
i hope you hold her and never let her go.
 Aug 2015
Chloe
My words, they flow like estuaries,
From my fingertips to the seas,
Spindly, twisting, winding veins,
That run through evergreen plains.

Each word is rich with emotion,
Like the countless fish in motion,
Some vibrant, some dull, some,
Alive and some, floating with bellies above.

When thunder roars and lightning strikes,
And the Heavens in the sky start to cry,
My feelings they overflow, flooding over,
And all around must take cover.

For the once beautiful waves, are now,
Violent, destructive, and they plow,
Mercilessly through the haven in my heart,
Wrecking my world, part by part.
 Aug 2015
Rainey Birthwright
Beauty aches before mountains,
There is great hollow in the glens,
By the shores, once sure landing,
Where I have come to know ends,
I was your beauty once, your ken,
No longer a trove, yet wish again.

You said we would one day wed,
Mountains stood for all we know,
But in no time you found another,
Beauty drowns, waves by a shore,
Beauty cuts like holly leaf in a fist,
Beauty pools in salt marsh of tear.
 Aug 2015
Nat Lipstadt
~~~
dedicated  to the three, who read this first
(S.B, J.A.,  & T.M.R.)
and know it all too well

~~~
more than ever presumed,
more than ever thought realizable,
indescribable attainable,
a modernizing magic powder,
synthesizing my intemperate body
~
at last, all ego falls away,
now but corn husk mulch,
detritus, non-toxic nuclear waste,
for growing better visions,
fruits undiscovered
~
write for me,
my recordings, my blog,
not to differentiate,
to substantiate,

to integrate

your gasps imagined,
mine realized,
exhalations upon lips grazing,
the soil of our rainforest
wetted by
living smiling,
eye droplets,
forming a singular stream
~
write for you,
sharing too close,
are you my first or second skin,
for there are no spaces
~
satisfaction discovered that is insatiable,
this pleasured seeing,
this pleasured sharing,
this poetic reason,
to exist
*I watch your face
as you write

in the furrows of the brow,
see you and the
word-seeds being seized,
harvested,
prepared, ready-roasted
for sumptuous consumption

grimace and smile,
alternating currents,
grimace and smile,
ponderous pondering
chew each word,
flavor extracting,
does its taste fit,
is it only,
but,
perfect?

you get up, you sit,
you move about,
pretending, misleading,
purposed to be aimless

yet eyes squinting
betray
a fearsome full
concentration rapture,
a mind computing
the numerical quality of
words,
summing, subtracting,
solving for X

you employ technique,
formats, tools and aids,
thesaurus, dinosaurus, dictionary,
even pictionary
when
the guppy letters
swim spring river current fast,
little boy catch me fast run past,
cannot be caught and easy captured

why
do I watch
your face
as you write?

for there visaged,
is your truest work,*
**you, your best poem**

*what words you select
matters little to me,
t'is the struggles,
the blush of satisfactory,
the distempered white of
disillusionment,
of inspiration sought
but not found

all these dancers,
you choreograph
a word-ballet in three acts,
scheme a midsummer nights dream
upon the stage of your face

return the favor poet?

watch mine,
watch my face,

as I read your poem
and see thine own best
reflection
in teary eyes caught inside crows-feet,
pencil thin smile lines of fine wine whimsy,
in feet that airlift,
the contour of
who you are
and
think*

You, Poet,
you are your best poem
 Aug 2015
Valora Brave
I place you in a mold
and when you didn't fit
I tried to make you bend
but there were holes in you
the kind that only you could mend
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