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Have you ever tasted bittersweet?
Have you ever felt broken, incomplete?
Has life ever not been fair blue skies?
Have you always seen through complacent eyes?

Sometimes, comforting the grieving soul
It isn't easy, but you don't know
Seeing tears, you're repulsed and unsure
You'd rather argue than console

Sympathy was made for thee
Apathy thy familiarest treat
For your lukewarm meals I pity thee
Your have never tasted bittersweet.
If you're reading this, it's not about you, don't worry
 May 2024 ConnectHook
Fey
the sun dies gently behind the hills as I
wander through the pastel cloud’s apricot-nuance
with floating eyes of vacant iridescence.

and the sky lost all of its mighty blue,
now glimmering in a nonchalantly lilac hue
one could only describe as the universe spilled passion.

darkness manifests on the canvas of atmosphere,
its golden streaks devoured by mischievous glee
and we all sigh and finally close our eyes.

so that this journey remains all that we see.

© fey (08/04/21)
 May 2024 ConnectHook
Shaun Yee
By the banyan trees late at night,
Come with me for a moonlight walk,
To a secret flowered garden,
Where night owls do their midnight talk;

I’ll take you to a sacred place,
Wherein a nightingale was born,
And keeping our voices down,
We’ll hear his lovely evening song;

There by silver-watered fountains,
Enclosed by purple-white daisies,
On special nights when stars are bright,
We can see the moonlight fairies.
 May 2024 ConnectHook
PAVANI
A failure, a downfall
a misfortune,
or a feeling that's just wrong
a poet's drug of choice?
yet another somber song
Can we live beside Evil,
Can't we just get along?
Can't we turn it a little
Using Music and Song?

Must we face it and name it,
Call it wrong to its face?
Must we risk our own comfort?
Can't we stay in our place?
Mid-night Meditations
Go along to get along?
 Apr 2024 ConnectHook
Bardo
I suppose I'll be in a Nursing Home one day
  drooling all over myself
And still plotting revenge on this world for
  having wronged me so,
Or maybe I might just be dozing, probably
  having another nightmare
I might find myself on a train somewhere and the conductor he suddenly
  announces
"Next stop Dementia City
After that it's Alzheimersville"
I'll awake with a start
And then...then I'll see her... this beautiful
  vision just walking in
Elderly like myself but still so ladylike
Still so lithe and graceful
I'll tell my Nurse to quickly get my false teeth
And my good wig
And my walking frame
And to give me a couple of those heart tablets
I'd think to myself "I knew she'd come... one
  day"
It'd be one last chance for Love... one last dash for Love.

So moving slowly but determinedly across
  the floor toward her
I'd probably get a pain midway
And then keel over
She'd not see me, she'd have her back turned
  to me
The Nurses they'd be showing her to her
  room
She'd be walking away
I'd try to call out but the words they'd get all
  garbled and stuck in my throat
I'd try to reach out to her... reach out like
  she's some mirage in the desert
My last gasp... my last gasp for Love
But...too late...
Too late, the Hero.
A bittersweet bit of fun.
Never quite content alone,
Never at home in a crowd.
Silence frightens us, and
So does being loud.
Never here nor there, but
Discontent in the present.
Longing for the past,
We crave a different future.
Lines in the equal sign
Make them all wavy
Approximate
How we
The people
Go crazy
The proud,
Mighty, prosperous,
Virtuous
Free
We’re the ones
Tribal discord
Interminably
Comes between
Splits the seams
Sees us
Misanthrope
And if ever there was
A more
Imperfect
Union
I’d sooner
Strive for it
Than see it in
Ruins
Aquí paz,
y después gloria.
Aquí,
a orillas de Francia,
en donde Cataluña no muere todavía
y prolonga en carteles de «Toros à Ceret»
y de «Flamenco's Show»
esa curiosa España de las ganaderías
de reses bravas y de juergas sórdidas,
reposa un español bajo una losa:
                                                                paz
y después gloria.
Dramático destino,
triste suerte
morir aquí
                      -paz
y después...-
                              perdido,
abandonado
y liberado a un tiempo
(ya sin tiempo)
de una patria sombría e inclemente.
Sí; después gloria.
Al final del verano,
por las proximidades
pasan trenes nocturnos, subrepticios,
rebosantes de humana mercancía:
manos de obra barata, ejército
vencido por el hambre
                                             
-paz...-,
otra vez desbandada de españoles
cruzando la frontera, derrotados
-...sin gloria.
Se paga con la muerte
o con la vida,
pero se paga siempre una derrota.
¿Qué precio es el peor?
                                                  Me lo pregunto
y no sé qué pensar
ante esta tumba,
ante esta paz
                            -«Casino
de Canet: spanish gipsy dancers»,
rumor de trenes, hojas...-,
ante la gloria ésta
-...de reseco laurel-
que yace aquí, abatida
bajo el ciprés erguido,
igual que una bandera al pie de un mástil.
Quisiera,
a veces,
que borrase el tiempo
los nombres y los hechos de esta historia
como borrará un día mis palabras
que la repiten siempre tercas, roncas.
Deliver me, with magic spell,
with gliding bow and ringing bell,
from this dark and dreary mood so fell.

The clock counts its minutes and its hours;
we obey its rhythmic, ordered powers
in the prisons of our shining towers.

The clock is but an artifice
from a tyrant’s workshop’s abyss.
Time was made for more than this.

Count not the hours, but the beat,
tap it with your dancing feet,
clap it, sing it, in the street.

A flute of bone was made before
the timecard and the clock kept score.
Our forbears knew what time was for.
Reposting this for William J. Donovan
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