The Upper Crust - Hello Poetry

May 2018

Eric W

Paths

I will stumble over my words
while I stumble
into you.
Show me where you are wicked,
and I will show you
mine.
Let me taste the pitch black
ink as it drips from
your lips,
and you can read to me
the thoughts you hold
close.
Take me to the place within
where you are not pulled
into a thousand directions,
that one place where
you are still,
that one place where
you are home.

May 2018

L B

Spring Brush Fire

There comes the disbelief
and the day
when a daughter comes to tell
the matter

And she knows you can't help
She knows there's no way
to convince
that afternoon to think about it....

No way to stop the fire in the leaves
of the driest April in twenty years
as it blackens the acres
and blurs the eyes
to all but its own emergency

Before it
the hay of last year's weeds
and all those buds that hope conceives

the flight of all that lives...

The plight before...
...The fire-line...

forces every hand
to the pure product of heat and light--
then to ash
and not to ask "This once was living?"

A senior class wrote their friend good-byes
...could not bring herself to...
...bring herself there....

She had to bring the mourning home
to make alive
to raise the sun--

"He slammed the medicine chest
And saw....
walked through the kitchen
opened the frig for the zillionth time...
Then walked a mile
in the woods behind his house."

Warm for April
short-sleeve warm

"...And I keep thinking
how the sun must've felt on his face and arms
He must've been swinging the jug
and--
WHAT WAS HE THINKING?

They found the empty amber
a hundred yards behind....

I keep seein' 'im put the handful to 'is mouth...
...Then the jug...
He must've had to swallow hard
They say you could tell
...where he stumbled...
...by the leaves...
...found 'im    on 'is side    with the jug
...just beyond    'is hand...

Oh Ma!
I CAN'T!  I CAN'T!"

...So I--
"Maybe he was mouthing the words to a song.
...anyway the birds went on
and he was still warmed by the April sun

when they found him."

My daughter, Phoebe knew the kid who didn't make it. We all know them.

...And there is nothing we can do-- but be there in this first real grief, thanking God for the gift of them, for every day-- giving them back to the giver of life along our sad way.

May 2018

Emeka Mokeme

THE EXULTED MAN.

The magic of once upon a time
has gone out of the garden of which
man was made to tend and to keep.
The mysteries in our world meant
to lead man to the miraculous
disappeared by the hate filled life
of our heartless way of living.
Our way of life are so full of greed,
that man become so empty,
for we pursue the mundane things
outside the glorious treasures
hidden within our consciousness.
Driven by the unreasonable
frivolous emptiness of a
quick silver lifestyle of the lost ones,
many have wandered away
from the castle of the valued
and treasured precious mysteries of
creation hidden within the heart of man.
Man can always return to the exulted glory,
for the paradise is not completely lost.
As simple as it is,
all that is required is to love one another,
and that magic lost will gradually come back.
The glorious heart of the exulted man,
the intelligence of the mind of man knows,
and understands this truth.
He only needs to step into the place that centers him within to fully enjoy
the joyful tenderness of an exulted being.
©2018,Emeka Mokeme. All Rights Reserved.

May 2018

Jesse stillwater

The Rising

The deeper the veins
of a silent rising
fountainhead reach,
awaking a muse
more chilling
than the truth
    in the blood ―
a  cold
stillness stirs
that lets me
feel  an
unheeded sigh
cast in the wind

A breathe
of words
from a sudden
burst of silence,
tossed like a
handful of dust
lost in a rush
  of wind ―
a  beclouded
murmur fleeted;
holding your breath
as the aching
passion
manifest,
no longer
containable

I really wonder
if you even know
or care
who's behind
the dark
     cracked glass ―
you learn to live
with what’s broken
   to survive...
learning to look
in the eyes
of a dark horse
in a tight-lipped mirror,
to hear what’s
pushed back down
unswallowed

Staring down
the muted throat
of the voiceless;
feeling the anxiety
of held breath,
turning blue
afraid to exhale

If you look
at these words
and remember
there was nothing
left to lose,
then you'll see
     the meaning ―

I don't need
to hear you
tell me to re-lock
all the doors
I wish I never opened;
knowing there are
still moments
when it leaks out
of my silence

Someday,
at first light,
a songbird
hearkens
the morning
dew's passage;
  I’ll take heed
a song
of deliverance
and rise up
  from
  bended knees ...

but right now
I’m still learning
how to live alone

Jesse e Stillwater

02 May 2018
................................................................

Note to readers: Thanks a lot for reading the things I've shared publicly the past few months. Many comments I shared intended to support others' work, fell to silence, so my apologies if I ****** you off not knowing the unpublished site map. Its hard to know here; perplexing when you're just a simple unknown trying to just be. For now I'm just going back to being more of a reserved reader until I've got a better idea of which way the wind blows...

#rising #silence #wellspring #thoughts #emotion #freeverse #vent #broken #learningtolivealone #findingstillwater

May 2018

Jeff Stier

A Friend of Darkness

I’m a friend of darkness
lock lips with it
in a lover’s embrace

I mourn the dawn
beg favors from the twilight
hold every hope
in my uncertain hand
for a day when the sun won’t shine

And I know
by my wayward feet
by the tremors in my hand
that darkness creeps silently
up to my borders
crosses every line
and will someday defeat
my meager defenses

I have prepared my retreat
a forced march
to the grey Pacific
where everything in my life
ends
and begins

The solemn swell of the waves
a fitting harmony
to that last sweet song.

Apr 2018

Bijan Rabiee

Adam and Eve

It was written in stone
With celestial chisel
That they walk the path of sin
Reined by the rings of Hell--
Much like a planet
Waltzing in captivity.
What could they turn to
Beyond the drift of revelation
Trickling through the wake of Time.
And I, the so-called progeny
Of such cursed matrimony,
Have myriad of times
Rebelled against
unwanted imprisonment,
Have resorted to
many uncanny schemes
To tear down the bars of legacy
Alas, i have come
To a stupefying standstill
Stood and swallowed
The demons of my waywardness
Oh, how those demons kept me alive
At every destructive yet
ecstatic turn.
How to separate God and Devil
Impossible!
The promise of descension looms
In every game of darkness
The Light above blooms
Every hue of divine harness.
In mystifying ocean of thoughts
Which way to walk, to run
Humanity seems the only savior.
A forbidden fruit
Unleashed the human race
The fable of original sin.

"To err is human to forgive divine"
by Alexander Pope
why weren't our original ancestors forgiven?

Apr 2018

Akira Chinen

a play of words and the death of love

It was a trick of the light
and a play on words
and the curtain call came late
and the actors forgot their throats
and the dancers could not find their feet

the mad men were taken by sanity
and the poets came down
with respectful writing jobs
and the stage was still a world
but the audience was bored

the earth was skipping
on a broken turntable
but the wax was lost
with the death of the bee

the milk of human kindness
oddly enough
didn’t taste as good
when not stolen from the cow
and I guess that should be expected
from a species that hoarded
the trademark of kindness
and then locked it behind bars
of fear and mistrust

don’t believe what you see
and don’t talk to people who are strange
and most importantly
just do as you are told
until you are dumb and deaf and old

a quite cog and silent spring
won’t wake the dead
keep all your dreaming monsters
inside your head

its all just for show
hush that little voice
and enjoy the ride
it’s a simple fact of life
why resist when we’re all
just going to die

actors in cages
pretending to live free
reciting our lines
there’s no place like home

if home is where the heart is
why does it sound like
our hearts are beating
from the palm of the devils hand

It was just a trick of words
as they played with our lives
and slit our throats
and bound our feet
dead marionettes strutting like Romeos
waiting to die by the suicide of our Juliets

romance is only beautiful
in the humor and satire of tragedy
its irony without iron
a bullet without a gun
a trick of the light
as we play with our words
and forget about love

Apr 2018

Dimitrios Sarris

Delivered

Such an abrupt ending
a chance to leave some
ghosts behind.
Behold the king
of timorous
who hoarded corruption
within his precious walls
here is his peace
by steel's swift descent.

Apr 2018

Andrew Guzaldo c

“ENNUI of JOY”

“I am that of a rugged farmhand quite,
Adept to love cordially,
As that alone of a man and the sea,
Created in the depths of the ocean floor,

Envisioning you brought me to the earth,
Leaping bounds in wonder of the sunlight you bring,
As if on the back of a blackbird disgorged from his beak,
Adjacent the swampy sand shore with crushing waves,

Body of not a dowager but of a celestial woman,
I could survive this if this was not a delusion,
I could utilize my feelings as a weapon to elude her to me,
She will be in my arms I know when the time is right,
The hour of reprisal abates and I know I love this matron,

I will prevail in the elegance of this beautiful deity,
Darkness falling upon us as I thirst for immutable desire,
A silk white obis garb of roses beneath the garment,
Our voices assessing words and then our merriment of fervor,
As the ennui follows joy jaded our eyes vision of Passion”

By AG 04/26/2018 ©