It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT

Lost games
Longer lost rules
Night-time crimes
Lungs full
Of pungent smoke
Bellies full of *****
And heads full of
Something
And nothing

A kind of homage
To a kind of music
Riding across vinyl
And even crackling shellac
And the dead man's foot
Still taps inside the coffin
Refusing to relinquish
The hard-wired hammer
The outlaw life
Is hard in the dying

                                    By Phil Roberts

I imagine I can write about
war—that god and man
have contrasted to the
continually shading
topaz of bodies being
crystallized.

stoic,
tangled planets overhead—
circling as my eyes
fill with infinity-pools.
your edges
fall off when I
look up into space to
see you without
seeing you.

I can see it in her eyes
when she comes creeping in.
She's been somewhere she promised me
she'd never go again.
She thinks that I won't know it.
She thinks that I can't tell.
She forgets how many times
she's put us through this hell.   
She's sitting right beside me,
but She's not really there.
There mothers slowly dying,
Killing herself without a care.

They say
"Everything has a purpose "
And
"Everything happens for a reason "

How do we
let go
Let in and erase insecurity of not knowing what's to come..

© Jenn Linh

I lay awake watching you sleep
Imagining your dreams and what they may be.
Sleep is foreign
For that I'm deprived
And alone I lay
As my eyes meet the darkness that surrounds me and this room.
My mind wonders too often
And often negative energy sets in
As my thoughts stammer
My head begins to ache
There lies why I'm here
Why I'm awake
My heart is pained and bodies cold
Detached from normality
That of solomn
That of somber
..
as you slumber tucked neatly in the warmth of your covers.

I'm here alone.. abandoned with my absurdity
As my eyes swell from tears
That are formed from my many fears
As they stream as the flow.. my eyes have no choice but just to shut
Silently exhausting what's left from a dreary day only to surrender myself off to what's hoped to be a deep sleep as I cradle myself
Alone I really am..

© Jenn Linh