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 Jul 2015 Paul C
Czeslaw Milosz
Burning, he walks in the stream of flickering letters, clarinets,
machines throbbing quicker than the heart, lopped-off heads, silk
canvases, and he stops under the sky

and raises toward it his joined clenched fists.

Believers fall on their bellies, they suppose it is a monstrance that
shines,

but those are knuckles, sharp knuckles shine that way, my friends.

He cuts the glowing, yellow buildings in two, breaks the walls into
motley halves;
pensive, he looks at the honey seeping from those huge honeycombs:
throbs of pianos, children's cries, the thud of a head banging against
the floor.
This is the only landscape able to make him feel.

He wonders at his brother's skull shaped like an egg,
every day he shoves back his black hair from his brow,
then one day he plants a big load of dynamite
and is surprised that afterward everything spouts up in the explosion.
Agape, he observes the clouds and what is hanging in them:
globes, penal codes, dead cats floating on their backs, locomotives.
They turn in the skeins of white clouds like trash in a puddle.
While below on the earth a banner, the color of a romantic rose,
flutters,
and a long row of military trains crawls on the ****-covered tracks.
 Jul 2015 Paul C
Francie Lynch
... as I was saying...
I'm sure you're just not listening.
Poetry is a
     well-oiled function,
      processing sentiments
                for posterity

*Poetry is an extension
     of our core elements,
           royally regurgitated
 Jul 2015 Paul C
Amitav Radiance
The night sky is so alluring
There is a subtle attraction
Stars hold our gaze tonight
As lovers hearts come closer
Fine strings from the moon
And the shimmering veil
Decorate the landscape
Waves of silver light
Resonates with hearts upheaval
Night’s bring out the beauty
With closed eyes, we see the universe
Love stops at this confluence
Hearts slowly drowning in love
 Jul 2015 Paul C
Ariel Baptista
**** me quietly in the current of the Caspian
That calloused-caviar undertow
Petroleum-pierced fragmented bone
You whispered things no child should know
And I was no child then
Trembling hands I emerge from the lion’s den
Wearing memory like white lines on the insides of my wrists
Until I forget they’re there
Blue eyes, blonde hair
Painted mouth and vacant stare
Here is who I have become

So kiss me quietly in the white-capped waves of the Caspian
My lips a promise sealed in black oil and blood
Hear the water tank trickle fill and flood
See the volcanoes burst with sacred mud
And feel my skeptical smile
Spectacle-clad you read my file
It’s been a while since I relived all of this

And I’m deciding if it’s far too late or far too soon
To begin to deconstruct our interactions
The repulsion, the attraction
The actions and reactions
That defined that interim allotment of time
I sit here now retracing your lines
On the rickety map in the back of my mind
Memory, so mute, so blind
And ripping down the track so quickly
Thrown back so sickly-bitterly
Like salt-lime-tequila

My memory has been mutilated
Slaughtered, drained and skinned
Treated, chopped and trimmed
And now I place it on a table in the street
Tell me, can you hear the pattern of its late heartbeat
As you grip a fleshy dripping pound of it in your hand
My memories are no-man’s land

So caress me carefully in the cool-calm caves of the Caspian
Recall the strange sounds of the early days
Sacred grounds, hot-garbage haze
Sandy winds, the bazaar maze
That made me acutely aware of the incomplete
Not even joyful summer heat
Could keep me from floating feet-up in the Georgian river
Memory smile, convulse and shiver

I intended this to be a reconciliation
Call me queen of counterproductive apology
Let’s redefine astrology
To gain some favour from the stars
Russian salad and white box cars
Deep *** holes in Badamdar
Truthfully I’ve never known who you really are
And I probably never will

But cut me kindly in the clouds above the Caspian
This is as close as we can get
Ignorant prejudice my one regret
But I have not forgotten all the good
And I will try to love you like I should
But tell me, is it better to have memories that lie
Or have nothing at all?
Shall I embrace the distortions or the abyss?
**** me carefully or give me a kiss
Tell me, what am I to do with this?
Cut me open or caress me
Call me child or undress me
Your impassive smile does not impress me
Tell me, how am I to process this?

I’ve swam your sea, I’ve coughed your air
I let you stroke and steal my sandy hair
I left without once looking back
No pillar of salt
No pile of ash
No blame or fault
Or debt or cash
But still the walls begin to crack
I feel the stitches start to tear
Murky-memory drags me eastward by my fresh-grown hair
Forcing my eyes, so-cold and ever-blue ever deeper into you,
the dark heart of the Caspian
 Jul 2015 Paul C
Sherry Asbury
Old women are forgotten wombs
whose graceless bodies have fed the world,
then been sent to sit in its shadows...
not quite seen, unacknowledged
and without nurture.

Old women are crucified with the nails
of oppression and poverty.
Invisibility swallows them when
age freckles out-number the fresh
patches of youth.

Old women have scarred and calloused
knees from kneeling in submission to
lesser minds that felt bigger for the
looking down.

A rosary of sorrows is strung through
the weary fingers of old women.
They are hung on the crucifix of youth
and beauty to wither into dust.

Old women have crabbed and ruined toes
from shoes worn too long - that a child
might have new ones.
Alone in cubicles or corners, frayed photos
beneath their coats, old women remember
children that have long forgotten them.

Old women do not seek a man’s arms...
for that is not a refuge, but a honeyed trap
where souls are flayed and burned.

Old women talk to themselves because
no  one else has ears to hear, or words to share.
Even their echoes are faint and whispered.

Such wondrous minds...libraries of living life,
vision and experience...left untouched because
they are not behind a pretty face.

Behold the woman....she is a wealth of wisdom
and power, beauty and courage - to those
wise enough to touch her power.

Her reckoning will come...

Until then - she endures.
From a series of poems written about old women not fortunate enough to have the wealth or stamina to keep themselves fashionable.
At one moment in time
  she was poetry in motion,
'til she pirouetted herself
  unto dusty shelves
midst old clouded rhymes
   & recollected love notes
yet, there were echoes
  glistening 'tween strands
   of web's interlacing design,
meshing her finessed
  past within gossamer's
complex entanglements
  amid labyrinths of
    ancient symphonies
she dances, still ~
  silently in her head
flirting with destiny
       albeit, not as grand
The universe shifted,
barely anyone heeded
    reality's harsh course,
  'til the earth purged
every plastic contradiction
   bent upon shores' conflicts,
a tsunami of relevant citations
    and replenishing proportions
  clashed upon discordance of
    newly christened blood horizons
Her perfume smelled of cheap Musk,
      tobacco and passion flowers,
the scent of betrayal lingered
         long after she had retreated
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