A Poet's Voice - Hello Poetry

Feb 2017

Walter W Hoelbling

when no mornings
follow nights
cities lie without their lights
little beasts root happily
children can live all their fears
   forests break
   mountains shake
then it’s time again

rockets roar with deadly freight
sharp explosions rock the night
   soldiers shoot
   graveyards bloom
it is war

when scrawny skeletons
creep through the streets
parents weep
dead bodies radiate
   new death
and crumpled shapes
   spread more disease
then it’s time again

the general orders strategic attacks
and watches how the metropolis cracks
   rivers stink
   battleships sink
it is war

when the bakers bake no more bread
when the butchers chop off their hands
when the doctors’ only prescription is death
   corpses float in the village pond
   and supermarkets stay closed
24 hours a day
then it’s time again

maybe the ultimate time
for the warriors to storm from their heights
to the valleys to lance and destroy
   they also **** women
   all children are dead
   the moon is all red
   the stars are so wan

   we are counting the corpses
   as long as we can

it is war

This verse was originally written in January 2003, three months before G. W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. The military saber rattling and hyped governmental rhetoric of the last week trigger bad memories......

#war #death #destruction #premonitions

Feb 2017

Lazhar Bouazzi

Forward Recollection

I don’t run to poetry
To save my skin;
Quite on the contrary.

I conjure the humming bee
On the blue rosemary tree,
I followed as a carefree
Boy in the backyard,
Only 'cause I’m scared
Of the scarred face
Of metaphor.
© LazharBouazzi, January 24, 2017

Feb 2017

L B

Sunset Apology

I hold your life inside my own
as you hold me
in your sea of seeds and waving reeds
Beach grass on breast of sand

Ripples of wind
Across my dune
drifts...
your hand

Tracing the mark of a high tide
with my wanderings
Will I be the last?
to recall its highest reach upon the land?
I note the smell of dead and ebb
Would change it all on my return
if it were up to me

And once I started running out
“Wait! O, Wait!”

Black breaks
The sand bars
between the tide pool’s
red whispers of you

I now believe
gulls turn time in their wings

#love #lost #sunset #beach

Jan 2017

Kelly Rose

Poet's Romance

I yearn for your touch
To be held tightly
Within your grasp
So I may stroke
The blank page before us
As my ink expresses
Your thoughts
and splatters your emotions
Across blank's page
Please hear my cries
And clasp me in your hand
Oh, just image
The magic we create
If only....
How I yearn for your touch
Defeat your writer's block
and see me yearning for
Your touch

I crave for that dance,
You, sweetly entwined betwixt my fingers,
Filled with the ink of enchantment,
The delicate nib are your lips,
Adorning your sublime silhouette,
Let me move you in cursive swirls,
sprinkling all the letters,
Forming a beauteous verse of love,
Dancing upon the stage of paper,
How wondrous is the fact,
That you fathom my inner being,
And splash it upon the sheets,
Like pearls from a sentiments' string,
Help me rise again,
From all the worldly pain,
I lovingly desire,
Your touch......

Collaboration with Shilpa Sandesh
(c) January 31, 2017
Kelly Rose
Shilpa Sandesh

Jan 2017

Emily B

morning thoughts

I had a vision once

jeeps and dust
an apocalyptic America
and I was scared

this morning I stood in the shower
thinking
maybe I should tell my daughter
to let her hair grow
to pretend to have a boyfriend

our system of checks and balances
is being stomped on
civil liberties
and inalienable rights
are extinct

psychic vision
is poised to become reality
and I never imagined
it would be our own government
holding us hostage

Jan 2017

wordvango

no one

if you are afraid to be a one man band
you must be afraid of life and eternity
when the orchestra and the choir stops
it is all up to you
you have to sing proud loud and resonant
sing that song you can
no one is gonna sing along with you
in the end
close your eyes
and sing loud
cry out

Jan 2017

Pax

a step

in passing of time,
as we grow old,
as i learned the wisdom
of the good and bad
in the rhythm of life
i stood still -
  in pause,
       waiting
              in silence.
at a passing thought
you'll never know
what's out there -
uncertain in most
                      cases.
in beating the odds
a step yet to have taken
    i only took a detour
for a time, just for a short while
yet I wouldn't have imagine
years has passed never did
i take a step...

dear readers,

i hope you would not think i have such deep regret buried deep inside, i don't have those as of yet and hope not in the future, it is just that this nagging feeling that you've wasted your time, or i feel like i wasted too much of my time engaging on something that i did not learn to loved. I'm writing now, because my heart seems to be so cloudy, and feel like crying for no reason... i hope by writing this, i'll find relief on the nagging feeling...

thanks again for reading.

#feelings #thoughts #clouds

Jan 2017

wordvango

Am I myopic?

just wait one minute
the theory of art
can it be like VanGogh's
stars be monumental
for the sake of drama ,
is the winsome guitar in my favorite song
just a prop in this play
of a rock opera?
Can it be art is just a
short way of saying artificial?
Does my heart sing her song
play a song of ethereal longing just for a
effect?
And does art
in her theory stand for artificial , is my sight
so shortsighted?

Jan 2017

Nico Reznick

Shrinking Pains

The Culture twists and shrieks, wracked by
violent spasms of regression, recoiling in
pain and terror, contracting inwards
like some giant spider god dying.

Maybe snake oil will
offer a cure.
Perhaps we can
purge the demons
by drilling the right
holes in the right
skulls.  We could try
electro-shocking our way
back to 'normal'.  We
might even rediscover
the benefits
of leeches.

We're building walls
and burning bridges.
We're forgetting the
lessons we never quite
learned.  We're watching
ourselves watching ourselves
watching ourselves on
an endlessly repeating loop
of tiny glowing screens.  We
willingly downsize our
worlds until we have to make
ourselves smaller, just
so we can still fit.

The future is closer
than we realise.  It's just
not as big as we
thought it would be.

#society #politics #culture #fascism #trump #brexit #posttruth #postconsequence #alternativefacts #endofempire