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 Nov 2022
Ayesha
3.
Picture:
smog pilfers
away some stars;
some cars
my words

Silence:
like a pinch, a piercer,
a piercing

Little winter:
a pistachio
salty, sweetly
confined a bead
I crack the door open
I eat it up

Clock:
a pistil
in it
time incubates

This lamplight
is like a pineapple
I want to write, write, write
28/10/2022
 Nov 2022
Lawrence Hall
as published in LogoSophia

Gave up trying to remedy the formatting...

“The Result was Silence”

“Today I initiated a telephone conversation with the President of the Russian Federation. The result was silence.” -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy

There is no silence in Kiev this dawn
Morning commutes, intermittent news feeds
Explosions. Power failures. How many will die
Without finishing their WORDLE today

Old men rattle their dentures in outrage
Sky News reports a couple of police officers
In the street below, smoking cigarettes
Which makes more sense than most things just now

Kharkov’s air-raid sirens are deeper than Kiev’s
There is no silence in Kiev this dawn

A Few Kind Thoughts for Roman Soldiers

If you have stood your watch throughout the night
To guard a clothesline of national importance
Dug foxholes only to fill them up again
And then patrolled through long days in the heat

If you have enjoyed Cinderella Liberty
And talking about poetry and girls
With a few mates down at the coffee shop
Because that’s all your poor pay can afford

You will then understand the conscript guards
Posted to keep order on Calvary

Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings, remnants of the young:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull

(First published in The Road to Magdalena, 2012)

We Have No Enemies Among the Dead
For the Young Crew of the Moskva
14 April 2022

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave…
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea -The Navy Hymn

Proud admirals and presidents rattle their medals

The young – in screams among burst steam lines die
Explosions and darkness and seawater and hatches sealed
The bulkheads blown, there is no up, no down
Only pain and horror and throat-torn shrieks

Proud admirals and presidents jing-aling their medals

Training manuals, pocketknives, and comic books
Naughty pinups, letters from Mom, wrenches, and boots
Toolboxes, ball-point pens, and coffee cups
Fall with the young deep down into the sea

Proud admirals and presidents dazzle the room with their medals

Mothers and fathers grieve in emptiness
Our Leaders caution them to mind their attitude

Proud admirals and presidents – to Hell with their medals

Crazy Old Men with Rockets ‘n’ Bombs

When you read to your brother or sister
A go-to-sleep book about bunnies and stars
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sing along with the washing machine
And help your MeeMaw up those tricky stairs
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sit on the steps late at night
And watch a pirate ship sail close by the moon
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you pray for the bombed-out refugees
And put a little extra in the collection plate
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sing a song to the universe
It remains in the heavens forever

Because

You helped heal a wound in Creation

No Bombers Over Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic School in 1958:
A Brief Discussion of a Successful Cold War Tactic

from an idea suggested by Kirk Briggs

Some have scoffed about hiding under our tables
As protection from the Soviets’ nuclear strikes
But scorn not this truth of those factual fables:
It worked! No bombers! Post that as one of our “likes!”
 Oct 2022
Caroline Shank
Even the birds are quiet,
This household of years.
The clocks rhythm is to
your heartbeat.

No one here knows the
secret of unbelonging
The jewel that is hidden
beneath my crying soul.

The incessant wait.
The door that squeaks your
name in a long mantra.

Do let me find the core of
you, the deep of your gone
ness.  The shine of the seat
of your soul is under the
tears of thin smiles and
platitudes.

When all along the door keeps
shutting.  The snap of the
lock is crash to my whispered
prayer.  Profound is to the
leaf on the wind as the dreams
of nights long silence.

Coping is a sign on the road
that says goodbye.
The turn in the plaid of
letting go.

The winds of possibilities
blow over me to the breeze
of

songs.


Caroline Shank
10.27.2022
 Oct 2022
Chris Saitta
A knife cuts clean the jugular of Greece,
Sun-shattered Autumn spurts in breezes,
Her face falls like crumpled sails of the trireme
~This is the sound of sinking clouds, mammatus~
The slow tottering head sinks into itself,
The arm of once-command lies lengthwise
Next to the sea, as waves erase all her form,
And the drear and maddened moon in its cage of stars.
 Oct 2022
ConnectHook
Fat-*** Ignorance parks her brand new SUV next to Sociopathy, who barely raises a hooded reptilian eyelid as he sells seven Fentanyl tablets to Diversity under a narcotic cloud of monotonous insistent bass beats. Equity is quarreling with Under-representation over Authenticity in fake Wokeness, bellowing and flexing tattooed muscles as the Walmart security staff jiggle their immense wheezing obesity to the scene of the escalating drama. Onlookers are quickly gathering up all the Ukrainian color posters from the parking-posts as they disperse, grabbing as many free samples of THC-infused Delta-8 gummies as they can from the abandoned sales-promotion table on their way out. Uncouth plebeian tremors are undulating over the entire trash-strewn parking lot as filthy seagulls take wing, squawking.

Shut UP **** ain't LIKE THAT! shouts Urban Degeneration at her baby-daddy who spits cannabis-cola all over her threaded beaded extensions. He drops their child, Criminalisha, still strapped into her carrier, onto the pavement and lunges at Urban D.

I'ma hafta ******* UP now, *****, murmurs Poochie tha Kontrolla (aforementioned baby-daddy) and proceeds to tie her hair extensions to the handle of her SUV. He bites her hand until she drops the keys, which he grabs and then he jumps into the driver's seat. The engine roars.

Meanwhile, in the gathered crowd of onlookers,  Miss Cultural-appropriation berates an old man for wearing a rice-paddy shade hat on a cloudy day when he only .05 percent Asiatic. The Walmart security staff have mistakenly sat upon and handcuffed one of their own who screams for his meds and therapy canine. As police sirens are heard approaching, America Corpulenta rolls her fat bloodshot eyes and launches her immense rolls of adipose tissue into orbit towards the international space-station.
My interstellar-*** rocket gone KICK you punk-*** lil' space station you racist-*** bigot, she yells  to no one in particular . . .

And America, although no one there realized it, was indeed GREAT.
Itz a PROSE poem, y'all
 Oct 2022
Zeena Miedema
Last night I dreamed I was somebody else.
Me inside another body.
A teen with another kind of life.
And I’m 30 actually.
This girl was still at school.
Had arranged to meet up with a friend that night.
Had a lot of fake black leg tattoos who would come off from a couple of washes.
I’m just curious about this seeming so normal, not remembering my actual life.
Only somewhere hidden in the back.
I knew myself.
But not everything from this life.
My actual one right now.
Is it worth it to go through all of this pain if I don’t remember?
Why am I learning, I know I’m growing but in my dreams I’m back to the base.
The developments are less present.
They do have an influence I suppose but the core is just plain me inside.
Without knowing, remembering everything.
Will I remember what I learned?
I must keep the growth, can I exist with it?
For the the collective.
Still being me.
15-10-22
 Sep 2022
David P Carroll
Lord Jesus Christ
I pray for the sick and suffering
Today and I'll light a candle
For every alcoholic tonight
And may the Lord fill there heart's up
With your peace and love in life
And give them strength
To carry on and hold them
In your heart keeping them
Safe and warm and shelter
Them from horrible storm
And I trust in you to heal
All the Alcoholics tonight
Amen Lord Jesus Christ.
Help AA
Thank you so much David,
That's much appreciated.

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/Home
Time
A crooked line
Connecting then and now
Never quite achieving the conjunction
That would build a bridge
To somewhere over there
And make a path to
What could be a better sometime
      ljm
Don't ask me.....I just write it all down.
 Sep 2022
Sarita Aditya Verma


Brittle and frail
Perception to perceptions
There lies perfection
It doesn’t lie
Stands perfect and tall
Much tug, Leads to fall
Maintains a standard
Not standard for all
 Sep 2022
Carlo C Gomez
"Memory is more indelible than ink."
—Anita Loos

~
Europe, after the rain,
the sun lending warmth and comfort.
fringes come into focus.
shadow journal,
fiscal dreams,
becoming ****** lines on a page;
procession bells
for young brides,
veiled in lace.
a touch from her
outstretched hands,
this honeymoon phase
running up the thigh,
the holding quite still until
she smiles for pendulum.
at first light, breakfast in bed,
granting pastel wishes on
boxing night,
then a letting go of the kite string.

new fingers in the medicine bottle,
tiny geometries
inside a house of reciprocal numbers.
paradise in mnemonic children:
cartwheels and handstands,
coloring books of
neglected spaces,
future ruins.
one hundred violins
play to isles of ignorance,
stray embers settle
along the solemn Chemin De Fer (railway).
a catalogue of afternoons
on the bike path
thru propeller seeds and dragonflies.

arriving in the haloed flesh:
skin dive,
the place of couloir descent;
**** beach,
the place of odd glances;
gun chamber,
the room of secondary light;
all horizon variations.
an algebra of darkness,
this dense Roman twilight,
their exiles unreflected
in blind lanterns.
our brightness will become
refracting silhouettes,
a broken yolk in the incendiary sky.

~
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