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 May 2016 robin
Shell of a Man
A lightning rod for pain
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Thunder in the distance firing on all pistons
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Time slows and I'm thrown to center stage
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I hear them whisper the lines I can't remember
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 May 2016 robin
Raven
Lasting love
 May 2016 robin
Raven
i have watched you grow
under my skin you have left warmth
comforting me for the days when you'd be gone
i have sobbed and let my tears try to bring you back
but things have changed now
i hate this kind of change
you are gone
and the last to go
i cover my mouth
i cant breathe and neither can you
silencing cries
under pillows and under water
my cat searches for you
wondering where you've gone
my dog lays on the last place i saw you awake
and we all sit here
waiting--
my room feels empty
i don't want to be here
the house you slept under
where you ate the leaves of the earth
causes me to crumble
onto my knees down to my feet
i see your paws on the cage bars
and your nose reaching for mine
a friend like you makes me pray for a god
praying for you to come home
 Apr 2016 robin
Got Guanxi
normality isn’t the same as the chaos we evade.
The truth is, normality alludes us,
we are formed beyond our minds declination.
Somebody stole my freedom,
using outside of the box thinking,
in your mind and mind.
And I was minding my business,
just trying to take my own sweet time, again.
and deja vu came through the window, again.
the repetition of the rain
cool calm and collected,
the pain subsides,
when i lived in my hiding place
and the raindrops made the gutters flow.

obviously,
yet never expected;
is it you? is it true?
the juxtaposition of you.
but they stole our souls before they attacked the weakened body.
We didn’t hear them coming through the car crash TV;
Are you and I the zombies?
Is your mind in control,
do you mind if they take control,
or do you not mind at all?
When the mask falls the I hide behind isn’t alien in dreams.
not who i saw in the soul.
is it true, deja vu.
so benign in idyllic lies,
a million miles away.
tribes hide behind nothing but a little something to be unique,
maybe a little something else
to be discreet.

But other than that,
food and air,
and company.
there’s not much else we need.
Make up?
Make up your mind -
who decided who you needed to be
it certainly wasn’t you.
Lost in the illusion of choice,
like deja vu,
like Descartes knew,
in collusion with the muse of normality,
by what is true to you,
not actually the truth.
it’s the perfect ephiany in alliance with deja vu.
but what came first ?
my mind, or yours,
through closed doors of inspection;
deception - they let them tell them.
inception - they let them tell them
And I know this fact to be true,
because I’ve seen you in dreams before
and I couldn’t believe my eyes;
or change my view.
I couldn’t believe it was you,
deja vu,
deja vu.
first i've wrote after a little break
 Apr 2016 robin
Vivek Mukherjee
Half the man I was,
I enjoy but I don't laugh,
I hum but I don't sing,
I move but I don't dance,
I care but I don't love,
I am me,
but only somewhat.
 Mar 2016 robin
Timothy H
someone caught me
working out mysteries
blowing white cigar clouds
beg
im just a gay,
standing in front of the boy i love,
asking him to love her
112915-1848
 Mar 2016 robin
david badgerow
lately i've been having these good days
i don't have sad wet cigarette saxophone nights anymore
i watched the sun wake up six times last week
i found a blue bucket of tulips &
gave them to a bald-headed krishna girl when
she sang to me on the sidewalk

i hired a boy to hide in the foyer
& peel a fiddle if i rouse from sleep during the night
or whistle through a harmonica
if i'm wet-eyed during breakfast
i finally got rid of all the pictures you stuck
to your side of the dusty bathroom mirror
except the blissed-out polaroid of us
perched on an old oak tree limb
like a couple of soft doves versus the turreted sunset

i deleted your number because you don't call me back anyway
i stopped mailing letters to your father's house
i haven't listened to the Plantasia record
you bought me since you left
i never feel the gray heat from your
staticky hand warming my shoulder
i forgave you for the blood in my kidneys
& old smog in my mildewed vinyl lungs

i sleep under the running green vapor light
of the moon & stars instead of the frothiest pillows
rippling on an ocean of sheets & project quilts
i finally scoured the lipstick stain from my collarbone
after what seemed like two years
i forgot how your armpits smelled
i sewed all your sundresses into a shower curtain
& i never see your delicate ribcage
peaking through the streams of hot water



i hardly ever notice the noose
you left hanging in our apartment
 Mar 2016 robin
david badgerow
she calls me
she calls me & I don't answer
she calls to say her grandma
is failing fast & the twins
aren't sleeping & they're angry

come on over I say
I only have two calloused hands
& a sixty hour work week
bony feet & a bottle of
chocolate wine & I ask if she's ever
slept four on a full sized mattress

the boys will be fine I say
bring both elmos
a set of pastel paints
& you can run your fuzzy-sock feet
up my legs & warm your small hands
on my space heater heartbeat

grandma will see good Friday
& easter sunday I say
& probably even her own
late April birthday
barely audible as the boys snore
like miniature sawmills
through peppermint toothpaste
ringed open mouths

the last thing I feel before sleep
is her smile stretching across my
bare chest & her hands catch fire
& wander toward a cooler spot of skin
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