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 Jul 2014
Travis Dixon
As the waves crash the spray glows along the ridges.
In a cloudless sky, a kite plays around the sun
in a breeze that can hardly be felt,
as if in slow motion--as if it's growing tired--
just like everything else.
On the beach wall sit wanderers and travelers,
couples and lovers, the happy and the sad,
all come to witness and share
in the end of another Saturday--
a surprisingly warm and clear
December Saturday--and no doubt
Saturn is smiling from his throne.
The birds, the gulls, they sense the transition,
just as aware of the daily phenomenon as we are,
perhaps filled with just as much wonder and beauty as we are,
because birds look better in the setting sun,
just like everything else.

As the sun descends slowly toward the horizon,
as the horizon slowly engulfs the sun,
I look wearily into a new year,
one filled with great hope and great despair.
There's no doubt this country will be struggling greatly.
The question is whether we'll weather it,
like usual.

As I stare at the sun it consumes my vision.
A flaming ball descending into the sea;
the dark negative trails burn into my retina & glide
upward like smoke into the chromatic sky.
The horizon distorts its apparently perfect circle,
appearing like a melting pad of butter;
a mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb.
It accelerates toward night as it approaches the horizon.
Its rounded top distorts into edges,
now looking like a house.
And as it douses itself in the sea like a hot iron sword,
it becomes but a twinkling strand of golden beads
on the surface of the waves,
finally disappearing,
leaving only a distinct glow in the sky
where once,
it was.

The wanderers and couples
shake out of their giddy trances & move
into the chilly San Francisco evening,
and I do the same,
wondering whether my final sunset
will be as calm
and beautiful
as this
one.
 Jul 2014
Marshal Gebbie
The sanguine shades of India
Flow in mantras through my mind
In hashish tones sienna brown
To ochre greens, I find.
The soaring slopes of massif peak
And roaring waterfall
Lead to tranquil rhododendron glades
Capped in scarlet, I recall.

The clamour of the market place
The grimy squalor found
In the gutters on the roadway
With a constant wall of sound,
In the bartering for spices, red
In wicker baskets wide
With the stench of open sewer
Causing queasiness inside.

Dustiness of sandaled feet
Robes of saffron gold
And the gleaming glow of polished bronze
To purchase, should  you hold.
Patterned carpets lay displayed
In jute and woollen blend
Whilst ancient hands on simple loom
Weave more for you to spend.

Ullulation in the air
As turbaned dancers spin
To shrilling ethnic instrument
With drumbeat adding din.
Wild eyed watchers flashing teeth
As rhythms beat the air
Encircled by a chanting crowd
With temperament at flair.

Thronging people fill the lanes
Churning on their way
Interspersed with sacred cow
Meandering to hay.
Children flock with outstretched palm
Surging as they do
Insistently to foreign purse
In urgency that grew.

The sea of dark skinned faces
Mid flashing whites of eyes
An intensity of gaze that takes
You jarringly by surprise
And everywhere the pungency
Of the continent in the air
With the spicey taste of curry
And a chutneyed rice as fare.

But in speaking to the people
I found their manner warm
And their love for caste and custom
And their cricket team was worn
Like a flag around the shoulders,
Like a talisman, so proud,
And their love for home and family
Reiterated, long and loud.

Overhead, the baking heat
Occasionally relieved
By a downpour of monsoonal rain
Must be seen to be believed.
And the total inundation
Of believers on the stair
Of the teeming seeking holiness
In the river Ganges there.

And then as quickly as I came here
It became the time to leave
And the wonders of diversity
Were beyond what I believed.
What was once a frank abhorrence
Grew surreptitiously on me
The splendours of this mystic place
Well deserve their sanctity.

Now far across the oceans
In my safe and sterile land
I am drawn to stare to seaward
To recall my thoughts at hand,
Out across the sprawling delta
Gazing far to sunset sea,
That special taste of India
Flows irrevocably, back to me.

Marshalg
13 July 2014
 Jul 2014
Mr X
I have come a long way...
Travelled a long distance...

Away from my own being,
Towards an ideal self.

I have lost my soul
To their cheers and applauds.

They call it success.
I call it my failure.
 Jul 2014
AlanK
A year from now I’ll look back
At you and me and what we had
The endless fights will have faded,
Our struggles just clouds of memory.
The good times will shine
Casting light on my nostalgic shrine
To the long gone past.
We tried and tried and tried
To make it work.
Our failure is buried with our futility
Perhaps it does not live on
Our meek success kept alive
Not interred with the bones of our disaster.
Am I wrong to recall
Those moments of bliss amid the ruins?
They hang in the air
I pluck the fruit of our doomed love.
I can taste the sweetness now
The cool juice drips
Excites my senses
You excite my senses
Even now.
 Jul 2014
Crystal Dawn
I often think of the places I've stayed
The reasons I was there
And the memories that were made.

I remember mi mi s house,
I visited every week
And though it smelled of smoke
I never wanted to leave.

I remember the movies we watched
All the time
I remember the joy
That filled her heart and mine.

I also recall other memories
Made in a house just off college street.

In the summer we would go
And try to beat the heat
Nanny always had ice cream
And good watermelon to eat.

In these houses I learned so much
Just watching my grandmothers
As I grew up.

We laughed we played,
We watched TV
And sometimes we were just
Plain silly.

Oh how I wish to these places
I could go
If I could just see their faces and just say hello.
 Jul 2014
r
Blue the mountains
holding close in view
sacred smoke of yesterdays
blue fog shrouded trails
beneath the rhododendron

falls of sweet blue water
replenishing the rivers
sapphire lakes reflecting
splendor of the bluest hills
above the peaceful valley

hear the sacred music
of the blue ridge mountains
magic in the songs of old
forever blue my appalachia
blue the hills I used to roam.

r ~ 7/4/14
\¥/\
 |      ^^^^^
/ \
 Jun 2014
LJW
ten years ago I was thin.
I remember the lover I
met ten years before then.
ten years later was nowhere
to be seen. Five years later
had yet to happen. I can
remember the freezing winter
of 1996.  It was just like yester
day.  I miss the creamy cotton
futon tucked quietly in my private
curtained alcove entryway, all sheets
calmly milky, my studio littered
by inspiration found outside along
Warwick Street. Life was easy,
I'd only loved one man for real. He'd
loved me just enough to leave
me in tact. Ten years later from
ten years from that, I've been left
twice, and left with one who stays.
All the while wanting the man
meant for God and an angel.
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