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Shofi Ahmed Jan 17
Came yesterday
ask me not
from where.

Tomorrow be gone
no, don't know where!
Jeremy Betts Dec 2023
I see you had a bad day
Thinkin' things you shouldn't say
No other choice but to stay and pay to play
Can't even stray away from your own cliche
Doomed by strands of DNA
Failed every single attempt in every possible way
In desperation you kneel to pray
No answer today...
...same as yesterday

©2023
Heidi Franke Oct 2023
Not drowning today

In remorse from yesterday

Draining self-hatred
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2023
October 2023, ten years later…dedicated to all my dear friends here,
some who may be reading this for the tenth time!

<|>

you need two hands, one foot.
counting my years.
each finger, worth a decade.
each toe, well, a century...

birthdays.

point of inflection,
point of opportunity,
presents itself,
to rewrite history.

a second coat of paint,
gift-wrapped in weak excuses.
how I lied, how I ain't,
grimm-fated fairy tales
somebody else created.

invisible suits of gold-cloth
worn to my party of
past rewrites and
future versions three and more
foretold.

one single thought,
memory,
seizes my heart,
as I fall to my knees.
cracks my temperate ease,
renders open the
woof and weave
of recycled deceptions,
causing all to be revealed
when I ask,

what if the poetry ceases?

you know prostrate?
you tasted grief?

have you not but
one pain,
one act,
one deed,
one memorization,
act of cowardice,
act of desertion,
mistake made, taken,
for which
forgiveness
can never
be given,
be taken,
attained?

do, does, did.

let me then
win the birthday lottery,
let floods of relief from
daily chores, not drown me,
chauffeurs to drive,
masseurs to massage,
cooks to cook,
les delicious treats,
keep theologians, logicians
on retainer, if needed for
explanations.

none know, or can provide,
still and yet,
a priestly sacred chord,
grants relief,
absolution,
a song of hallelujah
the ache of
perpetuity worry,
an ancient pain,
grows fresher daily,
the loss of one,
of my body,
my primal knot
unreasonable,
everything should be
permitted to be untied,
on my birthday, no?

this day, these days
breathe through words,
molecules of vowels,
stem cells of consonants,
the fabric, the tissues of life,
veins are a dictionary
of corpuscles,
red blood cells are
nouns of nutrients.


this day, these days,
the infection of my soul
is tempered, kept at bay,
tamped down from the
full flowering
by white blood cells ,
champions of rhyme, verse.


what if the poetry ceases?

Though the bones creak,
the body they carry. resurrected
once more,
for morning, afternoon
and evening prayers.

thrice daily poetry I recite,
roses red, violets blue,
my marrow transfused.

though my prayers refused,
the poetry act immolates
the fringes of my disease,
for which the common cure
is not yet currently invented....

what if the poetry ceases?

but be assured, told
scientists hard at work,
on the
forgive n' forget drug.

meantime,
take a bubble bath in
rosemary and mint
trap some words,
tap some words into
your cell phone bone,
the poetry heat that
provides aspirin relief.

through this poem,
on one day annual,
I am relieved, relived
the muse is feted, sated,

gone for few moments
concerns, worries of
exposure today,
agnostic's foxhole of hell
is dis-remembered,
the gloss returns,
the faux dispatched,

ain't birthdays grand?

what if the poetry ceases?

what rhymes with
Sorrow?

mmmmm,
could it be
Morrow?

bath drains, rosemary and mint odors dismissed,
the Argentine disparu,
the Spanish Medievalists,
the Neo-Raphaelites,
all gone,
didn't they have birthdays too?

Michelangelo didn't know
the Renaissance come
and gone,
and nobody
tole ya?

please recall t'is the day
after my sweet city recorded my
naissance in the
Hospital of the Flowers
on Fifth Avenue.

the 'crats put the datum
in the bureau with the
night creams and
the statistics
as follows:

on this day +/- a few,
seven or twenty decades ago +
a few centuries,
a question was born,
and an ache that is
sometimes relieved,
by a poem song.

though do not celebrate,
t'is a day to calibrate,
review, edit, tinker,
rewrite, often a stinker.

always one thought recycles:

what if the poetry ceases?

(how will I breathe?)
first penned ten years ago,
annually tinkered,
weirdly prophetic
and still spot on…

in the “early” days, wrote my poetry on a cellphone
while soaking the venoms out…
hazem al jaber Jul 2022
Yesterday ...

she was wrapped ...
within her soul
deeply ...
with a feelings of love ...
lived it ...
as if it were for eternity ...
to feel as she was ...
as a morning's butterfly ...
happily ...
with a new coming sun rise ...
as all her dreams ...
to dance crazily ...
all night ...
on the acres of love ...
with a hope ...
may a new day come ...
to rise on her ...
with a shine ...
as that another left day ...
with a lover ...
to keep him ...
all her life ...
with a love ...
last with lust ...
forever ...
as the moments ...
she lived ...
yesterday ...

hazem al ...
Amanda Kay Burke May 2022
It seemed yesterday
Heart was happy awhIle
Will it be again?
Yesterday love was such an easy game to play...
AE Mar 2022
These years, they ask us questions
answers that tomorrow never knows,
held in the arms of yesterday.
The weight of this dreaming
pushes the clouds onto the ground
and our fleeting conversations
with this flooding rain
breaks the boats we built
that were already too unfit
for this ocean between the clocks we build
and the time we chase
AE Jan 2022
Between us and this divided sea
Between us and this dying sun
Between us and this pale blue sky
Between us and the raging tide
Between us and running time
Between us and yesterday's dreams
Between us and tomorrow's sleep
Between us and the drying leaves
Between us and winter's grave
Between us and summer's taste
Between us and this beating heart
Between us and what's beneath
Are the remnants of our interlaced
Fingers
Still holding onto
Love
Hope
And some reason to
Breathe
WickedHope Aug 2021
you                                      
made                            
me                        
beg                
for          
you  
...
and
you    
walked 
away
I hate it when I don't get to be the cat.
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