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MV Blake May 2015
Is it odd that I hate tree stumps?

I mean, really, is it just me?
Is there something wrong with me?
I walk past them on the roadside
And something seems to break free.

I feel tense and taut;

A green branch pulled tight
On the saw edge of a gardener’s knife,
Peeling back one fibre at a time.
I can’t stop it to save my life.

It makes my skin crawl

To see the corpse left jutting up
Like the last tooth of a diseased crone,
Like a tag on the skin of the earth,
A drying scab to make the mother moan.

Couldn’t they just dig it up,

Or is that too much to ask?
Not enough to slay the ancient tree,
But to leave it lying on the ground;
Like leaving the foot of an amputee.

It makes me so mad

That I wonder I don’t complain,
But then I know a letter will be ignored,
As the death of such a mighty sentinel
Is a thing our conscience can afford.

It’s not like it was alive…

But the sarcasm doesn’t matter,
And the funny looks I get while I weep
Sink like the teeth of a saw,
Cutting through the body at my feet.

Am I the only one who hates tree stumps?
Please comment, like, share.  All critique welcome, though constructive is always preferred.
If you were a coloring book,
I would be mad,
That after opening the cover,
There's no spaces left for me to color.

If you were water,
I would freeze you,
Immobile,
And gently stroke my fingers across your surface.

If you were wooden,
You'd be the finest sculpture,
That I would burn with every touch in every crease,
And leave ashen.

If you were an egg,
I'd take the utmost care to not drop you,
And the only place I would break your shell,
Is at the bottom where I'd fit perfectly.

If you were a string,
I'd tie you up tightly around me,
So that you could never leave me,
And I could always feel you on my skin.

If you were lava,
I would gladly burn off my flesh,
And I wouldn't hesitate to go inside you,
Because I'm used to feeling you down to my bones.
In response to WickedHope's poem "If I Were An Egg".
Eleanor Rigby Oct 2014
Wooden hands
Bruising random shapes
On my bare thighs.
Wooden hands
Leaving me covered
In rainbow lies.

And when wooden hands
Cross my mind,
They come in the form
Of sunshine.


F.Z.N
Clare McCullough Jun 2014
False words fall out of wooden mouths
Mouths hungry As they breath soot, singing with flame
their want overpowers
The strings shift, pulling the limbs up and around
dastardly deeds done by devils
In one bright, rainless, warm, non-sombre and cloudless morning of April 2014,
Skirmishes began at ten in the morning, among the roaming street children
As if they were only playing hopscotch among themselves, and their mates,
It was an unfolding in the dust filled non tarmacked streets of Lodwar town,
Town located in the savannah desert belt of north western Kenya,
A non local police man who was on patrol shot dead a rioting local,
A hungry local had attempted to ****** a shot-gun from the policeman,
He shot him twice in the head, scattering whitish brain tissues all over,
He shot another local sympathizer of the riot in the leg, in the heel,
The remaining riff-raff of rioting locals took off on their heels, like rats,
Once picturized in the word-smithing power of James Herbert,
The hoards of local rioters, most of them motorbike riders, rushed back,
To their places of abode, known as Manyatta,
                                                  or poor hamlets, more sorriest than ghettos,
They pulled out their fellow manyatta dwellers
For military reinforcement
They came back in throngs
All armed with rusty guns
Swearing to **** all
By the brute guns,
All the non locals
Not from their tribe.


They rampaged a whole town
Mercilessly looting and plundering
Each and every shop, business vessel, all outlets
Of the non-locals, all the migrants; black and white,
Chinese and Arabs, Indians and Somalis, Just but to mention,
They looted while singing tribal war songs, shooting all the non locals
Identified by differences in outfits; especially loincloths, Ekijolong, etc
They shot non local women, children and vandalized their trade wares
Those with guns holding the police station hostage, those without guns looting shops
Some tried ******, but their uncircumcised ***** proved a snag in this satanic venture
With a sardonic remorse they stopped the terror of **** against womenfolk of non natives
Women folk of non local ethnicity, but still not safe as shooting followed without ruth,
Puncturing the *******, ****** and bladders, spilling and splashing blood on each gunshot,
Human wailing, crying, hysterical running, farting, falling, and brute of the gun’s cannon
Gripped the town in a flower of curling dark smoke from burning tires,
Gunmen walked from door to door in a feat of amok anger,
Asking names of each person on their way
To decipher out the tribe or the clan
Lest they mayhem a native son
Instead of the non- local
Which they are bound to ****
By dutifully releasing
Deathly bullets
Into the head
Of emoit.
Joe Wilson Apr 2014
A big wooden train Dad made and painted red
Or a tricycle I sometimes preferred instead
Sometimes a Jeep or a truck or a plane
Those Dinky cars I played with again and again.

Cowboys and Indians that we played near the shed
At the end of the garden till it was past time for bed
Where I’d read Secret Seven books or Famous Five stuff
Till Mum put the light out and I’d feign a big huff.

It was a leisurely time full of fun with no fear
We enjoyed our school days and held them so dear
But it all fell to pieces on one Saturday past noon
When my beloved father died at years far too soon.

My childhood till then had been fun like a game
But from that moment on it was never the same
Though the standing by his grave in the cold pouring rain
Isn't the memory I recall, it’s Dad’s home-made red train.

©JRW2014

— The End —