Thy lively prose and sprightly words disclose
Within a sweetness of eyes as fixed as those.
The flavor of your smile extends
Often to reject, but with love, it never offends.
To a poet thine eyes strike
Like the sunshine, they are so alike.
With a graceful ease void of pride
It hides any fault - if in you - you ever had any fault to hide.
For if to thy being some poetic errors befall
One look into those words and I’d have surely forgotten them all.

Doest’ thou know the beauty that I find in a single verse?
Let alone the many where my mind becomes traversed?
In unequal sentences measured in a peck
They shine like gold covering ‘round your ivory neck.
In these labyrinths - I am but a slave detained –
A mighty heart held within your slender chains.
So much to ponder in your imperial snare.
When all I ever needed was to know you there.

Let me breathe the breath that raises the fire.
Till we all fall together, never let us transpire.
To obtain and possess for each of us this prize.
The one I see when I’m lost within these cries.
If the powers can grant me but half of this prayer,
Then all the rest can fly to the winds dispersed into empty air.

Come now, my poet friends, secure this vessel that glides,
Fill it once again like sunbeams trembling across the floating tides.
Melt away the distant music that stole away the sky,
A deafening sound along the unwritten reply.
Please feel the smooth flow of the waves in gentle play.
Give me another smile to share with the whole world today.

Oh my thoughts of you are so tightly compressed,
I see the love tread softly across all the rest.
Summoned straight from some denizen's despair,
A lucid mastery of mystery, let it sail in to repair.
Soft underneath this shroud of death,
Let me feel your whispered breath.
Words flowing of the love we all bequeath.
We are many fluid bodies half dissolved in light.
Let us lose these garments erasing every mortals’ sight.
Our bodies given away freely in the words of a few,
Each of us lost in the other, the ones’ we always knew.
From every beam a transient color flings,
Given of life with our love on its wings.
Amidst the circle of life rides an ink filled gilded mast
With our hearts throbbing together within our task.
With purple pinions raised to the sun,
We raised our pens and shouted - we have just begun.

To this acquaintance,
A rendezvous with midnight.
A gentle Déjà vu and in some sense
I wonder if an unspoken invite
Has played a part or two.
Does the past ever ensue?

Words do become an addiction.
Layer upon layer of repeated satisfaction
Interjected, felt and spewed.
Silken sheet’s confessions are
Best made in the ****.
These words, why are they so bizarre?

Oh let me write it right
Let me dream tonight
Upon this unarmored stage.
Let me free the fight
All through the night
Releasing it from its cage.

With a candlelit smile upon a face
The sheets do gently part.
What fills my heart
Is the gentle art
Of a finger painting slowly traced.
It has not been done by the ones
Lessening love absent of these notions.

What lies beneath must lie beside
As the past becomes renewed.
A gentle kiss a midst a torrents tide
The naked beach subdued.
Wet sand shaping dry demands

Déjà vu be wooed.

This is not going to be a poem. Please bear with me as I try to explain something important to me. I am getting responses (Hello Poetry email) from children. I want for the Hello Poetry community to pull together and find a solution. Some of these kids are expressing to me that they do not have anyone that cares about them.

Since my NDE I can tell you that this is not unusual for me. On my property I have all sorts of animals that regularly congregate in my yard. Many different species, sometimes animals who you would think are dangerous to one another can often be seen together on my property. I’ll leave it at that other than to say that many of these wild animals have become my friends. They innately trust me and I trust them. Everything from bears, coyotes, deer, turkeys, hawks, eagles, turtles, snakes, rabbits, lizards, squirrels, and raccoons can often be seen in my yard or on my porches. You are going to say that I feed them. I do not. My property is very small but it backs up to a property that is leased and protected by the Army Corp of Engineers. I only mention this because I do believe that humans are sometimes curious about me too. Maybe this is why these children are writing to me.

I respond to these kids and tell them that it is inappropriate for me to talk to them. As one user pointed out to me, a child has a completely different mindset than an adult has. A child is a precious thing and so impressionable.  Like some of the animals that appear in my life, sometimes I help them in some way. If their injured I either help them myself or get them medical attention. If something in their environment threatens anyone of these animals I try to mitigate the threat.  That’s not said to put a feather in my cap. It’s just how I view life now. So now we come to these kids. Just like my animal friends, I feel concern for these kids. I have seen some of the writing about there being a writer on this forum who is not being a good steward when it comes to the children on this site. In the hopes to promote a better stewardship and responsibility toward the children on this site I propose that we pool our resources together and make a concerted effort to provide a safe haven for these kids. What I would like to see is a few of you woman step forward and offer to mediate for us guys who receive email from a child. Someone that we can forward the info of the child to so that a motherly individual can take part in gently leading these children into a safe or safer mode of communication.  I’m sure that I am not the only one that they are emailing. It could be that a few are not even kids. I don’t know. But like the animals that sometimes are curious enough to come to my hand when I reach out to them, there’s just something in me that I cannot turn away or ignore these kids. I need help. Maybe you guys could organize a plan for communicating with some of these kids. It just is not safe for them to be writing to complete strangers.
Email me if you feel compelled to help or if this is happening to you as well. Here’s an example of one of the correspondences that I’ve had…

A….redacted  15h
Follow me on Instagram please ? || @..... redacted
***** Shakysphere  14h
Hi and thanks for the invite but I don’t chat with kids. Have a great day and please be careful talking to strangers.
A…redacted  14h
Okay ; sorry for disturbing. You
***** Shakysphere  13h
Not a problem. Just be careful on the web.
A….redacted  13h
Got you - thanks for looking out for me not many people care about me

The above is a 14 year old.  
They say it takes a community to raise a child. I’ve raised two mostly by myself.  Any suggestions or ideas on how we as a community can reach out to these kids and help them and protect them would be appreciated.

Is it a warm bed on cold night?
Is it a cup of coffee shared?
Is it eyes glimmering – book ending a candle light?
Is it a kind word or a gentle touch
Or is it simply understanding much?

I think a Valentine must be
Learning - Showing,
Pushing - Pulling,
Holding on for all your worth.
Never doubting - never pouting
Knowing that seeing isn’t believing
It’s more a matter of trust.
Daring to share
Without a care
Of loosing one’s own self.

Becoming one isn’t just fun
It’s knowing someone’s there
Looking for what we call love.
Maybe sometimes it’s just a matter of lust.
But when your heart is breaking
And there’s no place to hide,
If you find my hands upon your face –

I’ll be there by your side.

All of my troubled lives have I taken leave
Of all that I ever thought you could be?
Without seeing you or knowing you
And often at the very idea of you,
I suffered a bidding of something I could never know.
As if I had long ago bid you adieu.

That time, time was my heart suffering
At some strange and dismal crisis.
My mind, body and soul were to be as separate beings
Which somehow seemed to be less than nothing
Until I passed that tremendous moment.
My love - your love - they were both in different worlds,
One where I would give anything to go after them or
Even hear of an account of them.

Time was what life could never be.

The reality of those words working softly over me
Like one day does blend into the next until
Returning blurred through some imagined memory.
All of my lives, have I really taken my leave of thee?
I always knew everything that I thought you would be.
But I see you and now I have
More than just the mere idea of you.

Oh but at least I no longer suffer at something I never knew.
So now I pray Lord, with the windows open tonight,

I beg of you

Paint me on the outgoing gentle breeze.
Let me know this love I need.
Let me be the warmness in the air that you breathe.
Let me drift through your open window
Softly blowing the sheer curtains over you.

Oh to be that sweet caress,
Sensual and soft upon your skin.
Your bed becoming a cloud
Cradling you in the misty waters of warmth.
Let it graze lightly upon your body
Like the tip of a painter's brush.

Let yourself feel my love with every movement,
Designed for your pleasure.
Let me hear you beg to be fully painted.
Let all of our art take its intended form.
Dipping again into the warm paint
Withdrawing slowly, ever so slowly
To feel the paint take hold.
Admiring our beautiful work,

Whatever it is that we create.

Within our artistic release
The hottest colors of passion
Pouring from within us
With each brush stroke erupting
So smoothly until
Even the brush shudders.
The immense sensations born on the wind.
Listen now, can you hear me?
Can you feel me?
I’m right here.
Painted on the breeze.

Barefoot - the walk up the beach alone
Is a journey alongside passionate waves
Like walking on anchored cotton
Each step anxiously craving the next sandy touch.
Oceans of water join in the experience
Retreating around my feet.
My long shadow follows me like a kitten
In the orange day glow of the evening light.

In my mind I recreate passionate times
While tickled feet squish into the unarmored sand.
Each thought complete in its own uniqueness.
A delicacy of emotions racing in with the tide.
The hopes that were held most dearest,
The fears that kept most things inside.
Am I dreaming or awake?
It’s hard to say –
The lullabies of the waves are my friends
Gently singing, returning me to the shore.

The walk now becoming long
The sun is beginning to close its eyes –
The kitten is no longer there.
Without even a shadow, I
Have never felt so alone.
What were once clearly discernible objects
Now become something jutting out of the earth.
Slowly they begin to glow with the new moonlight.
I continue the walk.
What is ahead? What is behind?
Either way it is just another step away.

Some of the objects must be buildings –
What lover’s secrets are being told inside?
The wind beginning to blow it shrills by me
Over the sand, past the objects to the sky
Onward to the stars above.
I wonder – can the wind carry away my loneliness?
Somehow it stays with me
Locked away deep inside.

Looking toward the ocean for answers
Shedding my clothing I oppose into the tide.
The cold liquid awakening me from my numbness.
Surrounding me like as if a billion tears.
Submerged to my chest – a dance begins.
The earth at my feet
The wind in my hair
The water all around
And the sky above with
This fire - kindled by all of the elements -
It burns deep inside of me.
And for one brief, settling, moment
We – the elements - with the tide

Are one again….

I have something within me that I cannot
Bear the burden of of its insinuation.
In the sport-ability of chit-chat I have
Often tried to conquer these thoughts
And with infinite pain I have hazarded
A thousand things hidden within myself.

“Excuse me,’’ I said upon seeing his face
Coming toward me while walking in Central Park.
“Are you who I think you are?’’ I asked.
“I suppose that depends on who you think I am,” he replied.
Not wanting to be made out a fool I asked
“OK, are you best known as JFK?”
“Well not exactly, he was my father,” he said with a smile.

I stuck out my hand like an idiot – but -
He offered his hand and shook mine like a man.
“I can’t believe it,” I said, “You really can
Bump into anyone in the big apple.”
He said that he had to be going, had to finish
His walk and get back to the office.

I asked him if I could tag along, just walk with him.
He said, “Sure.”
He kept a brisk pace, it was a cool day but comfortable.
The leaves were turned, mostly all fallen and
Then I realized that it was November 22nd.
“I’m real sorry about your dad,” I said,

“It broke my heart when I was a child.”
He nodded his head and sort of slowed his pace.
“How old were you?” he asked.
“I was 9”.
“I was 3”, he said looking at the ground.
“Yeah I know,” I said, “Everybody knew.”

He stopped and turned toward me,
Tilted his head to the left and point blank said,
“You know the story about my dad’s assassination
Is all BS don’t you?”
He caught me completely off guard but before I
Could say anything he turned back around and starting

Walking away from me like I had the plague.
I stood in my tracks but after he had gotten about 10 paces
He stopped and turned, “Well, do you want to walk or not?”
I half jogged to catch up with him and when I did
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Look I don’t know you and you don’t know me, “ he said
In a rough almost angry voice.
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.
Still half jogging to keep up with him I answered,
“Sounds like you need someone to talk to.”

He slowed a bit, “I just got confirmation on who killed my dad.”
OK, about this time I’m like you saying a few choice curse words
In my mind – like holy sh…. You know..
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Hell I don’t know,” he said, “It’s all circumstantial.”
Coming to a complete stop, “There’s got to be a way that I
Can tell people, let the whole world know that I know who did it.”

He turned to me, “What would you do if you knew who took your dad
Away from you when you were just a baby but if you told anyone about these
Murdering, slime ***** they would most likely **** you too?” he asked.
“I don’t know sir,” I said shrugging my shoulders.
“If I had your money I’d figure out a way though,” I continued.
With a questioning look he asked, “OK, if you had my money what would you do?”

“I don’t know, man,” I said - “Maybe name a building after them or a street
Or something that everyone knew you named.
You know, like a hint or a clue or something.”
His eyes got big, “That’s it,” he said, “By God that’s it.”
He shook my hand again and asked me my name.
And a few short years later he was gone too.

But the name – the name he named his business – there’s your clue