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John F McCullagh Dec 2013
Regulation time was up
and our team one goal behind.
At the referees sole discretion
Is the length of stoppage time.
How much time do we have left?
What difference can we make?
Already we’re shorthanded
And the playoffs are at stake.
We’re like a man whose heart has failed
a time or two before.
Each time nearly off with death
Until revived for more.
Or somebody whose lease is up
And headed for the door,
Waiting only for the truck
to take their past to store.
I heard my pulse race in my ears
As I penetrate their line.
I tuck the ball inside the post
And score in stoppage time.

Just ahead a shootout waits
which will decide our fate.
When playing games of sudden death
What a difference seconds make.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
finding gravity on a bicycle...

surely... given that most people
don't write a ******* hemmingway...
and there's no william buckley jr.
doing the interview...
and there's no norman mailer...

and that: no one really bothers
with kierkegaard and that:
kant "famously" didn't marry starry crap...
why didn't i have kids
and start a family?
uh... dunno... mother's best lie...
or the best lie a neighbour brings
with her... whenever you're
being a 2nd witness without
the 1st witness being there...

and she says an "also" with regards
to her son having the same luck
with women...
when the comparison comes:
a koala bear versus a gorilla...
bonsai tiger!
like a koala is a ******* bear
to begin with...
cuddly soft-pouch toy-ah-thing!

but there's that great feat!
finding gravity on a bicycle...
my mother helped me with that...
and that famous fail of
a rotondo... well... more or less
a cricket ground egg shaped, oval...
or a rugby ball...
the shoulder on the salto bike
hard... rammed into a car....

as a child you were supposedly well
loved...
and this is modern poo'etry i hear about?
here's to: john sounding like johny...
will sounding like *****...
richard sounding like: **** and not richy...
it's cute... matthew... matti: finnish...
leonard is: leo oh leo...
why art we all not named: Li Lo Po!

of course everyone managed to spot
the tetragrammaton vowel catchers that's
hey'zeus! no... not the bloke strapped
to the mannequin of tailoring...
oh no... not the crucifix pendulum
"for us all"... by blood... by cross...
who is to exfoliate on the crucifix...
better than some well scouted for materials
on a mannequin canvas for tailoring
a suit?
the guilt?! oh the guilt!
well... thank god this metaphysician would
never address the material realm of
enjoying a... dabble with... wool...
when donning a suit...
or leather shoes... or any presence of suede...
beside the crucifix mannequin: replica
and pittance!

- but finding gravity on a bicycle is one thing...
finding gravity when swimming is another...
it's called gravity...
but some heretical circles call it:
balance...
after all... it is both gravity...
and balance... given that while riding
a bike... or swimming...
you're pretty much sure, assured:
to not be falling...

you can find gravity with newtonian hindsight...
of sure...
that's there... it involves the magicians orbs...
copernican mathematics and...
target practice when it comes to
propaganda spew...
and Steward... the lesser... Stew...
cousin of the house of Stuart...
not Steward... Stuart...
which is (again)...
a McKiteit and MacCoddlewit...
some Glaswegian *****-donor clinic
"miss-up" mix-it: tend to...
lounging busy... which is of course...
besides the "look"...

5 bazookas cleared for a salvo!
hip hip! burger-pound!
hip hip! boom shizzle shoom!
hip hip! hooray!
oh now we'z getz uz best
partay birth doy wishy-washy
"protagonists"!

but given the current Persian affair...
i couldn't help to notice...
love actually... the narrative...
the u.s.a. and england...
the Z-spezial re-la-tion-ship...

so... who's spastic... and who's fantastic?!
spaz: B-bristolian-esque joking...
never aside...
who's the spaz and who's the frizzy-fuss?!

spe-zial mother russia talks down
to dog Kiev: yes, it's in (the) Ukraine...
spezial iz not what iz?

h'america... kept a yorkshire terrier...
media leetches of england
firmly in its grasp...
cuz onez we woz: once -
the militia contra the crown...
of north virginia...

coz b'rah: a 79-year-old man
who lit himself on fire protesting
against russia's language policies
in the capital of the volga region
of udmurtia has died;
name? alberto raisin...
which sounds terrible in its
non-native spanish...

but there's something worth of gravity
without debating
the heliocentric model...
finding one's balance on a bicycle...
a posteriori events...
but... the same balance can be
translated into a swimming session...

my god my father tried to teach me...
if i was supposed to learn
to swim in the sea...
with the fear: of not seeing the depth?
isn't that like a thesaurus
congestion of: acrophobia?
isn't there a word in the borrowed
lexicon of the ancient greeks...
concerning... fearing to swim in a body
of water... where you can't see the bottom?
i could learn to swim in a swimming
pool... thankfuly all because and due to...
moi...

i also found gravity in water...
i could... lie in water and become...
the antithesis of: the body consists
of 90% of water...
yes sherlock watson & sons... ltd...
but in water i'm mostly fat...
if i find the right balance...
i float...
which is why swimming is a bit
like riding a bicycle...
you find: the center...
or gravity...

again... in this special "relationship"
of bruv-love...
between h'america and whittle brit-pop interlude...
oasis on the continent...
my my... blur, even...
breakfast at tiffany's back in the dough-dough-us...
who is the ******* SPASTIC?
in this "SPEZIAL" relationship?
i guess the english must be the SPEZIALS...

a bit like watching:
go-go-gonzales trip up on a spelling mistake...
which is all i care for...
like a comedia...
a deviation from the informal, later,
subject of language implementation...
and all this peacocking prior...

where else does gravity allow itself...
a presence of the multi-vector?
up and down... left and right...
it's not as easily explained as:
on a ledge... with an apple...
drop it... newton with a header!
a 1-all equalizer in stoppage time
an F.A. cup re-match!

gravity on a bicycle...
it's hardly a drop affair...
gravity in water...
it's hardly merely swimming...
there's that aspect of finding... buoyancy...
there's not need for you to swim...
to exhert so much effort...
that you might as well drown 10 meters
in after swimming the 'undred...

no buoyancy: no chinese fortune cookies...
i still don't know which is more grand...
beside the acrobatics of... olympic level
acrobatics...

it's not bound to youth via lifting weights...
or supreme mao tse tung's winter olympics
of: hunger strikes in Vinter...
the gravity bound to a bicycle...
or the gravity bound to swimming...
after all... the latter is a bit "funny"...

"levitation" and buoyancy...
the dracula soundtrack:
only because of gary oldman and the composer
wojciech kilar... and the given, current...
b.b.c. spin-off and how...
yes... it's that terrible...
i don't even know where those five-stars
came from!
the archetype of feminine romance novels?
the syphilitic lover? the "vampire"?

yes, no? two guesses as good as: nein - keiner...
and, quiet honestly...
nothing could make this exercise in:
not engaging in any of all the available
comments sections on any website...
any worse... than it already is...

it comes as no surprise that: i write this poo'ems
not because i don't write poetry...
but because i will neither write
a poem by standards reserved for
pedagogy or demagogy...
or write identifiable puzzle-bog-trots of...
language reserved for politicization:
and not for... counter-marxist...
"psychiatric" post-...
hardly modern or... "today's journalism"...
eh... pushing it toward a Beckett-clause...
concerning language that is not expected...
oh but i certainly do know
a difference between formal language
and... this... the informal language...
the cognitive extension that does not
require a "free speech" protection bias...

none of this was spoken...
it was seen...
weaved into "thinking"...
that's the difference... isn't it?
from my end of the tenniscourt "promenade"
i've heard nothing but clickick...
off this dead-end replica piano
of a qwer
asdf
zxcvbnm

unless my shadow spoke... or there was some
telepathic connection
with the schizoid "group-think" of me
sourcing my sometime odd...
cognitive-murmors of "thought"...
"hallucinations"...
so be it...

this defence of a freedom of speech...
how does that even extend into writing?
i will never know...
and to be honest? i don't want to know...
writing is an extension of thinking...
which is also an inversion of speaking...
but it's never speaking...
where's the audio on this piece?!

how about... plucking your eyes out,
after fating yourself with the
original curiosity to begin with?
sounds better: than... what still persists as...
not being, said!

this was written, it wasn't said...
this is not a transcript...
this is not a transcript...
if this is censored...
then my... "schizophrenia" is not even
my original thesis of: bogus
mono-lingual parody of bilingualism...
no need to cite **** sapiens
jurisprudence advocates...
lawyers... the thesaurus bargain barons etc.
this is... what's those words they use?
invasion of the tabernacle?
do my "auditory hallucinations" stem from...
these words...
a private investement in internet access...
again: nothing is being said!
because this is a "public arena"...
a "forum"...
and the eyes on the other side of this text...
are c.c.t.v. eyes?!
not private eyes?

what's the point of freedom of speech?
when the freedom to think:
and subsequently write... is bombarded
by being who: see via reading braille...
and read... comments likes dislikes and all
those other ratios?

writing is an extension of a freedom
to think... most people who speak freely
don't speak via a precursor script...
that's not free speech: that's scripted speech!
and just because it happens be placed
in a public "forum"...
that's the argument that this writing
is a freedom of "speech"?!
really?! i guess your average u.s. citizen
is more despotic than the *******
president... then...

again.. blah blah blah blah blah...
blah blah.... blah blah blah blah blah...
blah... blah blah... blah blah blah blah blah blah...

you'd sooner convince a parrot to sing
you a song in sparrow than call this "debate"...
evenly focused on one or neither side "winning".
Ileana Payamps Aug 2017
I'm so confused,
I don't know what to do.
No way to elude,
No way to breakthrough.

What should I do?
What should I pick?
What's my best option?
In times like these.

I'm craving help,
I'm craving knowledge.
I'm so confused,
But these feelings I'll stoppage.
even though times are tough,
just hang in there and have faith.
i know you will get through this.
Where Shelter Oct 2017
an average human creature should such a mythical exist
in a lifetime will celebrate about 2,200,000,000 heartbeats,
billions of heartbeats per minute (I prefer moment)
but like everything so essence human there are
those very few heartbeat moments,
the ten or twenty maybe forty total in a lifetime
that you total truly remember,
recalling the cream and sauce,
swell and the hell,
of the pounding so slow so hard,
each one a volcano of
a moment until that day
you don't remember-anything

when she said yes and you're shaking and beating in a
*****-tonk rhythm cause you were heart undressed unsure
and truly afraid of a rejection that makes a heart stoppage
disallowing visions, to be exponentially happy future imagined

you're feeling your heartbeat
in your knees going weak,
when the doctor says:

congratulations healthy swell
and/or
some years later,
I'm so so truly sorry, hell

when they hand you a long handle shovel no instructions needed and that scoop of earth weighs two tons and the sound of slow reverb in your head hurts like hell and you lack the strength to move and they move you aside quiet gentle like
but inside the temple of the two headed hydra-heart,
it's the rock and roll of slo mo, the violin crying, the drumming of
heavy metal chords plucked so slowly, it's you froze screaming

a billionaire of heartbeats you are,
but only ten or twenty maybe forty total in a lifetime
you total truly remember with the perfect clarity and
forever renders into your own unique orchestral symphony,
your true net worth, the stripes you wear
upon your shoulders skin,  
the tune when you hear it and melts you into rigidity

you fall to your knees wherever you are,
that is where you will find me,
just listen for the cars horns blaring
cursing the man lying in the street, re-listening to
ten or twenty maybe forty heartbeats total in a lifetime

you alone total truly that concert set recall and
the win-loss record inherent, inhiment,
in both of them, tears and the rents, all there in the tunes,
of forty beatings you took,
somehow it feels like here is, there was,
the answers to
where is shelter for the heart,
the answers that have gone and come and gone and someone says,

I don't feel a pulse
what reading poetry is truly about: the endangered art of listening well,, a sustained exercise in empathy.
Alyssa  Nov 2013
i found myself
Alyssa Nov 2013
i found myself alone in my living room at ungodly hours of the night watching tv shows about politics and listening to poetry at the same time and trying not to say the wrong thing to tip off my friends that i want to **** myself because hey if i tell them then i can't do it and that's my problem. but then i started wonder why they're called ungodly hours. is it because god doesn't save anyone during these times? or did he just never save in the first place?

i found myself when i did not need to find myself in a higher power to find peace. how can you love someone else if you can't love yourself first? i spent an entire year researching and experimenting ways to "enlighten" myself (and i use that word lightly) and i think i finally found the way but when i introduced the idea of Buddhist meditation and chanting mantras of self healing and finding peace to my parents, my father told me i was tearing this family apart and "why can't you be normal?" and "this is not what our family believes in." and "what's wrong with the catholic church?" What's wrong with the catholic church is that i feel like a lesbian drug addict who needs massive amounts of alcohol to keep from killing herself whenever the priest looks at me, as if he can smell the gay on me like a dog who can sniff out a cancerous disease. What's wrong with the catholic church is that i feel like i'm stepping inside a political headquarters rather than praying to a god to help me not feel guilty about doing bad things and perhaps hoping he'll send something good my way even though i don't deserve it and i'm probably not going to heaven anyway because the bible told me that if i make love to another woman then i'm going to find a gathering of NHL hockey goalies in front of the pearly gates to keep me out. but my question is why people are so concerned with the sexuality of people that they aren't sleeping with, this was not the technical form of *** so i wasn't breaking two rules in one stone but i just "chose" the wrong sin. but hey, the devil said he's down to hang out with me as long as i don't mind the heat.

i found myself in the bed of a girl who always smelled like coconuts and had no respect except for herself and for me. she made me feel like i was at home even though i was miles away and didn't speak the language that well. i wanted to carve poems into the bones of her spine, she would never be able to see them but she would have the knowledge that they existed because her skin did. her existence ultimately created a contradiction for me, do i fall in love with a girl who could never love me back or am i able to stick to what my parents believe in but they'll never be happy with me anyway? i had to pick the lesser evils of the two, and she could never be evil to me. she could grab me by the throat, tell me to beg for mercy and i could reach out to shake death's hand and i would still want to kiss the fingertips the were wrapped around my neck. she could throw me down the flight of stairs and i'd still stare at her all the way down because if i were to die i want her to be the last thing i see. she could rip off my fingers at the knuckles and tie them around the christmas tree like the lights we use every year and i would still find ways to trace her body even more gently than before. she cannot cause harm to me as long as she is still within plane distance. as long as i don't have to give my life to see her again then i will always find myself in her. and even when we are dead and buried in the ground, i will swim to you like a mermaid of the soil just to be next to your bones.

i found myself when i started to get into fist fights with a god who forgot about me. i found myself when i started to call out death's bluffs, and death talked a lot of **** for a guy who couldn't follow through with anything. i found myself in the drugs and alcohol and my sudden stoppage of my use. i found myself in my yearning for death and drugs and alcohol but i found myself in my ability to say no because they only worsen my state of mind. And you only worsen me.
this is one of my favourite poems i've ever written and it's currently 2 am on the dot
It's oh in Paradise that I fain would be,
  Away from earth and weariness and all beside;
Earth is too full of loss with its dividing sea,
  But Paradise upbuilds the bower for the bride.

Where flowers are yet in bud while the boughs are green,
  I would get quit of earth and get robed for heaven;
Putting on my raiment white within the screen,
  Putting on my crown of gold whose gems are seven

Fair is the fourfold river that maketh no moan,
  Fair are the trees fruit-bearing of the wood,
Fair are the gold and bdellium and the onyx stone,
  And I know the gold of that land is good.

O my love, my dove, lift up your eyes
  Toward the eastern gate like an opening rose;
You and I who parted will meet in Paradise,
  Pass within and sing when the gates unclose.

This life is but the passage of a day,
  This life is but a pang and all is over;
But in the life to come which fades not away
  Every love shall abide and every lover.

He who wore out pleasure and mastered all lore,
  Solomon, wrote "Vanity of vanities:"
Down to death, of all that went before
  In his mighty long life, the record is this.

With loves by the hundred, wealth beyond measure,
  Is this he who wrote "Vanity of vanities"?
Yea, "Vanity of vanities" he saith of pleasure,
  And of all he learned set his seal to this.

Yet we love and faint not, for our love is one,
  And we hope and flag not, for our hope is sure,
Although there be nothing new beneath the sun
  And no help for life and for death no cure.

The road to death is life, the gate of life is death,
  We who wake shall sleep, we shall wax who wane;
Let us not vex our souls for stoppage of a breath,
  The fall of a river that turneth not again.

Be the road short, and be the gate near,--
  Shall a short road tire, a strait gate appall?
The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear,
  And Paradise hath room for you and me and all.
Chris Lazzaro Feb 2019
Wandering under
woodland leaves,
my mind confined
to winding suture lines.
Paths of pink nerve tissue
cherry blossom trees,
dendrite branches wave
in a heavy breeze.
Myline bark, an axon stump,
rooted contents of my skull
continuously growing,
a tangled plexus of
neural connections.
Twisting, turning,
a knotted blockage.
Pathways, rippled in roots,
a crossing synaptic stoppage.
A suffocating strangle,
choking corpus callosum
decaying mangle.
Branches atrophy,
shrivel and scar.
Root terminals suffer
hormonal harm.
Forest trails quick fainting
when lost in overthinking.
CK Baker  May 2017
The Sin Bin
CK Baker May 2017
Five for fighting
hands to the face
personal foul
player disgrace

Illegal contact
leap in the fray
willful head shot
leg astray

Encroachment defense
mouth guard out
roughing the passer
back field bout

Grounding the pigskin
mis-aligned
horse collar tackle
clip from behind

Knee on knee
offside end
unnecessary roughness
too many men

Gross misconduct
poke in the eye
hooking the shooter
sticks up high

Match ejection
over the top
face off folly
penalty shot

Unsportsmanlike conduct
chopping the block
slew foot infraction
hammer lock

Stick to the head
kick in the crotch
**** end jab
adhering the watch

Slashing the d-man
spearing the wing
running the keeper
back checking

Intentional grounding
stoppage in play
punching and hacking
delay of the game

Striking the ref
aggressor in fight
obstructing the line out
ear in a bite

Loss of downs
hands in the ruck
pinching and boarding
illegal upchuck

Rules of the battle
by the bye
pushing the limits
with a wink of an eye
Nothing like the playoffs!
MdAsadullah Dec 2014
Yesterday night I was there on a bus.
Road was jammed and was a muss.
Bus was empty, travelers were few.
Amidst the jam it crawled through.

Soon I got curious about two old chaps;
Sitting on seats marked 'for handicaps'.
They were different from common folk.
Without making any sound they spoke.

To talk some sign language they used.
I didn't understand and was confused.
Different ****** expression they made.
Lips and hands moved, heads swayed.

With hand they wrote on other's hand.
They savvied but I didn't understand.
On the next stoppage halted the bus.
Holding each other both left without fuss.

I looked but my vision came to a naught;
Mind got occupied with their thought.
Many languages recognized and known.
But their language had beauty of its own.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2017
with ref. with the title, i.e. my so called "poems"...
here's to tautology... it's not akin to a wd40,
but it really is akin ub40... white man dos
the reggae... wd 40? it's sometimes called
a paint-thinner...
  ub40? sometimes hailed as a nostalgia machine -
  or as we like to call it: the grey area.
the thing i mean, minus the punctuation rules,
i find to be worth a rocking horse
and an easy chair, and being aged 70 wiithout
allegiance to a crossword...
  i write: the so-called "poems",
when i can leave out the so-called and just
use the punctuation already included.
- there's already a booming industry to tell apart
saying and then writing: allegiance
          and allegience...
  æ.... graphemes aren't the basic
      units of encoded speech... had you noticed
the vowels and consonants? no? i can't do *******
with this tongue-tie other than make
bow-ties and distinctions,
or those halo-like hovering marks
above the letters known as
diacritical marks... and yes, poets
have a fear of the paragraph...
   they prefer to use the cascade verse....
i could write you a David Jacoby narrative,
or what could be worth a Copperfield-esque
cool... because it just happens...
  and i'm there to pick up the pieces
as narrator...
         but then i am of the sort of peoples
that leaves an umbrella / poem in
a crowded place,
and i leave it for reasons that can't be
far from the clerical authority of
a lost package office...
    i leave my **** where the sun don't shine,
i leave it there, just to tempt the kleptomaniac
magpie looking for a silver spoon
trying to shove it up its ****...
         and then fly... thinking it wasn't
tied down by some "obscure" anchor...
        i leave my poems in public
spaces, lest i turn to forget and not forge
a memory concern to conscript...
   a fern akin foliage of the lost tract..
and the needy footprint
needing applause with each step...
     it's no longer a case of London
being place you can be deemed as bored
and worthy of a scaffold to become
siamese worthy of an execution...
     i'm starting to think whether London
is split between Moscow and Dubai...
     and if approaching Kant's
pendulum of a priori and a posteriori...
there's the a fortiori cut in the middle...
pulverising from "a" beginning...
              and there we are, "beginning",
in concreto mort: a-,
    and that denotes: without.
death really has become a shabby piece
of furniture, a joke of keeping morals,
or needing to write a history,
of course, merely as an e.g.,
        and as an e.g. i feel no alliance towards it,
i have no desire to be "seen"...
  in a cafe, sipping coffee...
                      to be part of an insomnia that
cares no more for a a grave than it cares
for a bed, but it nonetheless roused
from each to establish heaven, or at least
dream...
  so i write my poems as if i might leave
an umbrella on a train...
      i call this kleptomania minor -
     i''m actully playing banker with it...
it's never exactly a high street with these
"exfoliations", but an alley...
  and i'm rarely found engrossed in
holding four roses... rather... clenching
four knuckles... don't know, i haven't
seen a man worth a punching bag in a long time...
  unlike my friend, who mistook me
for a punching bag, having seen his father
divorce his mother...
      landing on the moon was a bad omen...
it didn't make western civilisation
more grounded... the Islamic attacks seem to
translate as: stop exporting your "perfection",
stop your post-colonial colonisation!
    ******* never listen... what with Iraq
being a Saudi Arabian proxy-war...
what's with the delusion that the Islamic war
is somehow a unified body?
       Saudis hate the Iraqis and the Iranians
hate the Saudis...
                       the Turks are an anomaly...
except when combined with the Mongols,
situated in Uzbekistan.
the 2003 war was a proxy war...
           i held to account "democracy" when
the people marched, and left nothing
but a balloon pop indentation to be cared for
as effect akin to a stoppage...
       you had the catholics (sunnis) and
the protestants (shia)... they're not a unison
organism... they have had their own shism...
  all i can see is Iran laughing...
i can't hear anything about Shia extremism...
    orthodox Islam seems to be attacking
the protestant uptake of heretical texts found
in Egypt in 1945... it's attacking protestant
incorporation of ancient texts that neither
catholics nor the orthodox could care to accept...
   you couldn't find the nag hammadi
worked on in the underground in either a catholic
country or an orthodox country...
      that quote: you have to be cruel to be kind...
what's happening in russia is a way to say:
we need to keep homosexuality a taboo:
so we can have an artistic source...
    imagine if we gave the people what the west
gave, bypassing it all, given the science...
with a self-inflicted Behemoth idol...
        **** up north: testicles down south...
   for some reason the aylum disappeared...
     well... only because Hippocrates
    said to psychiatrists... you are inquiring into
their ailments without a cure,
                  but a desire for romantics!
well... that's called a singled out view of the world...
and anything beyond that is...
well... the world we live in.
             what is being imported isn't
exactly north african augustine - i don't know what
it is... michael jackon could better explain
his albino theory than i could explain a mirror.
K Balachandran Apr 2016
Wind,the agent of change,
         you at first was far off and distant,
                    A constant drone of bees, not much!
                       they paid no heed to those rumblings,
                  Your power was counted
                      insignificant,they kept the curtain drawn,
Down, intact, trying to
             keep you out of the house of darkness.they kept.
                    But the suppressed put
                     their ears close to the ground, listened,
Aware of your intent, they
        patiently waited, watching your unhurried advance.

Giving  talkative leaves ample chance
        to speak their heart, first, tickling trees, caressing clouds,
You changed the speed,
          rustling sound soon became persistent.
                 Shouting slogans, hand raised,
                    all the plants and trees expressed their anguish,
Insisted, a change, justice for mother nature,
           stoppage of torture of , animals, birds and bees.

Wind, you act as an unswerving  friend,
                creating awareness , is  your intent.
  and fight the rot , naked profit motive, relentlessly,
                 by now every one knows the injustice,
festering fiercely  in the core.
                               You drive the clouds and spin them about,
                                        rain by and by  gains strength
                                   It pours now in torrents, all untruth
                                      comes out in the open, face the ire,
                             the true power of the protests, eye of the storm.
Wind, you boom, give a clarion call to clean,
          revenge all the injustices, perpetrated til now.
When we were eighteen
sang the three women in chorus
and the bus burst into Spring.

When we were eighteen
they giggled and sang

the bus was a garden
the seats swings in the wind
the passengers angels and fairies

When we were eighteen
sang the three women
men beamed and the women blushed
as they broke into chorus
when we were eighteen

the ride was free
and they all stood up
their bones bellowing the chorus
their skin shining in the Spring

the child grew into eighteen
the old descended into that golden year
never knowing when their stoppage came
when one after the other they got down
and again it was a bus on the road
but with the whiff of Spring
eternal in the crimson blush
of the sun setting and rising
its engine and axle and tyres whirring in chorus
when we were eighteen
LJW May 2015
What do you do when the world stops encouraging you?
You've passed the nubile age of 18-24
you are no longer a fledgling,
in fact, long past that point.
You have no charm in terms of possible potential
you've aged out of that category
Now you are only an uncomfortable, wierd old person in the audience
and God forbid if you try to get on stage,
embarressment, boredom, pity
that is your comeuppance.

What do you do, then, when the world has no more encouragement for you?
By now you should have succeeded, or be on your comeback tour,
not still be in the gate!

Breath, hold in the hate, dissolve back into understanding, breath again.
Your chance hung there like a celluloid moment
on your twenty-third year, you were daring.
When the Midwestern plains rolled by undiscovered still
Preserved innocently in a Laura Ingels Wilder novel.

Rolling green waving grass
sunlight burning warm to my skin
sweat beads down and wets my cheaks
no where to go, everything to be.

The intellectual saddness of Camus was found by only by those diving into the abyss in search of divinity.

Bow your head, take one more breath, release...
your life had mistakes, fear, weaknesses you let rule the day.

— The End —