Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
“where time is the fly and age the fisher of men”

<>

”until I fell forward
into fall where time is
the fly and age the fisher
of men, then when winter
begins all will be forgotten,
where time is the fly and
age the fisher of men”


excerpt from “The Fall” by Rick Richardson

<>

that words from a different ionic state, jump as embodied ions from screen to the throat, evicting a guttural current of exclamation, you believe even with the half-heartedly palpitations from  remainder of my damaged pumping heart, that these words were always intended, just for me…

boy and old man coexist, the pottage of memories stirred,
and the time is fly, and I drown in the miracle of greenest grass of
Yankee Stadium at age eight,
oasis, heaven, a child reborn in a sea of Bronx concrete,
and the swallowing up of my boyhood is forever marked henceforth, the hook has caught me, and I am of the age
once and forever


not a fisherman, but a fisher of men’s souls,
mine own is my best bait,
hooked line and sinker, and
wisdom and words
elude and delude always, 
 like summer is perpetual and aging a construct,
time does not fly, but slowly laps and waves
eroding our myths and ourselves upon a continuum with
no ends

~postscript~

<>
yet I believe,
in miracles of
fish and loaves,
and that our individual continuums
will exist beyond the artifice of constraints
of
mortal time and that poems are
the forever chemicals within
our
bloodstreams,
even when our blood no longer spills


yet I believe!
a tribute to one of the best poets around
the isle is surrounded,
one if by day, and
too by night,
a thickening paste
of fog, condensed humidity,
and the mind smiles that
interloper explorers would sail
past by us, unawares,
for the waters are merely a
dirtier shade of green grey,
a "path" to follow and we
would be spared the noisy
pollution of politics and
and injections of identity
that divide, the tirades of
the overly righteous chest
beaters, who never question
their certainty, their compasses
always broken pointing their
"only one way"

sail on, sail past. this piece of
quiet tranquility, a place that
has just one of everything, a
sufficiency, a rejection of excess,
and the only melancholy is
the finality of passing of
the day lillies,
b u t,
the multi-colored irises, the
flowering of azaleas, rhododendrons, and the brevity
of the cheery cherry blossoms
of those;
secure, safe we are, assured that
their peaceful return is guaranteed
by the firmament and its secrets,
that, along with the overwhelming
greenery of this spot, for the
pleasuring enjoyment of all,
even the fog's quietude,
its surround sounds silences the anxious rapid heart beating,
slowed by one thought only:

Here,
herein is,
here within
lies the truths of
shelter

S. I. 2025
"As if everybody knows
What I'm talking about,
As if everybody
would know
exactly what
I was talking about"

Paul Simon
<><><>

test the hypothesis,
get out the glass beakers,
mmmmix the acid and the base,
wear those rubber gloves
and with goggles on,

always paying penpal attention,
we have the first aid kit and
the fire extinguisher
nearby
and handy

As if everybody
would know
exactly
what
I was talking about

what
I am talking about
is self~care
and on a dare,

whispering,,
a modest scream,
an ego soul statistic~all
@it's ok,
"love thyself"

everybody
knows,
...as if...
....as if....
April 14 3025
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Arthur Benjamin Franklin: my Unca Artie, my favorite. A High School football star, known as Red Franklin, he was famous for his dark red hair.  He used to chuck me into deep water at Chrystal Pool to terrify me for 5 seconds, then hoist me onto his broad shoulders.I suspect I was his favorite too.  War came and he had to go.  I cried and cried on the herringbone patterned bricks at the train depot in Kelso. I have a v-mail he sent to my mom, his sister, dated 1942.  He was a belly gunner on the B-17’s that  were flying the area where Rommel was fighting.  He brought my sis and I back little leather suitcases, tooled in wonderful designs by a skilled artist somewhere in the orient. I still have it.  A treasure.

Grover Cleveland Franklin: My suave uncle, joined the Navy in WWII and became a deep sea diver. The kind that wore those heavy suits with the big glass bubble head.  He helped detect and destroy mines around battleships.  In doing that brave work he lost his hearing and came home as a lip reader for most of my childhood. I was always  a bit suspicious because he seemed to read lips so well. He even got written up in the newspaper because he could sing while putting his hands on a phonograph and feeling the vibrations of the music he couldn’t hear. We kids would always try to make loud noise behind him but he never once reacted to it.
Many years later I learned that he confessed that his hearing had gradually came back.  He was a hero nevertheless.

About their names: Both being born in North Carolina, back in the 1920’s it was common practice among the country folk to name sons after famous people.  I also have another distant relative named George Washington Franklin. I love having hillbilly DNA.
So proud of them. Ordinary Americans who did extraordinary things.
 Mar 27 Still Crazy
Nylee
It's a reality when it is observed
It is unreal if no one sees
Even imaginary is unreal
but feels as if it is not.
If real is not real, why do I feel
we are running to acquire nothing
Are we onto something being
driven to see nothing sticks for long enough
If what I have doesn't make me happy
I manifest things with great yearning
But when I acquire, it just loses its lustre
Becomes painfully ordinary, are we onto anything?

we are participating in this life
It is real or fictitious, maybe both
we perceive it in our mind
Likely we have different insights
The echoes of our actions in a fleeting sound,
We bark out like a wounded hound.
We chase the shadows, of a promised light,
And grasp at substance, that dissolves in night.
The questions linger, in this hollow space,
Is meaning woven, or a fleeting grace?
Perhaps the journey, is the only truth we find, we are onto nothing,
A constant searching, of a restless mind.
Children in the fields of green
Play by morning light,
A depiction of pure innocence
Cannot, more, be right.

ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ
Arachnidal in it's way
It preaches it's mantra
To the massed disciples
Gathered adoringly,
In the bright, bright
Political bunting.
ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ

When old men sip their whiskey
In dark corners by the fire
Red memories float softly by
On wings of old desire.

ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ
Menace in it's rhetoric
Invoke a tarantula's reaction....
For this is what
The adoring came to hear.
ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ

By swinging lamp a rising gale
Cause tortured leaves to swirl
In courtyards paved and soulless
To a distant bagpipe's skirl.

ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ
Sleek in it's element
Of gathered confidence,
Stillness in it's menaced allure,
Eight hairy black legs,
Eight black beaded eyes,
Enbalm the enraptured masses
In it's web of words....
In it's tale of twisted torment.
ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ

Sleeping hounds in alcoves
Rouse amidst bad dreams
For the Gods of causal legacy
Diverge from what now seems.

ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ
The Assassin strikes
The tarantula rears back
In massive defence....
Fangs bared,
Talons raised in fury.
Angry invective of outrage,
Screeching arachnidal fury.
ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ
The crowd applaudes,
Despite the fear,
The crowd applauds
Cheering on
The fighting outrage
Of it's idol
ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ

A panic in the battlements
Humanity in flight,
Chaos as the shots are fired
Red blood now in sight.

ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ
Wounded it retreats
To the sanctury
Of a tangle
Of Secret Service arms and legs
And the refuge
Of an armoured limosine.
ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ

Harsh questions quash reality
Considerations die,
Those discords to disharmony
Now shred a burning sky.

ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ
Writhing in tarantular outrage
But safe
And wearing the bloodied cheek
Like a flag.....
In front of live television
Broadcaste,
Immediately worldwide ???
ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ
AND BY GOD......
WHAT AN ELECTORAL COUPE
TODAY HAS BEEN....
IN PENNSYLVANIA!!!
ᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣᾣ

Tomorrows order, lost to ruin
As cursed as the plague,
Discarded ****** vanquishment
Intangible and vague.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
An irregular dissertation of my jaded observation of yesterdays pantomime.
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  On the Events of 13 July 2024

                                                  …that we but teach
****** instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th’ inventor. This even-handed justice
Commends th’ ingredience of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.

                                    -Macbeth I.vii.8-12
I too will go to you, says the son
to the face of the father.

He broadens his smile
thin and gathering dust for long
as if to acknowledge
he always knew
one day his son would stand before him
resigned and weary
willing to join on his route.

The son sees his father's lips
move in the briefest prayer..

Welcome.
Next page