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Westley Barnes Jul 2014
This home is becoming
Like a weathermast of the soul
Beaten into responding silence.

To awaken here again
And to only wear this armour
As a riposte sufficient to self-assurance
And to rise, out of lazy eyelids and
Consider the opposing wind turrets
Laid as the proposition
All slack and starkly
Poised on the trapeze


The wallpaper durability of family headaches ;
The spurned lover's recurring luminosity
The marked and re-imagined lists
Detailing personal no-shows and defeats
Bookended by
The passing on of friendly eyes.

Assuming the universal, and in doing so, blindly holding out for the miracle :
For falling out of love is completely plausible
Whereas letting go of shame is mostly incomprehensible
...and the sound filled the room
An intoxicating fog that pulled straight down
On my rusty heartstrings
Vibrations overflowing, attracting, resisting
Until chakra aura colors lit the space
Between the speakers
And me
...it was distilled joy, revelation
Hands raised to the sky kind

...and he rode atop those sonic waves like
Jesus, walking on the water, hand held out
Inviting
He sang and his voice was light
And it glowed, illminating the space
Revealing the swirling vapors
He sang and he must have known me
Sweet God, he must have known me
Better than anyone I'd ever known
In seven words he wrote the book
With a wordless wail he read it to the world
He'd conjured hypnotic melodies
Chants and prayers
Soon enough my jaws would be sore
Knees *****
Voice hoarse but I would sing along forever
To become one with the unfathomable
Spirit
The Ghost who bestows
The Gift



...relating to the words
Falling in love with the singer and the song
Allowed, for 5 minutes,
To worship gods made by the hands of men
I stayed up all night
Reliving those moments
Bookended by ignored reality
Cherishing the song
Until everything about it
Became a part of me
Special, important, essential as anything else

...and I was hanging with some friends of mine
Wordlessly enjoying the silence
A blessing for us to share
But one does get bored
I spotted a pile of old magazines
Not so much stacked but thrown in a corner
Most of them were sports related
Cuz those naggas of mine were obsessed with the game
Towards the bottom I spyed with my leering eye
A couple of soft core quarterlys with juvenile titles
Buried somewhere between the two I found a music rag
Pulled it from the trash heap
Bob Dylan on the cover
Sign of the times
I settled in for an amusing if not educational read
Flipping through the snot slick pages I came to the
"Letters to the Editor" section
Halfway down the page, in the center column
Proudly displayed in loud "all caps" someone had written
"COLDPLAY *****!"
The abruptness of his less-than-charitable opinion was
Jarring
So I conjured up a mental image of the guy who had written it
And directed my own, even less charitable exhortation
Delivered mentally with a force that would frighten demons
"*******!"

I went home and played track 4
In infinite repeat mode
I loved it even more for the fact
That some ******* hated it so much
David FauntLeRoy Aug 2015
What can’t be seen
Holds us down
What can’t be spoken
Is the weight in which we drown

I feel it haunting me
The only take away
I truly weigh
Is everything between the words you say

I’m stuck
Here on Earth
You, the sun
I realize your worth
Though with recognition I’m done

I want to feel!
Give me your warmth, make it real!
Make your pauses incarnate
That look in your eye, honor it!

Yes, I understand
You’ve presented the framework
My feet are planted firmly on land

But I’ve seen you melt mountains
Dry up whole streams and fountains
Ushered in new life and hope
A daily cycle, though more grand in scope

I’m begging
Tell me I’m wrong
But I believe you’ve left out
Half your song
The part where I belong
The part where I stop witnessing
And start contributing
The part where I sprout wings
And join you in the sky
Hovering

I hear a few yes’s and a couple no’s
Your voice is as perfect as ever
But it cuts out and implication grows
Bookended by your breath, time lasts forever

Away from the sun my life is bound
I’ve only ever made it a few feet off the ground
The parts that keep me from you
Are when you don’t make a sound

Reality or perception?
Regardless
My hell

I wish that **** apple never fell
Claire Elizabeth Jul 2023
How does one lose a creature gracefully…?

Is it possible to just be okay with a quick goodbye under the hum of those awful fluorescent lights? Would it have been easier, kinder, softer, if the lights were lamps scattered about the space, yellow and murmuring? When does the gut-wrneching tightening stop? Will I ever let the sadness of it leave my chest?

Sitting in this complacent grief even months after it all is kind

I know that the grief will let me cry and I know that when I do, it doesn’t judge me for my “I wish things could go back to normal.” Because regardless of how familiar the New Ways become, it still isn’t the same. I am bookended by these two creatures that have and continue to adore the Earth I walk on. But the Old Ways stick with us for longer than we’d maybe like.

But in filling that little empty nook, the small nest where a dog named Nelson used to lie, I’ve forced myself to grow, to become changed.

My adult life started when I got Nelson, and it started again when I had to let him slip through my trembling fingers. And it continues on with this new creature named Franklin, who sits just to the left of that Nelson shaped divot.

Loving things that leave you utterly shattered is what makes us so mendable, forgetful, endlessly desperate for devotion…

The whole scene will replay in 10 years time, and I will be even more ruined then.
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2015
~~~
(Inspired by Miss Ohio,
I read your work)

~~~

"This time, but once"
one of my oldest companions,
surely,
my most favorite dessert
and lie
of greatest acquaintance

who, in posses of the
electronic stimulus card key,
mistress unlocker,
privateer explorer,
of the Venetian Grand Canal passage
of my ear to brain.
temptress of words-whispered,
always inviting me
straight to the dark places
of just us girls

this time, but once,
no one will care,
no one will know,
fumble, hurry, do it
quick now, quick here

just this once,
just this morning,
but not tomorrow,
just this night,
one cocktail can't hurt,
a few strokings,
a drag of desire,
a hit of heat,
glide path, short and pathetic,
this momentary shame,
for the quid pro quo,
of the satisfaction gained
from lying to one's self...

so I lay with a lie
to startle start the day,
come night time sleep,
speak of a sequential array of
pleasurable fantasies,
lies repeated repeatedly,
do not become truths

thus,
a bookended graduation
two endings,
a matched pair
a commencement to start,
a commencement to finish

and the truths in your poetry
in between,
*but just this once
Richard Morris Jul 2020
Preface
Life is bookended by nothing.
Grasp what nothing truly means.
Nothing is not another form of something.
Nothing is — nothing.



Where were you long ago?
All that time before a tot.
In some distant god’s château?
No. Not there. You were not.

Perhaps a soul in surplus stock,
A spirit not yet wrought.
Dressed in some heaven’s frock.
No. Not there. You were not.

Then came a twist of fate,
***** and egg were now one.
In this way did they create.
Your life had begun.

So began your book of life,
That in volumes three.
The past, the present,
and the yet to be.

Life is always in the now,
Presents itself as a choice.
Many matters to disavow,
To others, you give a voice.


Life is more than career,
Love is much more dear.
To love another earns its worth,
Makes your mark upon the Earth.

Take the time to stand and stare,
Feel the sun burst in the air.
Enjoy laughs and romance,
Work at love, at every chance.

And when the last word is writ,
There is no more, yet to be.
Life for you did quit,
Not something faced with glee.

At the end, where do you go?
To the place you were taught?
To some distant god’s château?
No. Not there. You are not.

Your Book of Life, a mere spark,
‘Twixt bookends of eternal dark.


This poem is also on Vimeo
Runs 3:39
https://vimeo.com/432650832
It is difficult for us to grasp before our life, we were not. We have a  precious time called life to savor love and lust. When our final day comes, we return to where we weren’t.
Make each day a delight.
Hannah Beth Sep 2014
5:58 pm.
The tortures of the week
are bookended at last.
The sun has gone to slumber
Hoodie zipped and a layer
Of crimson lipstick;
I am out the door.

6:15 pm.
Numb hands clutch each other like lovers
there's a wind that snips like scissors
The train is late.
I wait.
Just another weekend, anyway.

6:17 pm.
Warm breath gushes from an open mouthed train
I step inside.
Bottles clink at cold feet as my bag is lain.

6:20 pm.
The train stops.
Shudders.

6:22 pm.
It's moving again.

7:00 pm.
Miles from home
I've entered my mini weekend world
That gnawing weekday feeling lifts from my chest at last

7:12 pm.
We walk, the six of us.
Up the hill,
Turn left.
And there's the woods.

7:14 pm.
"Does anyone know how to start a campfire?"
"I can't see a ****** thing."

7:45 pm.
Orange flames spit at the sky
Illuminating the branches above
A criss-cross mesh gives cover so little
To six cherry red cigarette ends.

8:32 pm.
The clinking bottles are
gone
thrown in a bush?
I think
I may
have drunk each
one. or more?
(Who knows)
I do.

8:45 pm.
I explore.
No one to guide
But five pale faces
moonlit and smiling and tripping on twigs

I finally feel I can join in their smiles, too.

9:01 pm.
I don't know these faces of moonlight all too well
But they're starting to feel like home.

10:32 pm.
A change of plan
We stagger though the door
Of her empty house.
I count 8 of us now,
I thank my lucky stars
I've spare clothes packed
And bask in the warmth
Of a new friend's house.

11:06 pm.
Sat on cramped carpet floor
I smile as the warmth fills my lungs
A buzzing high replaces faded intoxication
I pass it on
And am given a shoulder to rest upon.
(I'm so happy. Wow.)

11:48 pm.
My head is so fuzzy.
And the quiet boy from school
Sits across the room
Him and I
We're far more alike than I'd ever have known
And I'd never have known
If not for tonight.

1:15 am.
I never want this to end.

1:30 am.
She plays her hushed guitar
As I lie on her shoulder
She's so beautiful

I didn't know she could sing.

I wish she knew.
I sit back on the floor.
(She strums her guitar
And sings her last line
In a voice so **** quiet;
'Where is my mind?')

2:45am.
I never knew how different a film could be
Surrounded by friends
And high as the sky.

3:33 am.
I sleep.

5:02 am.
I wake.
The boy waves
From the side of the room
A silence not uncomfortable
It almost feels like June.

6:58 am.
I go to sleep once more.
And I'm happy.
I'm so happy.
At last.
A slightly longer poem I wrote about the most memorable day of when i was 17. What I thought to be just another weekend at first soon turned into one of the happiest, most peaceful nights of my life, and I'm not particularly sure why, but I hope I captured it relatively well.
ash Dec 2020
Eventually,
We all get older.
We wake up and find ourselves standing on the precipice of adult.
We brace our bodies for the shift that’s sure to come,
The jump, the free fall,
The swan dive into the gatekept world of grown ups,
Where we’ve been barred out for long enough.
Countless hours spent building up dreamscapes
of getting out
And growing up
And getting rich
Or famous
Or beautiful.
Or brilliant.
We go reckless and proud and headfirst into ice cream for dinner
And socks that exist only in pairs
And questionable bedtimes
And bad decisions
And for the briefest and sweetest of moments we think,
By golly, I’ve made it.

Eventually,
We all get older.
The evidence of our ice cream dinners shows up on our hips
and thighs,
Our bodies betray our most private moments,
Shouting out to any passerby,
“I’ve had six pints of ben and jerry’s just this week!
I haven’t used my gym membership in well over a year
and at this point, i’m afraid to go in to cancel it!”
And, seriously, what is up with the sock thing?
Does my dryer consume socks?
Like, if my dryer doesn’t maintain a steady diet of socks,
Will it starve?
Will it explode?
Will it go on strike and recruit my washer to join in the fighting of the good fight?
Who do I call when my laundry appliances spin cycle their way into civil unrest?
A sacrificial sock here and there is better than the alternative,
I suppose,
Because I sure as **** can’t afford a new appliance,
let alone two,
And also, at what point do i start to feel like I can comfortably afford a new appliance?
Is it when I stop throwing money at a gym membership that i haven’t used in like, twelve-plus months,
or does that come some other time?
And why is it that anymore, by 9:30 every night,
My body starts to feel its own weight
all at once,
It’s as if I couldn’t remain upright if my life depended on it.
Is that because, for the last fifteen months, I have poured my hard-earned dollars into a gym membership that I have used
not one time in,
coincidentally,
the last fifteen months?
Like, all jokes aside,
why would we,
As an ever-evolving, self-aware, species
Continue to dish out nearly twenty U.S. dollars a month
Fifteen separate times
For a gym membership that we are obviously
Never going to use again?
And just like that,
It is so
Clear.
You have no ******* idea what you are doing.

Eventually,
We all get older.
We come to accept that more often than not,
Days will be bookended by more questions than answers.
If we’re lucky,
We might find ourselves learning to lean into the gray spaces,
the precariousness of it all,
Instead of trying to stain it peachy.
To find a quiet corner in the static,
To let the strangeness that be wrap itself around you,
Is a feeling that I suspect only an elite few ever get really good at.
To those of us who still try,
To those of you who are still trying,
Take pride in the practice.
No one gets good at being comfortable in the gray on their first try.
For some, it takes a lifetime.
For others, lifetimes.
But from what i’ve been told,
It’s well worth the waiting for.

Eventually,
We all get older.
Yes, even the mamaws and the willow trees
and the baby brothers
the first grade teachers, too,
and the cicada who met your acquaintance that one summer afternoon all those years ago.
The dads, the best dogs, the single moms,
Yup, they all get older, too, eventually.
As we all do.
When they go,
(we all go, you know, eventually)
we remember them for their windchime giggles
or you find them in the way you still brush your hair,
Just how they taught you.
People tend to leave breadcrumbs of themselves all over the place.
If you pay enough attention,
You can find them **** near anywhere.
You have your mother’s eyes, for example,
Or so you’ve been told,
A hereditary heirloom from her to you.
Even if you never could quite see the resemblance.
but lately, you’ve noticed,
There is a familiar sort of something there,
In your own lookalike set,
You can just barely, almost, make it out
When you tie your hair back and tilt your head just so.
It comes most clearly in the mirror after the kind of day
you don’t want to talk about.
When being has broken you down,
There’s a skepticism,
or a longing maybe.
You’ve seen this somewhere before, have you not?
A daydream perhaps?
A long-forgotten dandelion wish
or a memory dislodged?
You’re still working out the logistics, the linguistics of it,
But you saw this, once upon a time,
Took note of it,
Came to know it well, you think,
Certainly it must have existed in your mother’s eyes,
must’ve because,
It’s a familiar sort of something.
You first remember it way back when,
Yes, that’s it,
Something from way back
when all you wanted to know was what it meant to be her,
To be big,
To be grown up.
Peculiar, though, isn’t it?
it seems such a juvenile sort of something now,
Looking at it from way up here,
Seeing it in your own reflection for the first time,
Does it not?
Big, grown.
An adolescent sort of uncertainty, possibly,
Or -- no, that’s not quite it,
Childlike wonder, it must be,
In her eyes and yours.
Proof, I suppose,
That eventually,
we all get older.
And maybe it’s presumptuous to assume,
But one can’t help but wonder,
Aren’t we all just grown up kids?
Aren’t we all making it up as we go
and filling in the gaps with the cadence of a child,
Your mother must’ve, too, i’d guess,
with that sort of something in her eyes.
Aren’t we all stumbling, scrambling, doing our best to scrape by,
Praying to the dryer gods that our **** doesn’t break,
And if it does,
We cross our fingers for the tragic death of an imaginary, estranged, great-uncle who just so happens to have acquired a hefty sum of money throughout his life and, well,
i’ll be ******,
If he didn’t make you his beneficiary! Stranger things have happened here, have they not?
Aren’t we all just trying to understand?
ourselves?
and people?
and god and grief and bliss and sickness and marriage and death, hope and money, how the defrost works, and what it is about karma that makes her such a ***** and what it means to be a good person, anyways, and taxes and laundry and which drugs are must-trys and which are don’t-evers and when drinking is considered to be a “problem” and how people can push THAT out of THERE and the art of loving and the arguably more advanced art of being loved and forgiveness and success and desire and *** and stick shifts and the beauty of a deep breath?
Aren’t we all lost out here?
Aren’t we all scared out of our minds?
A bunch of grown up kids, really.
A ragtag group of misfits, try-hards, have-beens, and never-weres.

Eventually,
We all get older
Except those of us who don’t, I suppose.
I’d venture that we’re all still trying to figure out how to understand that, too.
We get older, just the same, as one does,
our hips get wider and our dryers get nicer, newer.
Teenage girls seem to get ever-prettier, the rich get richer,
cruelty gets more cunning and the planet gets sicker.
We get far more than we bargained for or
Far less than we deserve,
We get busy living and dying in tangent,
love gets stronger, scarier,
and we keep the faith that some day,
Somehow, love will get simpler, sweeter,
and time, as it does, gets on with itself,
despite it all.
In spite of it all.
And, as we do, we get older.
And still,
we have no ******* clue what we are doing.
If we’re being really honest here,
We understand not one ******* thing about whatever this is,
And I’m not fully convinced that we even want to know.

So, we let ourselves be small in big bodies.
We eat ice cream for dinner to remind our little selves that there is joy in the forbidden, the unpredictable, and the delicious.
We approach socks with reckless abandon,
pair a tall christmas
With a no-show pineapple-speckled grey,
We take on every decision with the impulsivity of a tiny human who,
Roughly and at best,
Has six years of life experience under their belt,
Skipped their afternoon nap,
and has developed an apparent affinity for shotty judgement calls,
We’ll apologize for it later.
And it’s true of most of us,
I’d think,
That we hope for a day somewhere down the line,
when we’re a little older,
A little wiser,
A little bit in a position in which we can comfortably afford a new dryer should we need to,
We wait for the day when we’ll wake up, as normal a morning as any,
And it’ll hit us:
By golly, i’ve made it.

The truth, i think, is that so few ever actually do.
Make it, I mean,
Whatever that is for you.
We hang on to our hope and convince ourselves we’re satisfied,
Or that we’re better off now than when we started.
Maybe we are.
But if you ask me?
I don’t think it matters.
I’ve spent a lot of time looking at my mom’s eyes in my own reflection.
I’ve asked all the questions,
Looked hard for a clue or a compass to point me to
Where i’m supposed to be going,
What it all means,
Who to trust
What to expect out of a person,
What people expect out of me,
Where to go to find lost souls,
Where I fit into the grand scheme,
And like, what even is this whole “grand scheme” thing anyways?
All this to say,
I don’t think she knows any better than I do anyhow.
Or than her mom before her.
Grown up kids, you know?
Little people in big bodies.
Every last one of us.
Growing up
And getting older
and getting the **** out of dodge
before we have a chance to catch up with ourselves.
I think it's the best way, truth be told.
But who’s to say, really?
I, for one,
Have no ******* idea what i am doing,
And if I was the gambling kind,
I’d bet my bottom dollar that you don’t have a ******* clue,
either.
We’re all just figuring it out, aren’t we?
Grown up kids, that’s all.
Little people in big bodies,
Just making it up as we go.



a.m.
Max Jun 2016
I come and go

But like clockwork,
Every time,

It is bookended
By three words

And a smile.
Wk kortas Mar 2021
He'd lived in the remaining house on the little byway,
The place and its existence somewhat accidental
As it was built as the groundskeeper's cottage
Accompanying a rambling edifice
Built by a former president of the mill,
That once-grand structure gone to rack and ruin
Nothing remaining save the odd bit of foundation
Poking forlornly above crownvetch and milkweed,
Though the lot of the man we'd dubbed the ogre
(The notion that he had an actual name
Not occurring to us at the time,
Though, as Nicky Demmer wisely noted
Whatever it might be, it must be unspoken.)
Was only slightly less unkempt and foreboding,
And it is hard to remember what exactly made him
Something to be feared and avoided at all costs,
Perhaps the combination of height
(Though lessened yet somehow accentuated
By a slight yet perceptible stoop)
And a widow's peak at the top of an unusually high forehead
Bookended by wiry and unruly locks,
Perhaps the fact that he rarely appeared in the daylight,
And then squinting as he turned his head to the sky
In the manner of one who fully expected
That it would fall, Chicken-Little style
But in any case his lawn
Was strictly no-man's land,
And any wiffle ball or frisbee,
Regardless of how new it may be
Or the retribution attached to coming home without it,
Remained behind, mourned but forsaken
And at some point we moved beyond our unease,
Too old for such superstition,
Moving on to other totems, other portents
Though some years later I happened upon his obituary,
Laying out the signposts of an ordinary
Though vaguely underwhelming and melancholy life:
He'd worked on the third shift at the mill all his days,
Thus precluding much of the social commerce
With his fellow man, no Rotary or Odd Fellows rites
To be performed at his service
(Of which there was none, burial being private as well)
And the list of survivors was limited to one daughter
Wholly unknown to us, ostensibly taken elsewhere
By an unmentioned and unmourning mother.
The item, brief and unadorned as it was,
Brought me back to that fretful nine-year-old self,
Though imbued with a greater disquiet,
As I had a deeper knowledge of the finality
Of cold, agate type, among several other things.
Sophia Granada Oct 2016
Here lies on the bier
My sanity
My baby
The gate on the edge
Of the precipice
Has given way and
I'm keeping the pieces in the refrigerator

There came death
In the middle of a two month period
Designated for mourning many things
Bookended by my crying
Alone
In the dark

If the well of life were reachable
She would be the first thing I'd throw in
Even if I knew she would not love me
Even if I knew she'd come back sick
I never imagined I could not make someone immortal by loving them

I have never kept a home for long
When push comes to shove
I can part with anything to
Lighten my load
I was always afraid to test this with her
It failed as I knew it would

Give her back to me in exchange for any promise, any favor, any fortune
memoir of a life
bookended by a teen in labor
and a place for mom;
a father whose paternal anxiety
made her bleed
like she was the child
of another,
and a carousel of ex-lovers,
the fast, magnetic type
in tims, saggin jeans
and pockets filled
with every dream
but rent,
and a ring.

a life spent
throwing things and thongs
at lying mirrors
until clinique said, “bye bye;
those lines and wrinkles
I can no longer hide.”

she never looked
within,
beyond the flawed skin

she never owned
her sins

she never found
her truth

she blamed him,
the father whose paternal anxiety
made her bleed.

~ P
Justin S Wampler Jul 2022
Ochre on her fair skin.
The twilight sun paints her smile in idealistic hues
as we walk away from the music, from the grass,
from our spot in the shadow of a tree.
Hands held, still swinging and swaying
with the receding bassline.

I get caught up sometimes,
I get busy
over thinking.
I don't like that part of myself.

There's times where
I can't provide
a passionate
hard ****
for her,
and
I feel
like a
lesser man
in those moments.
Trapped in my mind,
hoping that she'll still like me
even though I can't seem to get it up.

There's also times where
I know it doesn't matter,
where all that matters
is falling asleep all
tangled up together.

Times where
all that matters
is a setting sun
after a day
of laughter.
A day of dancing,
and music,
and loved ones.

Beautiful days, dappled with love yet
not always bookended with
glorious raw ***.

Those days count too,
don't they?

I hope so.


I like her.
The silence
of the lambs
resides inside
the courts
due to our injustice

Taken aback
by the shame
that pains
the hearts
deep within
the depths of us

Then there comes
the desperate silence
standing
at attention

Before the justice
that sees the sins of
of life's retention

Had only we
had listened
to the whispers
in our ears

We wouldn't
be wiping away
our fears
with the salty
taste of tears

Or seen
the visions
imparted
in our eyes

Telling us
the differemce
between the truth
and all those evil lies

Then there is
the silence of submission
awaiting our
due fate

Bookended between
the beginning
and the ending
with everything
at stake

And there are
the sins
of fear , worry, and all of our anxieties

That add to our growing list
of all our
improprieties

Comes that day
silence
will bury deep .
So deep that their seeds will never sprout

Prohibiting the weeds of doubt
that they never come
about

Silence speaks
so loud and clear
without ever making
a sound

The truth is in the silence
so look there
and it will be profound

— The End —