Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 Oct 2023 Bardo
Donall Dempsey
LE PRINCE DE DEMPSEY Á LA TOUR ABOLIE

Even my shadow
refuses to walk with me.

Even my reflection
refuses to see me.

Even my imaginary friend
refuses to speak to me.

"Why then Ile fit you.
Dónall’s mad againe."

Here in my own
personal Waste Land

tangled up in Nerval
and Eliot. I Kyd ye not.

And with no explanatory
footnotes.

I'll get even...I'll get even
with the lot of them.

*

A piece of whimsy to deal with great grief. My brother had died and then my Dad...I was totally lost and falling out of myself. I just happened to be reading Eliot at the time hence all the references to the end of The Waste Land and his reference to Nerval's “El Desdichado,”   and Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy which served as my references to the great sorrow I was experiencing .
 Oct 2023 Bardo
Anais Vionet
Dark and ordinary mornings start,
with haptic taps from my Apple watch,
and a yawning stretch, way before dawn.

I glance out my window, to check
the weather because that’s the spec
that decides whether, we’re outside
or we’re down to the gym inside.

“Alexa, brew,” I compel my AI
thank God, she understands,
and my Keurig gurgles to life.

I brush the ‘ol tusks and wash my face,
before wiggling into spandex and taking a place
on the bench by the door where our shoes are stored.

When Lisa comes out, stout coffee in hand
she slumps on the bench, with a sleepy pout.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she confides with a yawn,
“I barely closed my eyes - then it was dawn!”

Checking my watch, I haven’t the heart
to say ‘dawn’s a half hour after we start.’
Every morning we rise and jog a five K (3.1mi)
we decided, last year, that it’s the best way
to jump-start our brains and start our day.

Poets write about love, pure and chaste,
and less about morning alarms and toothpaste
but in these moments, the ways we start our day,
can influence our lives in interesting ways
Warmth of orange rust
Striking beauty of evergreen
Merry as the sun
Yellow sunburst

Feverish shimmering
Leaves on trees
Frozen in frames
Fall

Fervent
Rainbow in the sky
Beckons
 Oct 2023 Bardo
Thomas W Case
A canary flew
in my
window and sat at
my desk with
me.
It said,
who are you?
I replied,
I'm a base
poet that's been
dropped on
his head by life
a few times.
Eyes like a
kicked dog, and a
beard that doesn't
grow straight.

It chirped like
a Bach concerto, and
said,
ah yes, we are
all just dead
birds at the
bottom of a cage, tiny
lice crawling through
our eyes.
No song.
No light.

I said,
you're a strange
little fellow.
And we sat there,
like that, waiting
for 6:00 am
so, I could make
a beer run.
Please check out my book, Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems on Amazon.
 Oct 2023 Bardo
Donall Dempsey
AND DID THESE FEET...

Jesus is wearing
scuffed sneakers

"Made in China."

A hoodie with
the hood down.

Jesus, he's
one handsome dude.

Obviously a man
of colour.

Second Comings
are just like that difficult

2nd album.

Surely the critics
won't crucify me again

here
in an American shopping mall.

Some acapella  busking
should go down well.

The remix of
BLESSED ARE.

But it's a SIGN OF
THE TIMES

he's shot
as Prince rings out.

Jesus reaching for
the Good Book.

The white cop
who shot

claims he didn't know
what he was

reaching for...

didn't look like
no saviour to me.

Also he was obviously
a man of colour.

Blood pools
like a halo

around his
dear head.

Most people reach for
their mobile phones.

Only one passerby
kneels and prays.
 Oct 2023 Bardo
Donall Dempsey
THE GATE SWINGS OPEN
( for Mary Frances )

We hang from
(albeit upside down)

now interlaced between
now balanced upon

the five-bar-gate
the river beyond calling our names.

This is the threshold
between lane and field.

We live only
in the moment

and so
forever.

Your dress falling
over your face

stifling giggles
gales of laughter

shaking us from our perch
like windfall apples.

An "Ouch!" and an "Ow!" later
and we are back upon

where we had
fallen from.

A Constable I could imagine
would have painted us

thus
in passing.

Our five-bar-gate
as much a part of us.

Even in this
over-grown now

I still smart
from the sting of its nettles

still taste the tang
of its baby strawberries

at its gnarled
wooden feet.

The gate open
into a world that is

...gone.

Captured in my imagination
by a Constable blur of paint

showing two blurs
that could be considered

us
children at play.

It hangs in my mind
in the gallery of memory.

The light slowly dying
only the laughter remains.

The thrush's song
threaded through the morning.
 Oct 2023 Bardo
Nylee
Lil happy kid
 Oct 2023 Bardo
Nylee
Hope flickers faintly, like a candle's flame,
A whisper in the darkness, my inner name.
When I look around me, it is not the same,
Years passed, my childhood faint.
Somewhere near the grey pine tree,
I have this imprinted scenery,
I keep reminiscing the winter days,
I was a little happy kid, come what may.
 Oct 2023 Bardo
Eloisa
Retreat
 Oct 2023 Bardo
Eloisa
She drowned herself
in the magical depths of silence.
Searching,
healing,
finding her missing essence.
A much needed retreat to her sanctuary
to find herself!
Next page