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A B Dec 8
Thousands lie in rows, for years,
Brewing with impressionistic tastes,
Making their debuts all the time,

Or are they clinking and rolling out, until
A poster is discoloured down the range, or
Someone's back painted red.

But in honesty, I don't get what you mean here.

Because while
It's true I'm ageing a little slow for my liking,
I'm not sobering up, yet I wasn't drunk to start,
Yes, I'm being a little too selfish,
And I guess I have played paintball before,

You see
I don't seem to need to hit the metaphor,
Or play on words, or wonder,
Any more.

Will I be able to wander as I get older? Either I'll mull myself to senility, or maybe I'll get a hole in my foot.
Ayesha Jan 2023
Shy
minaret, matte in haze
an illusion of detail
you, Impressionism
your bricks clasp each other
intricately, intimately
without hesitation or sense

lips of red and suave craft
tilt:
pyre suddenly

I step back

I can fathom you
from here only
04/01/2022
Norman Crane Sep 2020
Three poplars grow along the river bank,
Three poplars reflected in the current,
Past is paint and the future is a blank
Canvas framed with poplar wood recurrent,
Reeds sway silently,
Tree trunks climb crooked,
Colors blur like smoky clouds unfurling
Colors blurring cloudy smoke rings spread
Across a pastel sky. Autumnal swirl
in kingly golden glow—presages:
Brush be quick / the sun dips / the light changes
Capture it before it rearranges!
Inspired by Claude Monet's painting Poplars (Autumn) from 1891.
Anthony Pierre Dec 2019
Its eighteen months since her delivery
Now she is penning odes ostensibly
Crayons in both hands: she is standing tall
What Dada says? "No writing on the wall."

With great care baby writes her graffiti
Not much untouched by her audacity
He tries to compromise with a new book
but baby says, "Daa Daa"; with a stern look

He has to admit the walls are hers now
Filled with scribbles and a chromatic cow
Its her version of Van Gogh's Starry Night
without the stars; a novice oversight

She's more surreal than Salvador Dali
The writing's on my wall: Pure Graffiti
Graffiti: Writing on My Wall
Lenz Nov 2019
Sometimes you can hear not with ears, but with a skin: with your fingers on fabric, with your hair sinking thought the palms, with your muscles on anxious joints.

Sometimes you can hear not the music, but emotions. Words, voices, harmony, rhythm, — all of them are spiralling into one multidimensional Rubik's Cube; all of them are thickening into a rich hodgepodge of colours; and then you can’t understand if the drums are ringing inside of your brains or if the song itself is closing its eyes with joy.


Sometimes you can hear nothing.

And nothing can sometimes hear you.


Today you hear winter.


Being on the ground floor it’d be like being outside.

Your elbows are on a windowsill. Your droopy eyes are chained to a sleepy late-night path.

You are therefore one short step from that path: just breathe and touch the earth with your cosy socks. The earth is chubby because of yesterday’s raindrops.

Smells like roaring lorry. Hears like water and warm winter.


The colour palette is in shades of a half past four morning.


On the opposite side of your street your neighbour still keeps Christmas: the garland made of white-blue lights flickers during four finger taps, and is lit during three. One-two-three-four, one-two-three. You can almost hear ‘Fantaisie Impromptu’ by Chopin. Right. Four. Left. Three.

That white-blue trembling sneaks into puddles along with the low smiles of lanterns further down the block. The blue glow is dancing, the copper illumination is dearer.


The cat runs — grey mouse — grey stain — on the canvas.


The windows are like card backs in Tarot spread on the walls like on the tables.

The windows are mirrors, and the mirrors are caves.

The windows run with perspective.

With the cat.


Tell us, sky! Do you exist? Have you been always franking us? Both on the left, both on the right one cannot find a difference. Your colour is lullabying.

Your colour is dual; at first glance it’s pure blue-plum gouache, but looking closely… The sky is scarlet. Scarlet as a wisp of a tapestry.

The scarpestry breaks through plumouache.


Suddenly a little white twinkle hops into winter, and suddenly dies.


Your heart has grown to your tongue root and to your little alcove under your ribs, and the heart is writing-writing-writing, and is escorting passing cars, and is fuming-fuming-fuming, and is sweating like in a sauna.

It’s dribbling outside.



Homely.


Nothingly.
Max Mar 2019
At fortnight it awakes and grows
It runs between a shoe and toes
It hisses, rustles, up it goes
And resonates

It softly comes, it quietly leaves
Behind a knot one can unweave
In hundred ways

The mist that falls upon the lawn
On summer days

Then, in the hour before the dawn
It resonates

Its tongue is pretty poor for words
It speaks instead in subtle chords
No one can play

There, in the shades, black, blue and green
There, in the cut between the scenes
There, where it hardly can be seen
It resonates
Derrek Estrella Dec 2018
Nothing but a forlorn pain
Phantoms of art
Snake charmers
Larva tamers
“Free Me from the sun”

Helicopter steed
Blaring Gjallarhorn
Crystalline ammunition
Shrub-like heads
Civilian militants

Snake charmers, take my hands
Sting them once again
Render me strong and heartless
Tend to my obsidian horn
It grows longer as the sun subsides

Blood on the papers
Christened for television
Whitened crusade
Negotiation for control
Count your blessings

Arm the hangars
Send the reserves
Whip the cavalry
Watch the nation
Watch them bleed again
Derrek Estrella Dec 2018
On the evening of August 6th
The body is separated, eviscerated
Stone walls
Lost thralls
A family takes their evening stroll
And finds themselves imprisoned
Their umbilical cord, cut down the half
Microwave oven
Searing monsoon shower
Vagrant feet are shackled
Eyes are blinded with exhaust pipes
The East is not allowed to cry alone
Decay, wail on
Wail on
Contain us
Dear Marcus, free me
From these Pyrrhic victories
Clean this dusky mall
I feel safe under phosphoric lights
Guerillas swing on electric wires
Transatlantic conversations
Acquired on paper
Perverse
Desecrated
Red cloth seizes everything
Stray, running felines
The impassioned, waving flag
Kept in a velvet pocket
Stay here, stay a while
This cold era is a rising draft
The Bermuda Triangle
Quarantined
No more ships crawl along the winded shore
A time capsule
The nation sinks into antiquity
The brink of armageddon
Cusp of oblivion
Crimson hand of eternity
An old, whittled clock
Last minute
Cold Turkey!
God almighty
Peace is never promised
But we may yearn again
Nobody is free
But we are safe for another hour
God almighty
Leases on the lands
Paid in thorns
Nations playing circles
Mr. Versus Mr.
An ever-changing world
Stagnant and tightly oiled
Save this soil
It will cave in silence
The clockmaker sits in the backdrop
Readying her tools
Nick Stiltner Jul 2018
They sing from along the path,
lined like torches would, evenly spaced.
A hazy wood surrounds me,
swirling trees and melting hues
of a late summer afternoon,
fiery colors dancing and melding together,
flowing to the next,
cream in a Sunday morning roast.

The colors, the chimes
they illuminate my stumbling journey,
my tottering travel.
I stop and catch a gaping breath,
bent over, panting, and begin to listen.

The wind pushes the trees,
it sounds the chimes colliding ring,
it exists in flux,
rising in singing ascent
and exhaling in a comforting sigh.

Drifting down the path,
I separate and regenerate
With each glitching step forward
my face distorts, rearranges.

What is the source of verse, of thought?
Rehearsal, a precursor who holds us like
a ventriloquist through time, or is it just
a keen ear for your minds own
singing wind chimes?
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