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Josephine Wild Sep 2023
I am just me.
A single being.
A beginning and an end.

I am just me.
An individual.
My character and personality and morality belong to myself.

I am just me.
A human alone.
My heart is mine alone to own.

I am just me.
A person all my own.
My worth terminates in myself alone.
Feeling the sense of self during meditation. It’s just me and nothing else matters.
only two dancers
remain standing
shuffling
   and swaying
under syncopated lights
held by
an unspoken law
an apparently unavoidable
trait of human nature
that forces them
to continue despite
such terrible choices
of song
and persistence
each was merely
a "friend
   of the bride"
moving in different circles
prior to this
their dancefloor meeting
unfortunately
neither can now
abandon the other
to dance alone
to risk being seen
as the cause
for bringing this
near-sacred ritual
to an end
these residual bodies
left with no choice
but to mirror
each movement
match every sidestep
echo every clap
with rhythm
   or without
it will not matter
so long as this
transient solidarity
of misplaced confidence
and forced smiles
continues into
the next song
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2022
How many poems does one individual contain?

Ahh you say!

Why unlimited are our of-coursing emotional exhalations,
our sighted and insighted sparks
like forest fires they come ad infinitum!

THEN the mind’s eye blinks, then word blindness follows
in phased arrays of
gaps that cannot always be easy pencil filled, permanent inked,
as locked and closeted,
and put away in a glass jar of formaldehyde.

I see, I feel, I hear, I read and react;
a notion,
a title born,
perhaps even a line or two follow-on scratched and etched,
even refetched
but followed then
by the deafening quietude of a stillbirth breeched
 fetus,
the emptiness of a blanketing blank,
a glance too short,
a foam extrusion whitening the spark into nothingness,
the death of a poem in a forest…

and you can’t care!

more such wordless poems have I buried than the
talkative children I’ve birthed,
old age delimits me now, my eyes failing, my hearing lessening,
the senses eroding, and worse, the frustration morphs
NOT INTO caring,
for the days of wine and roses, the mid-of-night urgency of
try, try poetic ****** is now a sinful spilled residue
on the wooden floor,
crumpled sheets of spermatozoa failure to perform…

the wastebasket
is a into a silo of mockery, a self-administered glass shot
of saltwater, bitter herbs, lamentations, an impassable gateway nominally know as 502, a wide, emptied moat of “haha on you!”

thus an answer forms,
there is no endless, growing,
inhumanly impossible trumpeting crescendo voice that doesn’t falter, eventually!
a petering out, a tangled, gordon knot of a shoe-laced Nat voice that cannot be untied by creaking fingers that scream ¡no más!

Even though
you believe, you yet possess the tools, though well worn smooth,
the belt lies heavy on the hips and its removal a welcoming
enlightening!

let me abide in peace, trigger me not, and the
answer is and always had been, this one, or the next one,
or the one prior is perhaps the finale, you will never know,
and if you do,
you will never permit yourself to utter aloud,

terminé et terminé!

in sæcula sæculorum imperf!

forever and forever unfinished finish!

!last one out, turn off the light!
10-30-2022
as they
shuffled by
she told her friend
“i always look
forward to this
time of year
when the first
tinge of yellow
touches the leaves
with the contrast
between shade
and sunshine
a comparison
of polar opposites
where a gentle breeze
can chill
or relieve
one making you
appreciate the other
once it has gone”
i couldn’t help
but take note
of her poetic words
as i surveyed
those same trees
glad to see
swaying hues
of green against
shadow-dappled green
feeling fingers
of sunlight
still breaching
filigree tree-shadows
to warm the skin
of passers-by
while overhead
a pastel blue sky
mottled with only
staccato wisps
of gentle stratus
paint the vista
leaving thoughts
of the days to come
when this spectrum
will shift
and these colours
must change
Lalaouna Amina Jan 2022
Trivia Snippets?
Garlic, Onion, and Potatoes
  (Small List in The Kitchen)
Thyme or Mint
  (Every Night Drink)
Full Names of Poets
  (Long list on The Desk)
at midnight
Lalaouna Amina Dec 2021
when everybody knows everything
yet
none feels a thing
colleagues' talk
Lalaouna Amina Dec 2021
I salute his audacity
He stands and utters
'You are pretty'
on my way back home
Lalaouna Amina Nov 2021
A working-class culture demands
A Male teacher and A Female learner.
The teacher's framework:
  high, conter, shock
(cultural)
The learner's profile:
  acceptance, patience, tolerance (humane)
The medium:
Living in Britain (besides a whole setting of temptation)?
Visiting Britain (with a firm sensation).
The threat of change, mobility, then?
None (A Home).
You are rich (superficially)?
I am;
I am the most average, common, person you may ever know in Khenchela (I am proud of being Algerian).
in culture and civilization class
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