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  Feb 2023 Marshal Gebbie
Nat Lipstadt
The
tilt of my seesaw
is decidedly downward facing dog:

and there’s no rush to judgment, for the powers that be,
be delighted by slow-walking, making the waiting
max-tortuous, but am of an age when everything,
even the long buried sins and unkept promises,
poke and **** nonstop, and the formulae once
relied upon to ease incipient self-deception,
to temporize and salve the consternations

of unkempt aggravated remorse fail,

as aged misdemeanors be matured felonies,
I blurt and declare guilt to all, alas, and yet, in the
ultimate crushing of tardiness, knotted by indignity of silence,


no one is desirous
of taking my

confession

5:10pm
Thu Jan 28
2023
Time for the sadness to find an end
Time for the hateful words to hush
Time for the wounded to find a balm
Time for universal love to blush

Time to find abandoned paths
And travel on them once again
Time to lend a helping hand
And plant new courage deep within

Time to act when there’s a need
To be the person who steps out
To bridge the rivers yawning wide
With cataracts of fear and doubt.

Time for the star that glowed one night
O’er the hills of little Bethlehem
To work a magic in our souls
Eliminating “us and them”

Time to bathe in gentleness
And soak in honesty
Time to set the world alight
With all the things that ought to be.
ljm
M E R R Y    C H R I S T M A S   D E A R   F R I E N D S
Writhing sea of dancing faces
Roiled by electric currents
From a storm that I can’t see-
No high, no low, no ebbing
Just tumaltism from
One Sean cut to another.
In the middle is a wooden box
Painted big and black and square.
On it is a Nereid
Arms out flung, long red hair flying
Turning in the basting of the spotlights
So willow-thin above the starfish in the tide pools.
Powered by the lack of sun
She floats her rhythms
On the breakers
And becomes a beacon
For lost eyes and hopeless dreams.

How I wish I was her sister
Cousin or best friend.
How I’d love to fusion with her
Show her where she got her licks.
But I hold back- I don’t dare it
My time was yesterday
Today is hers alone
I must be jetsam on the shore
So sad that my tide’s moving out as
Hers is rolling in.

If I could only be her peer
Instead of Sea Waif’s mother.
ljm
Watching my daughter take center stage.
Marshal Gebbie Feb 2023
Virtue lies in simple lines
Unencumbered by the times,
Same old song's familiar tune
Breeds contentiousness's classic rune....

"That worrisome and trouble lurks
So deep in thoughts, where trouble works."

Shed ye the dark within, old friend,
Then whisper, soft, thy song again.

M@Foxglove,Taranaki NZ
5th February 2023
That Same Old Song

Why carry this weight?
Does reward await
some years ahead
but...before I'm dead?
Is there virtue in the same pain
felt again and again,
that same old song
I've been singin' for so long?

JP Midwest USA
  Feb 2023 Marshal Gebbie
Nat Lipstadt
11:06 AM Thu Feb 2

<>

early early morning

when the restless images of semi-sleep haunt, the hazy unknowns and wavy specters ****** you with wild abandon dancing verbs,
all eager to mislead, happy to pronounce distorted truths, seemingly
delicious but confusing familiars seem real, but they are…not

late late evening

when the day’s hours hang heavy round the neck,
the outlook is now the past-look, inevitable raising
words that start with the letter D, none good or delighting,
and looking back, reviewing, is too oft confused with previewing…

dinner time

when family gathers, interruptions frequent, and the
specific gravitas of concentration sinks beneath soapy
dish water, or is burnt in oven, or distractedly spilled and the
words burnt too, anger arrives as a question…when is my time?

early evening

the receding hubbub has numbed the desire, even the need,
flows are stillborn, and for every word composed, ten rejected,
disarray and dissatisfaction, despair, strangle the creativity and the
seductive drugged  non-thought of TV, dangerously addict-attracts…

when then?

always. as in everything. anytime. feast on the crashing all about,
source and savor life’s cacophony as purest inspiration gifted,
record, clasp and grasp the passing stanzas that flow from the tap,
quicken the mind, retain the veins of irony, whimsy & despair

for there is no time other than the time…

*when “it” already writ and needy only for the writing utensil, tablet,
blue-lined pad that presents, begging for fufillment, yours & its,
and you need only discharge the torrents of what went before,
the poem, and you, both fully formed and emptied and contained!
  Feb 2023 Marshal Gebbie
JP
Why carry this weight?
Does reward await
some years ahead
but...before I'm dead?
Is there virtue in the same pain
felt again and again,
that same old song
I've been singin' for so long?
  Feb 2023 Marshal Gebbie
rose hopkins
When I was young  and time was infinite
I was spontaneous,impulsive, impatient.
Now I am older
and life is precious
and timeless becomes time
with an end in sight.
Love becomes more visible.
I am adventurous,
pensive and patient,
riding the next dream
into a timeless future.
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