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 Mar 6
Vianne Lior
Moss-sutured dawn spills —
heron’s wing fractures glass hush,
water remembers.

~
March 2025
HP Poet: Mike Adam
Age: 66
Country: UK


Question 1: A warm welcome to the HP Spotlight, Mike. Please tell us about your background?

Mike Adam: "Slum east London, dysfunctional violent childhood, playing on bombsites. School, dungeons and kidnappings, sad little boy. Love of dogs and plants and rocks. School: Beckett Shopenhauer, work, college, work university, 1st love lost, travel Asia beaches and mountains, monasteries, monks, Bhodidharma. Work, work, work, Lady J (published collection), retirement, happy at last."


Question 2: How long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?

Mike Adam: "Began writing 10 years old, HP about ten years."


Question 3: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).

Mike Adam: "Poems gestate and arrive unbidden, laid like turtle eggs, a little hole, sand flicked and forgotten."


Question 4: What does poetry mean to you?

Mike Adam: "From 1,000 posts perhaps start with the latest few. I call them "mercifully short," easy to read but, given time, you may unpack a great deal."


Question 5: Who are your favorite poets?

Mike Adam:
"Ryokan:
Why ask who has Satori, who has not?
What need have I for that dust, fame and gain

Montale:
Life that seemed vast
Is briefer than your handkerchief"



Question 6: What other interests do you have?

Mike Adam: "Amidst the first suicidal mass extinction in history I am grateful to read new poetry and garner hope from young poets still expressing themselves in beautiful combinations of words so thank you all for that...

Who am I?
I don't know"



Carlo C. Gomez: “Thank you so much Mike, we really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to get to know the person behind the poet! It is our pleasure to include you in this Spotlight series!”

Mike Adam: "With gratitude, Mike."




Thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed coming to know Mike a little bit better. We certainly did. It is our wish that these spotlights are helping everyone to further discover and appreciate their fellow poets. – Carlo C. Gomez

We will post Spotlight #26 in April!

~
 Mar 5
Agnes de Lods
I cut through realities
like a slow-moving train,
seeing chess masters, victims,
silent witnesses
drowning in dense air.

From a dim-lit corner
I see those who run
breathing in danger.
Scattered shreds of information
stick to my head.

Precognition is
riddled with blurry spoilers.
Too vague to hold,
too sharp to ignore.
One girl was saved.
The boy? I sensed the loss
but not the name.
Bitter ineffability.
I draw words from an old well.

I wish my visions
were just a nightmare—
not incarnations
of a day yet to come or not.
The pictures wrench at my veins,
like dulled knives
playing a discordant melody.
Only a clear mind can save me.

I rebel in the silent scream,
clenching my hands
smiling slightly—
just enough
so others don’t see my fear.
The heavy drift of solitude
between reality and possibility…
Stubborn time bends,
refusing to be linear.
Am I still here…
or nothing but a vanishing sound?
 Mar 5
Vianne Lior
Bare feet kissing marble’s chill,
fingertips tracing teak and dusk,
air thick as mulled velvet—
honeyed, heavy, slow.

She moves where silence frays,
light spills like sugared wine,
breath lingers like an unshed sigh—
never still, never caught.

Fluorescence hiccups across her skin,
pavement inhales her weight,
a flicker, a glitch, a sliver of absence—
half-held, half-gone.

She dances where gravity forgets,
shadows soften like overripe fruit,
laughter drips slow as melting wax—
feral, fleeting, free.

She is not waiting to be found—
she is, and that is enough.

 Mar 5
Vianne Lior
Waves retreat too far,
leaving ribs of old whales bare,
oceans gasp for breath.

 Mar 4
S R Mats
On stormy days,
The balcony door open,
I sit listening, watching,
And feeling an electric air.

There is the sound
Of seagulls crying out.
The wind whips in uproar.
Pregnant black clouds overhead

Churn with birth pains
Wanting to release their burden
Onto the earth beneath.
I watch and wait.

Clouds billow and bellow,
Swirling above the house tops.
With the temperature's sudden drop
The sweat from their brows

Begins to drip in relief to all.
 Mar 2
aAr
Basking in the hazy dawn
staring at the dwindling moon.
Each passing second warmer than the previous.
The stars in the garden gently rise, tintless in the mist.
Surrounding as still as an isle in the ocean.
Soon at the demise of this silence
chaos of the chirping birds will prevail.
All these moments will permeate any heart with glee.
Then why is this heart drenched in sorrow
like the lines of an elegy?

Maybe its because witnessing the break of a new day
solidifies the yesterday that she let slip away
Maybe the roses in the mist appear gray
as an echo of her own bleak existence.
Maybe the silence irked a forlorn ego
her distorted mind kept at bay.
Maybe the blurry sight weighs her heart down
as it resembles the image of her future she pictured.
Maybe all these moments makes her ruminate
about the memories the merciless time marred.
wide awake at dawn w serene melancholy
 Feb 25
Dhaval Naik
In the gentle breeze,
Wrapped in a whisper of peace,

We grow weary of the endless chase,
Yet pause to gaze,
Realizing it was just a phase,
As we long for  the golden days.

The larvae fades, its time has flown,
The heart still desires the unknown
Thus begins the endless flight—
Chasing butterflies in borrowed light.
#butterfly #love #transformation #larvae
 Feb 21
Coleen Mzarriz
I exist in the abysmal state of solitude, where I, whose existence survives in profound literary pieces, could fall short of mere words penetrated—cast against me. Where would I be if I can't find the right words to say?

In front of me is a sweet orange juice menacingly teasing me with its dazzling pumpkin hue. Beside it is the apple pie I swore my life I would never put in my mouth. Yet, the sun glistened brighter when I gently put my fork down and absurdly ate it with my eyes closed.

The sadness that lingers deep within enthralls me more, as I swiftly swallow and digest it without tasting all its flavors—just so I can return to reality. I try to keep it all together, even as my spirit is crushed by the thoughts that seep in, nipping at the edges of my soul—through the cracked window of my vision, and the half-drunk orange juice. These thoughts keep coming in, like an intense downpour after a shower. I have tried to write this simply, yet I could never find the right words to say.

I could never forgive myself.
the first whole month of this year felt like unending closure and goodbyes of the past and the future. i wasn’t living in reality but between these two. a lot has happened from the first month until this day. i felt like a child trapped in a 20-something adult’s body, and it’s terrifying to know that i will never meet that child again. it’s like a cold january and a warm fuzzy december being distant yet closer in edge.

i still can’t fathom those thoughts that i am already an adult. i have to work and try and fail until i come of age and die. it’s unnervingly a hard pill to swallow. and it’s making me sad.

televangelism - ethel cain
 Feb 21
Arcassin B
"Love,
Should be a wonderful thing,
It's an impossible thing,
So many people in ya' contacts,
Its an optional thing,
The Audacity of this generation slumping out thing,
This a when in doubt thing,
No conversation,  never started,
I'm cool with it,
Not having a connection is my expertise,
I need another drink for all the women that I didn't waste time on,
Say you wanna' be friends but still ghost me,
Have you no shame.."

(Full poem below)
https://arcassin.blogspot.com/2025/02/text-sessions-1.html?spref=tw
 Feb 20
Carlo C Gomez
~
Maternal midnight

Metallic lakeside

Freon heart, fayence mind

Eyelids of iron ore

Influence feet into the water

Into an embargo bay

Clear and innocuous, innocuously blind

Hills like white elephants on a polar plateau

Mosquitos on her mouth

Drink the blood of encryption

Change the tone of her voice

They pass behind the blue vein

Become infinite particles of her

~
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