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Navigating mercy

An asylum harbor from afar

Here, in the gloaming of your closed
notebooks

A faint-hearted horizon

And the wide beam sea

Two days out from despair

The written word will capsize
you, Anne

God is in your typewriter
and where the boats so often go
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974)
 Aug 2020 ConnectHook
Brian Oarr
Between empty junction gullies of the Dogskin mountains,
the BLM has once again released their Judas horses
luring the free ranging mustangs into capture corrals.

Their crime --- thriving in a battle of survival.
I assure you the Comanche do not dance around the fire,
nor does the ghost of Cortez roll in the wildflowers of El Dorado.

Ironically this native species is now considered feral,
introduced in the very habitat which shaped its evolution,
arcanely empowered to exceed enviromental carrying capacity.

The lands of nature are so dear: rejoice their freedom!
The mountains do not judge, they merely shelter.
Let the mustang graze unfettered through winds of dawn.
 Aug 2020 ConnectHook
Sarah Clark
hope you are doing
well and have stopped
rebelling against our
founding father's
cautionary counsels.

risky over here,
still doing kudzu
in hot water and
lighting off firecrackers
in the pouring rain.
After years of aimless wanderings
Leaving behind the cities of midnight revels
And the fevered journey in metro rails,
I am back at the land of my people.

Wherever I went,
Under which ever roof I slept,
I had carried my land,
As a jewel in a casket
And ensured it rested safe
Ever under my pillow

As I moved with aliens
Unable to merge with their cultural mores,
I saw my land glimmer in darkness
Like a dew drop on a moon blanched leaf

When I sweated in the blistering sands
A patch of green landscape, like an oasis
Wafted me in a cool embrace
Then dreams poured in like star light
And I wandered in the meadows of my youthful love
My heart struggling to forget old longings
And memories lashing upon me like tidal waves

Pursued by that inalienable shadow
Suddenly being born in flesh and blood
I hastened to the streets of my youth
With hopes galore and plans vivid

But alas! There is none to recognize me
Oh! I am a stranger here
An unwelcome stranger among total strangers
Now I wonder which is truly my land?
The one left behind or the one just landed in?

Oscillating between these two worlds,
My fractured identity looms large
With worms of memories wriggling in my flesh
And a myth suddenly dying in my brain
I am glad to share with my friends here that this poem- My Fractured Identity- is prescribed for the 10th Grade students-English for Junior High School- entitled Voyagers, in the country of Philippines. The exciting thing is that my poem appears among the writings of eminent men like James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Jules Verne, Jean Jacques Rousseau and the like. I feel it a great honor !!
on a sea strand,
have you watched empty shells
mercilessly tossed from sea to shore
and from shore to sea?
      
often I shrink and reduce to such a shell,
with jagged and broken edges
colorless and empty

among many a debris cast on the shore,
i lie half buried under the sand
waiting for some mighty wave
to wash me away
all the way to the sea

how tedious is my voyage
shuttling from him to her
and from her to him
unable to openly confess
who weighs more
on the balance of preference

through how many alleys and by ways
I have wandered, questioning my identity!
am I a puffer fish, being toxic
the fisher men have discarded?
a jarring note in a discordant symphony?
I wonder....! I often ask myself!

destined to grow
in mercurial climes,
planted in arid shallow soil
with the tap root trimmed,
branches pruned,
growth denied,
I, a stunted bonsai!

still I dream to be a towering tree,
that in profusion gives fruits and shade!
a ****** aspiring to be a Goliath
a hollow reed,
longing at once to be the singer and the song!
When a divorce occurs, the threat of losing the home and losing the purpose of life confronts a child, especially in the younger age. Children of divorced parents experience a real trauma and they begin to doubt about their own identity!
<@ <@ <@

whispering shells
announce God's presence
more clearly than
any trumpet

[10W]
Catherine Jarvis
 Jul 2020 ConnectHook
Rich Hues
A twisted
Column
Of grime,
No metre
Wordplay
Or rhyme,
An artform
For those
Without
Talents
And the
Lonely
Who lack
                            Balance.
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