Poetry comes from the heart and soul
At times it is revealing
Laying bare inner most secrets
Others, it is concealing
Misleading the reader
To the truth of what is deep within
Poetry
It is truth
It is deceit
A mystery
Or just plain spoken
Poetry
Is whatever you want it to be
A song you hope captures the moment

Kelly Rose
© September 16, 2017

Craving Paradise
By: Lucian Huw Benedict

I built a paradise out of despair too desperate
Too empty, too silent, I only hear the echoing
Reveries, Fantasies, The Angels are singing
As if so near yet so distant



I built a cathedral with my desires
Above all creations, through the windows forever higher
I am burning, drowning in warmth that's not there
Yet I am letting it heal the pain, pouring down Gilded Rain



I crave heaven, snowflakes and stardust of heavens
Yet, I am burning in hell, as
A sinning believer kneeling in the spotlight of Benevolence
Gazing at the white dove, my sight follows it to heaven
Leaving me at lost
My shadows escape, running in two directions
"Are you heading to the quiet paradise?"
"Or to pay your debt in hell, My Conscience”



I saw the angel's innocence with my mind’s eye
Too blurry, too abstract, a mirage's city reigns
Begging, For the Fortune Wheel's Turning Tides
I used my illusions to reverse back the flown kite,
And went back to a Dreamer's night



I wrote rhapsody with a fantasia
A Silent Solo, I can't hear the melancholia
Silent Melancholia
Peaceful, *******, I take off the camouflage
And Play the last desperate tune
Between Heaven and Earth, Up and Down



I crave heaven, lights and warmth of paradise
But am simmering in hell, like the
Sinner in Purgatory aflame in a ray of righteousness
The most sorrowful thunder roars in turmoil among the raging clouds
Just a flight of solitary plight
He spreads open different wings
Crimson light and White shines
Tears him between the Inferno and Paradise

The best words stretch the mind like taffy
pulled and twisted to sweet perfection
opening doors to heart ,windows to soul
Inviting sunlight and salad days back to the roost

because it was one in the morning
and the streets were empty
and the few lights were bright
and the houses were dark
and the world was quiet
and i thought you were next to me
i wanted you next to me

sigh* a day later, when Saturday's mad pile of work was a memory, it literally tasted like water.  Now, how did that happen?  



(sonnet #MMMMDCXLIV)


Mists waft with curious fragrance' odd detail
Upon the creamy surface of those scents'
Brown claim of coffee in my mug, to fence
Thin hope with old chagrin as morning's pale
Light watches from its cloudy vantage' scale
Of truth, where ghostly layers shift oer pretense
And grey asks white to call it blue from thence,
My breakfast:  ***** dishes 'hind th'exhale.
It's nat'nal cereal day, so in a poor
Excuse I added Malt-O-Meal to do
The favours with our wonted pancakes, fer
A whopping stack of edibles.  Yes, two
Eggs, bacon, and a touch of fruit.  If you're
Still hungry, there's no coffee.  I love you.

07Mar15a

A Body Winds Down

A body winding down -
Its signs a preparation:
Loss of appetite, sound sleep at night;
Strength in arm and grip,
Youthful movement in the hip;
Fifty small, small things of note -
To note, denote, remote
As they may be.

Beginning early, barely showing:
Gone or worn, the bite uneven,
Pearly whites no longer pearly;
Vocal cords and tongue or throat
Cracked, coated…
Body borne from infancy,
Winding down.

There it is, the fact of it.
Can you take
The tact of it?
(Or tactlessness -
The zero chance to make
It over?)
Living’s always closing in on kith and kin -
On all and every who can’t win,
The numbers passing by
Each day receding into destiny.
                        
A Body Winds Down 9.14.2017
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; Circling Round Wrinkles;
Arlene Corwin

Someone once told me that life is just a series of moments,
that the past is merely a story we tell ourselves before we fall asleep.
And so I look at him and I am reminded that I am not who I was a moment ago,
and that I shouldn't try to be.
I fear a reality of fiction and distortion,
where my life is a blurry foreign film and he is the fourth wall,
always broken.
I have written of lovers and their seemingly intangible hands for so long that my concept of time is impressionable,
one might even call it sacrilegious.
I have bled dry every metaphor capable of embodiment that I wonder if it ever meant anything,
I wonder if anything ever will.

I want to write him into a scripture of meaning, of something other than illustrated angish.
I want to write about something that isn't love,
that isn't a thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.
I want to write about the way he leads me into rock pools,
like a child being baptized.

I look at him and I am reminded of the ocean,
as if his blood can only move in waves without devotion,
more like instinct.
I want to write about something that isn't love,
because this is more like inspiration.
This is not knowing what could possibly come after his tide falls back.

I am aware that literature always ruins the ending,
that finishing a book mid sentence is the only way to avoid the loss of its final words.
I am aware that beautiful things can never stay,
but maybe that's what makes them beautiful.
He is a picture of my perfect faith,
but he doesn't make me want to believe in religion,
because I know god hates the competition.

For so long I had thought that I was never going to feel anything new,
that I had exceeded the depth of emotions,
like anything that follows can only be a lesser version of something previously felt,
but here I gawk with a mouthful of blasphemous teeth.

I couldn't tell you about the snowstorm he evokes within my chest,
nor the locust plague that raid in his name.
Because this is not a love story,
at least not just yet.
This is a man that has grown roots where I have only planted seeds,
a man that scripts his stories on the soles of his feet.
*And so I look at him,
and I am reminded that I am not who I was a moment ago,
and that I shouldn't try to be.

Did I ever tell you
Why I stopped drinking?
Why I am so terrified
To take a sip alone?
How that one time after class
My heart was broken
And I skipped the glass
And drank straight from the bottle?
How I crumbled into a ball
Under my favorite blanket
My mind screaming through the halls
Fighting off the demons trying to drown me?
Of course I always want to die
That's something I've learned to live with
But never before in my life
Had I known that I could give in.
Yet there I lay crying
Wasted with a racing mind
Begging to give in to dying
But instead I went to sleep.
So when my depression intensifies
And I run to my substances
I am so terrified
So alcohol is the last option.
Because it could be my last decision.

i'm just a room full of empty ladders

The distant hollow of the high mountain pass
swallows the setting sun as it steals away southbound
behind the coastal mountain's tangerine sunset hued silhouettes
Mulberry plashed shadows pointing northward
across the evergreens outstretched dimming,
beneath the waning fade of each fleeting eventide

Sundown ebbing asunder the wafting daylight,
each gloaming of the day, helplessly a moment sooner past,
transfixed further south beyond yesterday's passing azure
The lazy days of summer escape unbounded,
nomadic as the sea I've seen sail away before;
evanescent as the beauty of the bloom summer days beheld
and the memory of the fragrance they exhale

The nebulous weight of the gravity is consciously denied
by the truths a human heart beholds
A moment’s epiphany afflicts like a rogue wave in a calm sea;
the only thing my heart ever wanted remains out of reach

Everything my heart needs consciously surrendering
to the poignant passing moment's beauty,
the falling sun at distance sets more suddenly now
Lost in the undeniable certainty
life's imminent season's change

Eyes drawn stubbornly from presence to a sky so far away,
knowing there'll be no restitution for the welling sense of loss...
A bitter sweet song mummers in the silence of the absorbing spell,
summer's sun stained pages of watermarked soul scribbles,
time tattooed reparation for the indelible ache
of a harsh grey winter loneliness

Perhaps too familiar, this whelming Déjà vu
that tears my soul;     that tugs at these roots
but cannot sever their sacred grasp
But for now, eyes fixed to the sun's
inevitable tightening tether hence —
to wear weary each fraying thread's  impending break

Each sunset leans a deeper angle southward
as it slips down through the firwood shadows;
illuminating other faraway latitudes
far beyond the distant horizon skies

The preordained continuum unfolding what will be ...


someone you used to know ... September 11, 2017 ... 7:30 PM