poem
lyrics
or just a screed

we rant
we rave
we rage against the machine

dandelions
daffodils
pear blossoms

and they say
to get gray
you must facilitate

the mostly holy
union
of bull and cow

What’s happening in the world today.
Wars everywhere.
People shooting people because of different faith,
greed for one little piece of land.
Missiles thrown at innocent women, children and men.

Once
A child grew up on conflict ground.
Saw all family and friends dying.
Born was the devil in him.
Only rage in a traumatized mind.
A planted seed without love.
Devil he will become.
Don’t you see.
Killing each other to have peace leads to nothing but loss.
Loss of love and loved ones.
Revenge leading to nothing but pain and end of everything
nothing has been gained.
Keep feeding hate with hate.
Wars will know no end.

Don’t throw bombs at innocent ones.
Children are just children wherever they’re from
No matter on which side of the borders they are.
Don’t you see you only create hate with what you do.
There is no faith that says go hurt
**** a child or a helpless man.

You can’t stop the hate with hate.
You can stop hate with nothing but love.
Please for once learn from the past.
You don’t have a winner in war.
You think that you might have won.
But there is that child somewhere
with rage in the heart.
And everything starts all over again.


Shell ✨🐚

She picked a flower
and put it in her hair
She felt beautiful.
They laughed at her at school.
It didn’t matter.
She smiled and the flower smiled too.



Shell ✨🐚

Older women look around,
say wait a minute,
We are required to have tea.

Older women
wear watermarks
where kisses
first were placed along with
lilacs.  

Flowers are the truth.
Older women whisper
in petals. The scent
rubs into the soft
underbelly of
years gone deaf into

yesterdays.


Caroline Shank
10.14.2023

THIS ROOM KEEPS TELLING ME LIES

ok...ok...I admit
sometimes I forget
& go & call you

and the telephone
remembers
that. . .

or there's everything in place
the room just as you left it
as if you had just stepped out of it

for a minute or so
soon...soon you will be
coming back . . .but: you're not

or your clothes
hide in the wardrobe
wondering where you've gone

but they feel so all alone
empty trousers
over empty shoes

making a scary scarecrow
version of you
and I turn away

in disbelief
that there's no you
. . .no more

I watch the sunlight
crawl across the carpet
dust motes dancing

in an empty flat
look upon your favourite hat
touch it and then...not touch it

sit at your piano
and hit middle C
the last thing you ever taught me

I hate this room
for pretending you
you're still here

I know...I know
it's lying
I brush away a tear

didn't even know
that
I'd been crying

i’ve blown all my dosh
on a brand new Bosch!
my clothes will be super clean
with this amazing new machine
i’ve burnt all my dosh
singing swish, swash, swosh,
singing splish, splash, splosh,
a ladies got to wash!
i’m in love with my new Bosch!

It burst into millions of pieces,
shards flew to the deepest
depths of my life.

What once was my heart
is now ruins, shards of
memories you left behind.

Shattered!

©️ 2023 By Amanda Shelton

A celestial glow, the cosmos ignite,
A soul departs, bathed in silver's light.
Free from the shackles of mortal clay,
It ascends to realms beyond our earthly day.

A spark of starlight, a cosmic dance,
In the tapestry of time, its essence enhanced.
With the universe's secrets entwined,
Its spirit echoes through the cosmic mind.

Though the body may fade, its essence remains,
A radiant thread in the cosmos' veins.
In every star, in every breath,
The soul's eternal dance defies death.

THE ONLY EDEN

Granny unable to
see

would build me
touch by touch

with her blind fingertips
search for the face

she would create.

Here my cheekbone
coming into being

there an eyebrow
newly born

here an eye
there a philtrum

sculpted from sunlight
hewn from nothing

here blind seeing
fashioning me anew

her fingertips
butterflies

forming this
living portrait

of the face
I own.

Her fingers feeling
for each nuance...each tone

the music of me
plucked from thin air

one moment I am not
then I am

all there.

I made all the more
real.

More realer
that I could ever be

emerging from
her fingertips

as if I were
God's Adam

and this her tiny garden
the only Eden.