Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
 Mar 2013 tread
Marcus Harper
I started down this corridor blindly.
I walk though I cannot see,
As my vision clears things only get more confusing.
I see what is before me but it is as a maze.
I go with the path I feel is right.
I come to a dead end,
I try to retrace my steps.
Yet I end up in a place still more bewildering.
When I find my way the whole structure changes,
I play by rules that are not my own.
I’m drawn
Trapped
I try to break free.
Ensnared.
Quicksand,
I am sinking in quicksand.
It’s only a matter of time before the end comes.
But wait,
I hear a sound
Small at first,
Distant
I hear it drawing closer.
Hope is still lingering,
Tiny but growing.
I see a light.
I am lifted.
The light shows me where I must go
All is restored.
I am restored.
I am saved.
 Mar 2013 tread
Czeslaw Milosz
Burning, he walks in the stream of flickering letters, clarinets,
machines throbbing quicker than the heart, lopped-off heads, silk
canvases, and he stops under the sky

and raises toward it his joined clenched fists.

Believers fall on their bellies, they suppose it is a monstrance that
shines,

but those are knuckles, sharp knuckles shine that way, my friends.

He cuts the glowing, yellow buildings in two, breaks the walls into
motley halves;
pensive, he looks at the honey seeping from those huge honeycombs:
throbs of pianos, children's cries, the thud of a head banging against
the floor.
This is the only landscape able to make him feel.

He wonders at his brother's skull shaped like an egg,
every day he shoves back his black hair from his brow,
then one day he plants a big load of dynamite
and is surprised that afterward everything spouts up in the explosion.
Agape, he observes the clouds and what is hanging in them:
globes, penal codes, dead cats floating on their backs, locomotives.
They turn in the skeins of white clouds like trash in a puddle.
While below on the earth a banner, the color of a romantic rose,
flutters,
and a long row of military trains crawls on the ****-covered tracks.
 Mar 2013 tread
Thomas Carew
I do not love thee for that fair
Rich fan of thy most curious hair;
Though the wires thereof be drawn
Finer than threads of lawn,
And are softer than the leaves
On which the subtle spider weaves.

I do not love thee for those flowers
Growing on thy cheeks, love’s bowers;
Though such cunning them hath spread,
None can paint them white and red:
Love’s golden arrows thence are shot,
Yet for them I love thee not.

I do not love thee for those soft
Red coral lips I’ve kissed so oft,
Nor teeth of pearl, the double guard
To speech whence music still is heard;
Though from those lips a kiss being taken
Mighty tyrants melt, and death awaken.

I do not love thee, O my fairest,
For that richest, for that rarest
Silver pillar, which stands under
Thy sound head, that globe of wonder;
Though that neck be whiter far
Than towers of polished ivory are.
 Mar 2013 tread
Dale Williams
Friend
 Mar 2013 tread
Dale Williams
I need a friend to confide in
Someone to tell about my sordid sins
I need a friend to hold me close
Someone to give me my morphine dose

Many friends have come and gone
Why did none of them stay that long?
Many more friends I shall find
I cannot be forever wearing this lonely sign

So will you be my friend?
Hold my hand until the end?
Tell me that I'm always right?
Even if I start the fights?
 Mar 2013 tread
J T Gaut
Yellow light, dust
The smiling face
Eyes beckoning to hear
White plastic, encrusted
A new love, entrusted
Bonds reaching only
In thought they masquerade
Bonds here, tight
Strengthen and Fortify

To have these thoughts again
To replace morbid guilt
To find you amongst the dirt
And tears, of orphans and needles
To take these feelings with yours,
And bury them, tied with quilt
To return again to the bosoms of our mothers

One proud, one sad
Truth would have it reversed
 Mar 2013 tread
Carl Sandburg
I HAVE ransacked the encyclopedias
And slid my fingers among topics and titles
Looking for you.
  
And the answer comes slow.
There seems to be no answer.
  
I shall ask the next banana peddler the who and the why of it.
  
Or-the iceman with his iron tongs gripping a clear cube in summer sunlight-maybe he will know.
 Mar 2013 tread
Sea
an upward stream
 Mar 2013 tread
Sea
fighting against something

that may or may not be meant

to happen is a pointless endeavor.

I have always enjoyed putting

myself up for something that very,

very easily could have me totally

shot the ****

down.
 Mar 2013 tread
Courtney Rose
Ink
 Mar 2013 tread
Courtney Rose
Ink
Sitting alone in your room
The late hours of the night
The early hours of the morning.
Not being able to tell if  your eyes sting
Because you’re tired
Or if it’s
Because you cried out all fluids
Or if it’s
Because you still need to cry.
Those lustrous beads welling up
Needed to escape for so long.
And the inky black darkness bordering you
Makes it hard to look past whatever it is
You want to cry about.
And after being torn down so violently
And so fast,
Healing
Is the hardest part.
Your mind becomes nomadic.
It wanders around every memory
Every mistake
Every impression.
Fractured scenes
And dimmed pasts
Find their way
Looming over my ponderous mind.
And still I envision a perfect world
In which no one makes mistakes
And where no one gets hurt.
And my soul tugs at me to go there
But sometimes
It’s better to just
Forgive
And
Love
And then
Eventually heal.
Next page