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 May 2018
Brent Kincaid
Dead soldiers, lined up in a row,
Short history, how many more to go?
Dead sailors, some of them in an alley
Not sailing anywhere anymore are they?
Dead airmen, and also dead marines.
What if we’d been where they’ve been?
Men and women, fathers and mothers
We are burying our sisters and brothers.

Hut, two, three, four,
What the hell are we fighting for?
Five, six, seven, eight!
I’ll go to heaven if it’s not too late!

Dead soldiers, not just bottles of beer;
More come back home dead every year.
Used people, we let them get thrown away
By listening to what rich crooks had to say
Their empty promises were all about glory
But remember, most of that word spells gory.
Expendables, in the Big Game of profit.
The proceeds, none of them ever got it.

Hut, two, three, four,
What the hell are we fighting for?
Five, six, seven, eight!
I’ll go to heaven if it’s not too late!

Salute and makes parades, of course
And pin the cheap medals on a corpse,
A kid under orders to invade and ****
Hoping leaders wake, but they never will.
The politicians get rich in office when
They sing  patriotic war songs again.
Someday we all can stop all the killing
If love, providence and all gods are willing.

Hut, two, three, four,
What the hell are we fighting for?
Five, six, seven, eight!
I’ll go to heaven if it’s not too late!
 May 2018
Ricotta
fishes could swim through my ribs
when I saw you

flowers started growing on the palms of my hands
when I saw you

the stars made their home in my eyes
when I saw you

lover
I will join you by the riverbed
and rest on your collarbones
 May 2018
pitch black god8
5 Sensory Deprivation Relevations  (Happy Birthday Will Shakespeare)


I     the smell of sad

odor colorless like *****, similar familiar sidewinder effects,
musty invasive, it has no specificity, no locale centrale, well closeted,
saddling saddlng, in place, plain sighted better to toy our lives,
pervades persists, worse lingers, impervious to sprays
and even everyone’s good literature (even Will’s)
good wishes good intentions and mood prayers
to the nearest lay god
on duty at the spiritual emergency room on weekends,
stink

don’t think that this poem is for you; solely for the writer,
your doppelgänger ******, your mirror’s inside hiding out place,
I, who has your sadness smell into my skin cells crept
waft woof and warp wet weft-woven
into the sad receptacles hidden in my
head’s cubbies and the palms of my tree hands-covering face


there are cures so wonderful and inexpensive but unavailable
at the local Rite Aid, though they are the right aid recoverable,
so closer than close, so close that the internist
cannot prescribe them because he must inject himself first
because the live bacteria in the antidote can **** all

this odor lays down bamboo-strong roots;
to eradicate you must dig down deep,
six feet perhaps more, with heavy earth moving equipment,
uproot at the source, follow sad always all-the-way down and the root
great god gone,
but the saddest truth
stench odor yet present

II    the taste of joy

the joy of cooking is not a gene in my litany possess,
but the buttery taste of joy I know, I know,
it’s a real princess rarity,
the hard costs of finding and keeping it,
I’ve paid endlessly and willingly pay on

the taste of joy is like presents under the tree,
shock surprises delights lives/life, customized, infectious
(except for socks, no matter how joyously exceptional),
joy to those whose buds never blossomed for its taste
readable on some one else’s, anyone’s ****** expression

I think of it as the taste of fast traveling cumulus whites
upon my eyelashes blinking as they are speeding you by, but happy
for ten more behind before the evening stars takes over

the taste of joy is physical, there can be no denying,
concentrations can be found in the lips and the fingertips,
which you think of as a tandem, someone else’s on mine

but it ain’t necessarily so; the taste of joy, shared I, having submitted to others kisses carried on the wind that
found their mark and were well received,
poems from the heart
that arrive well,
as their intended is sleeping, and
as intended, as waking gifts

the taste of joy in droplet tears
when you are notified that words
you joined in holy matrimony made you cry,
because the reader did, wept for two,
the weeping of contentment released,
free at last from container confinement;
this particular taste of joy is in the  
recovery and recognition that these
are not for you,
just joy peculiar these tasted tears for whomsoever sheds them

III   the hearing of truthful

truth am told is oft served cold and hard up for the hearing,
best avoided tween noon and midnight and any time a
bathroom mirror is in the vicinity; though religious men lie
too easily; bathroom mirrors cannot; a character flaw for sure,
but the truth to be trusted is this: no one is truly contented, always there are the richer, the more famous, the employed and
someone above who has more, more burdens of a different sort,
better quality losses and pains unseen not dreamed of

truth tastes terrible and is awful sometimes noisy painful;
it hides well in the stink of sad exposed to the atmosphere when exposed it turns red humans blue

truth may set you free, free to be what are you are or truthfully
an admission of what greatness you have to release the trick is
use the correct scale, do not let the wrong sized ruler rule you,
the truth, if you hear, hear it unfiltered w/o the bias implanted
by not your people; hear your poet voice growl like a blues singer and be truthfully satisfied like no thing no person only you could hear it as you intended it be spoken

IV   touches of fantasy fantastic
secret confess: touch my fav cause when its juiced with
mental visions of what might be, it Saturday satisfies and let me weep happy smile silly and is mine all mind; yes another’s tip
has sorcerer powers of revelation
but alone by myself I yet
relevate
and flow; my hands are right sized, my arms reach around myself for so designed, and the pleasure is mine to give;
mine to take,
neither better or worse if self-administered,
touch myself anywhere anytime and fantasy over dreams wins,
rise up, touch is a language and I speak six or a hundred;
listen to the sounds of touching and be touched human

V  insights for the sightless

at last we close the deprived
with an elegant elevation
sight overrated when imagination exists,
cannot be restrained
this the revelation
you have proffered and preferred all this time

have pity on me
I crystallize the unseen with the replacements
of my conjuring
the other senses lend a hand
telling me look up look up, be life save life
let your madness blossom in the spring airs,
the coolness of a first fingered ungloved snow
sight,
a mathematical function from the other four derived,
sightless an impossibility for with one alone defeat the
sensory deprivation and give tongues to words

epilogue

read my face
incapable of,
deprivation
but how now silent bow my head to Will
for teaching the way of words
traced upon
a fool or a king's tongue,
two too human,
so that poet may ken
his senses keener,
all for the better,
for the betterment of all
and now you understand how came this poem to be writ
in the pitch black
 May 2018
Meg
there is fire in a woman
in the words she utters, spilling like a river from lips that know pain and hurting and still curl into a smile that reaches further than her cheeks
there is fire in a woman
in her art
and ‘art washes away from the soul the dust of life’
and often i wonder what it would feel like
to make her body my canvas
let my lips write words on her skin that they could never speak
into the small spaces that lie in-between what i envision our twisted limbs would look like
there is fire in a woman
in her touch, at least i’ve dreamed it so
spent nights, half asleep envisioning what her fingertips would feel like against my skin
or twisted amongst my hair.
i dream of cups of coffee in the morning
that she’ll make me
only to go cold and sit half drank upon the table beside us
because they will never be as caffeinated as her
i’ve spent countless nights alone
with my palm placed heavy upon my chest
checking that the dull thud of my heart still exists
and i wonder what it would feel like
to have the fire that is a woman next to me
and i wonder if i wouldn’t need my palm to check i existed
i wonder if it would feel like dreaming
or if i’d finally feel alive.
 May 2018
AnnaRae
Every time I looked in the mirror
I’d think so many things
And most of those thoughts
Weren’t very kind to me
Then one day I cried out
God why did you make me this way
What made you think
I was worthy for this life
For a stunning moment
My world was silent
And God said
Because you’re a child of mine
I made you in my image
I gave you your heart
I made you for a purpose
And I know life can be hard
But I’ve been here all along
Waiting for your call
Trust in me as I in you
And I will catch you when you fall
For you are my child
And I will love you

For all eternity

-AnnaRae
 May 2018
Glenda
I crave to feel.
To return the love you give to me
And truly love you back.

I've blocked out emotion for so long for fear of getting hurt and disappointed.
And in doing so I may of hurt you.

Please believe me when I say this, I never meant to hurt you.
I'm not capable of showing you my love because I don't know how to love myself.
I didn't want to love you because I was scared that you wouldn't return it.

I'm sorry for confusing you, it's hard for me to articulate anything when my mind is as messed up as the people in power.
© WRITTEN BY GLENDA DLAMINI
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