Someone You May Know

I know what’s going on, don’t play the fool
Hiding behind your oh so charming smile
You may deceive others with your smooth guile
But I know you are rotten and so cruel
Conning your way through life, you’re such a tool
When you are found out, all will agree you are vile
I know what’s going on, don’t play the fool
Hiding behind your oh so charming smile
A stranger you are to just laws and rules
Instead, your lifestyle leaves me most hostile
What a wretch, a fiend; you are such a ghoul
I know what’s going on, don’t play the fool
Hiding behind your oh so charming smile

Kelly Rose
© January 13, 2017

Young love,
Bitten by the Rose’s thorn
Giving the lovers’ their first blush
Powerful imagery stirring memories
Of first love, of true love

There was a time when
He would have suffered
Her pain as his own
So connected were they
That even in dreams they were one

Sadly, Rose’s thorn
Left its poison behind
And betrayal cut
Deep and true
Its ravaged scars
Leaving an indelible stain
Upon their souls

Bonds torn asunder
Young love’s blush
Turned scarlet red

How I yearn to warn the lovers
Of the Rose’s devious ways
Slyly infusing their love
With betrayal’s bitter pain

For in that moment
When they thought
Love was won…
Well, I guess that’s why
First love’s wound
Colors forever one’s love

Kelly Rose
© January 27, 2017

This poem was inspired by an image - The Thorn by Charles West.  Here is a link to the portrait is you wish to view it.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CharlesWestCope-The_Thorn.jpg

I never expected to capture anything more
than a fragment of you
A phrase you might once have spoke in your sleep,
A twitch of your lips,
Or the curve of your spine when you stretched.

I soon realized that snippets of you were all about the place,
caught in the hedge by the back gate or reflected in the kettle.
The rings of coffee mugs on my old desk,
and loose change down the back of the sofa.
Even when I was away I still found you,
Sand in my shoes, folded corners in my books,

Even though you are gone,
I can see you in myself.
I speak with your words,  
I still see the world as you described it,
Full of wonder and curiosity,
But now tinged with bitterness.
Lyrics from your songs lurk in my mind,
And an aching emptiness where my heart once was.

I cannot forget you,
For I cannot escape you.

.
With this tarnished love I do
paint the world with darker hue,
and rise 'pon no light restraint
with shadow clouds for me to taint.

So ride black mood and flee away
torture me not for another day.
Begone! Be banished, leave no trace
release my heart to a better place.

Fate may bring wither she will
a new adventure, my love to thrill,
so permit this curtain call be seen
as my epitaph to a broken dream.


© Pagan Paul (2017)

Let us bend our minds
toward simpler times
and hail the coming
of an unexpected apocalypse

Limping toward the infinite
scattering thank yous
and blessings
like popcorn to the wind
a foolish man
am I

This life was supposed to be
different
a changing of the guard
But the guard stayed on
same old starched suits
same old
old

So how did I become
so young?
I woke just yesterday
to a sunrise stretched
like God's fresh linen
across the eastern sky
No idea how I got here

Every memory is dipped
from the well of time
and I draw that bucket well
and carefully

I taste the water
as a sacrament

The tick tock of time
is a goad
and  a constant reminder
that we must never forget
and never should fret

So drink deeply
and know the sacred
in every moment in time
and every moment
long gone from time.

It is a gift that you are given.

a refugee from Yale, and the stale stench
of old money, he took a job with the park service

where he maintained outhouses,
and got high in the cover of cottonwoods

this crap crew job gave him no
deferment from the draft, so he landed in Can Tho

he didn't clean outhouses there--little people did,
stirring his dreck in burning diesel for 75 cents a day

when his Huey was shot down in the
Mekong, only he and his door gunner survived

they hid, submerged in paddies until dark
hearing faint but ferocious voices of the VC

who never found them--and they made the
miracle mile back to base camp, covered in muck

that smelled like dung; a scent that stuck
with him in dreams, no matter how much he bathed

when he came home, he again labored
for the forest service, and asked for ******* duty

fearing if he lost the smell,
he would lose himself as well






.

the first casualty was truth
after that
we could do whatever we liked

isn't it time

for penitence?

I just forget everything

and don't talk to anyone

except for you, dear Lord, you are my ball and chain

having died and come back again I get to look back
watching old movies of myself,
sleeping last night off, leg twitching
dreaming of moving along a motorcade of immanent death

one by one getting flat tires, running out of gas, suddenly the battery
dies

I get out of the car, look around, and see, to my surprise

a loved one's love looking back at me, twisting in the wind, empty, alone, drunk,
its my father or mother lifting my brother or sister from the back seat to the front, carelessly driving, ceaselessly swerving

towards the waterway

if it wasn't for the guardrail,  we'd all be dead

time is a ritual now, and it hurts to come back to life, to feed the living,
to get dressed in day-old church clothes, to hit back, as one sneers at being sneered at, I pick up the Daily and skim the headlines, Lost and All Alone, A Stranger Takes a Dive, toss the rag and head to work, fixing to lie to my boss about being sick, about tasting olives, about who I am.

Hello
It's me again
It's the early hours and I'm slightly drunk
And it's me again

He has the sins of his mind
Which keep him warm inside
Amidst the weary and the wasted
Such warmth keeps him alive

Restless
I've always been restless
I hate to move yet I can't sit still
Hours are endless

There is a thrush inside his head
An agony of wings
Panic beaten thrashing
A cage of singing things

Anxious
Still always anxious
Even though I've slowed right down
This edge is ageless

Laying low and watching
A million sub-plots hatching
Paranoid and paranormal
He scatters to survive

                                     By Phil Roberts

The most
dangerous
are those
sincere
in their belief
of a lie