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The smoke hazes the setting sun
as the fire burns remains of the last crop
proffering ashes to the wind.

It's all the wind gets
as the memento of the last harvest.

On the new soil
once again there'll be tilling
and God willing
seeds waiting hope laden
will sprout into corn.

What's dead is to be reborn.
Cornfield in setting sun, Dec 23, 4.30 pm
 Jan 2018
Stephen E Yocum
Once I was young and strong,
Consumed with compelling
desires of Horizon Lust,
traveling forth wide and far.

Time and age has intervened,
now I stand alone and wait
high above on the city gate,
Silent sentry to all of those young
lives that venture forth to explore
horizons of their own, and those
weather beat ones like me
returning to rest and remain.

Accepting as I must, that I shall
never again roam too far afield  
from my place upon the gate,
Content with a life well lived,
to languish now upon this place.

Horizon Lust is for the young.
Oh, if only we possessed our
acquired wisdom of age
back in our youth.

Now a heart and mind
full of memories along
with a tranquil place by
the home fire hearth is enough.
Though I would not be
who I am, with out pushing
out to discover what's there..
 Jan 2018
Valsa George
Mind, like a deciduous forest
has lost all its foliage,
all leaves torn away
by the autumnal blasts

The brain where great schemes were concocted
is now an abyss where spiders sway
It is bare – dismally barren
of all memories – sweet and sour
Like a kite afloat in the boundless sky
moving nowhere, but as the wind directs,
cut out from the past, turned from the present
with the future yet to surge from the abyss
or like serpents intertwining,    
hissing in turmoil within the brain,
unable to sense the gusty blast,
or hear the whispering air,
dead to sounds that disturb,
deaf to songs that soothe,
like a phantom he moves weird,
drifting far away
to a space and time impenetrable  
with nothing to make the mind agog
or depress it to let out a sigh.

Loitering on roads without hurrying feet
with no bliss coming on the way
to run or hasten to embrace
or fear to be missed sore
passing through dark labyrinthine tunnels
forever barred with no exit
churned in oblivion, oblivious of all,
he remains a spectral facsimile
of his onetime self
plummeting into a black hole

The pulse of a heart beat
is all that keeps him alive,  
all else is dead…… !  
with dreary nights ahead
that shall not know another morrow
Only others can throw a little light in the dark lives of its hapless victims!

(With a heart heavy with gratitude, let me acknowledge my poet friend -  Kim Johanna Baker who gave sunshine to my poem who has thus honored me several times !)
 Jan 2018
Valsa George
There was
none
to
listen
to her

Her words were like:

- A cry in the wilderness
that broke and shattered on woody trunks

- The howl of a lone wolf
that rose in the dead of the night

- The cry of an infant
that told the world, it was hungry

The cacophony of discordant orchestra
that left a jarring effect on the listeners

Her words sounded meaningless
To a world that spoke a different tongue

With no receptacle, her words like heated waters
Evanesced into vapor and billowed upward
Like coils of smoke to freeze into clouds

But one day it rained down,
Quite unexpected…….

With thunder and lightning!
-
 Dec 2017
L B
from a dream*

...My student's name is Ari
and he's dying...

“No serious talk today!” he warns
He wants to laugh –
and so we do

He wants the Patriarchs and Prophets
on this tropical island
He names them doing something funny
and I pick up where he leaves off--
with the second line:

      “Elijah, with his ravens on a blow-up raft...”
     “...Ascends with ham sandwich, sipping wine!”

    “Jeremiah throwing mud *****...”
    “...at Zedekiah's white garage!”

We rewrite the Old Testament
laughing till we cry

“Now that's what I'm talkin' about!”
He's pumped
and kicks that rebel trashcan 'cross the room
...and suddenly shouts out--

“For everything there is a season...!”

I do not finish this one....

“I'll tell Solomon you said Hi”
____

...and in that moment half aware...

_____

I'm wearing a grass skirt
in someone else's dream

I'm on Instagram
and I don't know how I got there

I have coconut halves for my ****
but for the life of me –
can't figure
how to keep them on

So I let them sway with my grasses
to the languid freedom of marimba music
toes clutching warmth of sand
No one here to see
but Instagram?

Nagging in the background:
How did I ever get here?

Dreaming like this... right?
Thanks to Anon for the suggestion to switch the order of the two pieces to this dream.  Yes, definitely makes it more sensible.

These two different dreams just somehow blended together.

I have never been to the tropics, but it's nice to dream, seein' as how it'll be
3 degrees here tonight.  I've worked with kids and as a teacher in public schools, so I guess that's where the rest comes from--that, and I've read the Old Testament.
The winter is slowly killing her
and me
but on the deck by her side
at the low tide
the river at three is a sparkling glass
feeding a belief
there would be no end of us.
With her on the river Bidyadhari, Nov 5, 2017, 3 pm.
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