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 Mar 2013 JV Knight
Shari Forman
A curse of a bad deed,
Stabbing constantly at my soul,
Running until it's out of breath,
It's acid reflux, in control.
Writing from calm
placidity.
Calm, blankness, stark.

Perpetuate it
maintain,
always want this

this is a good outlet
by the leaves
serene,
calm is not boring
it is the opposite.
It burns with promise,
lights
dark buildings
at pitch black;
calm is a torch in
castle walls.

Staple,
Stand still.

Carry calm
in pockets,
closer to skin than
wallets or watches.

Watch the calm
and let it still
this is beauty
this
is, fire,

still.
 Mar 2013 JV Knight
Janet Li
I was lying in bed with him
after we had both come.
In the pitch black, I had to
use my hands to see his face,
trace his
eyes, lips, cheeks, the shape of his head.
We were silent but for our breathing.
His rumbled ever slower
and I knew I had to act
before sleep captured him.

The words were so potent
I could feel them in my mouth,
A heavy weight pressing on my tongue.
I opened my mouth to
spit them out, but
my brain was too powerful
and kept them locked in,
snapped my jaw back into place.
I swallowed as
I felt his breathing deepen.

I held it in as long as I could.
But the force from my pounding heart
won the battle against my brain
and before the defeated could rise to try again,
My mouth burst open on its own
and I heard the words tumble out of my mouth
as clear as the sun.

"I think that maybe I love you."
As tears shed from the angels that live among us,
Take me as I am, with sorrows that drag along like rabid dogs wanting more,
She and her death goodbyes, I have been dragged down by lungs that can not breathe, my voice wilts, like roses that are beautiful dead or alive,
Without hellos those silent goodbyes could be your last,
These silent hearts slip like the windy gasps from under your breath,
As a blade or a word slipping across this barely covered mind,
My veins walk with passion and leak with seeping sadness,
I try for words but your beauty that wraps itself around my heart tears at the best,
It sinks into the folds of clean sheets, not dirtied by blood and horror,
And threatens the supports of my mind held together as a castle of cards,
Who am I, and who are these nightmares for, the death of love,
And why you left, as we flew you broke my wings and left the skies,
In the sinking words of darkness I found my self with worms and spiders,
Of webs and dirt, woven into broken stories that the gladdest people don’t hear,
Handcuffs of silence cut me apart like a noose of steal wire,
Who is to listen, of minds so silent with so much, and so little heard,
The crows crowd the trees near as if I have died,
And fill others evermore as if you and her have too,
With shadows all about me I feel the need to take them for myself,
Could you save my everything that is only a fist in size,
The beats, and the blood, if it needed words to sooth it’s raging rapids,
Breaths slip, upon ice that is the silence from everything,
I am a lost inspiration, thought forgotten,
Of a song set among the machines of cords and monotonous beeps.
i dream of poems
without verses

almost sleeping
almost awake

i occupy the
ubiquitous places

ebbing into
the vortex of time

with no clocks
ticking

tracking absent
footprints

on opiated loam
of flowing ether

telling eyes
breathing
vapors of me

embracing all
that was

with no
knowledge
of good or bad

the spirit of
judgement
sleeps

as
i dream of
poems
with
no verses
no words
just poems



Music Selection:
Pink Floyd, Breathe

jbm
Oakland
6/4/12
Today is World Poetry Day  
"Poetry is one of the purest expressions of linguistic freedom. It is a component of the identity of peoples and it embodies the creative energy of culture, for it can be continuously renewed".
    Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO
    World Poetry Day 3/21/13


    Message for the World Poetry Day
 Mar 2013 JV Knight
Ben Okri
After the wind lifts the beggar
From his bed of trash
And blows to the empty pubs
At the road's end
There exists only the silence
Of the world before dawn
And the solitude of trees.

Handel on the set mysteriously
Recalls to me the long
Hot nights of childhood spent
In malarial slums
In the midst of potent shrines
At the edge of great seas.

Dreams of the past sing
With voices of the future.
And now the world is assaulted
With a sweetness it doesn't deserve
Flowers sing with the voices of absent bees
The air swells with the vibrant
Solitude of trees who nightly
Whisper of re-invading the world.

But the night bends the trees
Into my dreams
And the stars fall with their fruits
Into my lonely world-burnt hands.
_

Source:
http://www.universeofpoetry.org/nigeria.shtml
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