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Ricky Oct 2018
I see this guy at work sometimes.
He looks drained.

Eye lids halfway down.
Neck dropped.
Walking so slow, as if he wants slow down time.

To his left there are kids playing with cups, he looks at them and smiles. I guess that brought back memories of feelings of freedom.

To me freedom is having no fear.
I don’t want to fear paying bills on time, I don’t want to fear trying to create an image people would accept. I don’t want to fear the reality that maybe my life isn’t going the way I’d hoped.

I want freedom from all that.

But “realists” love to say that’s just how life goes.

In African American History class, my teacher told me that Harriet Tubman only saved about 60 slaves, and most of them were family, but there’s a quote from her that says ‘I could have saved thousands - if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.’ And that got me thinking. Back then some of those slaves probably thought that that’s just how life goes too. “That’s how things are supposed to be”

Well **** that not me.
I’ma challenge “reality.”
Maybe that’s not my reality because maybe reality can just be your own perception of it.
Mixed in with a little hard work.

So I’ll change what I listen to, I’ll change what and who I’m around because “sweet love and sunshine, if it’s all in the air, then it’s all on your mind.”
Live Ya Life.
Only one chance to get it right.
In nature
trees grow
as wide as the
roots will
allow.

At a point,
science must
surpass nature
or risk becoming
a 'nature' -unto itself.
Liberalintent Sep 2018
Dawn's golden notes stream
across barn's yellow beams
supporting stables hemming horses
cavorting cows sagging udders
melding with yellow hay
bouncing glistening pitchforks prongs
as the song begins.

Dust, glittering as if a nebula, each speck of it freed of
ground, twittering around like birds wading sound.
Spread out, as if a picture, dots of bright ethereal
in their luminescence lightened blinking out
as if frightened, but then heaving about
in the barn's barren air circulating redoubt,
sparkle yet again,
and again,
until they are drowned dark black out
by the opening of a barn door.

Little of moment's loves
Transform our precious
Frail pleasures
Into eternal loves
Unless there is a decision
to greet the old and mundane as
new,
as if dust were stars.
Kaity Sep 2018
two people
sit across from each other
they act like they're in love
but they are not in love
two children
who try to be adults
attempt to listen
but they're not listening
two lovers
struggling to live
take it one day at a time
one son
one mother
try to understand
but ignorance is not given
to those who won't understand
one dreamer
young and naïve
she's gonna change the world  
she just doesn't know it yet
    the man in the corner
    is sipping his coffee
    but he doesn't like it
    he prefers tea
        the woman over there
        is writing a novel
        she's been writing
        for three weeks
            the elderly woman
            is always alone
            almost as though
            she's waiting for another
               and the waitress
               is just trying pay
               the bills that are due
               the next day

every life is a movie
and everyone's got their struggles

but it's just another day
at the Blueside Society Cafe
D Lowell Wilder Aug 2018
There might have been a time
When I wasn’t full of fear so topped off
Like a gassy sombrero
like a burrito left in the
Sun to bake and there might have
Been a
Time
When I hadn’t yet eaten a burrito
landlocked
In New England, locked in a small state of
Fear and knowing that knowing
just isn’t
Enough.
There might have
Been
A time when luxury was a nickel
apiece paperback
Book at the Unitarian Church fall sale
to raise funds for
Their roof.
To raise their
Roof.
And there
Might
Have been a joy in my spark
Plugs,
A joy
In my canter
A Joy in
My legs that preceded my
Fears.
There might
Have
Been a time:
When I would pick one of the seven records we owned
And delicately put it on the turntable, thinking I will
Have my own money and
buy my own music.
When I idly lift the leaded paint
from the 200 year old wood
And scratch it to smell its sweet aroma.
And put my hand on the glass pane
Think hard enough and open your eyes and it will be
1838 again.
Oh where are the people?
Oh where
when there might have been a time
Did I not see who they are?
Or they did not register.
I must have watched them everyday
Observant
so keen to be seen
Is it possible to feel so much
for feeling so little?
Or did I feel gulfs of embrace
that were not there?
I wanted and I desired and I dug.
I craved and thought and speculated
and clung.
And there might have
Been
A time when I roared on my Schwinn down the long empty
Roads of my town.
Invoking our gods.
Invoking my claims.
There was a time when I stuttered with
Compassion and could
feel a touch observed
There was a time:
Across the street in a
lit house at dusk.
Their curtains are open, their lights are on.
Oh, the sun has settled down
There is that time, golden, when I
Look into your kitchen, and the wallpaper is
Blue and harvest gold with small pictures of oil lamps on
Them and your walls are mustard gold.
Your plates are unbreakable
I see them lustre in the
Overhead light, fashioned like a wagon wheel.
Guns ablazin’.
Trails awash.
There might be a time when I can slip back
Into your kitchen
lick the plates and then
Run my fingers over
the wall paper.
Tracing the outline of the oil
lamps imprinted.
Growing up in a small rural town in Vermont.  The boundlessness of it vs. the containment.
RJP Aug 2018
Nina Simone, occupying ears singing about bed and dressers.
Sparsely populated
young couple
Interrupted by saying amusements.
Only two stops
I know where to get off

I knew to mind the gap
I'm a responsible citizen
Voter with a valid railcard
Only two stops
Purchased a ticket
Only two stops
I can not throw up in that time

I can not clear my system of over-priced beer
A niche in the market
Exploited in the name of money Making let's just raise them
let's charge extortionate rates for an autoimmune disease

Paying to support a normal drinking culture embedded into the narrative
Growing by in the western world Listening to Nina Simone
Only one stop now you'd never know what life would be like

Without loud pop charts entertaining a few leaving the others yearning the return of ABBA when times were simpler and people cared about Eurovision and illegal music was your own

“Tickets please”
He seems awfully jolly for a late night ****-shift on Arriva Trains Wales
Who's making him work and why's he So ******* happy about it
Real extra effort! Soul sapping in my opinion
Last stop gotta get off.
This is one's for any of the Welsh here.
a white coat of frost
covered the spindly grass
near our town's river
out toward the east
a heavily laden cloud brow
poured down its rain
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