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 Dec 2015
Terry Jordan
My Mom called me a clever girl
It felt like a slap in the face
She said, “My sister did that, too,
Wrote silly poems and crocheted lace”

Since Alpha, her older sister
Had a bad rheumatic heart
Too weak to help with the farm work
She cooked a little for her part

While Mom, the Swedish farm girl
With a rope tied around her waist
Up at four to reach the barn
Six feet of snow was every place

She had to milk the cows then
It was bone-freezing cold
Her older brother Forrest
Plowed the fields at twelve years old

Their father died and left them
To run the family dairy farm
Soon after Alpha passed on, too
Depression inflicted more harm

That year was 1931
Ancient history one might say
Grandmother never recovered
Her depression years there to stay

Cokato, Minnesota
Who could blame my mom for running
Her mother could not forgive her
Til she installed indoor plumbing

She had run away to Oakland
A California nursing school
Her mother called her *******
And disowning her was cruel

But she was the lone survivor
In her family of five
So she nursed her future husband
After World War II arrived

They married and moved to Boston
The Yankee soldier and farm girl
It was 1950’s suburbs
To my father it was rural

Theirs was such a raucous union
Like a constant fire alarm
That when I could I moved down South
My dream came true-I bought a farm

How history repeats itself
And leaves its own impression
Alpha was reborn as me
But treated for depression
Growing up, My brothers & I heard my mother's stories about growing up on a dairy farm in Cokato, Minnesota.  My grandparents were immigrants from Sweden who had 3 children.  My mother's older sister, Alpha, had rheumatic fever as a young child, which damaged her heart and caused her death at 19.  I think that both my Grandmother and mother suffered from depression most of their lives.  When I started writing poetry as a child, my mother would be dismissive about it, saying that's all her sister Alpha did, other than crocheting and reading, while she & her brother had to do all the  hard work.  And we heard the story about when she tied a rope around her waist to get to the barn, and back, without getting lost in the snow-a million times.  She'd laugh at my interests that were so like her sister Alpha's that I believed I WAS her sister, Alpha, especially since I looked like her, too.   The farm girl & city boy, my parents, were a mismatch, like many who met from different places during the Post-war years.  It sounded romantic, the way she nursed him when he was hospitalized for Malaria in California after WWII.  I just had to try and get it out in this poem...
 Nov 2015
Michelle Morine
A chill in these
broken bones
leaking out
everywhere
leaving only my decimation
in it's wake

Frozen eyes of blue
remember
a spell of liquid
iced rain

The storms
soft death of cold
brings an
understanding of
the darkness

While freezing in these
cold air dreams.
Merry revellers
cast one glance on me
before your mind wavers
throw me one penny

My eyes are deep in socket
but ears are sharply keen
catch jingles in your pocket
silver's pompous din

Pray not be too aloof
need a lil of your pity
a penny can't buy a roof
can buy a crumb for belly

It wouldn't hurt you much
for one less from too many
merry revellers before you rush
toss my way one penny.
 Nov 2015
CharlesC
On this Thanksgiving Day
tables are filled with
what are called
blessings of enough..
Yet those fillings
suggest and remind
that there are tables
without enough..
And in truth
all tables filled
however filled
if standing alone
indulged
out of Context
will never be
Enough...
 Nov 2015
topacio
she sat in the center of her home
becoming the heart of the halls
the blood drifting in and out of
the corridors,
the clot that stood still in the living room
unable to move to the next destination
stuck staring at the dusty painting
that haunted her tendency
to fix that which does not
need fixing,

humming the delicate tune
which ascended into the aorta
of her kitchen,
all the way
to the apex of her attic
and finally folding into itself
like the towels in her
chamber of cabinets,
before unraveling out
through the long vein
of her chimney,

the housewife who
makes a living
with sharpened bread knives
and turning scones into
christmas trees,
who croons ancient love songs
in her infinite spare time,

and i wonder as i
stare at her
from underneath my book
of russian poetry,
how she holds up
when the front door bursts opens
and nature sings
a solo to her heart.
 Nov 2015
Ronell Warren Alman
The ship will continue to travel
As the waves come about
There may have to be a change in its course
That my friends is no doubt
Continuing to sail at sea
The vessel will carry its mission
From dusk until dawn
And never lose its vision
 Nov 2015
SøułSurvivør
teenage angst
marriage strife
nasty childhood
change of life
stress at work
financial woes
mental illness
on it goes

pour the bottle
pop the pill
find the vein
"cure" your ill
light the pipe
tip the glass
it don't matter
race or class

it may appear
to help you some
but in the end
the devil's won
it don't matter
your job or skills
the smoke's a prison

the bottle KILLS**



soulsurvivor
(C) 10/4/2015
if you have a problem
with drugs or alcohol
or both
the first thing you MUST do
is admit it to yourself

I beat the odds
i'm clean and sober
and while i had
a temporary lapse
a few months ago
i bounced back and
i don't even have cravings

HOW???
see my write
Salvation Story
by soulsurvivor
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/863650/salvation-story/

THANKS!
 Nov 2015
Dhaye Margaux
~~¤~~

I have seen these dark clouds before
Thick blankets that cover your sky
Oh world, you've been missing the light
Those clouds were powerful enough to cover the sun
And their power is increasing as time goes by
That they have reached even the corner of man's mind

They just didn't create the rain but storms
Storms that attack even the small veins of one's fist
They made hearts of stone
And minds as black as night

Tell me, oh world
How much love we need to fold these thick blankets that cover us?

We are waiting for the sun to shine upon our souls,
for the love to melt the hearts of stone,
for the minds to welcome the day

Paint thy sky with love
A shimmering rainbow
That will melt the dark sky over us.

~~¤~~
Inspired by the photo I've taken this morning.
What heinous acts
happened in Paris
so recently
happen all over the World
(yes, with a capitol "W")
every single day
and no one ever seems to really give a single ****
until it's a "civilized nation;"
that is to say
a western nation.

Oh, please.

Lest we forget
NATO, the UN, and countless other nations or groups of people
commit far greater atrocities
on a perhaps much larger scale
perhaps much more regularly
and no one talks about it-
yet if they do, and they're of the West,
it's glorified as saving the civilized world
from injustice, tyranny, bloodthirst and corruption.

Why, then, is it okay
for the West to transgress against others
for our own political, economic or simply sadistic goals
and for others to transgress against one another
(and for the West to bet on their strife and rig the odds too)
but then when it's done unto the West,
they're unforgivable evil warmongering savages
whereas the West is just innocent?

What the ****?
Why do we in the Western cult of the World
get to be Judge, Jury, Executioner,
Press, Victim, and Beneficiary?

Sounds kinda ethnocentric to me..

Maybe these attacks
are to violently prove a point
that we are not so different or stratified or separated
as we may wish to think we are.

Maybe they're angry
we refuse to allow them to sort out their conflicts for themselves.

Maybe they're frustrated
with our domineering and permissive Western-world-centric
commodification, dehumanization, and globalized ****
of any resources, people, or land we wish to own
which is so graciously sacrificed by our sacred Mother Earth
for all and any to use-
so many of which so happen to occur
across petty and mortal geopolitical lines
drawn by fingers of Devils
in Gods' sands.

This type of ire and violence
should never be condoned
and I am deeply disturbed and ashamed
by our irksome and shameless
double standard propaganda.

All lives matter.
Period.

Regardless of
ideology or nationality.
Regardless of
***, sexuality, skin, dress, or hair.
Regardless of
language, culture, or material wealth.
Regardless of
geography, education, religion, or politics.

Besides,
I'm certain we've already spilled
at least just as much blood in retaliation.
How many of the dead would have to be innocent for us to even care?

It's a vicious cycle we Humans are pretty "good"at.
--
--
Please know that this plea is neither intended to downplay the very real pain nor to legitimize gruesome and tragically inhumane events, but simply to empathize and show solidarity with all of Humankind;
not just our fellow 'Westerners.'

We are all equally Human.
Every ******* one of us.
No exceptions.
Period.
Ever.
Period.

Our enemies are extensions of ourselves.
We must allow them to teach us.
To keep killing one another
is to perpetuate our self-inflicted purgatory
as a conscious species.

If we refuse to change,
perhaps we've earned this Hell.

Hold people accountable
for what they do to our planet
and to her life- our lives and those of everything around us:
animals (including Humans), plants, ecosystems, economies, philosophies;
no matter which side of which line they're from
or what name they go by
or what title they hold,
for the Devil's face and name must be known
beyond a shadow of a doubt
to be able to confront the Evil
and have the knowledge, courage and integrity to resist it
and in so doing transcend into Heaven.

I love you all.
Thank you for reading.
Blessings upon thy Paths.
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