Retreating from
  weighty day of toil
I settle my slack
  on tailored sprawl of lawn
Compressed soil radiating ;
  tapped battery
  of a day's warmth
Life is raised through my cartridge
  I stretch out
  receiving reptile charge

Aimed shyly
   at the expansive dark bedding of night sky
     speckled
         pierced
     pecked at with pinholes...
each emitting brilliance
firing out fuel
  exhaust from further worlds
                less adulterated than our own

There is a correspondence
  amongst the insects in the grass
  ticking, clicks and tats
  like static amongst laundry
There's a great correspondence out there
  in the night sky

here am
   invulnerable human
    suburban and secure
   belly...

a cross draft
   from the open basement window
              invades me
eggy sulphur burping from the drains
an organic degassing from below my house

: Betrayed ! 

my feeling passes
the stars behave stagnant
       and dismissive of me
; withholding glove oblivion ;
the clouds step in
  like a quick curtain
  over some 'lewd private show'
(must I pay more
                  to see more ?)
My world is kept restrictive
; a muzzling

I bare the weight still
      of the days wetter ill
Better off indoors
        filtered
            of my own dander
and projected upon
        by a feeding screen

Green grass, silver chain,
a low, slate sky waiting to rain.
My Golden Retriever finishes her yawn,
sits up, and takes off like a shot
towards the far end of the lawn.
In one, long wave the fine mesh links
are played out until the line yanks taut.
The dog never learns. My heart sinks.

From "Bird's Nest In Your Hair" by Brian Jobe

indistinctively I took a hasty step
the ground below my feet rumbled
balancing my way on a thread like lawn
comprehending how it's like to be free

thoughts corrupting my mind
compulsive actions I do like mime
I ask myself countless of times
is there an end to this
once upon a time?

Grow wild
Grow free
Mowed down again
Controlled by what tears you down
Try to fertilize
Pollinate
Cannot stop the blades

Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here—among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire—
"What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?"

Keywords/Tags: death, sentence, dead, cemetery, graveyard, mausoleum, corpses, manicured, lawn, flowers, pink, petals, blue, sky, red, sunset

My misgivings hide among the shadows,
In the tangle of long grass along the hedgerow
Between your wide open fields and my cultivated lawn.

Unspoken truths crowd out the spring bulbs,
Now snarled with weeds and thorned with blackberry,
The cobbled pathway which once linked my hope with your promise.

Will you meet me at the gate by the old sycamore tree?
If yes, then bring your dreams, untethered, and the dappled autumn sunshine,
I will bring my careful notions and the soft spring rain.

Prim roses and wild lilac; a velvet ash and sweet chestnuts,
Your gypsy summer, my redbud winter,
Our season, one garden.

She smiles at me,
baring twenty teeth and thousand arms,
towering in the grass.

Round her crowds men - spokes of men,
eyeing and climbing for her youth
Young and fearless her children are,
and so is she,
locking her steel-coated arms
tight on her children.

Les they be careful
the sun will shine on their homes
and Spring will take them away -
cajole with his sweet talk,
lead with his loud mouth.
Four by four, the blossomed children
leave their mother, who
doesn't hear a word.

On river banks and narrow creeks,
on closing books and lovers' looks,
on baskets and gardens,

the powdered children will soar and
their mother will be waiting
where they are.