Living Poets Society - Hello Poetry

1h

Francie Lynch

We can't know them
By their religion.
Too much hypocrisy.

We can't know them
By politics.
Too much lying.

We can't know them
By country.
Too much movement.

We can't know them
By their clothes.
It's easy to colour your soles red.

We can't know them
By their words.
Too many equivicators.

We can't know them
By their jobs.
Ever changing occupations.

We can't know them
By their family.
Nuclear or extended.

We can't know them
By their deeds.
They say one thing, and do another.

But look to the roadside.

Ye shall know them by their garbage.

"Them" is us.

#identity #knowledge

6d

Francie Lynch

Sustainability

We keep good records.
Starting dates, endings.
Wars, plagues, starvations.
Emigratiions. Genocides.
Religious and cultural shifts
Continue in sustainable growth.

Not unlike my Magnolia,
Some of whose roots got burned
From excessive fertilizer.
The foliage suffered, not the trunk.
This year there are fewer buds.

Not unlike my grandkids
Holding up our mythology to reason,
Our White Lies.
Our magical lights, speeds of travel
That take us from our immortal Earth,
I snap back,
And slip a dollar under a child's pillow.
This will sustain.

There have always been hard times, worrisome times, but our humanity, ingenuity and positiveness prevails.

#aging #positivity #positiveness

Oct 10

Francie Lynch

Does It Really Matter Who Started the Fire

"What in the world happened!"

An innocent cliche,
We hear it every day,
At work, at home, at play.

"You don't say!"

A congenial comment?
Perhaps,
but...
Be careful what you say.
It could add to the maelstrom
That's becomes unfriendly fire.

Arguments in... arguments out.
Trash in, trash comes out.
That shouldn't surprise us.

The unseen whisperers make silent decisions,
Unheard among the raging shouts.

Who understands
How it went wrong.
The Why is easy.
But How.

How in the world did it happen?

I can't say.
High School doesn't seem to be enough.
Men feel threatened.
Not enough black hats are being unhorsed.
Women do very well
Walking over coals and broken glass,
In stilettos, clogs, mules,
Bare footed.
They will be revenged.

How in God's name did this happen?

Such unwarranted blasphemy.

#chaos #modernity #modernsociety #society #womensrights

Oct 7

Francie Lynch

The Family Tree

The upper branches
Of the Family Tree
Are visible.
I'm not near the base
Where I used to be.

There are fewer branches above;
And as I move there's
More and less to love.

Some limbs above have broken,
Suffered drought and heat
Through the elements of life.
But the trunk is true, strong,
Stalwart and flexible
As the lineage of its rings,
These expanding circles of life.
And above,
The transplanted branches
Were rooted with love.
Sprouts apppear below,
As further up I go.
And my limbs
Are moving slow.

Mistankenly posted this one before I had finished it from my notes.

#aging #ancestry #family

Sep 28

Francie Lynch

On the Road to London

The message was as legible
As orbits in astrophysics.
The syntax was true as
A mathematical equation,
Not calculated by accident or coincidence.
And precise, announcing,

HAPPY VALLEY NUDIST CAMP

Boldly, on a southern hillside,
In white-painted stones,
On Hywy #22,
On the crossroads between youth and age,
Doubt and confusion.

The stones are gone.
Picked over, or, rolled down the hillside.
And the Hywy is hardly used.
How. By accident or happenstance?
Or a higher intelligence orchestrated
The arrangement of the stone message.

And this happened outside our town.
On the road to London.

#doubt #confusion #creation #physics #coincidence

Sep 17

Francie Lynch

Still a Son

Mammy died years ago,
So I'm older than her now,
Though I never feel this way.
But I'm younger than my father was
Years after his delay.

I'm an aging Granda now,
But I seldom feel this way;
When in my memories,
Where they truly lie,
I'm still their son today.

Mammy is an Irish term of endearment for Mother or Mom.

#family #parents #aging #death #children #sons #mothers #fathers

Aug 4

Megan H

My Master

How scary it is-
To realize
None of this is truly mine.
Not these things,
Not this life.

Time is my master,
She owns it all.
I cannot keep any of it.

#life #time #master

Jul 30

Thomas W Case

When the Light Came

Night comes on like
an old hound lumbering
in from the field.
I don't fight it.
I'm getting too old.
I sit with pen in hand,
and wait for the
darkness to show
me something.

I think about vaginas and
Ireland and fish that
hunt a t night.
I think about
Bukowski and
Beethoven, and the
*******, and a kernel
of corn.
I think about my
life and this night, and
how it is better than
those near-death years of
caterwauling and chaos;
drunk by the river, lonely
as a glass snake.
I was living to drink, and
didn't give a **** about
anyone.
I was searching.
I found it
when the light came.

Here is a link to my you tube channel where I read my poetry from my recent books, Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems, on Amazon and Rise Up Collected Poems and Short Stories, available on Booksie.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qum45hpUqrg&t=16s

#sobriety #life #growth

Jul 25

Francie Lynch

Spokes

So many roads lead back home,
But not the one where I was born.
That first wet road was slippery,
With curves and hills and holes,
But every mile I travelled on,
Without knowing, I headed home.

Those many highways,
Like a wheel,
Were radiating spokes,
But like the wheel,
They're circular,
So always lead back home.

#home #travel #roads

Jul 13

Thomas W Case

A Small Place Above His Left Ear

My friend asks
me where I get
the fodder for
writing my poems.
I tell him, life.
He says that's too
simple.
He isn't satisfied.
I tell him that
sometimes, I sit at
my desk and open
the window above the
litterbox, and look
outside at the
orange daylilies and
wait.

He says he writes
from a small place above
his left ear.
It tickles at times, but
often it's painful.
I nod and make a
note to call my
doctor about the
headaches I've been having.

He reads his posey at
the coffee shops while
drinking espresso and
chatting with the other
young poets in sweaters.
I tell him that I used
to live under a bridge,
I read my poems to the
savage river and the
Mallard ducks, and the
drunk friends that
wandered in for a drink of
***** or a beer.
He says the little place above
his left ear is beginning to
hurt.

I walk him to the door and
tell him goodbye.
He asks if I will come
to the coffee shop to
hear him read his poetry.
"Sure", I say, smiling blankly.
After closing the door,
I sit and smile at the view from
my window.
I can smell the freshly cut
grass, and hear the
grinding whine of the
lawnmower.
A woman across
the street is lying in
the sun.
She's wearing a turquoise
bikini and big sunglasses.
Just then, a slight hint
of coconut wafts into my room.
I get hard and pick up the pen.

Here's a link to my you tube channel where I read my poetry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjeCroHYQxU

#writing #art #inspiration

May 17

Francie Lynch

Anywhere Else But Here

I woke to the warning blasts
Of fog horns on the St. Clair.
They comfort like a weighted blanket.
And the rain falls evenly, now,
On my vegetables,
On everyone's lawn and garden.
All is as it should be this morning.
Quiet, ordered and secure.
I'm glad I'm not over there,
Or anywhere else,
But here.

#peace #tranquility #rain #war

Apr 30

Francie Lynch

A Canadian Middle-Class Life

Do you see
How all things
Have conspired
For an average ******,
Like me.

I am grateful
To evade
The poxes
Others have endured.

The cold, the hunger, the homelessness;
The hate, the fear, the lonliness.
There's more.

I have never
Stretched out
A hand or fist
In want, fear, or hate.

I held chalk, and *****, and babies.
Such things sealed my fate.
Peace and Love
Filled our waves;
No poppies and crosses
On a friend's foreign grave.

Yes, all things conspired.
And this time got it right,
To live happily ever after
In my middle-class life.

#middleclasslife #canada

Apr 29

Carlo C Gomez

Tunnel 13

It must be dark
out here in the cold penumbra,
where mile after mile
no one smiles,

dots and loops,
dots and loops,
a kind of blissful nullity,
beautiful and pointless,

wearing at the edges
it almost stings,
seclusion unraveling
at the underground in us all,

aubade aberrations abound,
challenging the orthodoxy
of the troublesome
morning road,

but should this near-life experience
hydroplane toward
another mineshaft, it helps to know
less is less, not more.

#satire #sarcasm #pessimism #optimism #life #future #adventure #travel #driving