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 May 2015 ND
NV
boy meets girl.
 May 2015 ND
NV
girl, all drenched in bathroom floors, 3 o'clock in the morning and mascara stained face, smelling of liquor bottles and boys who will never remember her name.

boy, all drenched in bed sheet linen, 3 o'clock in the afternoon and lipstick stained t-shirt, smelling of air from empty pockets and girls who will never forget his name.
 May 2015 ND
NV
ever since.
 May 2015 ND
NV
within a prison-like classroom.
i learnt the writer used
"i "
to express his or her's feeling of unimportance.


i promise you.
i've been texting my i's in lowercase letters ever since.
 Feb 2015 ND
Dave Gledhill
Legacy
 Feb 2015 ND
Dave Gledhill
I see your hand waver, now you're faced with a ghost,
not the raw, killer features that were nailed to a post.
Just an old, dying cowboy, trying hard to play host.
There's a chair if you've mercy, and a story...come close.

The liquor of youth lights a fire in you, son.
Puts that flame in your eyes and the heat in your lungs.
I wore that expression, before your thread was spun,  
so let me unload, you can shoot when I'm done.

Growing sore in my saddle as the nag became lame,  
I sold off my shooters, then re-mortgaged my name.
But tease out the creases, we're exactly the same;
two felons of fortune, wanting someone to blame.

See, I never got settled, didn't take me a wife.
Sailed a ship in a bottle, on the edge of a knife.
I put stock in misfortune and invested in strife,
took diminished returns, paid no interest to life.

But corralling cattle won't hold them for long,
they're born to roam free where they know they belong.
Soon the lipstick and whiskey begins to taste wrong,
as the backroom piano sighs its monotone song.

By a tangerine sunset I scraped off my boots
and considered an orchard as it set down its roots.
As a buzzing of insects idly nurtured its fruits,
I was deafened by silence. My own garden was mute.

So I clutched at the earth as I fell to the floor,
to ask for forgiveness, as you darkened my door.  
Seems redemption's eloped, like a gold digging *****.  
Just a name on a tombstone, for a few dollars more.

Quite an end would be fitting for a fool so innate,  
who has squandered his years until the hour is late.
Son, unholster your weapon and wipe off the slate,
I beg execution, swift vengeance,  But wait...

Did I catch my reflection as it fell from your face?
Like a hound in a heatwave, too tired to give chase?  
Son, the trail that you're riding is easy replaced.
You can stand in the sunlight, or come sit in my place.
 Oct 2014 ND
Raj Arumugam
read me literal, dear reader
please - for I never transcend
beyond the obvious
I am in the physical, embodied and whole
and so cannot go into things figurative
or metaphorical,
satirical, persona-cast, parodic or symbolic
Irony, I've always known, is some contraption
wrought by an ironsmith


and so to me, dear reader
"He's got the whole world in his hands"
is a ridiculous proposition, makes no sense;
and Isaac Newton was obviously
suffering from concussion
from the literal apple
that hit him ******* his head
when he extemporised:
"If I have seen further it is
by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Bah! Humbug! - a scientist and you believe in giants!
Come on Newton - you're nuts!  Stick to apples!

read me literal, dear reader -
so when I say my wife is an angel
I mean she's dead and she floats around me
making ****** sure I don't get hitched again
till I too become an angel, or fiend,
however it may come to pass;
and the guy who tells me: "Nice day, isn't it"
when it's raining cats and dogs
is obviously some crazy *******
 Oct 2014 ND
Edith Wharton
Hunters, where does Hope nest?
Not in the half-oped breast,
Nor the young rose,
Nor April sunrise—those
With a quick wing she brushes,
The wide world through,
Greets with the throat of thrushes,
Fades from as fast as dew.

But, would you spy her sleeping,
Cradled warm,
Look in the breast of weeping,
The tree stript by storm;
But, would you bind her fast,
Yours at last,
Bed-mate and lover,
Gain the last headland bare
That the cold tides cover,
There may you capture her, there,
Where the sea gives to the ground
Only the drift of the drowned.
Yet, if she slips you, once found,
Push to her uttermost lair
In the low house of despair.
There will she watch by your head,
Sing to you till you be dead,
Then, with your child in her breast,
In another heart build a new nest.
 Oct 2014 ND
Raj Arumugam
I  did a gig last night
at the local bar - Moderation Inn,
they called it

and  I played the piano
late into the night -
the usual tunes, the usual crowd:
friends and lovers
people talking aloud
no one who drank in moderation;
couples dancing...when I noticed
an elephant in the corner
crying,  
and I said to the elephant
even as I continued playing:
"Recognise the tune?"

"No,"  said the elephant,
shaking its head
*"I recognise the ivory"
...dark humour...

— The End —