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 Jan 2018
harlon rivers
.          Seized by the moment,
          the gravity of a memory
           lay closed the window
             to the outside world

               Eyelids surrender
            in the breath of a sigh,
         the silent pacing footsteps
unable to walk beyond their shadow
       nor their footprints left behind,

      never needing to turn around
               to look back to feel
      the weight of every laden step
         across the old Arch Bridge
        spanning the river far below

             The cold wet sidewalk
         rumbles like the throbbing
              heartbeat still echoes ,..
                     resoundingly,
           through the muted voices
          of a past buried away alive

                 Halted footsteps
           become a blacker silence
                  at the precipice
     of the Arch Bridge railing ties;
   revisited deeply with eyes closed,
         wide open so many times
                 before  and  after
  that  long abhorred day since past

   Reliving an old noir silent movie,
       tarnished time and the river
              coursing through it,
    remaining unable to wash away
    the stains of that watermark tide

                 Standing   frozen
      as a weatherworn bridge tower,
  high above raging waters far below
feeling a cold chill, empty as a pocket,
            perpetual teardrops flow
  filling an empty thimbleful with love

           A thimble seems so small;
               just a pitted silver cup
       to shield from a piercing pang,
              and yet  a welling  love
             uncommonly  overflows ―
        tossed over the bridge railing
             toward the river below
       to see if hope really does float

            Seized by the moment,
          a random act of kindness
            and a thimbleful of love,..
                    lay open again
            a pensive soul's window
                to the outside world ...


                 rivers ... 11/06/2017
Notes:   nothing put away
alive,  within, ever dies ―
it can reawaken like a dormant volcano,..
ruptured in the blink of an eye

Thank you for reading
... Thimbleful of Love

I forgive it all...Tom Petty & Mudcrutch
https://youtu.be/jezqNxQ8mb0
 Jan 2018
Nat Lipstadt
the sun’s veins  

a unique thot, it's magi source:

naǧí  


my poem-joy instant-isthmus arises
and asks that I  
cross, connect,  
write of the sun’s veins that we will be forever unable
to see


but the veins will  heat yours - and it is not shared blood it warms,
it is poem joy
<•>


a warmth organism that leaves one gasping wrestling
for words  
so weakly I am grasping the connection
that snakes across
globes

and the poem joy that has no end, no boundaries  -
that full fills me

And I say,
thank you
6:25am
 Jan 2018
Mateuš Conrad
if it ever wasn't despicable, poetry with conversational overtones, and yet all the more dear, than that rigid suit, matching socks, clean underware and even a popish demure... of yet another seance in the dead tongue classroom of: rules, rhymes and calibrated perversities worthy of a pedantic despot. if ever a chance to beautify language from the mud-stained dross of daily services, a thousandth 'thank you' from that mosquito-sting itch of the proverbial, formal toot-p-toot: citizens in cohort stringing pirouettes of lardy ballerinas.*

thus in ars díēs (the art of days),
   how not fill the mind with
darting footsteps when standing
immersed in scorthed & crackling
clay of pater tempus?
  a day-to-day epic?
  no affairs with a trojan war
to claim for one's own repertoire,
or thereby the warring eyes
  with magnolian scythe swoons
or that sabotage of mortal frame
whether a penitent man,
  or a patient man,
  the old woman still feigns
that a clock is the heart of a home:
to me its an annoying insistence
to imagine a phlegmatic
take on a carousel:
  + or -, depending on whether
you can fathom the near impossibility
of yawning when nearing
      lull and gaping nox.

but still no 30 years, no show
of cunning, courage or loneliness,
no adventurous scoops or a bargain
of lies, as notably a seemingly routine
banality from the annals of what
others scatter on menus of:
scollops, sand, frolicking,
  alternatively: holiday reading
  in unbearable frying dunes,
   while watching blinding diamond
pinches on the azure -
but to phrase it better,
even with that, twelve dwarfs
an arching temptation for
necromancy, a gypsy love for
ragabond set scenes,
  and all those desires man delves
into from behind a respectable
ordination toward an inconsequential
defeat, with no kiss nor
  tease nor joke aside from
teasing death - thus in patriarchal shroud,
with a mere laurel wreath and
a respectable salvo,
  there's still the endearing compulsion
to riddle and be riddle with
the banalities as if a giggling sparrow,
light-headed commands...

...the chance of phrase,
    the lottery of words,
    against beyond all horror of
imagining orc or jinn or shatter jaw
of wolves...
    
- not all thus said could ever strip
  the horror everyday,
  in pairs and in tiers,
     past the naked inferno
         and yucky gingerbread kneading
of body against body,
   escapism in bypassing courting,
friendship, toward the casual
  burning of bridges and dissociation
from artefact to artefact,
  from the shackles of
   both formality and informality,
a chance to confiscate a brief
   irreversible- opening,
      as said: the world is your oyster,
make sure you only keep it briefly.

alternatively even the monologue,
or one's idealism folds quacking,
  if it ever wasn't worth admiring
  a creaking floorboard or a chair,
as if to say that: worn shoes
                 and a cushioned lair,
  encouraging the slang throng give
up its slavish inclusiveness mantra:
  dictum vogue.

-

in that no-man's land
    or rather: upon the misnomer
savannah -
            a lion claims sight
  of a juicy blank,
  that instrumental pivot of
eye with no tongue narrative -
pristine sheen of two icebergs,
of what is two-thirds acid
   serpentine guts and vigor,
while only a third Pavlov,
pounce and squirming bellydancers
  of the lashes...

   again, on the misnomer savannah,
an image or a metaphor when
I compare the fresh effort
  and the breathing canvas meat,
and these as incision and tear marks?

am I not to say that:
   a. true virtue is not afraid of critique
      (supported by reason)
    with an exempli gratia,
         b. critics do not pass
              citation a., which is to say
   c. critics are like hyenas in
   comparison,
  the once breathing meat,
its gushing burgundy
    croaking bones, mussle sinew
  and the remaining assortment of
pâté crevices emptied,
  akin thus, with the satiated bulk
of a lion's share deserved,
  scavenging the carcass,
  less a feeding while more a looting,
are critics truly the thinkers
for the people who would
rather others think for them?
        
  perhaps poor wording forced
that sort of question,
    yet it still remains, stalled
and waiting,
             by the time i've made my final
  incision, the once pristine alba
      will become a carcass catatomb
  filled with hyenas' smirks and snobbery,
  of those lesser kind journalists -

...by the time I mawl my final gnash,
   there will never be a case
  for a critic's in situ case, comparable
     to an "uncomfortable matress",
prima dona in heaven's name theatrics!
yes, the pervasive argument,
counter: contra carcass.
 Jan 2018
Nat Lipstadt
when a lost muse is no excuse,
when the mundane and the profane
are away on summer holiday,
and you are currently on the divine’s
'u **** - no write list'

nonetheless the itch in the private
spaces is driving you crazy,
write a poem, write a poem,
in the way a grandmother
(or a mother to a grown child)
whiny nags,
its a nice day, go outside and play
with a strange man
,
whatcha ya gonna do, the walls are all painted,
and the good bad boys are out of town, all with the  
other bad good girls,
who got there first,

but we will write of
******-rings and
other crazy songs you sing

it is not important you the reader understand every verse,
like Patton said, "it only matters that I know,"

which line is a joke,
which around your neck is
your customized yoke,
which is why:
plaintive wail to no avail,
the regret that never can be sated,
the frustration cratering inside the chest,
which is just,
(and unjust)
just enough
to make a semi-satisfactory smile
upon the lips appear

whose lips?
who cares?
as long as you don't have to hear me sing my poetry
but hear me smiling at
the power of whimsy writing
and the return of
my no longer muzzy^

Ms. Minx A. Muse-me
<£>
2:13pm
a poem in reserve for you, the Canadian girl
^muzzy - groggy, blurred

always about you and you

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2046630/to-new-beginnings-and-******-rings/
 Jan 2018
Valsa George
There was
none
to
listen
to her

Her words were like:

- A cry in the wilderness
that broke and shattered on woody trunks

- The howl of a lone wolf
that rose in the dead of the night

- The cry of an infant
that told the world, it was hungry

The cacophony of discordant orchestra
that left a jarring effect on the listeners

Her words sounded meaningless
To a world that spoke a different tongue

With no receptacle, her words like heated waters
Evanesced into vapor and billowed upward
Like coils of smoke to freeze into clouds

But one day it rained down,
Quite unexpected…….

With thunder and lightning!
-
 Jan 2018
Kitbag of Words
an incredible incite (the ruthless volatility of words)

~for L.B.~

the only place of solitaire solitude in the city accompanies me
like a faithful country dog that doesn’t know better to be afraid,
of moving cars, sleepless night terrors and unscripted “dreams”

where image and words say come “follow me” with ruthlessness and no cloying come hither looks and
see and take and recall with perfect midnight blue sky clarity for

the incredible incite of credible insight

surfacing unexpectedly in a intemperate pool of slushy snow,
that will be an ice storm of painful confrontations with naked
inner truths standing outside in sunny sub zero playground

there is great risk.  volatility gone wild. when the speed
governor is removed and you live at 100 mph on local streets,
when the merest slight of an accidental incidental touch
transforms into an incite incident and hell is the threat
that you will not die today and your own words will ruthless
pull from the nerve places where sensible and sensual cannot
coexist and this write this script is a poetical insight inside, an
incredible incite and what your spilling is spaghetti sauce blood
when you left your brain on broil, instead of the faking daily of
slow simmering ineffectual intellectual words that just don’t
cut the crap. your addiction complete, you cannot live without
the incredible incite, the ruthless volatility of words,
otherwise why rough write what you see
in the blind
beyond the blind


1/6/18 5:03am
Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5
“I took great pains to study and ’tis poetical
 Jan 2018
Born
5
                   a
               e      r
           y             s

since I joined hello
a larva with a torn soul
Clinging to Whatever's left of life

since I started scratching for light
Peeking at the  deeming tunnel
but still hoping

since I started dinning with poets
eating haiku in the morning
drinking sonnet in the afternoon
feeling the aching agony of the broken in the evening
falling in love with the dreamers at night

Since my heart was pounded
wrecked and left with unspeakable pain

Since Born was birthed
a crawling character that was literally dying
but still screaming for hope, love and dream

Since Ismael Ibrahim aka Born
stopped existing
and started living
I appreciate every single one of you for making this journey possible. In good, bad and worst I poured out my heart to you guys and you showed me nothing but love. Thank you
 Jan 2018
ryn
If the
weight of thoughts
could wear away
the resilience
of the broken bough,

I must’ve done
something terribly
wrong
to feel the way
that I do
right now.
 Dec 2017
Nat Lipstadt
the elegance of truthful simplicity,
the sweet truths of elegant brevity,
the insides of insight
|||


~
Please Read

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2246391/gratitude/

for it should be the Poem of the Day
 Nov 2017
wes parham
Slow is her progress and high is her climb,
It's measured in arcs that trace my night sky.
I spoke and she answered, but only in rhyme,
Across space and time, the poetess and I.

In my dream we met, and she told me she'd written,
Something dear to her kind heart- a poetic creation.
For Sara herself, I was utterly smitten,
And I urged her to share it, with awkward elation.

I rambled then, foolish, and shy to be near,
Since her words had already reached me before.
In a future that’s past yet, paradoxically, here,
And knowing, not knowing, just what was in store.

“There's a poem that you wrote...”, I had started to say,
“In the Bradbury story, I think that's the one”,
“There's an automated house that's going through it's day...”,
“It recites your piece aloud...?  but the people have all gone...?”

“ ‘There will come soft rains’,dear friend”, her reply,
And her smile said, “thank you.  I'm glad you recall”,
But this one is shorter”, and her voice was a sigh,
It’s a different theme, but encompasses all”.

Then, as you'd expect, in the midst of a dreaming,
She opened her notebook and the next thing I knew,
Four lines of writing appeared, only seeming,
To arrange themselves magical, universal and true.

——————————————————
"Moon's  Ending"  by Sara Teasdale

Moon, worn thin to the width of a quill,
In the dawn clouds flying,
How good to go, light into light, and still
Giving light, dying.

——————————————————

Every step of our lives, we are walking the line,
Fail or succeed, illuminated in the trying,
The moon is just as bright when she's on the decline,
Our light, consolation to the living or dying.

Thank you, poets. You gave everything that you could,
When you’d make something holy from the simplest spark.
Thank you, friend, for understanding. I had hoped that you would.
Thank you, Sara, for writing the light and the dark.
https://soundcloud.com/flowermouth/moons-ending-with-wes-parham

This is for another collaboration with a composer in the Netherlands, Dennis Ramler.   He wrote a composition inspired by a poem that he loves called "Moon's Ending" by Sara Teasdale and asked if I could write something to mix in.  This is what I came up with.    I'll post a soundcloud link once Dennis has mixed and mastered his track.   The idea was a dream-memory in which the speaker meets Sara just as she has written "Moon's Ending" and entreats her to share it.  They ramble awkwardly about another poem of hers that was used in a short story by Ray Bradbury.  The poem is followed by, basically, a paraphrasing of how I interpret "Moon's Ending" and the final stanza is gratitude for poetry, poets, friendship, understanding, and for Sara who wrote so lyrically about beauty, love, life, and death, each in equal measure of respect and gratitude.
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