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 Aug 2016 Joel M Frye
r
Death can do strange things,
like time-lapse photography,
undress those quite bored, or
make a patron saint out of a fool,
turning sleek idiots into monks
more mysterious than Rasputin.

What a place to drink, the casino
death runs, nothing fancy or beautiful,
a blind man called Dark Island
taking requests on a piano with keys
worn dull as bone handled knives.

A place the lost can find work, graceless
and not made in America without a living,
all these odd jobs death can do, like art,
factory smoke blown in the eyes of women
in Senegal making overalls for Walmart.
 Aug 2016 Joel M Frye
ryn
Neglect
 Aug 2016 Joel M Frye
ryn
Like the tiniest of pebbles,
ignored by the cool fingers of the laughing brook.

Like the obscure cave...
So inaccessible that it never sees the light of day.

Like the move easily dismissed.
When the queen overshadowed the rook.

Like the kite that spiralled downward.
When its string snapped and wind refused to play.

Like the pothole that tripped,
simply because indifferent feet would only overlook.

Like an idea that never sees fruition,
when open minds are scarce and clenched fists scream nay.

Like hidden reasons that remains unseen.
When we judge by the actions we conveniently mistook.

Like consequential words whispered under my breath.
They bear much weight...
But I'm too afraid to say.
She cries tears of mother's ruin
"Look at me!
It's been so hard
All of my life
And I've had to fight
For my own patch of light
Still, no-one ever looks at me"

He turns his eyes to the floor
Saying nothing
Feeling stupid
And his words burst like bubbles in his mouth
He is desperate to say something
Anything to make her happy
But he cannot turn disappointment
Back into youthful optimism
Or bitterness back to hope
As she sinks into smeary sobs
Wet and bleary loss
He takes her home

He undresses her and puts her to bed
Then he holds her as she cries
And he holds her as she sleeps
He hushes her when she stirs
And calms her when she starts and cries out
When the dreams become too real
And he shall never be more than this
Never more fulfilled
Caring for her is his only purpose
Making her happy is his holy grail
Willingly trapped within her pain
He is nothing else at all

                               By Phil Roberts
The sun went to bed angry.
It sliced itself on the razor's edge of the mountains. Bleeding all over the sky. Rivulets of blood seeping down into the dry River beds. Mars couldn't even soothe it. He glowed red in the sky. Its fury made the moon blood.

Then the sun woke up on the wrong side of the sheets. Dawn was depressed and looked like sludge. Morose clouds muffle my breath. Weakened my lungs cry out for air... And find only fog. The kind of fog that gives you asthma. I have COPD in my emotions, and dust has seeped into my brain.

I call out to the only relief I know. My words bounce off the sky. But later that day a single sunbeam burst through the clouds,  highlighting a pair of butterflies dancing together.

God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform...


SoulSurvivor
(C) 8/15/2016
I've been in a depression. With everything that's been happening in my household (I care for two very elderly parents) I have been overwhelmed. Thank you for being patient with me. I'm just going thru a lot right now...

-
a Saturday afternoon love song*

<>

finally the breezes have sheared the humidity,
away, away, out, out sluggish, do nothing thoughted spots,
so peculiar to a Saturday August afternoon,  
passing like a last exhaling breath,
quiet like, no receipt, no return, no raising of the turgid, languid lungs
one more time

alone with quiet contemplation for sole companionship,
observe a regatta of sailing board boats, silenced passerby's,
orderly and regal, the wind keeping them tidily single filed

their empowering wind makes me prone to
thoughts of singing,
Leon Russell's A Song For You,
up next on the playlist,
but the squirrels beg off,
the rabbits hide away 'neath the deck,
the craven ravens retreat to the highest branches,
alone, laughing at their impolite, unsubtle slipping away of the
dearly departed

earbud a semi-solo performance, a duet,
me backed up by
Leon and the river-baying waves,
a city boy singin$ rockily,
in a place where a city boy has no earthly business to be, ^
especially singing,
chanting to everyone, no one in particular,
listening real careful like to the words of two oaky, growly voices,
leftovers from the Sixties, sing a song to the ones they love

"I love you in a place where there's no space or time,
I love you for my life, You're a friend of mine
And when my life is over, Remember when we were together,
We were alone and I was singing this song to you"

sometimes it just doesn't get any better,
under the wings of the sky and its multi-shaded blue blessings,
don't need counting, enumerating, all kind of blending going on

the old alone days been on the mind,
those laser clouded future gazing hazing days,
when you listened to music non-stop, but never sung along,
strange though, I wept then, and weeping now,
can't quite make the connection...
guess my singing is still
just that bad*

<>

August 13, 2016
05:50pm
S.I.
https://www.google.com/search?q=leon+russell+singing+this+song+for+you&rlz;=1C9BKJA_enUS668US701&oq;=leon+russel+sing+&aq;;=chrome.2.69i57j0l3.8534j0j9&hl;=en-US&sourceid;=chrome-mobile&ie;=UTF-8

^a line borrowed fromThe Shawshank Redemption
"At the base of that wall, you'll find a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield. Piece of black, volcanic glass."
It might be the brilliant yellow of turmeric
boiled into salted potatoes,
washed down with the brown
of peppermint tea.

Or the intoxicating fragrance, when
we are hungry enough, of simple
spices. Cinnamon and cloves,
in another dish of oatmeal.

Outside the house, across the street,
the neighbors' children scream happily
into the warm night, where
the first fireflies begin to appear.
©Elisa Maria Argiro
"Be the harpooner of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody, comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders into crinkly eye-lined smilers."



l<>|

writ many years past, just another dusted off phrasing,
composed from life's lecture notes, collected by eyes tired
from the hazing,
eyes wearied by the addict-strong,
incessant observational needing,
of celebrating the loopy,
they who make this planet
capable of laughing at itself,
a helping habit for mutual survival...

should you spot a man ungainly wrought,
weighted down by a harpoon cross
cursed  'pon his Cain-marked back,
you need not move to the other side,
'tis only a make-believe poet,
with his recording device,
seizing your rhapsodies to rhyme,
his collected artifacts, your crinkly smiles,
his meat, his metier, his chosen career,
a comfort caresser of your illusions into
a shapely sculpture of words for you to keep,
a token of your now examined worth,
a celebration for the keeping...
T'is a curious thing,
these verbal peddlers,
these tribal members,
famously well known to no one,
perhaps at best,
a kindred few, fellow-travelers.

Each a troop,
in the army of orphans,
bloodied, purple hearted,
word-wounded,
anonymous unto each other,
yet all bonded intimates,
in solitary struggle united,
yet sea-parted by the very nature
of the solitude of composition.

All poets are Cain scar-marked,
purposed for everyone to see,
a warning to the rabbled boors,
the imagination suppressors!

World:

cherish these flawed ones,
gentle these frail but gritty,
the Lord has tasked them
to be prophets in one tongue untied,
undo the strife of Babel's division.

Poets!

Be the harpooners
of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody,
comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy
to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders
into crinkly eye-lined smilers.

With clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
teach us our free-to-see peep show,
reveal, unseal us
with **** empathy!

For who's who in poetry
is all of us!
saviors and failures,
recorders and decoders,
night writers of the oohs and aahs
of dreams and nightmares.

When this poet cannot,
no longer, anymore,
taste his poems upon your lips,
keep your poems within his heart,
then he breathes no more,
becoming one who was, yet still is,
because of you,
because of poetry.

http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1564122/orphans-and-poets-peddlers-members/
A cabin that had once been white
Stood, peeled, on the shore of Carthage.
It looked like a drunken scarfaced knight -
Eyes shut to Dionysian carnage.
A pack of lost dogs roamed around it,
Their pangs of want they sought to manage.

The lone cabin stood on the wrinkled sand
Like a young tree on Shott el Jerid's* white pale
Whom the white monster forced to speak with the hand:
Basta, no stubborn resistance from me will avail.”

The fuming sun displayed his festival of fear
Over dogs who could handle their thirst no more;
While the salt has now made its white task clear:
Gnawing the sapling and gnawing evermore
Until the only mark on the Shott will disappear.

And the poet who has only half-chosen the vision
Half not knowing what to do, tried to listen
To the trickle of his obstinate, patient cheer
Oozing through the new orange laptop,
He had purchased from a Chinese peer.

(c) LazharBouazzi, August 10, 2016.
“*Shott el Jerid” is the largest salt lake in Tunisia and the Sahara desert, with a surface area of 7OOO km2. As far as the poem is concerned it would perhaps be helpful to say that the gigantic dry salt pan has the shape of a wolf.
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