I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

In the Pine Barrens
Where we go, where we sleep
Is the place where the wind
The wind blows and water's deep
You can hide your head
And disappear for a while
In the thick trees and tall grass
Natures gateway, natural turnstile

So meet me there
When the Sun is hanging low
Don't brush your hair
Only thing you need is to go
With your heart in your hands
Intent on burying in the sand

take me to that shadowed place
past all the songs and tales untold
for none can ever see a trace
in domains dark where souls are sold

chill thoughts in solemn darkness tread
outside the sun’s beguiling spell
through barrens deep in mortal dread
of endless night and frozen hell

my voice lies mute in lifeless cold
where twilit lands may hide my face
beyond my youth and dreams of gold
conceal my wretched fall from grace

with stone and star I now will dwell
and grieve alone for words unsaid
leave bone and dust my fate to tell
weep silent tears that must be shed

I again visited my garden of despair
Watered with tears of woes and neglect
And now that the pond of bliss is arid
I once again asked myself
What flowers can thrive on these barrens?
Then I glanced at the blossoms of withered memories
Scattered as wreckage from a landslide
The bushes of harrowing pain I found
Arranged in a line of endless thorny shrubs
Decayed trees bearing the fruit of deceit
Still cast a shadow of contorted lies
I then trod as lightly and slowly as I could
Then plucked a fruit from a rotten tree and got its seeds
And with a chalky smile I hummed a quiet tune
Even in the death of my garden
I saw the promises of healing
As I walked past the rusty trellises and tarnished fences
I welcomed my sanguine memories of perfect and scented blooms
Visions of sun-drenched leaves greeted my anguish with a sliver of silver lining
It doesn’t matter if my garden left me with nothing
What now matters most is here in my hands are seeds of hope

My sweetheart let us be more open in our love relation
Let us wear our hearts on sleeves to be the companions
Let us be heart to heart and lips to lips with compassion
Let us make our hearts loving and fertile land so barrens

My beauty of universe enlighten my eyes with your light
Make me bright with all streaks and be with me as guest
Let us feel light and fly on sky just like a colorful light kite
Let us be just one and alone taking the rivals and the rest

Love and beauty are just two shades of one and the same
They celebrate together to bloom in real fragrant spring
I can not survive without you the day I saw you I am aflame
Let me embrace you be in my arms to sing in love to swing

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2016 Golden Glow

There’s voodoo in New Jersey
And I’m losing brownie points
There’s a devil in the pine barrens
And he’s looking to anoint
There’re the dark suburban houses
With their cookie-cutter frames
There’re child-bearing stickers on mini-vans
Filled with kids who need taming
There’re bus stops reeking of poverty
Filled with those who aren’t well-groomed
They’re fast food places and strip joints
Where food and *** are consumed
They’re people who are evil
Living in this wretched state
Socio and ******-paths-
And everyone’s related

Snakes won't cross a braided rope,
so I take the leads up from around my bed.
I remember her face-
bright and
smiling beside mine
white as if she had just shed a skin
and the dunes grow now over the urchin barrens,
a desert in the sea.
I can peer beneath the 3rd lid
my heart claws at my throat,
allergy tight from the judging shade of
green.
The 3rd lid opens over the Taklamakan,
Tibetan horns sound so old -
ancient vagus nerve endings in my throat but my heart claws them away.
Snakes won't cross a braided rope but
her eyes are green and we lay a
cottonmouth skin across her womb.
All I see are diamonds on the ring fingers.

Decisions, decisions
One or the other
Irritatingly difficult
Why must I choose
Two terrific choices
Tormented by self
Distracted by nature
Forfeit attention
Lost in the barrens

Cinnamon sonogram

Detect the abnormalities too late.

Morning after birth of

a placebo placenta.

Irrigate the porcelain

of a lost labor laboratory.

Love found not within the arms of

the golem grasping for straws.

-

Wailing a harmony of blue and red.

Pumping panacea.

Steady the pace, you hotheads

with elegant electric veins.

On Monday she sung so sweetly and

whispered her prophet tales.

Saturday appeared as an echoing,

hollow and halfhearted hymn.

-

They retreat in rebellion;

lapping at salt laced lacerations.

Rye, grain, roots, and grapes

for the Baroness of the Barrens.

Weeping waters leads to the

sleeping daughters that dangle

their threats like fishing hooks

off of the edge of a world so flat.

Listen:

it’s 3AM and your heart feels like a gear
that slipped the track.
Or the sunshine smells like honeysuckle
and its the most perfect day of the year
but the knuckles of winter close on your throat.

This is not a new story. Some women can’t
find a good man.
The intellectuals, the homely homebound
finding nothing but silences, theirs and that of
God (or someone that goes by His name)

Anyway, He’s not on the other line,
your prayers spread like ripples,
skimming, only reaching the surface.
Some women are cursed by Eve and her
****** want to know, you know?

No. Eve was a ***** or a saint,
nothing more, not a woman with a real ribcage housing
a real blood heart. Some women can’t find a good man,
but she had two and chose neither and
that is her curse.

She found herself naked and embarrassed
and Adam was a fool with nothing to say
and she was embarrassed by him too.
When lo, the angel of God cursed her *****
from which she birthed ****** and cowardice.

Some women can’t find a good man
and nights seem like the barrens of Eden
with fruits that birth flies and rot on the vines.
Remember, sister, our mother who from out
of Adam was born then cursed to his side.

Two poets in love,

A natural disaster,
just waiting to happen...

Ah, yes,
I live in beautiful,
beautiful old Paris,
& as they say yes, yes,
oui oui,

Do you like my French accent Mon Cheri?

Well good.

You have your passport I take it?
Bags are ready?

Perfect,
so here we go,

Ahhhh yes,

Let me take you for a ride,
in a lovely old gondola,
through the beautiful & peaceful,
& placid canals of Venice,
the romance capital of the WORLD,

Or on a romantic moonlit stroll,
in the city of love,
hand in arm,
down some worn old,
cobble stone street,
heels click,
with a charming old lampost,
to kiss,
beneath,

Incredibly beautiful that Eiffel tower,

Or take you,
for a heavenly ride,
at the drop of a fateful hat,
you sit by my side,
we are drifting in a hot air barquilla,
yes,

Oui Mon Amour,
as pursed lips,
take careful sips,
of delicious red roija,
a candle burns,
as melting wax drips,
my heart just skips,
cheers my darling,
sampling one another's lips
& roving eager fingertips,

Quivering in a touch
& wanting so much,


This feels right, no?

Beautiful tastes,
of salty spicy Mahon,
from the Islands of Menorca,
tastes Europeans can appreciate,
& so can we
we can belong to the city,
and really it's such a terrible pity,
to stay in,
come along,
it isn't a sin,

The bright lights,
on the city's most tempting nights,
I'll take you to the highest heights,
relishing in the simple & sweet delights,
something we shouldn't fight,

I am right there with you,
like a twisting kite,
  kissing the wind,
just board that flight,

We are free in our wildness,
they say,
like Hemingway,
& his,
"Movable Feast"
I wanna taste this memory,
tonight,
like beauty & the beast,
I see you are so very beautiful,

As Pablo Nerada is gently,
nibbling on,
& whispering in my ear,
telling me, telling me
telling me,
of my most secret,
secret fear,

"You must give in to the night"

As you tip my neck back,
& come in for a slow attack,

"Like a Puma in the barrens of Quitratue"
stalking the night,
& your lover
loving her right,
& the stars,
as they are so brilliantly shining,
on blood you are dining,
try in vain to resist,
this feeling it always persists,

There's more,
I promise my love,

Wherever you wanna go,

I'll paint the way,
so whatta ya say?

Lay next to me in the sweet,
incandescent moonlight,

I would love for you,
to come along with me,
I would LOVE to love you,

Except I'm here,
I'm not there,
just take a little risky dare,
I just wanna say I'd share,
in something that I always swear,
I think that we'd be quite a pair,
no I guess isn't fair,
doesn't matter though,
cuz I don't care,

Being a poet,
it seems that I can take you,

ANYWHERE.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

It's September 2013.
A Coronal Mass Ejection scorched the Earth,
collapsing the Global infrastructure.
Those that weren't fried up in the killshot
traverse a world nearly foreign to them,
devoid of any form of luxury.
They make their ways to the FEMA camps,
setup all over the United States,
because that's what their TVs told them to do,
just days before the blast.
But they knew since the Remote Viewing program began in the Cold War.
A teenage boy,
now forced to be a man,
leads his Mother through the terrain,
avoiding building fires and roving gangs.
Finally they arrive,
the camp like a shimmering oasis
in the burned out barrens.
They stand in line at the gates,
poor and huddled masses.
When it is their turn,
they present the IDs they were informed to bring.
"Sorry son, your name's on the list,
you can't get in."
"What do you mean? What list."
"The list of people who didn't know how to keep their mouths shut on facebook.
So, you're out, but your Mom can come in."
Another guard approaches and squires her in at gunpoint.
"No, I won't go, not without my Son!"
To which the guard interjects
"Shut the **** up..
take your clothes off..
we're going to pour powdered sugar on you."
"Noooo! Mahhhhhhhm."
"We're gonna **** your Mom kid." the gatekeeper laughs.
*Insert Whale sound

Chaos,
grandness around us, within us
our pasts and our fates,
the heads and the tails you bring us,
nothingness,
mistress, our all that is free and forbidden
forgiven, forsaken, forseen and forsworn;

Our endlessness,
countless infinities that you defy
our unbreaking circle of charities your grace is defined by;
our mother, our barrens of space who is bearing existence;

our eminence,
baroness, dancing the torments of pregnance
our sorceress, chanting the songs of emergence;

our senses and souls,
your spawn, your kin, your death and your sins
our servant, your serfs
kneeled down and bowed over
your lust that is shameless, yearned for and proud,
raised up and all that is tall afly
your will that is mindful, yearning, forgiving;

our Godesses, our locks and our keys,
around us, within us, the now and the here,

listening through the ears of machine elves
our absolution from words uncertain;

speaking through colours of clockwork glyphs
our faith to bring magic into our lives;

teaching through picture puzzle pattern cellar doorways
our choice to approach whenever we wish.

You are awareness. We are mindful.
You are presence. We are eternal.

Lone* soul swirling and lost
Amidst the searing heat, noise, and chaos
Lost soul can't seem to find a safe haven
Then finds a flower sprouting from the barrens
Light grazes the fingertips
Darkness reigns, the nemesis
Scream escaped from the fearful soul's lips
Another lost opportunity to escape the abyss

Melancholy of the barrens
Gloom of the drowning winter sun
Shades of grey over the horizons
Dirge under the moonbeam
Can you hear me?

So dead and cold inside
So much hatred in your eyes
Can you feel me?

Angel face but a torchid soul
Flesh veiling a heart of stone
Do you breathe lies and are you high?
Did you smile when my hope died?
Do you remember me?

I see vendors in the aisles, selling dreams and lullabies.
I'll buy some for myself
In the palace of exile,
With you bushed into my mind
I will aestivate

Me, up on the snow-rock white glacial cliff hedges mountaineering my way in the moments-after-twilight-sweeping-black. Execrable cold, a death-making quiet, Not a seal, not a hare - this Earth of gelid death. I climbed out above the snow Where my expiration left sinuous brandings in the copper light. But the Weddell was siphoning the darkness to the katabatic deep valleys - piceous lees of the brightening umber - cleaving the moon in two like the split eye of a winter lynx. And I saw the penguins: Little specks of black in the limitless white - fifty together - obelisk-still. Their inaudible coo, they sat motionless, nearly mute, With creamsicle feet and amber-eyes, incomparably mum. I proceeded: not one chirped or swiveled its little fur cap. Black silent fragments of a black silent world. I hearkened in the barrens of the desiccate plains. While the wooly bears came from the sea to see of the silence. Slowly edges oozed out of the darkness. Then the moon ivory, porcelain, azure erupted Quietly, and halving to its heart and shot mist, shaking and the ocean opened, crying blue, And the giant mountains lunged-. I stopped Scrambling, as if up from my voice at the mouth of a nightmare, down towards the snow-rock, from their glacial sheaths, And came the penguins. There stood they, still-, silent, in the river of blue light: Creamsicle feet and amber-eyed Thwacking the ice in a grand fête While everywhere was gray and rimy. And still they did not speak above a breath, Not one squeeked or cawed, Their nestled shining beaks dug into the polar rim, Low into the valleys, in the blue shimmering rays - In throngs of the congested cities, living among the years, the faces, May I some day greet my memory in such solemn a world Into the estuaries and the azure-skies, curious wooly bears, Listening as the ice tholes.

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

We were promised the land of milk and honey
But we've made mindless dribble and front running our bread and butter
You can tell they've filtered out all ingenuity as soon as you walk into the gallery
The Pine Barrens wilt
The Polar Ice Caps thaw
And all precious metals become worthless in the eyes of spice rack collectors
Religious rites
And the evil dimples of ****** misconduct between priests and alter boys
Frivolous ramparts made of humming body parts that suffered a downhill slippage in the pecking order

Poetry written in chalk on the diaphanous walls of the abandoned plaza near the villa by the beach

"The surge of powerhouse blood thirst caught in the door jam under the arch is asked to double back unhurried as the shops are dipped in ivy"

       -Tommy Johnson

See the coming of the light of dawn
After the night, the sun will soon be on
Magnificent views of the morning will be upon you
And the warmth of the day with the sky in blue
Northern lights will then be coming by night fall
The phenomenal aurora that we came to call
Heave from darkness and come to a less dimmer light
And you will be safer from the dim of the night

See the coming of the light of dawn
Unify the fields with the horning of the fawn
Mythical forms of creatures from barrens deep
Marvelous trees from the great forest above the keep
Each sight can astonish and amaze a man
R**eturning from the farthest distance, the journey from a distant land

Me, up on the snow-rock white glacial cliff hedges mountaineering my way in the moments-after-twilight-sweeping-black. Execrable cold, a death-making quiet, Not a seal, not a hare - this Earth of gelid death. I climbed out above the snow Where my expiration left sinuous brandings in the copper light. But the Weddell was siphoning the darkness to the katabatic deep valleys - piceous lees of the brightening umber - cleaving the moon in two like the split eye of a winter lynx. And I saw the penguins: Little specks of black in the limitless white - fifty together - obelisk-still. Their inaudible coo, they sat motionless, nearly mute, With creamsicle feet and amber-eyes, incomparably mum. I proceeded: not one chirped or swiveled its little fur cap. Black silent fragments of a black silent world. I hearkened in the barrens of the desiccate plains. While the wooly bears came from the sea to see of the silence. Slowly edges oozed out of the darkness. Then the moon ivory, porcelain, azure erupted Quietly, and halving to its heart and shot mist, shaking and the ocean opened, crying blue, And the giant mountains lunged-. I stopped Scrambling, as if up from my voice at the mouth of a nightmare, down towards the snow-rock, from their glacial sheaths, And came the penguins. There stood they, still-, silent, in the river of blue light: Creamsicle feet and amber-eyed Thwacking the ice in a grand fête While everywhere was gray and rimy. And still they did not speak above a breath, Not one squeeked or cawed, Their nestled shining beaks dug into the polar rim, Low into the valleys, in the blue shimmering rays - In throngs of the congested cities, living among the years, the faces, May I some day greet my memory in such solemn a world Into the estuaries and the azure-skies, curious wooly bears, Listening as the ice tholes.

If beams of light carry eyes then all reasons are good
If season of the heart is good then all seasons are good
From attitude and behavior it is difficult to see hatred
All faces covered under cover and the curtains are good
When we call them good but this comment do not suit
All seem to be apparently good but the real ones are good
When we departed my love we lost our souls in trance
We made them fertile and they left us barrens are good
Hearts are full of venom of hatred but love dances on lips
All of us are good players all of us in actions are good
Only Satan is bad and his disciples are bad in entirety
Mother Eve is really good and just Adam's sons are good  
They wear hand gloves when **** innocent just mercilessly
What type of killers are they that all factions are good
Mehr has emphasized on love and in love gave his life
I 'm staunch believer of love , for them heavens are good

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2017 Golden Glow

The beauty of the barrens
the sky a blanket of grief
and no man knows the end of it

until the end.

My skin is but a map of scars
a journal of all the times I have betrayed myself.
Raw emotion settles in silver lines
multiplying with every breath taken
in fear and rage at my reflection.
I write meaningless lines in hope of cure as I carry the weight of their shame. I let them go, to travel into the ether in hope of reply, of friendship, of hope that I am sometime seen. A doppelganger of my former self, I writhe and spit lines at shadows, the longing too deep to name, my loneliness a constant echo within the barrens of my mind.

Free movement

unobserved even by my own eyes

I am free in the moment
uncondemned and unconfined

I am flowing
like the vines of a
weeping willow in the wind

Growing
like the pines of the
barrens aft the inferno
has licked the cones into opening