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Man Mar 6
I walk alone
For the sake of everyone I love and know
For the blush of unspoiled fruit
So we can walk out into the sun
Freemen and not slaves
So we can get out from under the thumb
Of oppressors who seek to keep us down,
For the Americas
My Americans
For her siblings, allies of dear note to
Fair Lady Columbia
For all that share in the rays of the cosmos
My friends, nature is so beautiful
And once was so full, in this world
Of all the things gone extinct
It is less they do not control
Remember, you too are an animal
Our hands are tied, and most don't know
Zack Ripley Feb 25
History is like a mirror;
the closer you look,
the more you'll see things
that you don't want to see.
The more distorted the picture becomes.
But, if it's your history you're looking at,
the distortion offers a rare chance.
A chance to change the way
you look at your past.
Carlo C Gomez Feb 25
Life is war,
my hands are hypnagogic,
so far from refuge.

The purgatory salesman,
an enemy with antlers,
speaks in hostile slogans:
create, destroy, rebuild, repeat.

My friend coma,
blunted and paranoid,
has lost her vital signs.

But Television says differently,
calls this an elegant demise,
you touch the screen
like you're touching God.

The immortal world
I'm hoping to collide with
is beautiful and closed to resistance.

But there are cracks in everything,
the snowglobe army
granular and brittle,
the constant uncertainty
of your universe
becomes a hiding game.

Take me with you
my halation angel,
to migration salvation.

We made our history
into mythology,
a mass of disconnected facts,
the stars may be dead,
yet, we're here
and we've stopped time.

Tonight I'm breaking
through the gates,
tonight I can see around corners,
suddenly, forever makes sense.
Piotr Balkus Feb 8
Every death is unexpected,
takes us always by surprise.
Darkness always falls so heavy
from the red Pompeian skies.
Never ready for her visit,
she will come to take your life.

Even if the holy fire
comes to wash your sins at night,
it will wake you up and frighten,
it will make you run for life.
Suddenly, without a warning,
all your dreams and hopes will die.

Young or old - it doesn't matter,
man or woman, noble, slave,
saints and sinners, bankers, poets
will end up in the same grave.
Our bones won't be discovered,
unless by an accident.

Everyone has the volcano,
sitting over their town.
One day it'll unleash inferno,
even when it's quiet now.
It will follow you, if happens
you decide to leave, move out.

Every death is unexpected,
takes us always by surprise.
Even if you say I'm ready,
you will run and try to hide.
But there will be no escape
from the red Pompeian sky.
Spicy Digits Feb 7
She is the witch they burned 

The compassion they purged

The expert they scoffed

The healer they refused

The lover they daily used 

The dark night pathologised

The divine objectified 

The artist they buried

The joke they stole

The house they made smaller 

The teacher they silenced

And the outlet of their violence.
Jeremy Betts Jan 20
Maybe this non dairy rocky road was already laid out for me like some kind of haphazardly tossed together destiny of unfathomable tragedy
Or maybe I was too afraid to look too closely or venture too far from safety
Didn't see the blame had shifted dramatically, mostly to me, but how wrong can one guy possibly be?
And yet still I will admit, there's a possiblity the mentality I harbor is mostly negativity manifesting this reckless trajectory
No way to know for sure cause the final copy sent to the publisher was never run by me
So maybe, just maybe, it's some combination of these three, and everything you don't see but what pushed the first domino is beyond me
Can't jog my memory, the good, the bad and the ugly all lost to ancient history, constantly looked over, over and over to the point of obscurity
There's no money so follow the calamity of the paper back story, it's short and gory
Densely packed and stacked with everything that would make someone uneasy
Only pain and shame, no glory, not even a hole, boxed in and been lonely for 40
My future is solely based on what I've done previously
Most might say, "uh, yeah, obviously" but it can get tricky
With a little creative liberty taken to push the limits of an already worn down psyche
Me, myself and I, a split personality or just a not so holy trinity?

©2024
~
Bring your whirlwinds with you;
in the snow angel summer
bring Margot the sun.

In the hour of red glare
a rush to pick slowberries
before getting caught up in the silk.

Prisms, mirrors, lenses!
strategies for combatting visibility:
keep your eyes closed,
face away from the window.

The myriad threads of people in hiding,
they eat their own web each day,
and yet something always shines
in the heart's secret annex.

Men and women are
separated from each other,
the girls are on a train
to the Bergen-Belsen,
"white founts falling
in the courts of the sun."

Margot now cries quietly;
so silently she weeps over
sunshine and hate.

~
"white founts falling in the courts of the sun" is a line from 'Lepanto' by G. K. Chesterton (1911)
The good ole days were enjoyed with ease,
There was more to enjoy because of disease;
There were fewer people to dress and feed
Thanks to child mortality.


The middle-class were few and greedy,
Thanks to rampant poverty;
We could find work and be employed,
But tenure turned to workplace injury;
Illiteracy was common,
Innumeracy, our fate,
Due to the high-school drop out rate;
Polio and smallpox kept in check
The burgeoning growth of the unelect;
Minorities knew their social place,
Jim Crow was voting in black face;
Heteros ruled the ****** race,
Alphabet people were an outlier trace;
In summer and winter we were outplayed and beat,
With no Air Conditioning nor Central Heat.

Let's leave the past in the past,
There where history belongs;
Where hunger and sickness,
Lasted life-long,
With the poverty and ignorance
The minority prolonged.

We can agree times were simpler then,
But time came rushing to our quick end.
Alphabet people are LGBTQA+
Duane Kline Jan 1
Trying to learn
Something from the
Past
Is a funny way to spend the
Future.

We look back
At the beauty,
Seeking the safety
Of our imaginations,
Knowing memories of
Other Lives
Can shield us
From the pain
Of our own
Biography.

You long to sit
In classrooms,
Captaining other minds
Through the fogs
And mists
That shroud memory.

The light you bring
Can illuminate
Or blind.
Sometimes, a dimmer light
Is better
To see through
The fog.

Glance backward,
Don't stare.
The future,
Glorious and clear
Awaits.
For Aaron
1/1/24
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