Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 Mar 2017
Joel M Frye
With every passing day my body begs,
Consider that all drink, all food consumed
Will shorten breath, and weigh on swollen legs.
But thirst and palate are no less attuned
Though appetite has slaked as time goes by.
Instead of gluttony, I must select;
Notice what I eat and drink and why
To savor flavor to its best affect.

A poet learns their mindfulness of words
The same.  With small or no restraint at all,
They gorge themselves on overstuffed buffets,
Well-salted with their tears.  Yet, to be heard,
A simpler line cuts through the caterwaul
And quenches thirst and hunger on its way.
Shared lesson hard-learned by a reformed gourmand.  Graze lightly, thoughtfully, and well.
 Jan 2017
Marsha Singh
We still think
we're ripe figs, saplings
green and sweet 'neath supple
bark, hearts still sticky,
fruit still ****.
 Dec 2016
Valora Brave
0.  I was just trying to breathe

Every inch of my story line
I drank like coffee that you need so badly
You don't notice the taste of ash
it leaves in your throat
and when I breathed out smoke,
slowly gliding from my tongue,
you'll know, the words I can't choke
the ones I hung to dry,
but left them outside
through a crisp winter season
and returned just in time
to catch the lullaby as it dissolved into water.
I couldn't wait any longer.
I broke them into icy pieces
that fit back in my mouth.
I held them there long after I breathed
the blizzard that had formed in my stomach.
I couldn't swallow, I couldn't breathe
and I couldn't wait for you to leave.

So I locked my icy breath in my hands
and looked for silent corners between buildings
so I could begin to understand
how to squeezed out the blood from the words I've been spilling

I. White Moonlight

I went up the mountain side
listening to the canyon's song.
Dancing beneath the tree lines, I soaked
in the pines and cypresses.

I ran to the west, searching for a place to rest.
Fell asleep in the foothills
and had to run home to catch the light
Running in the dark, I would not beat the night.

[I was a villager traveling through
There came the White Knight with red hair in view
offered a space, a safe place for the night]


The white knight held out his hand to an aching soul.
Accepted.
Trusting the purity in a path lit by moonlight
Unknowingly, I would never trust white again.

II. Static (original)

Deceived and seduced by the safety and warmth of white,
There was a subtle yellow tint in your light
that began to scream from its origin and fight against the walls
A cinderblock room colored in skin absorbed my calls

There was air trapped in my bones
that halted movement and created unfamiliar vocal tones
There were no cuts or bloodstains,
but all that was white drained to red
as he wrapped my limbs in reins
(to) make them dance, make them spread
Dance for the White Knight
make them move as you please, White Knight.

This body was a delicate ship that had been sunken
from a night spent in a dungeon
with a monster disguised as a man
whose touch would shave inches from my wingspan
Now these limbs do not belong,
the pressure outlines of your unwelcomed hands
Whimpers became the lyrics to my muted, morning song

I didn't know, how minutes can become tattooed in your veins
with each breath, a gentle push of blood through your body
you begin to taste the ***** again
the red clouds invade and bring me back to the monster's den

Now he holds these layers as the corners all peel
from a defeat long ago, a kidnapping, a delicious steal
The potency of your dominance
the power you must have felt
in watching a flower melt

III. Silence

The moon is now a cold light,
but nothing is wrong.
A response clean as white-
A secret
to be naked and unprotected for so long.

My youth cools the coffee
My stomach burns the atmosphere
encapsulating me
Teeth marks stains on my pillowcases
In the day, there is outward harmony
Like carefully crisscrossed shoelaces
Night falls with the sound of silent sobs.
My walls begin to melt.
They are turning yellow
Reliving how it felt
to be betrayed by something white.
I can't live through the day with anticipation of the night
when that white light floods in
I try to tear you out from beneath my skin

IV. Don't Try to Love Me

The luxury to be still.
Motions that were quiet
Set the music to your gaze
as you reopen the tears
When will you open the steel curtains,
you drape around your heart?

I run my fingertips and I can’t find
how you’ve cloaked the mistakes in your architecture
There is nothing poetic about solitude
Let me pinpoint the coordinates of your pain
Let me find the exact longitude
Let me be your constant latitude
I know you are alive

You live in some unknown torment,
I once saw you writhe in the night
and under the moonlight

He didn’t know
How I was preoccupied
I had to settle the background noise
the constant buzz between my ears
that fills my head so I could never hear
How much he could have loved me.


V. Patience

How sweet to be loved by you
You are warm weather in February
You are the reflection of a mountain in a reservoir
mais mon humeur est noire

We were in a large room lit
by one lamp in the far corner
when words poured from my jaw of glass,
I guess I could have asked
but it seems no one knows
the cadence and way words can flow
into our hearts and puncture the soul

How sweet it was, to think I could be loved by you
You are figurine of my fears
A January wedding in three years
A shadow mapping an escape plan
Yet I lace my fingers in your hand

You don't belong with me
but when the delicate words
trembled from your lips
and your voice stopped
with my stare
Both your hands in my hair
I wish I knew how to tell you,
but I couldn't remember why
you had to be someone to just pass the time.

VI. Deliberate Return

It should have felt like
a lifted weight
so I could move through
an unlocked gate

brush your teeth on my neck
and your cheeks across my chest
I thought last time was the last time
Tiny drops became the anthem
And the tears found a quiet path
To roll onto my belly
Between you and me

I could still taste the poetry you left in my mouth
the deception and interception
of my growth
and of my youth

My clothes hung off my back
darkness from all the sleep I lack
Trying to wash out the scent of you
after 6 years, I thought I'd be through
but you've kept me here and I've let you

I am a lost warrior in the meadow
Treading water every night
Trapped in an internal fight
You held me in the shadows
Grabbing at the wildflowers in my breath
But I just kept breathing in the echoes
Of a time I must let go

The mist of my trouble followed me in March
I’d sit with tea and say things like ‘I feel better, but maybe not tomorrow’
There was no promise
Just moderate disbelief
No security in my sleep
So when I shook your outline out of my sheets
Laid in bed where I once lost my youth
I wish that this was not my truth

VII. Shuddering While Healing

There is a section of the river where
the current sends it’s shivers
The wind dances with the tree branches in slow motion
(but) I was grown with my toes on the edge of the ocean
Leaning in with your hand and handsome love songs
about relentlessness and forgiveness
You sang a gold song
like a January river
flowing beneath the ice
You thought your love could break through
that shallow ceiling, but I couldn't hear the tapping
as you drowned beneath my feet
I was submerged in the cross currents
pulling me and hugging me caught in the center
how I heated up and bent you
then left to wade in the river
how you stayed next to me
and remained never bitter

I can't find the line
and I can't ask you to throw me one
because I'm dragging you in as I float through
tracing the fire I began on this river
with my fingertips
and remembering how I was grown on the shore
but how I can never be sure
if the breath in my ear
is someone to be trusted
or if the breath in my ear
is that monster crawling near
taking the color, once again, from my atmosphere.

VIII. Fragile

The sweet kisses he planted on my shoulders
and the moves he made were full of truth
The guilt he felt should have been mine
but the longer he stayed the more I felt fine

For the other’s love was simply beige
And outlined in black
I didn’t want excitement
I didn’t want lust
It was not enticement or boredom
It was from the buildup of rust
between my bones.
And I listened to your breath against my shoulder through the phone.
It hit me like an ensemble
predicating the concerto.
You were just an instrument.
And here I thought I was the conductor
just dreaming of ways to escape.
And I don’t sleep well when I’m next to him either.
Because I’m dreaming of ways to relate.
And I don’t sleep well when I’m alone.
Because there’s no one left to blame.
So now trying to be tame
Searching for an answer
in a small place like alone

IX. Releasing

What it means to be powerful
I saw it in shades of red
To find your feet still melt the snow
To find the only security is within
the confounds of your frozen bones
I was sure that diving meant drowning
but I've been drowning on the shore
Since you touched me and wanted more
Since you saw me raw
I evolved into a monster
scratching and clawing at your dungeon's door
You can't keep me here forever

You displaced my trust in balance
and turned something beautiful into something *******
But if I can see your belly button,
then you were born once too.

What does it mean to be powerful?
I can do it in soft baby blue
I can do it with the haunting memory of you,
but I don't want you with me anymore
So, good night white knight.
You don’t get to have this moonlight
and soon I will no longer be afraid of the color white.

X. Tenderness

Tenderness.
That was the name of my pain.
It was not the bitterness
that makes us take down photographs
or change the song.
It was not about bitterness.
It’s about tenderness
and distance

I learned that the silent pauses
between gusts of wind causes
more sound than running facets.

I learned when you’re ******* for feelings
You start to feel the weight of the ceilings
We just hold on our backs and call it 'dealing.'

Trying to achieve the humility of a willow tree
Turning yellow in the slow descent to winter
But I’m not going to wait to give you what you need
White knight, tonight, I leave
Because I know you’ve been living in me like a splinter
Strong enough to puncture
Weak enough to be removed
This glass castle is just a structure
That could be improved

But you already made a house
And now you’re trying to pick out decorations
Let me tell you, humans are not decorations
Another human should be a matched foundation
I think you almost saw that too
When you felt the vibration of the wind from me to you

Terrified because it’s never about growing
it’s about pride.
Too scared of showing
the days we cried
cried so hard it became
the anthem of our week.
No, we can never show we are weak

Terrified
The fragility of our pride
So we disconnect, in order to protect.

Let me tell you, no one describes this life as a glide
If they do, they lied
Everyone is terrified or uninteresting
Yet we are all putting up walls and distancing

Farther and farther
What would it feel like if I asked you about the sound of tenderness?
Or what it looks like to be repaired?
We are so afraid of being unprepared
we don’t hear how the wind
sounds like children growing
How healing feels like the roll of the river
and just because you shiver
does not mean you will be cold forever
and those silent pauses between gusts of terror
when we are just a step away from pulling that lever
are the moments we should reflect on
These are all those things that cause us
to be terrified
and learn to be tender

XI. Happiness Doesn’t Leave a Mark

How do I tell you
that every day used to be a battle?
One that I fought because I had to
so I could get up and fight the next day.
It was never about winning.

This is a Saturday night kind of pain.
The kind you feel that doesn't belong to you.
But at least you are no longer numb.

I want to show you where I'm from.
That childhood house that saw too many ways
to shatter plates on holidays
When I left, I grew back wings
and flew through the haze
You see, plates and whites are just things
but you can make anything a symbol
and when you see that this is no signal,
this is a sign. That I can be standing here with you
and still die
but this time, maybe I’ll let you inside
because
I've been too many people to start anew
I've loved the color blue
Loved a man with an amber hue
I was damaged in a yellow room
but I cannot match a color to you

My mother,
She said "the weakest point in a rope
is where it connects to another
and your insides are tangled"
You see, I can live with the knots
I want to look at you and know
You can trust this knot to hold
You know I'll pull through
You're not so scared
of a scar, or a few
Because I want to share where I've been with you
*and that includes the happiness too.
 Nov 2016
Terry O'Leary
Once wars were fought with sticks and stones
to flog the flesh and batter bones
and conquer lands, defending thrones -
though gods provoke, not one atones.

The multitude (by hordes beset
with battle-ax or bayonet)
braved blades, dyed red and dripping wet -
the stains were wiped with no regret.

When raining blood, the teardrops spill,
enough to drown the daffodil
that withers in the mourning chill -
who was it said 'thou shalt not ****'?

The mad machine's now mechanized,
torment and torture legalized,
blind barbarism globalized
and wrath of demons sanitized.

Each rival's right (whichever side)
committing holy homicide
in names of gods diversified -
like Cain and Abel fratricide.

Above, a Drone that terrifies -
a button's pushed, a missile flies
to rip apart, to vaporize
(defending life, they fantasize).

Dismembered victims everywhere,
most, non-combatants, unaware -
a lone survivor, solitaire,
unfolding hands, too late for prayer.

Beneath the dust, a baby lies
with mouth agape, with bleeding eyes,
arrayed in death that money buys -
though warriors watch, none empathize.


The media's impervious -
in truth they're ever devious
for fear that reason's dangerous,
find every question treasonous.

Through eyes lit up like rosy sores,
embedded scribes report on wars
with tales to line the cuspidors -
the Fourth Estate? A herd of ******.

To paint the slaughter civilized,
objective news is sodomized -
when foreign streets smoke, pulverized,
the body counts are minimized.


Big Berthas boomed in days of yore
but now the tanks spit spikes of Thor
and mortar shells like raindrops pour
upon the lands of Nevermore.

The grumble of a hand grenade
is drowned in claps of cannonade -
assorted charnel chunks lie flayed
in battlefields where kids once played.

Somewhere a ******'s bullet flies,
somewhere a voiceless victim dies,
somewhere a famished orphan cries
while weapons warble lullabies.

The bunker busters burst the sides
of dwellings where mankind resides
and innocence in darkness hides -
the die is cast, but who decides?

Use cluster bombs and barrels too,
(crude critters in the wartime zoo),
to shred more souls than hitherto -
choose death en masse, avoid the queue!

The leaders lead (twelve steps behind),
enmeshed in intrigues, well enshrined -
yes, powers, business (so entwined)
pull twisted threads, ensnare mankind.


The mercenaries hack and maim
(god's creatures crippled, morally lame),
do beastly things that none will name -
well-paid for such, they feel no shame.

The ****** bombs and phosphorus
and ghastly weapons gaseous
are scattered widely, bounteous -
behold the desert wilderness!

Yes, Agent Orange burns slow and calm,
may leave behind a blazing palm
(or better yet, a molten mom
inside a hut)  in Vietnam.

And phosphorous… its flame so white,
exploding, falling through the night,
commemorates the Sacred Rite -
and babes in arms, thus blessed, ignite.

Cast chlorine, sarin or VX…
a lethal dose (or side effects
like blistered lungs) will serve to vex -
but death in war? No one objects…


Constructing A-bombs's arduous -
uranium, depleted thus,
can trash a tank with little fuss,
cause natal cankers, cancerous.

But doomsday warheads (dropped or thrown),
ignited, leave the sun outshone -
beneath a mass of melted stone
lies powdered ash, once flesh and bone.

When atoms split in bombs debased,
vast cities smolder, laid to waste,
a million sinless souls erased -
perhaps, one day, all life effaced.


You close your eyes but can't ignore
that body parts and bags of gore
are bursting through golgotha's door,
and strewn beyond the ocean's roar
like rotting fish that wash ashore.

Why can't we stop and end all war…


POSTSCRIPT
Regard the dreary death Arcade
of Armaments (a fruitful trade)
and tally up the millions made
by ghouls that raise a colonnade
of miles of missiles, weapons-grade,
in Armageddon's crazed parade,
and hide behind a masquerade
of lollypops and lemonade
while planning new an escapade
for sending armies to invade
and loot far oil lands, unafraid
of misery and grief parlayed
until our final days cascade
into a hell no more delayed
by happenstance or luck outplayed
that leaves society decayed,
bombarded with a fusillade
of lies upheld and truth betrayed
by pundits in the shifting shade,
and crises of the world clichéd
as sung in solemn serenade
by journalistic hacks that preyed
on wide-eyed folk in sham charade
that lulls to sleep with eyelids weighed
by tiny tears that disobeyed
to stay behind the barricade
and bathe the modern-day crusade
of war in cheers and accolade.

The bottom line? Just profits paid
for deadly sins that god forbade…
 Nov 2016
JT
I don't know what he was to others—
   fireworks, lemonade, ants crawling on a picnic blanket—
   but I always knew him at his worst.
He was sleep cycles shaped like carnival pretzels,
   days that bled together,
weeks that clumped like a rat king
   under floorboards in the beach house.
He spoke in clouds
   swollen with diluvian rain,
daggers of lightning
   cracking the river in half,
the language of a muggy body in sticky room
   staring out a window
at absolutely nothing.
   The sort of stuff that makes me think
he didn't know his own strength,
   most of the time.

As always, when he died this year
   he died by degrees,
bedridden in the hospice of September.
   I listened to his death rattle
 of rustling yellow leaves
   and watched the last of the fireflies
crawl from between his parted lips.
   When he went cold for good
I built a pyre out of his firewood bones.
   The ashes fell into the soil
like seeds in waiting, and I watched
   the moon grow so large that it stretched
the nighttime like candy licorice
   and made it longer than before.
My duty done, I turned to go.
   The smoke rose up to embrace the sky,
and at the time, I could have sworn
  that from the corner of my eye
I saw it curl around
   and wave at me.
version four point something.
 Nov 2016
v V v
He enters the wood
without wanting,
taken from slumber
and pushed from behind
into darkness.

Up ahead he sees light,
he wants to believe
he always sees light,

but lately its not there
and he cannot see,
and they’re not at home.

He’s becoming afraid
to close his eyes,
no telling where he’ll end up,
skirting the edges of
the unknown.

He wonders what’s beyond,
a cliff, a hole, a vacuum,
insanity hovering over the
sprawling darkness of Hell.

He’s never been
though he thinks he can taste it,
it tastes of fear,
dark and gritty like burnt toast.

His only hope in
the little white diamonds.

When he swallows,
their edges work to scrape
the darkest burn away.
 Nov 2016
Edward Coles
You took me to the Mekong River,
handing my documents over the border,
to the temple of the left-handed Buddha,
in the hope it would all make sense.

You took me to the brink of a stolen calamity,
you stayed with me in poetry; my eventual insanity.
You kept me with your golden voice,
you kept me with your wit.

You lost me with your genius;
how you discarded it.

You drove me to a calling that I could not fulfill,
just make statuettes from the ash that lines my windowsill.
Call it art, or call it a longing,
call it that animal burn for some kind of belonging.

You were a father, you called off the saints,
you cooled my tongue, my off-white yogi;
taught me these songs of pain, these songs of love
were meant to be sung by everyone.

Not the clever mind, nor the metronome heart
that keeps time with this life, that keeps pace from the start,
but for the stumbling folk, the slow off the blocks,
the maladjusted, the criminal; those who only see dark.

That this chip on my shoulder is a flute in which to sing,
that each failure I live, is a story I should bring
to the table of life, to the feast of recovery,
for every impatient soul with a hunger for discovery.

Each broken chord is a chance to sound alive,
amongst the crackle of the static, there is another side.
Another wasteland companion, another strangled voice,
that amongst all this hopelessness; we always have a choice.

To bend or to break in the shatter of our soul,
sometimes the glass must be half-empty in order to feel whole.
That some convenience pleasure is not always enough,
sometimes we must bear the burden;
sometimes we must hang tough.

Because the words will come, the sun will rise,
amongst the debris of yesterday, there is another side.
You took me to the temple and on bended knee I pray,
that I could lift a suicide, with just the words I say.
Written on the day that Leonard Cohen died.



Leonard Cohen tribute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e01PXY9QYqg&feature;=youtu.be
A Spring Evening in Paris with the Thieves of Love


They found each other in the good samaritan way you would try.
If you are not alluring, if you can’t get a reverie, there are other ways.
Ellen was drunk and left alone near St.Severin off the Rue de la Harpe
Where you can smell butter and garlic and mussels and iodine
From bistros open to the street. Anthony loved it that you could see that
Those bistros were happy and good.  He wanted to be in one with a girl.

Ellen in mottled lamplight on the churchyard cobbles:
Freckled, brown eyed, strong in clean denim overalls and white T-shirt.
She knelt there sick and knelt also inside Anthony, in a lyric:
Not many chances like this in life. He nursed her
To her place in Billancourt. She was afraid on the Metro.
A drunken kiss of thanks at her door tastes of sickness and anise.
Of course he came back. A real man would come back for more thanks.
If it was his first chance in months.

She was brave, dramatically friendly, often in
The light that passes for candles on stage.
She had the fierce compassion that terrifies.

He had been disqualified from girls by anxiety.

They bought food, flowers and wine in the market
And walked and bought books from bouquinistes
And cooked in her room. He wrote at her table.

The white iron bed by the sunny window...

Who was this girl no older than Anthony,
Showing him friendship, making him grateful,
Showing him love,

" I like to do this,
Find one that I love, make something perfect."

Sneaky good love of stealth and cunning...                


                          Paul Anthony Hutchinson
www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
copyright Paul Anthony Hutchinson
Love and artists and creativity
 Oct 2016
Dagogo Hart Dagogo
As uncertain as the first drop of rain, an undecided sky trying to pick what game to play, she was the wild kind of beautiful. With her, every heartbeat was a fist against heavens door and my chest was left a battered jukebox playing broken tunes for broken men. See wild things always leave broken in their wake.

So we unlearn love by attaching orange peels to naked mandarins, and maybe one day I will love mandarins for who they are but I still see your face in every crowd because most times close enough is good enough, so apologies to mandarins. When I said forever, please do not believe I lied, for forever is just another way of saying from birth to death, so let us bury this alongside old jumpers and handmade cards. Let us gather all the orange peels from the kitchen floor and find all the places we hid ourselves in each other.

Now my mother worries about me, she doesn’t mention it but she says “remember your roots”, I almost said it’s hard when you’re trying to branch out, but I just said always, I always say always. I always mean sometimes the ocean between us makes me feel like half a story no one will ever truly understand. So apologies to mandarins, until your skin learns to unravel across an ocean to the doorsteps of old black women with crowns for hair that doesn’t know how to fall and wishing well bellies where dreams come from, I will always be half a story and you will always be half my life.
 Sep 2016
Larry Schug
Mending my leather mittens
for the third time this winter,
I sew them with waxed string
made to repair fishing nets,
hoping they’ll last
until the splitting maul rests
against the shrunken woodpile
and the *** and ***** come out of the shed.
I find myself praying.
Blessed be those who have laced together
the splits at the seams of this world,  
repair its threads of twisted waters.
Blessed be those who stitch together
the animals and the land,
repair the rends in the fabric
of wolf and forest,
of whale and ocean,
of condor and sky.
Blessed be those who are forever fixing
the tear between people and the rest of life.
May we all have enough thread,
may our needles be sharp,
may our fingers not throb or go numb.
May each of us find an apprentice,
someone who will take the needle from our hands,
continue all the mending that needs to be done.
 Sep 2016
Seán Mac Falls
.
In the long nothings of blackest night
Owl whispers.  Hair of mouse stands,
As only an under sieged without spear
Can and grave vole, simply wide open
On his mat of dead leaves, drying time
And even the hare, without hope, hops
Maddeningly caught in dark labyrinths
Without sight, dear is the silent scream
Of all that was mere, so slim after light,
Night scurry, dash, curled fingers, prey.
Next page