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 Nov 2017
DaSH the Hopeful
Life is a melody
      You can listen to only once.

    The first thirty seconds, you find the groove,
         it's appealing
    A harmonious rhythm hereto unwritten
                    
       This could be your favorite.


 
             It is.
       For the next three minutes, you settle in.
               The chorus comes around.

          *You'll be here again.

                  It's fresh, it's catchy
You're enraptured by these certain pitches and the words rhyme perfectly.
   One line flowing into the next, the ends justifying the means.
       Another verse, another chorus. This one feels more weathered
          Routine, maybe. You still feel that groove but your perspective of it has been altered by the change in tempo and direction during the last verse.
               

           You realize you have fifteen seconds left.
         This was your song. What did you do with it?


       *As you think back, a gentle blanket of white noise embraces everything that ever was, and your song fades
Let me know how you feel.
 Nov 2017
Anya
When the judge asked what I was thinking, I replied “no comment.”
What really came to mind was the betrayal, the fury, the angst, that I feel on a daily basis.
I can’t get through a single day without thinking about what you’ve done.
You’ve hurt me.
Not physically, no, but my heart is bruised and broken and there are scars on all my thoughts.
Some days I try to think of the good times we had together.
Going fishing, walking through the woods, fixing stupid broken cars...
But then your stupid mistake pops back into my mind and “I HATE YOU” follows close behind.
What you did was disgusting and from here on I out I choose to say “no comment”.
People don’t deserve to know what you did, you don’t deserve that kind of publicity.
You weren’t with me for my 17th birthday, you don’t see how much I’ve grown in the past 10 months.
And when your birthday passed by, it was as if you didn’t even exist.
Father’s Day was the same way too, because your fatherhood should not be celebrated.
Seeing you now, and hearing the frustrating plea deal you got disgusts me.
Three years of parole and you’re off the hook.
I have to carry this with me for a lifetime but you only get 1,095 days with it.
Do you know how many days are in the average lifetime? 27,765 days.
Your sentence is no where near as damaging as mine.
You will never know how I feel.
You will never care to ask.
You will never see me graduate, or get married, or have a family of my own.
You will be far, far away from me.
Maybe you’ll rot in a pickup truck like your own father.
Or maybe you’ll waste your days away and sit in your own filth like your mother.
But do not ever drag me down to that hell with you.
Don’t ever talk to me.
I don’t need your apology and I don’t need your love.
So when the judge asks “Do you have anything to say?”
I suggest you tell him “no comment.”
To the ******* who ******* up the rest of my life.
 Nov 2017
SG Holter
I

She exits herself on the
Sofa. Blanket, dog, and bits
Of a poem on a pad of paper

On the table, like a half-eaten
Piece of homework.
Shades of wine on her sleeping

Lips. Exits herself; space-walks
Outside that frame of mind she's
Been expected to hang herself

On the wall within; she knows
There is more.
There has to be more.

II

She has to be more.
Like so many writers, she falls
Asleep working. Sometimes

Works to fall asleep.
Digging her way through
Herself, mining for words,

Hacking away at painful pasts,
Gathering emerald experiences.  
Diamond doubts and ruby

Regrets all fuel her poetry.
And she reads, spotlight kissed;  
Audience adored,

Goosebump summoning; hairs
On arms and necks stand up as
She whispers directly to me.

About me. Because of me.
In front of everybody.
To music, and I've brought a box

Of pins, and between each of her
Every word, I drop one. And I
Swear to the gods, you can hear

Them all. Like the unsteady
Ticking of a clock too cool to
Care.

III

Poetry jewelry; set with stones
From her innermost. Chips of
Gold from her heart melted

Down to a key pendant she
Holds in her hand; chain dangling,
Eyes closed, forehead resting

Against a door she knows it is
Time to open. Key in one hand,
Pen in the other,

She
Enters
Herself.
 Nov 2017
Jellyfish
I want out of here.
Let me out,
let me disappear.
I want to turn inside out and melt,
sink into water and ripple out.
I want to go home.
 Nov 2017
DaSH the Hopeful
I am like a man
That lives inside a very small cube
      *
*And is deathly afraid of corners
 Nov 2017
DaSH the Hopeful
Breathe each breath as if you are inhaling the sunrise of a new day**
            Possibility filling your lungs
        Every cell in your body
Dancing to the rhythm of a fresh start.
I sing to the trees
a lamentation
for the loss of you

I sing to the trees
as I look up at them
they look down at me
my lamentation
is heard

the shatters of my heart
collect like autumn leaves
under my throat
ready to be sung out
clothed in notes
of gossamer and gold

I sing to the trees
a greeting, a sorrow
for the loss of you

and the shards of my heart


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater
 Nov 2017
spysgrandson
in the hall, I listen as she calls out
his name

not aware I am there,
nor would she care

if I open the door without making
a sound,

I purloin a few seconds to watch her
before she sees me

when her eyes catch mine,
she looks away

the morning sun makes a sympathetic effort
to light our room

"our" room which from which I have
been excommunicated

the drapes she sewed only last summer
are never open

that is her world, staring through
baby blue curtains

which mute the half light of morning,
though not enough

not enough to blind her to the spot
where her son's crib waited

until I committed the unpardonable
sin of taking it to the cold cellar

only a fortnight after our stillborn child
was placed in the ground
 Nov 2017
S Olson
Heaving into the airless room of your heart
willingly, I sat on the bone-cold floor

subsisting on chaotic peeling inches of light
in the dimly lit corners of your diaphragm;

but I have grown old inside the succubus
stomach of these walls, and I am drowning

listening to you speak of your emptiness
as you bathe all around me
in the holy waters of narcissism
the cathedral of your sorrow eats

itself; I tethered a promise into the middle
of you, and I could yet spit at salvation



the lock on the door;
I could spit at salvation
but I have tethered a promise
deep as this imprisonment
masked as a woman.











into the middle of you

is where I am most alone.






my father is dying; of the many times
I chose to stay, this is not one

you have abandoned me within you for
the last time; I forgive

but you are not the god

Consumed and spit out many times
through the unlocked door of salvation,

the cathedral of your sorrow eats
what of myself I have cloistered there

not so I could be a sacrifice on your altar;
you are not the god of my promise to fill you

but my father is dying, and you are a prison
and heartbreak can funnel no love.





but a prison has become you.









I appreciated the slowly peeling inches
of dim light in your many hard corners,

growing old in the succubus of these walls,
drowning on the inside
listening to you speak of emptiness.







as you speak of empty




and I appreciated the peeling walls,
respecting
the dim light in the many hard corners;

but I have been growing old in this bitter love
where you say, and I listen of your empty

where I am prostrate, drowning in walls
so as to lessen the sting of your sequester

but I could fall through this door
you have opened; I could sink
without a struggle to our grave

where the cathedral of your emptiness
would truly become a skeleton

see, the sinew of it is not in self religion
but that love is the heartbeat.








too.












where I will no longer be stifled
in the asphyxiation of your self religion

breaks my hoard











but the anti-gift lies in my cloister,
and the world moves as I am misappreciated



and I listened to you tell me how empty
you are, and how you invite, but how
no-one comes

and I bathe in the bitterness, as well as
the love, because this is something which I
have promised

but I am drowning in a room,
a room that talks to me of walls
and of ceilings, and of floors

and of itself; but never of what is given
by not walking through the unlocked door

into a place where the cathedral
of your emptiness
may preach, aware, that the sinew
of love
is the soft aorta if you are the skeleton.










but the cathedral of you I will worship
even as I sever the love
 Nov 2017
r
Cold days, dark nights,
yield memories left
like headless corpses
on some ancient field;
seasons and years,
blood, sweat and tears,
the chains and links,
those things that bind;
blinding sharp beak,
black murderous bird,
winging over peaks,
leaving these worldly
lows below behind me;
my dying wish is for
restful bliss in winter's
white sheet stiffly lying.
 Nov 2017
nivek
one depth of helplessness
one acknowledgment
one letting go
one honesty
one acceptance
one trust
one heart
one love.
 Nov 2017
Jellyfish
what am i supposed to say
when it feels like i should say nothing?
should i just stay quiet and miserable,
or say things that could bring on a horrible battle...
i think i’d rather crawl back into my bed.
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