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 Mar 2018 Imran Islam
laura
i want to wrap my legs around you
be your necklace of white
jewels and sheets that smell of perfume

you know i don’t do the pronouns
i’m full of myself when i want to be
full of you in the light of moondark night

contrasting, my ego is the ring around
your finger that does not belong to me
so whispers you, “wait until August, love

when she leaves again.”
 Mar 2018 Imran Islam
Jeff Gaines
You …

My Love.
My Queen.
This Shining Light in my eyes.

My Laughs.
My Dreams.
My Soft, Contented Sighs.

My *****.
My Lavender.
My Dew Covered Rose.

My Smile.
My Cinnamon.
The Joy in my heart … ever inspiring my prose.

My Best Friend.
My Co-Star.
My Fearless Partner in Crime.

My Breath.
My Cohort.
My Side-kick throughout time.

My Snow-capped Mountain.
The Wind caressing my face.
My Vast Green Field.

The Ivy Covered Wall
that harbors my soul … ever refusing to yield.

You … are my Life.

You … are my World.

You … are my Everything

and I will always love you.

~Charlie Brown
If you don't know the story of Charlie Brown ... OR his "Little Red Haired Girl" you won't really get this. I was just trying to imagine that poor guy writing a poem to his ever elusive object of adoration.

Maybe this bit from Wikipedia will help explain his plight:

"The Little Red-Haired Girl is an unseen character in the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, who serves as the object of Charlie Brown's affection, and a symbol of unrequited love. While never seen in the strip, she appears onscreen in several television specials, in which her name has been revealed as Heather Wold."

"Charlie Brown most often notices her while eating lunch outdoors, always failing to muster the courage to speak to her. She figures prominently in Valentine's Day strips, several of which focus on Charlie Brown's hope of getting a valentine from her. Charlie Brown typically attempts to give her a valentine but then always panics at the last minute."
-Wikipedia

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All my life, I have, for many reasons, loved and related to, Charlie Brown. Lord knows my friends and family have ALL witnessed first-hand my being in situations where, like our hero, I somehow get *******, knocked down, beaten back or just plain defeated by circumstances beyond my control, all while in the midst of trying to do something heartfelt, valiant or with the very best of intentions.

I had a plastic toy of him that was, ironically, the only toy of mine that survived the house fire that took my Father, Christmas Eve 1969. I kept it until my 20's, when I was burglarized ... and the ONLY two things this person took were THAT precious, cherished toy and an object d'art piece of pottery that I had made in High School.

Oh, good grief!

(Long sigh)

I wrote this poem nearly blacked-out after an entire night of power drinking across lower Manhattan. The next morning, I woke up and found it still on my PC screen. After I read it, I almost dismissed and deleted it as too "silly" and "mushy" ... but, for some reason, I just couldn't. I eventually became so enamored with it, that I included a slightly rewritten version in my experimental short story. Find it here:

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2396540/thee-longest-piece-ever-uploaded-on-hello-poetry-as-far-as-i-know-i-doubt-youll-read-it-through/
Picture –
The ancient slave
On one knee, hands in chains
From his dreams, he refrains
A soul destined
To follow his master
Like a beaten dog tied to a post.
The few who rebelled
Either died, or were expelled,
Outcasts for life,
Labelled as heretics, agents of strife.

The ancient slave
Was born a slave, a captive soul
Animated as a shadow, not a whole.
No freedom, no choice –
A voice
With its chords tied,
Its right to speak denied
Because slavers and a bill of sale said so.

Visualise –
The modern slave
The one who is born
Not with bonds made of chains
But of laws,
Of the systemic corruption
The incessant drive for consumption
And the illusion of freedom.
It is the modern slave
Who lives the greatest lie –
A purposeless drone who will die
Thinking he has lived
Because he had an affair with life.

A life fully savoured
Cannot be just this.
Working 40 – 60 hour weeks
A system that just reeks
Of exploitation,
Of the horrible foundation
On which everything we know is built.

Most of us
Work to eat, to provide,
No secret accounts to hide;
Most of us
Make enough to get by,
Maybe enjoy the weekend
When given the leave to do so.
Most of us
Have this affair with life
Living freely for a few hours
Like rain when it’s just summer showers
Brief flickers, drops of rain
Sprinkled onto an otherwise barren field of crops
Of which the main harvest is pain.



A few of us, however,
Endlessly profit and plunder;
The modern slave
Differs from his ancestor
For he chooses his master
And loves him.
He is conned
Into thinking his masters care
Allegiances are laid bare
Hands are cast in adulation
Rights undergo strangulation
And nobody bats an eyelid.

The modern slave
Caresses his chains,
Wears them like a badge of office
Distaste for dissidence of the state
Pouring out of every orifice.
The modern slave
Could learn and understand
Confront the shimmering illusion, the shifting sand
That is the realm of made men,
But doesn’t.

Rather than fight back
We consume the great lie like crack;
These made men
Will run our planet into the ground
Until it is no longer a home
But a graveyard made for us, by us.
These made men
Spin lies, smear the truth
Force them to mingle and interchange
Like mismatched lovers in a diner booth.
Reality has shifted
It has become unbelievably twisted,
Our perceptions are suffering.
Towards each other, we direct our hostility
Unable to grasp the possibility
Of a better way.

The modern slave
Is cosy in his prison cell;
The reality of the world outside
Is a structured, engineered hell
To be avoided.
So, we just build our own bubble
Outside of which
Our only, primary concern
Is how to get rich.

Life isn’t meant to be an affair;
Life shouldn’t be
Something we are given permission for
But a free pursuit of happiness,
A learning experience.
So, with this I will conclude –
Raise your fists in the air
If you are tired of living bare,
Resist
If you’re tired of a world that does not care.
Those mighty mountains veiled
With mist and an enchanting mat
Of wild ferns and eerie rampageousness
Saluting apart from the bowed stuff
Desperately frowned
Not a picturesque worth
Posed as the whole community
Of sand, stones and gravel
After thousands of years labour
Collision of their descendant plate
Or their kind god of land
Knitted every yarn of their unit
But everyday two devils
With their aggression and *****
Wears out every thread
Of that giant particulate matter
Dumping in crowds of tractors
To overdeveloped cities
To constructors and masons
After just three months
Gush of sandy winds led my way
To the way to saluted mountains
But once bowed land saluted
And the once saluting mountains
Were past under my feet..
 Mar 2018 Imran Islam
wordvango
I've only imagined where I'd go were the skies to open up
Magical, and time to be metered
Only in metrical or musical
Timbre what bassoon might be heard when and if
Flutes bass drums human voices
Joined into that chorus of
Nature resounding unheard
On the distance in the forests
On sunrises in flowers
In the eyes of the forlorn
The starving bellies
Of the deserts
In that mass of culled voices
Written on papers buried
In libraries in educated
***** on leather desks in the
Remotest abscesses where the hurt cannot reach or on
Wool carpets decorated
Florals instead of the marvels God
Sent created made us in
Oh I cry loud
I cry at top of my lungs ability
Wake me up
Cry cry
Sound out
Poets
Those with more than
My abilities.
The time is
Now.
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