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 Jan 2023
Steve
Can’t believe this is still a thing?
I almost gave up on the site because of it

Counts to 10, Deep breathes, tries again..
 Jan 2023
Rob Rutledge
When this mortal frame does falter,
If there be left a body still to burn
Cast my ash from the cliffs of Dover
For on the winds I shall return.
Though my soul may be lost to water,
Bones bleached and turned to dust
My heart will soar across the forests
Climbing mountains in the dusk.
Then as the daylight rises
And darkness gives way to light
I will cast these eyes, one last time,
Across the shores of life.
 Jan 2023
Carlo C Gomez
~
Mermaid in a manhole
suffering hibernation sickness
she drinks in every sob like wine
her oceanic call reverberates
whilst speaking dead languages
into the receiver
but slipping off melancholy
and blown a wish
by hide-and-seek lips
she chooses an unfamiliar light

****** with scissors
throbs of undamaged energy
from her vernal equinox
but in love with a bad idea
and beyond the minimum safe distance
she no longer plays at fragile volumes
and careful times
hands playing butterfly
pinch nippled skin
she chooses an unfamiliar light

~
I’ll be there when you call
I’ll be there if you fall
In you I’ve found my future
I’ll be there
I’ll be there

I will watch while you sleep
I will hold you when you weep
My eternal love won't fail you
I'll be there
I'll be there
ljm
A while back I put up the first verse and asked for help with a second.  I got a lot of suggestions but could't make them work.  After some time a comment by a fellow poet gave me the inspiration for a second verse, which is above. I thanked her and then promptly lost her name in  my damaged brain. Now all I need is a bridge.

Turning her head
as if to  bury  it all
back under the covers..
This hiding away
from me

from everything  about me
that could hold her

right where she is at--
This crazy holding

That cannot stop itself
That cannot keep  from doing
what it does
That cannot control itself
from what  it feels

every  time  she  shows  me
(who it is that she is)


She is anything
but a death  to me
whenever she sings,


whenever  she..


.     .     .

.."Wish I could write songs
about anything other than death
But I can't go to bed
without drawing the red,
shaving off breaths;

Each one so heavy,
each one so cumbersome
Each one a lead weight
hanging between my lungs

Spilling my guts,
sweat on a microphone,
breaking my voice
Whenever I'm alone with you,
can't talk,
but

"Isn't this weather nice?
Are you okay?
Should I go somewhere else
and hide my face?"

A sprinter,  learning a way..
A marathon runner,
my ankles are sprained

A marathon runner
my ankles are sprained
https://youtu.be/cjNKph5z3-I

a beautiful, sprained-ankle Angel
<3
 Jan 2023
Carlo C Gomez
rhapsodic pastoralism
as beguilingly bucolic as tempera gardens,
where nature’s wild beauty
is domesticated and made
into a safe space for dream and play,
reverie and revelry.

with the bright dawn
chatter of birdsong
it seems to reach your ear across distance,
like a girl singing happily to herself
while walking down the road
on the other side of your garden wall.
 Jan 2023
Ken Pepiton
If wishes were prayer

Saturday, January 28, 2023
12:06 PM

let me go wry or right, let me
be as one you witnessed falling,

and for that breath, believed,
wishes work as wonders do,
with very little help from things
thought truer.

I think of you, reading words I write,
I thrill a little at the intimate point of wedom,
the thoughts I fit to words, and sent into the
other
state, to wait, and wait, and become too tiny
to make any change not made,

at the time, when we touched as words do,
and held the hope that words hold.

Being as an event, we be apart, we be all one.

And we cannot unbecome.
----------------------

Inner being, being in me, other than I,
guide me, today.

I am willing to be useful, I do not have an aim,
I hold no hope of fame and recognosis,
I live to become a memory, at best,
and less than a memory, eventually.

I lie if I deny the joy I take from any sign, I see
you, thinking whys atop wherefores and how comes,

sudden otherness
occuring in a wedom framed by grand imaginations,

a new form of governing mankind, a new reason
to be defensive…

earnestly contending for pride of place, top of the pile.
------------------------

My Saturday, as all my days are now,
a day of rest,
a day of being after growing old enough, not, too;
but plenty old enough,
to reason with war,
face on face, as if, war
and I were forces of the same sort.

Ideas, grand wads of thought threads, spun
from times last chances,
grabbed with all I have to hold, huggishly,
for comforting knowledge,

I am not alone in wishing prayers were left being,
answered on reception, now, then, left being
alright. Amen.
-----------

It is in the thousands, tens of thousands, even,
Even, everish, same old, same
balanced on the upright,
walking,
past any hope to become one of those, the greats,

not even a billion to one, the odds of me becoming,
by the time I survived, the odds were even worse,
not a chance.

I bet, I said, I bet I won,
my race already run, by now, you know,
the results are pending
review,
and then I died,
and the results were these remaining
lines you take in,
as though you heard me talking, and thought
you might
over hear and know, all the songs of us, are about you.

The most self-centered man I ever met, said
my therapist to me, as I spun dervishly on my point.
------------------
In the hope of doing good by being ready to give account,
all my idle words wait in lines linking now to the cloud
which cannot withstand the constant collection of all we think or ask.
 Jan 2023
Paul Butters
Vic Davies
That Davies bloke called Vic
He showed he isn't thick.
His table tennis can get bad,
Especially when he gets mad.

Liz Conolly
Mrs. Conolly, first name Liz,
Really, really is the biz.
Loves a seat at the front table,
Always gets there if she’s able.

**** Staples
Ah, here is **** Staples:
Loves his football from Grimsby to Naples.
Could be a pundit on the telly,
Always gives it plenty of welly.

Phil Sharpe
Mister Sharpe, first name Phil:
At table tennis he knows the drill.
Master of defensive ploys,
Wins his matches with lots of poise.

Ron Dawson (added 9\1\23)
Cider and Ale to Ron Dawson known as Rocket.
He has the whole World in his pocket.
Knows the routes of all the trains:
Lots of knowledge (on brewing and trains) fills his brains.

Paul Butters

© PB 6\1\23.
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