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  Mar 2023 Bardo
Sally A Bayan
It’s Springtime.
The hours, the days pass quicker,
especially to folks already in their
late seventies, or eighties…
a cool breeze blowing easily brings
back good times, bringing smiles
to their wrinkled faces...to some,
rage and sorrow are resurrected,
recalling, how they lost loved ones,
all that they've had, through ways
unlawful, how they pined for truth,
justice, and freedom...time is too
slow for for them...some choose
to forget, but couldn't...
malfeasance is a habit, a way of life.

The privileged ones bask in the
brightest of comforts…impregnable
walls of their fortresses have made
them blind and deaf to the woes
and the doldrums outside.

The "unsolved" remain unsolved,
the "miserable" are now despondent,
the needy, the hungry, in greater
need...are even hungrier...drifting,
wherever their needs take them,
some minds have gotten used to
distorted versions of democracy,
existing on uncertain airs and waters.

Being bereft.......takes its toll.

Past awakenings were wasted.
eyes...minds opened, and closed.
those outside the walls, patiently
await...nothing is ever permanent.



sally b
© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
February 18, 2023




      -<O>-

OZYMANDIAS
(Percy Bysshe Shelley)

 I met a traveller from an antique land,
2Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

3Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

4Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

5And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

6Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

7Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

8The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

9And on the pedestal, these words appear:

10My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

11Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

12Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

13Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

14The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Bardo Mar 2023
One day my young niece was showing me some photos of herself and her
  friends on her phone
She had loads and loads of these photos
I was thinking to myself I don't think anyone's taken a photo of me in forty
  years,
Then I thought what'd happen if I got famous and someone wanted to write
  my biography (would be a short book)
And they'd say Give us some of your old photos to stick in the Book
And of course, I'd have a problem, I'd have no photos to give them,
Then I remembered there was this Novelty Joke shop in town
They had a great collection of all these different kinds of wigs
I thought maybe I could buy a few wigs then stage a few photos
Pretend they were from earlier days,
Yea, I could get an Elvis wig with the sideburns, I could say that was my
  Rockabilly stage
Then I could get a big Long Hair wig and say That was my Hard Rock
  phase,
I could get a Mohican wig and say Well that was what I looked like when I
  was a Punk Rocker
And Hey! Maybe I could get one of those lovely big blonde Dolly
  Parton type wigs
I could say
"Well that Summer I was listening to a lot of Country music".
A bit of fun for St Patrick's Day. Have a Great One. Cheers!
  Mar 2023 Bardo
Thomas W Case
Angels with broken wings,
frostbitten dreams,
morphine nights,
and gangrene schemes.
She had that broken glass sadness.
The kind that gets worse with
every slammed door and every
lazy moon mad night.
The light in her eyes was dim,
like a candle in the fog, or like
a frog that dreams of flying, but
wakes up to the same old pond,
day after degrading day.
God, every time I see her, I want to
take her home and give her a bath,
feed her strawberries and rub her feet.
I want to free her from the rain slick
suffering she's stuck in, wash away the
stench of the lonely diesel strangers,
but I can't save her, hell I can't even
save myself.  So I *** her a Midnight Special,
and light it for her, with a brief sulfuric blaze
of glory bereft of any lasting light...
walk away...Jack-O-Lantern grin
into the lonesome neon night.
I did a poetry reading from a boat today, Here's a link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3mjQqmUguo
  Mar 2023 Bardo
Thomas W Case
It's the continual
opening of the
eyes that disappoints,
not that sleep brings peace,
but it's the momentary
reprieve from life's
clenched fist, and
it's ruthless apathy.

Life is a toss of
the coin,
a roll of the dice.
Often, it's snake eyes.
As a kid, I always
thought that everything
would be alright.
Now I see the
randomness of
it all.

I'm always trying to
get back to Eden.
Sometimes, the
dreamer in me
forgets the futility.
The banishment is
forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocv6CdAfPqA&

Check out my Youtube channel.
  Mar 2023 Bardo
Lori Jones McCaffery
The New Yorker is Obscurity Central
With a lot of naked Emperors
Parading through its pages.
ljm
I don't understand half of what they publish as poetry and I don't have time to take a college course to find out. I love the cartoons though.
  Mar 2023 Bardo
Thomas W Case
Another visit to
Med Psych;
the withdrawals are
horrendous.
I’m emaciated and malnourished.
With the exception of
one meal every few
days, I’ve dined on ***** and
wine for my sustenance.

I check out a lap top from
the patient library, and
try to get the poems organized on
my flash drive.
Concentration is elusive.

The psych doctor decides
to have me committed.
She’s concerned about my
worsening health and depression.
I guess I can’t  
blame her, but what
bird likes a cage?

I try to talk her
out of it,
but she’s resolute.

The next day, just
as the deputy is
serving me the
committal papers, I have
a seizure—a bad one.
My lips turn blue.
I **** myself.
The doctors pump me full
of Ativan.  Everything is a  
blur for the next
week.
Slowly, softly,
my mind comes back.

I get a room-mate;
turns out he’s an
artist, a fantastic
abstract painter,
his name’s Chris.
Chris gets the activity
director to bring
him some paints and
other art supplies.

He goes to work;
stabbing the paper
with his brush—
makes it bleed with
color.  He’s a young  
drunk;
a madman and a  
genius.
I have my notebook and
my sword.
I pound out the word, the line,
my highway through this
silly society.

Chris and I talked
long into the autumn
night, locked in a  
cerebral prison.

The room we were in
was more like a Greenwich Village
beat pad than it was a  
hospital room.
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