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Mark Wanless Apr 17
i don't write i flow
i know not what am doing
just i say hello
Robert Ronnow Feb 15
There are actual people
half woman half man
running mornings and
dream people in movies
half language half light.
Tomorrow is John’s funeral.

* * *

This is my minute
my moment
Oops, gone!

Anything can happen
if you don’t resist
Resist!

* * *

But who am I? You think bullets won’t
****? I’m the guy they put before a
wall and shoot then eat lunch.

* * *

Long as yr livin
yr havin that dream in
which yr killin the villains
w/o even needin a weapon.

* * *

If it was fun, they wouldn't call it work,
but it is fun. It's what we do, a bird
sings, dogs bark. We work. Sing bark work.
Honey, put on your shorts, it's gonna be 90 today.

* * *

How right is the rabbi!
"What a good and bright world this is if we do not lose our hearts to it,
But what a dark world if we do!"

* * *

We saw a barred owl
camouflaged in winter branches.
Bird of death (in myth), hunts down the dark,
floats to a farther tree, turns its back, and naps.

* * *

The sadness of summer, the silence of winter
you can’t sum it up in one more metaphor.
So don’t complain about the epoch you live in.
Go to Big Hidden Lake and jump in!

* * *

Down to negative calories, in deep snow
we find soft wintering rose hips, gobble them down.
First time for me a wild edible made a difference,
not just a delicacy. Then we snowshoe out.

* * *

Spring morning
flycatchers, jays, thrushes, a woodpecker’s loony cry.
A toilet flushes.

* * *

Zach
awoke from a scary dream
I kissed him back to bed

He asked
are all the doors locked?
I said yes knowing they would not hold

* * *

The republic may expire
but birds go on traveling, singing
in their best attire.

* * *

My plump cashier
has a new love.
Her skin is clear
and her line moves.

* * *

Desafinado means slightly out of tune which is not a problem.
It’s a fortunate condition. Zach just called from school sounding clear
and happy to say there’s floor hockey this afternoon. For me, another       cold,
slow Spring. How lucky!

* * *

At basketball I was reminded
the better players in their private moments
think on the ultimate reward. Perfect rest.

* * *

You come in our backyard, we go in yours.
That about sums it up. Assuming there are definable, accepted backyards.
Suppose it’s all one backyard and time is all one sheet of ice?

* * *

My son Zach said as a toddler he liked the old house
and he’s having a good time now at the new house.
We were lying together in the window seat passing the early morning       time,
late September and happy as I was I thought what’s running out is time.

* * *

The young women’s bodies were awesome. I appreciated
the couple of Muslim women who kept their bodies
covered. That was easier on an old man’s eyes.

Not that I wanted to change the American girls’ ways.
They seemed comfortable wearing underwear outdoors
and unaware, more or less, of the longing it provoked.

* * *

To invade a clean house
searching for weapons or insurgents, I agree
with the enemy, that is a sacrilege.
Not that I accept their god, and there could be,
hiding, a mouse.

* * *

I tell my sons
If some man tries to pull you into his car, fight
kick bite yell run punch curse scratch knife
make him **** you right there in the street
use your feet your fear your hate.

* * *

If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.
—Mario Andretti

* * *

The river in its muddy symmetry
high water mark in Spring
is a god to me
in a way that I can be to a dog while thinking
or the sky is to the hanging apple.

* * *

A day, a new day, starts at 5:00.
Earlier than that it’s still yesterday,
the rags and dreams, the sweat and worry, the *** and laughter
of that day. The alcohol and aspirin, the sunset and machinery, the dinner       and toothache
of that day. The germs and friends, the sports and editorial, the gleam and
      dullness
of that day.

* * *

The key to success is cross out, delete, compress,
rub out, expunge, black out scratch out blot out,
censor, crop, shorten and silence.
Clip, cut, erase and eradicate.
Hate everything you write.

* * *

I will be saved
and spanked too.

* * *

Phil is on a movie diet. Bad movies in which the logic switch is turned off. Jumps from scene to scene like a cat.
Most ******* is hilariously obscene. Genitals like little animals. Snowplows hit potholes sending up sparks.

* * *

Make way for a future that’s irresistible!
Dust. Rest. Mist. Rust.
One day follows another until the last day.
And on that day, there will be weather.

* * *

Driving in traffic
80 mph, 80 y/o.
Turkey vultures shrug shoulders.

* * *

When an archangel
flies into your windshield
sing cuckoo!
Crow Jan 9
don’t make me write another poem
with fancy words cause I don't know ‘em

I’ll write a book or short article
make science notes about a particle

a brief speech or an opinion piece
type a travel blog of sunny Greece

I’d gladly pen a romance novel
if poetry’s asked I’d sooner grovel

I’ve lost the power of rhyme you see
as fork and spoon sound the same to me

but now I see what I have written
it reads like Edward Bulwer-Lytton

I’m stuck in couplets what a curse
but what the hell it could be verse
Life Dec 2022
I see my timeline on this site:

2014
From my older brother's diagnosis
to the death of my grandmother

2015
Falling in love with you
My brother disappearing

2017
To the breaking of trust in exchange of fluids
Never receiving what the law calls justice

2018
Realizing you were never my first love
Merely my first attachment

But I never wrote about finding my brother
dead
in the woods near the main road
white bones in a tent
not knowing who it was
only realizing after the police left my mother crying
for him
dying there alone in the woods so close to home

I cry for him
dying there alone.
Hidden by the wilderness
rotting away inside the plastic tarp.

I cried for him
and wrote for you.
This timeline is my reminder
holding my guilty conscience accountable.
This is my reminder to write.
Nigdaw Nov 2022
I write lines that are sublime
I write lines that aren't mine
words are written on the page
by my hand but not my mind
majestic sounds that fill the ear
luminously engraved as
the bass harmonizes with
melodies in my mind
as the piano croons a humble tune
coating the whispers in my ear
as the drums build up to perfect synchronization
wishing I could hold it so near
the heart of the synths enrapture me
catching me in the web of love
crocheted in a melodic fantasy
I close my eyes
as I enjoy the ride
letting the strings subside
I fantasize in this melodic bliss
who knew heaven could feel like this?
as I walk along the tones of bridges
building up to a world unknown
it is the sweetest thing I’ve ever known
like the tenderness of honeydew
the rhythms of love speak to you
so sweet yet so tempting
the trumpets tower over me
leaving me selfless
giving myself endlessly
I love music. It feels so good to write again 💗
snipes Sep 2022
never stop writing
     express your heart




but remember what you write

~as the permeant pen bleeds
   you hope the alcohol can
   scrub it out~

yup the cup overrun with relief
I’m shattered
yup the bottle speaks with emptiness
as I live
the pen comes with a heartbeat
your assaults leave paper cuts
and these words come with wounds
please believe
Coleen Mzarriz Aug 2022
My heart would fold so quickly, in a rush, falling off of ledges when I could remember all the things you said to me. It was the first time I learned to read your lips for gestures by the way they moved. A period, a comma, a mark, a scar, the why's and the suffering it weighs.

But it would fold so easily, the heart I longed for swishing in the wind, stealing kisses in the sky and letters of forbidden romance all over the city. The same scene, the same garden, the same promises and stars fading away in order to live through a thousand light-years. Yet in the meaning of something, I get to learn how to control the reading gestures you unconsciously make when I pass by.

Even though it is the same as my movement, I fled in order to live the few years I have here, because the earth evolves so quickly, in rush, in remembrance, in light. And I get to go back to the music of my own rhythm, while my eyes are closed and I sing two notes of sonata.

Even when you tell me a thing or so, I get to wipe the longing raindrops from both my eyes. As if a waterfall had been longing to go out. At the very least, I got to write even a single word, which I wish you could hear. Maybe the wind will deliver me to you.
it feels good to fall in love, sometimes.
haley Jul 2022
is it dangerous to wish
for those goods of which
are not I, are not me,
are not the breath that we breathe
upon the gentlest and free summer morning?
or the gleam of the beaks
perched humbly in the cradle
of the cuckoo's nest still adorning?
before their wings bare vulnerable
to the light of the wind and to
man and to bringing
their unsuspecting redeeming
to the order of clinging to the now;
or the we, or the me, and
the I, and the us, and
the beat
of the heart that keeps borning?
This is the first poem I've written in 2 years.
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