...and suddenly there's SPACE...

Jul 2017

Mike Hauser

I'm fixing to do something
That I shouldn't oughta
But let me say mister
These are desperate times

Can anyone blame me
For feeding my family
When you fight for survival
Is it considered a crime

When you hold up a store
That sells the devils firewater
Would that be a sin
In the good Lords eyes

Cause that's what I'm bout to do
You can read it in the papers
I just hope it don't say there
A desperate man died

And that he was too young
When the clerk with the shotgun
Without a question
Ended his life

With words from his family
How the kids miss their daddy
Story continued and ending
On page 25...

Jul 2017

Twigzy

My Husband is Dying

10th July 2017

To My Husband

As I watch your life, slipping away
We share all the things we want to say

We have time to reflect, encourage and love
To be grateful with warmth, to look beyond and above

We remember the good and laugh at the bad
And take time to listen and embrace the sad

It is a rich time, this time that we have
What has been, what is now, is what will be had

As your strength fades, and your eyes slowly dim
We look beyond the body you are in

When death approaches and your final breath taken
We know your spirit, will soar with elation

You will look at this world and say your goodbyes
And peace will take you as you pass through the sky’s

All the best for your journey
Your loving wife

My husband was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer we only had a few months to say goodby and make peace. It was the richest time of our marriage

#dying #journey #love #goodby #life #peace #husband

Jul 2017

Pradip Chattopadhyay

Hills of Shillong

Julys have come and gone
in the hills of Shillong
and from the browned ORWO
the skinny boy with an oversized cap
smiles as if there's no tomorrow
but this moment
wrapped in fog and drizzle
holds everything within
the now filling life to the brim
making growth a needless shape
absurdly redundant
and never more real
than the eyes
peering from that shot of time
ecstatic in happiness
rejecting a future
too intangible
to be valuable.

Shillong is a hill station in the state of Meghalaya (abode of the clouds) in India.
This work is inspired from a photo of mine taken there in July, 1978, I chanced upon from an old album. I feel I've moved too far from that boy to bear his identity any more.

Jul 2017

sunprincess

☆Love☆

Shhh, heart be silent
never speaketh thy sweet word
Love ever again

The heart chooses whom to love
Does anyone know how?
A love mystery
xoxo

#love #heart #mystery #haiku

Jul 2017

phil roberts

THE PLACE I CAME FROM

The place I came from was known locally
As Apache country
Later to become the Lebanon
I guess you get the drift
Even to this day
Taxis are loath to go there after dark
And nobody blames them

Everybody smoked back then
And most men got drunk too often
Women might get a little merry
When weekend came round
Most men hated their jobs
And many women hated their lives
But everyone carried on
Because it had to be done

In the streets I learned every swear word
Long before I started school
In a place where "****** this"
And "****** that" and worse
Were everyday parlance
Nobody ever mentioned "love"
Oh, don't get me wrong
I know that there was love around
But I only ever heard it mentioned
In the words of popular songs

By Phil Roberts

Jul 2017

AnnaMarie Jenema

Self Validation

I've always believed that I needed you,
That I had to be validated,
That parentless children could only be the sum of their genes. That my two shadows foresaw my only hope: a shadow myself. She, a mother who cant love, shown me her care recently.
But I no longer needed it.
I no longer craved it.
Her words though sweet - no longer held so much meaning.
Because I've met someone whose teaching me to validate myself.
To not speak so unkindly about who I am.
They tell me that I'm not a monster, and am special.
I've never felt more free or happier.
You, though someone I love,
cannot be my reason for living.
for you've proven untrustworthy,
In your lies and how my time is unimportant to you.
And so I shall learn to love myself.
I no longer need to attain that which is unattainable.

Jul 2017

Pradip Chattopadhyay

Reunion

They bring with them the baggage of men
the lost children attempting pathetically
to recreate the aura of time long gone.

If you discount the roughness of skin
travel past the thick hedge of beard
penetrate the silt on the eroded eyes
you can delayer the hardened coats
and get to see faces barely recognizable.

Some were once too close to be missed
their names and all
but most you could hardly recall
and it agonizes your thought
were they in the same class or not.

You smile till your jaws ache
fetching stories from the blue
dazzlingly colored and half true
for they are all in the mood
to joyfully succumb to falsehood.

You could tell from the body language
who's in the backburner
and who on the front page.

Forty years break and make men
but they feign happiness
to be united again.

Jul 2017

phil roberts

SOMETHING WILD

When I was still young and fresh
A million years ago
I walked on edges
Always on the edge of something
Something wild

Bright lights and long nights
Lots of laughter and music
Always music
Singing with the band
Dodging the flying glass
When fights broke out
Howling to the moon
Oh, wild indeed were we

All shadows now, alas
Visions from an addled brain
Pubs, clubs and smoky dumps
Leave no turn unstoned was the cry
More fun than fundamental
And fundamentally flawed, it was
A couple of hours sleep 'fore the day job
With eye-lids stuck together
And walking into walls
But still I wouldn't have swapped it
For all the strait laced straight faced
Wealth in the world

By Phil Roberts

Jul 2017

betterdays

sing

singing love songs
to one he will not meet
living pipe dreams
he can not complete

how can I make him
understand the gland
required was removed
whilst he snored

tux the cat,
singing love songs
to a lonely moon
like a flippin loon

There is out in the garden a little girl cat,
swinging her hips, thinking she is all that
Little does she know the tuxedo bro, she wants
is all growl and song...no show, but they sing
and sigh and carry on... young love in the suburbs