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Rebecca Bates Feb 2019
Standing on the shoreline of a smooth unmoving pond
Stars mirrored in deep silver, serenely desolate
Venus cupped exactly in the waxing crescent’s core
The water, black and soundless, boundless, starkly infinite
Inseparable, we watched entranced. Together on the shore.

We stepped into the cool smooth water, calmly, hand in hand
Effortlessly sliding in the soundless silver pond
And underneath that water, silent, absolutely still
Our desires were extinguished. Our aching hearts erased
In the utter quiet comfort of the water's cool embrace

... This I do remember. The rest, you know by heart
How this ever spinning world will in due time, illuminate
What the dark had hidden. The white hot stone within
The deepest core of dreaming. And all our days defined
By desire. Our hearts clamour. But we're never satisfied.

And I wonder, does it matter, in the gritty dragging days
Boredom laced from time to time by yearning, sharp and hot
Does it matter to distinguish what's illusion and what's not?
If I can summon back a single flash of that dark water
Why not **** time in trying? I'd rather love than not.

And you, of course. Unshocking, that swift flicker of surprise
The striking disappointment as precisely, midnight chimes.
And the masks are lifted. So I ask you, what’s the difference
If I’m entranced by man or mask? Illusion or existance?
Wherever pleasure’s sought is for the seeker to decide.

When my heart’s unquiet, loud with longing and desire,
Defiantly I seek you. Not vanquished, not quite yet
Tick by tick receding. But I insist on keeping this:
Inseparate underwater, serenely intertwined
A distant hint of feeling. Thus is my keen heart satisfied.
Filomena Nov 2018
it feels pretty strange
being called by a phrase
that isn't my name
Filomena Nov 2018
My mind is a prison.
I can read the sign, but it wasn't mentioned in the manual.
Just sigh and move on.
Paul Butters Oct 2017
Alliteration and assonance
Are what we need to make words dance.
Pretty poetic practices percolate the page,
As apples happily meet our approval and appreciation.
Words have music
As surely as the sun
Gives light.
And all these things
Are older than the hills.

Paul Butters
First 2 lines were writen 10\10\2013, so I just carried on......
Julia Aug 2017
My knuckles look like coke and roses
The winter bit them hard; they cracked
I **** on them; they bleed their noses
I fear they are forever chapped

My knuckles look like milk and lipstick
Dressed in cream and Vaseline
I'm oiled up so says the dipstick
With pink supreme silk gasoline

My knuckles look like wine and diamonds
I deck them out most everyday
They never mind the crime and violence
I keep them moist with Tanqueray

My knuckles look like snow and crowbar
They finally just had enough
I tried to run; I didn't go far
My knuckles, unlike me, are rough
I got into a fight with the curb on which I cry.
Cate Jan 2017
Whispering eternally into the void
Hoping internally
It can turn the black
churning bile of thoughts
into incandescent showers,
specific epiphany.

Lately, I've been laden
with the epitome of anomaly.
Loner labotomy,
living in self devised autonomy
A private economy of thoughts,
exchanging deranged for sane

Only to flip back again
Turn around, full swing
Indignant incantations ring,
Echoing down the corridors


This skeletal paradigm
Of rusted pipes
I've unwittingly installed
above once placid pools,
A wellspring for many muses.


Caught in a rift of dimension
Words begin to leak
Without direct intention
And with little attention for the details
My thoughts quickly become words
That derail more than just a conversation.
My hesitation to engage
Is a fair wage for holding my silence
Tightly,
But the precarious musings of my mind
Must tumble out to spite me.


I tried cutting out my tongue to save face
But a poet who can't speak is a disgrace.

1.8.2017
C.e.M.
Jim Marchel Sep 2016
You are the moon that is moored in the sky
And the moonshine that shimmers against Atlantis' cloak
So vivid, yet so pale
And I begin to wonder if you're alright
Up there, all alone atop the world.

Is it better to be carefully propped on a celestial pedestal for all men to indulge,
Or to be chaotically plunged
Into a sea of solitude and peace?

You are much wiser and older, my dear;
Is it true that
Beauty lies
In the eye
Of the beholder?
I have been told that beauty cannot be trusted...but I've yet to even find it in this world.
Cate Sep 2016
Strawberry sun
hot on swaying hips

a shimmer of skin,
sultry beacon of temptation.

Days smear in sweat
and grass stains.

Twilight carries dusty toes
a few steps further.

Legs dangling, lonely
top of rusted tower,

Moon whispering
“come and kiss me”.

Languid laughter lilts
lining ancient constellations

Space(s) [is] filled
By our separation.

Cicadas croon,
Biding elusive slumber,

dawn’s yellow tendrils grasp eyelashes,
rays morph into rivers of light.

Time, the illusion of a tether;
A notion of perpetual motion

Adrift an absent-minded sea,
Hazy, evasive sleep

Our ropes will fray
in wisps and waves of heat.

C.e.M.
31082016
fun piece I wrote for a competition
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