stoop side you sit
fallen angels with broken knees,
40 ounce amber galaxies &
palms of prayer on an open mirror.

The benefactive is Columbian is
endless stairs on roofless buildings, is your
cracked knuckles of powdered meaning —
metallic shifts in the parking lot holy
begging thunder to threat everything
at once,

so then you can forget.

You prayed for all the wrong pronunciations
& when you sleep demons graffiti epistles
on the walls of your exposed chest.

I’m no author, novelist or poet.
I’m just Me,
And don’t I know it.
I don’t need to be classified,
As long as I’m writing, I’m satisfied.

Typing out words, line by line,
I don’t care if they don’t rhyme.
I don’t care if my verses don’t scan:
I’m not always an Iambic Man.

I just say what I gotta say,
I’m not worried about any pay.
Words come to me without much bidding,
The world of its evils I hope to be ridding.

I love to spread lots and lots of Love,
Bringing peace to all like a messenger dove.
Things of beauty bring joy, John Keats rightly said,
To make us sleep easy when we go to bed.

So I’ll paint what I paint,
And sing what I sing,
Just letting those words
Do their magical thing.

Paul Butters

Black and white dreams
Less conventional
            it seems
Yet,
         I still believe
That too
    many
colors
Can fade out
        the true meaning
And if
       I dream of death
Then it's *just
                   the beginning

There was a deafening silence
Ringing in her ears
She tried to scream out
No one was close enough to hear
She wanted to break down
Drown herself in her tears
Losing sight of all that's right
Forcefully banishing her fears
But it was too late
It had been too many years
Taking a slow deep breath
Letting all the fog clear
She sensed death in the distance
Her time was almost near
Leaving nothing behind
She shudders then simply disappears

My lust, my thirst,
Day by day happen to increase,
But the truth is it darling,
That my life till date has been cease (d)

Dying love in a gilded cage,
Imprisoned by my pent up rage.
You never loved me, but neither did I,
The last gift you gave was the gift of goodbye.

You made a poet fall in love with you
And expected her not to write sonnets about your eyes
Haikus about the way you kissed her in the moonlight
Expected the fire in her heart not to inspire couplets
You made a poet fall in love with you, and when you left
Expected her not to write pages about the ache in her chest
Write a soliloquy dedicated to her tears
Expected her not to feel every gut wrenching moment of the pen hitting paper like your words hit her in the most vulnerable places of her mind.
You made a poet fall in love with you, and you expected her to be silent.
That is no fault of hers.