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when torn clouds bared blue holes
the river brimmed with ecstasy.

it had rained the whole day
and she was bursting in seams
to tell her side of the story
from the many
upon her shore's mangrove.

how the tiger guards her treasures,
prawns and ***** and honeys and woods,

pounces from the saline thickness of the mist
when dream of life is heavy on the gatherer
and smell of death far gone forgotten

rips the flesh cracks the skull open
flows the blood as silent night
carries the trophy for a bony rest
till devoured by her floodwater.

the river knows it too well

the tiger is her lover and loyal sentinel.
The Sunderban tigers prey upon the fishermen, crab catchers, woodcutters, and honey gatherers who venture into their territory, more often illegally, driven by the lure of the wealth in the river and on her shores.
 Jun 2015 Cori MacNaughton
Luke
Oh conscience,
this is where we must part.
I promise to keep your damage here in my thrice heavy heart.
Your guidance once illuminated a long and treacherous path
but the destination you had planned for me
has become too distant, far too embedded in the dark.

Oh lover,
I’ve done my best to keep myself,
I can’t believe it’s been this hard.
Because no matter what I say or do,
I’m the only one that gets torn apart.
And I’ve grown tired of these fiends,
vultures scavenging through the carrion heap,
so called friends looking for their fill.
Oh misery, you’re no company to keep.

Oh mother, if you could only see
what this world lost in the throes of avarice has done to me.
it has taken everything I had and erased the lines I drew upon the sand.
and I’ve worn myself thin trying to exist between them,
to find myself again.

Oh conscience,
this is where we must part.
But I promise to keep you, oh burden,
here in my broken, heavy heart.
Bread is the staple food of life
We feed and nurture the delicate shoots
Lest we have no bread in the future

Words are the future of poetry
We must nurture and care for those
Delicate gentle words
Lest they wither and die on the vine
A flower so grand
in itself, vivid in
details, following no pattern
like the leaves of the plant.

All the leaves are the same
but a single flower so distinct
one does and the other doesn't
add to the plant's fame.

In its life of just a day, it steals the show
and spreads so much happiness
though the leaves may, in silence keep low,
diligently work for air's cleanliness.


Even then it sticks to the branch
as its life is given by
the apparently dreary plant.
Here, all its coming generations
will choose to be born,
and this plant only will they adorn.
We may be so much accomplished and successful in our life but we should not undermine the value of our roots, things which have helped us to reach where we are now.
i wonder what its like
to have a guy who finds
everything he needs
in just my eyes.
I watched the morning come,
its satin sheet of light lifting
off of the curve of the world.

Venus shone something crooked,
like the eye of a magpie staring
down at my blond head. I took

one last sip of whiskey, stood
and in the sauntering, in wobbling
home to my own bed, Venus

watched me turn my back,
like a stone rolled in front of a tomb.
I finally stopped chasing love.

I decided I’d rather spend
each night thereafter comfortable
in the bed of my life, no longer able

to sleep while sick of the resurrection
I had at one time simply called six a.m.
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