To The Woman**

Yes, you remember,
You certainly remember
The way I listened
Standing at the wall
As you walked to and fro about the chamber
Reproving me
With bitter words and all.

You said
That it was time we"d parted,
And that my reckless life,
For you, was an ordeal,
And it was time a new life you had started
While  I was fated
To go rolling downhill.

My love!
You didn"t care for me, no doubt.
You weren"t aware of the fact that I
Was like a ruined horse, amidst the crowd,
Spurred by a dashing rider, flashing by.

You didn"t know
That I was all a-smoke,
And in my life, turned wholly upside-down ,
I was in misery,   downhearted, broke,
Because I didn"t see which way we were bound.

When face to face
We cannot see the face.
We should step back for better observation.
For when  the ocean boils and wails
The ship is in a sorry situation.

The world is but a ship!
But all at once,
Someone, in search of better  life and glory,
Has  turned it, gracefully,  taking his chance,
Into the hub of storm and flurry.

Well,  which of us
On board a mighty boat
Has never brawled nor barfed nor fallen down?
There are not many of them that will not
Despair when they"re about to drown.


Me,  too,
To loud hue and cry,
But knowing well what I was doing
Went down to the hold where  I
Might keep away from scenes of spewing.

"Hold" was a Russian pub
Where I
Drank,   listening to the loud bicker,
I tried to stop my  worries by
Just drowning myself in liquor.


My love!
I worried you, oh my!
Your tired eyes revealed dejection,
I didn"t hide from you that I
Had spent my life in altercation.

You didn"t know
That I was all a-smoke,
And in my life, turned wholly upside-down,
I was in misery, downhearted, broke,
Because I didn"t see
Which way we were bound.

....................................

Now many years have passed,
I"m not so young today.
I do not  feel the same, and I  have new ideas,
And here at festive table  I will say:
Long live the one who"s at the steers!

Today I,
Seized by tender feelings so,
Recall your  wistfulness,  and I am happy  
To tell you straight, for you to know,
About what I was  
And what has happened!

My love,
I"m glad to tell you that
I have escaped a bad descent, an"
Today I"m in the Soviet land
A staunch supporter and defender.

I"m not the man
I used to be.
I wouldn"t hurt  you now
The way I did.  So silly!
And I would follow Labour, feeling free,
As far as English Channel, really.

Forgive me please,
I know that you have changed.
You live with an intelligent,
Good husband;
You don"t need all this fuss and all this pledge,
And you don"t need me either, such a hazard.

Live as you do
Lead by your lucky star
Under the tent of fern, if there"s any.
My best regards,
You"re always on my mind, you are,
Yours, faithfully,
           S e r g e y   Y e s e n i n.

They said high school was a home of learning
Oh I learned alright
They said it would construct my future
All it did was destroy me with the past
They said it would be safe
They have no defense over the demons
They said it would develop me as a person
But I remain who I was... only shattered

They said so many things, yet understood so little

This goes to the pillow-clutchers
to the broken who carry soaked and salty handkerchiefs
to the flesh that thrive for streaks of red dripping out
to the souls that are constantly bombarded by screeches of lies
Lies that overrun every beauty in and out
Lies that lead to masochistic actions
Waiting for the second heartbeat after every punch
Hoping this would free the monsters trapped within
This goes to the insecure
No, we are not emo
How can one contain our being in just three letters?
We are not superficial pain lovers
We are violated, dispirited, downhearted, beaten, unsettled, splintered, forgotten
But we will never be merely emo

A high school is not filled with students
It is filled with labels, rumors, divisions and fake personas
filled with eyes that look straight into your soul
filled with whispers that spread like a virus
Getting worse and worse after every ear it has jumped into
Savages looking for the flaw that can destroy you
Until you break and mindlessly follow their example

High school is where you lose who you are
And be who everyone else wants you to be

Everyone thought I was just being vain
Always staring at the mirror, trying to be cute
Never did it come into their minds that I was already believing the lies
ready to accept the rumors
using FINE as my own maxim
**** I'm Never Enough
But I waited
Waited for someone to drive out the beasts
to heal my scars
to fill my emptiness
Yet until now I remain drenched in loneliness and fear

High school is worse than hell
A quick and small crack in your soul hurts more
Than an eternal burn of your flesh
This is why we're ready to see the light come out of our eyes
But I'm holding on
For you need pain before you're declared strong
For you need darkness before you see the stars
For you need death before you reach heaven
For where there are angels,
*there will always be demons

Boy
Get you
I don’t
Burning in the back
Am I

You call
Come
I ensure

You put me
Last on that list,
Busy
From me

I believed

Hopeful
I stayed
Fading
Can only last
prolonged

Soon push
Too far

Fall will I

Catch
You will not

Early minds turn to the sunrise
Wandering souls turn to the map
And the downhearted turn to the knife

Everything I hear is a blurred whisper
And everything I see is so distinct

Do not be downhearted
Though fine weather
May not delight you

Do not be downhearted
Though the daily news
Seems too desperate to comprehend

Do not be downhearted
Though the scale of global challenges
Seem just too global

You
Just as you are
Can make a difference

If you believe
You can

R.J Calzonetti


Screaming cross the skyscraper’s windbreaker tapering

Aether vapour- trailblazing ****-sapien wafers

Of machinations psychotropic doppelgängers

Aristotle throttling menagerie’s philosophically hypnotic obelisks

Mind-boggling astronomical chronological esophagus

Antioxidants phosphorus catastrophic mitochondria

Beyond anaconda onomatopoeia

Of hallucinogenic Armageddon biblical umbilical cords

Swarming northern lights of aurora borealis

The chalice a battleground of Evangelion belladonna

Metalica candelabra swallowing the monochrome Hanukkah

Of a cold winter’s eldritch disintegration photosynthesis

Of innocent infinity stretching wretched beckoning requiem

The words that fall upon my page, are really just a shallow grave

Of the dawn of nighttime in my eyes, calm upon the twilight sun

Wrong is done draped on the blood moon wraiths

Skyscraped fields dusk a hollow thud below the dunes

That thumps the consumption of our fate, fumes to glow in darkness loom

Left blind in light of day you cannot see, the little pieces silver sheen

For blinding light may fade to grey, and I will never have my way

Nightfalls on another daybreak, dawning darkness, sundown on another day

Twilight plays with sparkling haze, the sky a wildfire made ablaze in patchwork scarecrows

Who etch rainbows black as a heart of coal, sold flatlining railroads

Gold wraithlike halos of stained-glass cathedrals unreal in the fever-dream of human beings

Bleeding Elysium from the seabed of dead worlds, gourds of incorporeal cornucopias

Born orchestra morsels of sorrowful oracles predicting crucifixion of ellipsis’ antithesis


(MC) Aurora


Absonant  as my pen writes the twilight, the red swallowed on horizon and bright

As through a sea of blood under my feet and shrinking mast of my mighty ship

A shadow I make on that red snow and peep into my heart’s hollow

It’s deep as much as my pen spake of grief.

I blinded in that last light and hurled like a beast dreading the songs of holy lies

That have just pained in bright and made me grieve.

They dragged me on my wings and deplumate  me as so fallen humans

They wrenched my limbs and rive my heart out and flinger me in air and I laid forever

On the stones that dank my blood.

I wait for the troth  of  demise but betrayed as it didn’t come to detract,

I laid when the horizon grinned red on my face and poured the last ale

And brutally drank the last sip of me.



R.J Calzonetti


People are sleeping under the blankets of a tranquil streetlamp

A sunflower in the damp bed of concrete

Soon they’ll be pushing up daisies

Underneath the foundation of what I stand for

Nip the bud of the flower pedalling the root of all evil like fallen leaves

Breeding paraplegic freedom from the pollen melancholic

Anarchistic polycrystalline shapeshifters drifting vilified

Buried alive like asphalt constellations crowning metallic gallows alcoholic in my solitude

See the clouds bury the ground in half a heaven’s heartbeat

Limbo’s limitless abyss the photosynthesis of the sepulchral diablo

Revenants of redemption dancing with death

Evanescent in its bioluminescent crescent moon spooning illuminated illustrations

Of Himalayan mayhem cremated avarice of ethereal onomatopoeia unravelling catacombs in God’s palindromes

Homeopathic saplings decapitated in the dismembered September wastelands defibrillator

Invigorating the nightshade white wraiths plane-walkers of Apocrypha documenting entropy

Pent up sentience avenging the endless demigods of discombobulated proclamations nocturne graceless, octaves eldritch, evangelic

Elegant elevators to flights of staircases where the air is fragrant with the fragments of stagnant stained glass asterisks

Written gospels to masquerade hostage to the faith the man misplaced the sacred hate, the passageways of apathy apostrophe

Apartheid of serpentine survivors carving smiles on the sidewalks

Farming diamonds and their detox

Arming giants like a phoenix

Carnal nihilists with their secrets

Stardust quiet as the bleachers

Start defiant still a reject

Art discipled to our freedom

Shattered hearts pick up the pieces

Jigsaw puzzles, smothered treasons

Sow the seeds and **** the reaper

Even legions rhyme and reason

Tattered flags without a penance

Good men do not go to heaven

Buy your burden at 7-11

Your exit is the only the next entrance

Resurrection prepubescent

Asymmetric biomechanics

Anguish to be reprimanded

Megalomaniac in our sabbath

Living life is just a sentence

Psalms of seance death’s senescence

Baptize vengeance lest it ventures into heaven

Ventriloquist omniscience of rhythmic equilibrium

Earthly hurricanes reemerging insurgent as the sugarcane purgatory

Primordials metamorphosis contorting rigour Mortis oracles horoscope cloaked in cloaca hallucinations

Induced irradiated amalgamated retaliatory incorporeal chlorophyll

Born from the sorcerers' spell, the cathedral of doubt

The only darkness is within oneself, light shed within a holy shell

Isolation is a lonely hell, scythes of moonlight blight of bells

Nightingales fail to halo word of mouth

Enveloped in the clouds cast shadows hex

But resurrection cannot hide from the eyes of death

Fresh as babies breath

Rank as the body festers effigies

Bless the Nephilim the questions beck

And call for some god to collect the rest

Is there any answer?

Even growth can be a cancer

Lifeless corpses once were dancers

Devils waltz on top of canopies

Heaven’s hands have touched serenity

****** brands that crushed His enemies

Stained glass sanguine dismantled entropy

Calamity ran dry insanity dabbling in humanity

Unravelling the candy wrapper saplings of happiness

Pitch black irradiant dull edges sharpening archangels, darkness reincarnating

Blinding bioluminescent glistening abyssal rakshasa sarcophagus parting monarchies

Metamorphosis coruscating fornication immortalization Tartarean

Reverberating ****-sapien scintillating hurricanes palpitation circulating ricocheting oblivion

Shining crepuscular homunculus dully illustrious

Sunless avatars, mannequins of Abaddon stygian as fallen leaves on the breeze of Avalon Evangelion

Incarceration breeding Elysium’s jailors in the cathedral of double helixes

Bethlehem's’ new genesis of Lucifer’s crucifixion

Brighter than a fallen star

Mourning in the dark

Doppelganger apostles night stalkers of phosphorous

Pockmarked arcanum bloodstained in gravestone Salem

Where the braves’ halos dined on maelstroms alone

Heirs succeeding failures of the empty throne

Filled with nothings’ own

Brimming bound by Babylonian poems

Deus ex Machina's apocalypse coughing prophets of Samsara blossoming diabolic

Life is but a Holocaust

Death the moment God forgot

Breath the only psalm we sought

Kept within a hollow box

Shedding devils, angelic, lost

Finding metamorphosis


(MC) Aurora


A world often synonymous with beauty on the horizon,

Meet my eyes you mourned demon load the strength on thee.

Crestfallen light on your wrist burns down your girth

And you can plead, just plead your twilight sun.

Watch the dead sea swallow you in the salts of agony

And drown in the anguish, hundreds of angelic bloodsheds,

Press hold of the thumbprints on your throat, you can't roar.

Sore lugubrious melancholy aired atmosphere,

And downhearted souls dispirited dragons dragged along.

The sob grim hiding in a blue funk rusty smog choking wind,

The nyctophilliac animals howl long the cold-blooded love song

In your lungs and burn.

It's the twilight sun,

Just that twilight sun.

I try to tell myself that I am in control this time
Hoping that you will feel some kind of wonderment or downhearted, one second thought about me
I will not call you
I will not give in
I will not get my heart broken again
I want to use you to show you how I felt
But I can't
Because despite all the disappointment and letdown I could never hurt you
I could never ignore you

Although while I am over here over analyzing and nearly overloading my cranium with what if's and thoughts
You have the air of nonchalance and disinterestedness while you pop into my life again without warning
Can you tell that you get me all frazzled?
Is this purely for your own amusement?

Why can't I figure you out.
Why do you interest me so?
Why do I feel like my connection to you is the strongest thing I have ever felt.
No I must be naive and disillusioned

Till the day I completely cease sparing my time and thoughts to you
You will be the winner
Even if it is a bad thought you are still consuming my mind
Confusion and Love
Spite and Wonder
They all are the same
Same being you

Refuge

***** soaked mattress holes in the door
This drunken behavior I can't take much more
My children are at risk in his drunken state
My son packs my bags he is only eight
Under police escort we are taken away
The children are stressed they don't want to play
What keeps you going when life falls apart
Encourages you to take each day as it comes
No one to love you've broken your heart
The strength of your love for a daughter and son
Living within the four walls of your home
Anxious depressed and frightened for them
Downhearted despairing facing life on your own
There's no silver lining not even a hem
I hope when they're older they're old enough to see
The reasons behind why I did what I did
Nothing was for gain nothing was for me
I did what I did for the love of my kids

Hello you, I have a few things to say,
and although you are downhearted, I hope they make your day.
Your life took a turn and you fell so hard,
but I promise you're not broken but merely scarred.
Soon things will get better and you'll wake each morning with light in your heart,
with a smile that lives forever within your eyes, moulded like fine art.

I want you to know that you're the most beautiful creation I've ever come across,
you are the beacon of light for so many and if we didn't have you, we'd be at a great loss.
You are the one who can go ahead and actually change the world -
a precious soul who can break the mould and change the ideals that have been furled.

Reading an anthology of
Classic poems
On quiet a night
With wings of
Enlightenment and delight
My soul took flight
To far-off lands bright
Rife with musical poems
Some brain racking,
While some savory but light.

When I saw celebrated poets
From my dream plane
I decided to alight
So that the messages
Encoded on their poems,
To me they further explain.
Cognizant that
Hearing things from
The horse’s mouth
Like Antarctica
Will not make things
As far south.

I saw Helen Steiner Rice
Reading whose works
Like  ‘Christmas Guest’
Is nice.
When she me behold
This to me she told
“Till your corporeal being’s
Turn come to be a sod
Never desist to
Put your hope in God,
Who foresees and shapes
That will unfold.
Always dwell
In the vineyard of
The Lord. ”
Drew close James Stephens
With Helen
You are right nod.
“Chap, if you look around
You will behold
On everything
The hallmark of
Creation stamped by God!
Also excellent, from
The ordinary extra,
Your will hear
Nature’s God praising
Orchestra! ”
Willian Henery Davis
Courteously came by
To say <<Hi!>>.
“Be content with
What you have
You will be happy
When that you learn to love.
See you not why
The example set
By the butterfly,
On a rough rock
That sleeps content
Without a blanket! ”

Soon I met
Enda St. Vincent Millay
Whose fame
Surfing the tide of time
To date that does resonate.
“As the saying goes
‘The world is lovely
And the loveliest is enough!’
To be happy
Try to nurture the culture
Of admiring nature.
Waste not time
Go to the mountain
The secret of happiness
To you it will explain.”

After seconds walk
William Ernest Henely
Approached me for a hard talk
“When beset by challenges
Never give in
That is a great sin!
As for me, whenever
I fall
Soon I get up as the
Captain of my soul.
Though in the darkness
God seems far,
For the downhearted
He is a lodestar.”
I saw Elenor Frajeon
By a roadside
With a book in her hand.
“Love to books
Is a launching pad
To a wonderland,
Where readers meet authors
Of different brand
Hence, a window to their
Soul they will stand.
Also read my poem
That draws attention
To mother-to-child affection
That defies description.”

I met anon
Austin Dobson
“A rose
To itself
A question
Opted to pose.
‘I wonder why
This hoary-headed
Gardner refuses to die?’
But soon
A wind blew up
Its sun-withered
Petals to the sky.
The analogy teach
On the timeline
Brief, beauty to a grind
Will screech.

Patted me on the back
My son,
Ben Johnson
“Like a Lele
Being short and brief
Could render life
Ease and relief! ”

Sat on a rock
Samuel  Taylor Coleridge
To me a secret he broke.
With bitter smile
Waving his
Pen as a tool,
“Those who think
A poet is a fool
They will realize
Who is rather the fool
If they think with
A head cool!”
I saw Walter De la Mare
Exactly the way towards
Old Susan he used to stare.
“Susan taken away by
A romantic fiction
Past midnight
Sat on chair
Engrossed in a monologue
‘Breeching
Culture rules
Is not fair! ’
After
One’s age
Did advance
Reading fiction
One stands
For reliving
The past
A chance.  ”

Soon, came William Blake
Me to the graveyard
To take
Pointing to
A headstone
“Now, my enemy,
Object of my anger,
Is dead.
Subject to a
Conscious pang
It is divested of a soft pillow
I go to bed!
You must not yourself find
An axe to grind
Otherwise, to a reason
You will become blind.”
For supper
Volunteered to be
My host
Robert Frost.
He stressed
“To settle
Punitive price
As lethal
As fire is ice!”
Came an invited guest
Edmund Spencer
To tell us
The mystery
That put
His phlegmatic dream object
And he, her
Ardent lover, asunder.
“When fire and ice
Are locked in a love’s dorm
Out of the norm,
One may not change
The other’s form! ”
Via the window,
I saw a graveyard
Past the meadow.
When my eye caught sight
Of Julia Caroline
I took steps
To sit by her side
The meaning of eternal love
To understand.

“A kiss on the lips
From a lover
Is a keepsake stamp
That transcends
An earthly map.”

There in the graveyard
I met Sara Teasdale
“Like a low hanging ripe fruit
In the gray time
When a lass
Is off guard
To ****** her
A chance a lad
May stand.
Also from affection
For conjugal felicity
Many a lass
Could give added attention.”
I posed
Why should you show bent
To profanity?
“My friend
A *** could not be taken naughty
For expressing man’s sexuality!
For the answer try to meet
                Anne Bradstreet.”

Before I asked
Her why she
Committed a suicide
She got clear
From my side.

Anne Bradstreet
I met
“It is tragic
To have at home
A child with
A down syndrome!

What lurks
In the subconscious
Of an author or a poet
Through his/her pen
S/he may seek an outlet
So to date,
Regretting
“Why did I
Write this a taboo-seen
Thing!”
Seems some author’s fate.


I saw Thomas Hood
Amidst his harvest
That fares good
He told me
“From a perfumed
And well attired lady
Who belongs
To the top brass,
It is by far better
To tie a knot
With a provincial lass,
In her hair
With a fresh flower
Plucked out of the grass
She shines bright
Bathed by sunlight!”

Out on the street again
I met Lithuanian Salomejia Neris
I became happy
As I never wanted her to miss.

I asked her
About the heard-renting fate
She, her father, her mother, siblings
Neighbors and her age mate
Underwent.
“During the  World War II
Children, who
Otherwise were
Considered
Unfit for themselves
To fend,
Were forced
The brutal ****
To defend!”
Soon I met
Richard Lovelace
And John Scott
Locked in an argument hot.
The former
“I want to head to the front
It is a source of pride
To fight on
Nation’s side.”
The latter
“Paying a price grand
I cannot understand!”

Edwin Arlington Robison came
To tell me the story
About Richard Cory
“Measure not
Your life by
The success of your object
Of admiration,
The one a role- model
You hold or held,
I am afraid
Off guard
He can lodge
A bullet in
His head.”


I saw William Butler Yeats
, an Irish poet
Who raised an issue hot.
“How an
Angel helped out
A tired priest
A snap who
Could not resist
While a laity
In his parish
Was Ceasing to exist.”
Robert Herrick approached
Me this to speak
“I am smote
By grief,
To see a Daffodil,
Like human beings ,is brief.”

Said Emily Dickinson
“It is when you ere to hit
A target heart felt
You’ll understand
The meaning of
Having something desired
Under your belt.”
At last
I saw
Edgar Allan Poe
To make this to me
He made haste.
Though a pauper
“From my soul mate
No earthly or heavenly power
Is capable to asunder me
Top date.
After reading this much
I realized why
Poets never die”//////