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 May 2020
IrieSide
Movement of time collides
with tear drop melody
darkened angel
to final day symphony:

gun blasts in homeland
enter familiar flesh-
different tongues conceal
common threads that makes us

wounded souls call for God
in bomb dimpled lands-
far from American eyed reach
and inside

amidst spiritual sands

Treading with foot print patterns
around rock’s pure holiness
meditating in temples
laden in gold tributes

seeking truth’s distant comfort

guns blast in homelands
families wonder why-

pain embraces consciousness
dripping hints of salvation
into thick Iron pools
of Christ’s calling

red horse not so distant
seven seals awakening
run back to one
it’s time to find love
The tragic happenings of todays time.
 May 2020
zebra
back in the day
rocks could talk
often
they where
casual, petty and small-minded
just like us
divinities platitudes
every word a drop of manna
its magic
wow magic

so out of conceit
we made them gods
deferred to their credibility
and like idiot children
paid attention to their great allegories
a provident sea of wisdom
from the skeletons of time

we carved their faces from stones
put them on pedestals
and gave them names
the great know it alls
urns of heaven
those oracles of old

and so ensued
the epic cycle of talking statues
and thats how decisions where made
back in the day

the statues are strangely mute now
sunken shadows into earths bowels
and the age of reason
has been transplanted
by the age of
what the ****
a new
hobbled world soul
of darkened consciousness
to cope with tentacles of complexity
and a forest of trials
where depth of thought has been replaced
and decisions are made by
the exalted
ennie meenie minee moe
method
an abstruse form of ritual magic

so from now on
all arguments will be settled
by me
sticking my tongue out
Sun perched in the trees,
why do you stare at me?
I’ve not sinned!
Sun perched in the trees,
why can’t you leave me be?
Rest already so I can breathe,
I’m barely standing,
on my knees.
Your piercing gaze,
jets through me.
You ******* sun,
let the night take thee.
A stain in the sky,
blistering high,
perched in the trees,
let me be!
I’ll trade you for anything,
even disease,
just bury yourself deep,
into stone and granite.
Settle behind cloudy seas,
burrow into hillsides if need be,
just avert your gaze,
sun perched in the trees.
Copyright Barry Pietrantonio
 May 2020
Timmy Shanti
My world is a-spinning,
I chase wild deer -
For pleasure, not trophies -
My conscience is clear.

I chase ‘em through forests,
Through grasslands and doles.
I find giant craters
And tiniest holes.

My eyes are wide open,
I hail all life,
Asleep all these years...
But now I’m alive!

I’m ready to ponder
The sense of it all.
My mind doesn’t wander -
This time, it’s my call.

I challenge old habits -
Deep-rooted they be -
My deer chasing rabbits
While rabbits chase me.

I’m easily happy,
My cry is of bliss,
My tongue fires wisdom,
My shots never miss.

I eagerly travel
Through darkness and light -
All myst’ries unravelled,
My troth here I plight:

To battle for freedom,
To fight for the poor,
To champion peace,
To ignore all the lures.

I never will falter -
My mind is my guard,
My faith is my altar,
My love is my God.

My world is a-spinning,
I’m dreaming all day.
My vision a-clearing -
Ill thoughts fade away.

And what of the wild deer? -
You might want to ask.
Gone home to the Highlands,
They’ve finished their task.
 May 2020
Jeff S
now hear this! sing this! you constant Cade, you
choral breakneck in a single sum of man,
brackbreaking in the chaos-rinsing rite of ashed religion!—

choke now, for you used me. a tossing stave to ward off sins
of fratting simpletons and their unsyncopated singing.
—all sixteenths through roughshod roads of wrong-be-gone righteousness.

and why? because i vaped some trebled color to the gray.

oh! what is the
madness-misering measure of a middle-aged man
who through the din of dampened doing, of desperate
dancing on two left feet and wrinkled writhe of witlessness in the mid of being been should shuffle off and coil himself into a crimson cross?

you did it why? for friends and for the fissure,
some bald breach of banality beyond the stoic peach—
and for a frosty flame?

what waste of was you were, and still accomplished are;
that god-grappled greed should unhinge your soul's Sophia
and ever the future fraught.

there is not bracker brine than your bishops ex-cathedra,
for all the feast you fête, and friends you turn upon a spit;
you're hungry for a food that's never fed.

poor witless starving pitchless sum; your death is all my make into an angel, as you so quickly from this earth will shred
and songs adduced unto the celebration same.
 May 2020
Left Foot Poet
I used to live alone before I knew you

so
of the mundane tragedies endlessly writ
repeat rinse repeat
repeat
how awfully awful
is the complaining without cessation
of busted everything;

recall the the doctor’s office sign
"no cure for the broken heart here"

so when I hear a Buckley sing
the words of the Cohen, High Priest of Songs,
I, a broken hallelujah,
smile with recognition
  though the true cure is
yet  still forever being researched

patience is a patient within me,
for my muses and their endless,
poking aching whispers of write, write, write, right,
they are the company I keep,
they are the company that sweeps me up
I, a broken hallelujah

they are not the desired flesh, true,
that affirms confirms and denies me
denying my needy frailties
but for now,
mine company to keep,
so when we do meet and
you greet me with a
tell me about your previous lovers
as you humanly must

will recite my poems from
from before I knew you
 May 2020
n stiles carmona
Spring, cherished maiden ambivalent:
three parts rain, one part intemp'rate sun.
Show sympathy for clouded, rueful weather -
and let her weep 'til she, at last, is done

for there is no permanence in her grief.
She's winter's lover, moreso summer's child:
clutching daisy chains like bespoke rosaries,
new petalled life retrieves her golden smile.
caught myself relating to the seasons. spring's emotionally dysregulated. leave her alone. :(
 May 2020
m
consistent contradictions
gambling away my
happiness to the gods,
or the devils,
i can never tell which
i can never tell which
witches are good
and which ones are bad
and i'm on the edge of
glory and humiliation.
consistent contradictions
of a woman whose heart
is not in her body but
within another's, whose
home is june and whose
jail is the present
presently prosecuting
my own **** fingers
for falling and failing
and fumbling for the
light switch
for faltering and
sweltering in the heat
of heaven or hell
i can never tell which.
i can never
tell
which.
anxiety and loneliness are a dangerous combination
 May 2020
A
In a forest, where bird songs are silencers to a pistol and their feathers are scattered hopes, like broken dreams are to fantasies, I sit.
I stretch my arms, wide enough to fit grief and happiness in my muddy hands that I use to bury unspoken apologies and eulogies for days I have not yet lived.

I begin to stare aimlessly at the sky trying to spot the night moon. Its silhouette, that I trace with my finger.
I've drawn
And in the folds of the night, I hold you close
like day does dawn.

I let your depression stain my cheeks and see it drip between the gaps in my teeth,
sting my gum,
and so your language interweaves itself upon wounded scars on my tongue, so when i return back home, i return with the same cuts identical to your tongue that you hung


I don't want to sound too much of a stranger to you when I talk thus tonight, I’ll choose to tie happiness to things that have asked for no such burden
and stictch my lips silent to silence our silent violence.

My eyes bounce back at the hazy sky as if it’ll tame your inner broken and mould it into a less wild creature
more civil, more mature
less aggressive, less of a spirit

Your spirit appears in the bezels of my mind
my trachea catches fire burning deep into my whines ,
my breath disappearing into a silent hymn in the dull light
and watch my tongue chameleonize into a trillion hues of white
until my tongue becomes a graveyard for all my white lies

Until pain becomes a part of my diet,
until I'm able to chew the residual images of a broken girl, until her sadness becomes the air I breathe
until her inner warrior becomes the battle field never fought in
until I'm able to swallow sadness when chugged down my throat,

until I'm able to befriend your wild.
 May 2020
Sappho
And their feet move
rhythmically, as tender
feet of Cretan girls
danced once around an

altar of love, crushing
a circle in the soft
smooth flowering grass
 May 2020
n stiles carmona
i.
you wonder if somewhere there's a voodoo doll with your face stitched on
(and if it's covered in pins since god knows that would be the logical explanation)
who goes away in winter? he'd laughed and laughed
-- and in spite of yourself, you let him

you very patiently explain that with european winters
'the sun's still out but it's no cancer risk
and the air's still hot at night but it doesn't try to choke you
and what's more cathartic than a spanish caravan park where you're serenaded by crickets?'

playing it off as a quirk, not an excuse to be anywhere else

he'll never know the comfort in being
little more than a passing stranger
a face on a street or in a window or a car
transient, fleeting; the short-term memory lasts roughly thirty seconds
so you're a stranger in a yellow polo and then you're nobody:
it's the circle of life, but compact and mildly less terrifying

ii.
unexplored streets and brains are bigger than home:
you can only be your true self when you are not at home
eyerolling, rotting from air pollution and complaining about first-world problems
you're hardly ill at mind but you're jaded and sad and sufficiently middle-class
so when in doubt, you pack a bag and think nothing else of it

you buy the guardian and a kitkat from a sullen newsagent
whose hands look like your grandmother's
(why do you notice this stuff?)
the poor guy's only middle-aged surely - he can keep the change
counting coins is weird and confusing anyway

happy flying says the hostess with a ribbon around her neck
she means it and you know exactly why she'd taken the job on:
fixed addresses are awfully limiting
and the swarms of crying babies are probably worth it
to get to go everywhere EVERYWHERE

iii.
package holiday dj digs out his usual and plays 'come on eileen' for an aging crowd
your eyes are upturned to a foreign sky and you breathe warmth
the stars are out and you are floating quite carelessly at the top of a swimming pool

happy birthday
a narrative poem, i think? not sure where it sprang from. i just like trying to access inner monologues that aren't my own, because the ***** never shuts up
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