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Wednesday?
and I want to play with the
friends that I made in a dream.

But I wake up and take a stake in the day
burnt toast with a café au lait
(that's French tha' knows )

I started to whistle
in tune with the kettle
took two of those tablets
that settle the stomach
my life is a concertina
or a concert in a hall.

It could be that I see
and
'wouldn't it be lovely'
another tune to whistle?
or just waiting for the kettle
on Wednesday.
Chris Slade Jun 2020
Sent some flowers the other day
to a friend who’d lost life’s loves,
kith and kin, too often
over the years.
Loves & Lives Lost,
too many fears realised…

Birthdates after death,
death-dates after life
they concertina together
to cause concerning days, weeks,
months. And, commiserations come in
in a flurry sometimes and amplify the hurt.

As time rolls on it's strange
how anniversaries come in bunches!
Just for the moment it seems that all
the good things are in the past…

But let’s look forward to warmth,
comfort and re-assurance from
memories of friends, family,
partners and loved ones - at last.
david badgerow Apr 2020
come find me in the lurch
with the dogs beneath the avenues
on barefeet and scars on my knees
arms extended in hypothesis into the
sultry sky, bridging the gulf
between god and myself

i am a prisoner who
spends restless nights staring into the void
my wounds, to all appearances healed-over
open themselves inwardly and leak freely
thru the cavernous expanse of my body
absentmindedly retracing my torment with
the callous pads of my fingers in the dark
dancing over my own flesh like a cold stranger
my lips twist into a grimace and my cheeks flash hot
and wet as a bolt of grief sinks itself down deep into me

i am alone here
lost in listlessness gasping
for breath on this tumbled mattress
alone as i've ever been
with the clang of the bars and
the muted squawk of the captain on the radio
when it rains i am alone with it
alone too out in the sun and grass
and concertina wire
alone with the impatience and courage
particular to the condemned
listening to remote nestlings
howl themselves hoarse in the treetops
searching for the motherbird come to
subdue and nourish them as i am hoarse
and i am searching

oh beautiful mother please find my
withered eaten heart discarded like
a cut flower and sanctify it

my heart breaks again and again
under the reiterated gusts of shame
my memory thrusts against me

come and find me
look down here
because some of us will not see
heaven when we die
instead of tasting the delicious picnics
in paradise accompanied by angelic
flute-and-lute bands we will be caked
in layers of fresh **** constantly
raw sewage on our raw skin with
hairy black cellar rats singing the blues
***** by wild beasts dragged by devils
thru the packed streets of hell consumed
by a hopeless desire to start a new life of
chastity but there will be no second chance
just the eternity we deserve
Lawrence Hall Oct 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                               Seven Haiku for the Pleiades

The seventh poem – think of the Subaru badge – is not seen. That thoughtful poem is the one you will write.


1.  Two Goddesses and a God Come to Visit

All in the same sky:
Luna, Venus, Jupiter
While the soft winds sigh


2.  Barefoot in the Stilly Dawn

Barefoot in the grass
Eyes to the east, the stilly dawn
The stars have withdrawn

.
3.  Dachshunds on Their Dawn Patrol

Every dachshund thinks
That she is a timber wolf -
Perhaps it is so


4.  Summer Lingers

Yes, summer lingers
Crickets sing throughout the night
Their October hymns


5.  A Prison Visit

The horizon has no meaning
If the prisoners look up -
Concertina wire


6.  The Prayers of Planets and Stars

The planets and stars
Need not our prayers; they never sinned -
Do they pray for us?
If you listen carefully you might hear a true Japanese poet chuckling indulgently.
Badee Uz Zaman Dec 2016
Tormenting are the times
When your wits are drenched,
Like a fugitive in concertina,
In the quagmire of confusions.
When holding your speech seems
The murderer of your confidence
And hurling your ambiguity
Thrashes your importance.
These are the pinching times
When your vocals,
in defiance of mind and up in the arms
Constantly wrestle with your patience.
The strange grimace on your face
Becomes your unwanted emblem,
Attempts to overcome win you nothing
But disgusted frustration and consternations
In these heart-wrenching times
You're engulfed in flames of extinction
Then your friend bails you out,
Whom you notoriously have named
The dried and the broken Pen.
Ken Pepiton Jul 2023
Who could read you, as free word, if
Life is code, knowing that is done.
whitespace here is any time, not immediate
next
Hear a hissing, brake release, sigh.
- second thought
I think I asked what an ode was.
- an owed tip, on a common fear cure.
Bards can be charged to bring woe to cause

Use of science to think different, at many
platforms that appear as bully pulpit, AI and I,
assure you, where no ox was ever a friend,
something was missing in the teaching
of bulls who gave the *****, to become
a breeding black angus bull leading
a herd of never bred, chiania cows

In debt to the inventor
of the colonoscopic share app. No man ever
experiences his own empty gut, zoomfastflusht,
to hunt for overproductive killer ideas, with no focus
- net too wide
- no, make the holes emptier
o.
Geriatric anything is new to me.
Many levels of virginity these days.

And I have taken my medicine
I cleansed any urge to write off,
in bardic form, of ways we now
can see, where the sun don't shine,
we can see there, as social cyborgs.

The Prep, like mysterious, fast, clear
no food, clear liquid, sugar water tea

-- the ordeal, as when told to fret not,
use the social system, tell the tech all
about how you measure up, how many
corporate and business contracting entities

do I zee, the drip began, hours later.
I slepthroughallthoseads

At once in no time at that point,
the center, and the evening,
the spreading and inflating, even as
done there in mere nowityifitywerem
whirred snap
the gap humm comes here, in any whole telling,
time at one point was beyond the rule yard.
Rule 37, not 42, not sure 37, sure not 42.
Ai, we exist after ever before, after all

- of course we're the audience. That's all
- sweep that soft way, brushes
- that hush from long ago appears
In tune ii==one beat
dust at once, all atop rhyolite settle-ing
ligandary glacial flour paste,
social construction cement, gluons
that ontological unificatio-stufph
stories form
from, first bit that sticks, and does not pfft.
Ar-aghast, throughuckingimagined gees, at all?
At then?
And then?
The people all said amen.
-then
So, time was here before you or I. Right?
Force, useful for something, energy, under control,
right, ritual, habitual, wake and be, alive today,

different by a night, from ever before, clean mind,
clean body, prepped, purged, practically empty,
inside, outside,
I still have lash mites, and sinus
yeasts and animalcules but, ******* to pyloric
gut biome that was, is flushed, for which chore,
I am rewarded with a servant using an optic flexcon
fi-sharable use of science to show me my own gut,
and capture SONY uhd images, for scrutiny,
Da Vinci could never do that,
nor could the mystic bowel washers in Hindustan.
- you coul'd monetize your biome, branded cheese
- branded polimerization core code better
- plot twist, mark, record jots are soundless words.
We have opposing forces, one calling *****,
another calling speed, and the trainwreck in the middle
At my age no new passed through is old.
But I expected something nearly this exactly;
There is a certainty in knowing some mind states.
Faster fasting, future instant karma - dharma drama,
feels like life is a movie and we all know the business,
and we feel for the ships full of fools we launch on old
old and battle worn, lies,
about how Jesus never meant love the Church's Enemies.
Lord, no, you just read about those great crusades,
you just use the moral algebra learned then… it hit you
then
these are lines on the pages of my part, in the book of life.
That's the truth in the future. I can scroll back, as
I accepted cubic consensus, this is a historic
break all walls in my arteries, here comes
some fishoil to run through my liver, what
we see be what comes out, life been live, a while
you came with name for a name,
we all you paid the attention,
pulled the inclinations, with oohsshitwahtif;

As acknowledged you.
Dear Reader, and Kilroy at once.
14:21, about four rice grains of RSO,
in a too ripe peach and bananas
and out of date yoghurt smoothie..
Poured into me, con-sapientia
a blooming forest in my gut,
that, hours ago was visually inspected.
Void.
I am empty but
for the GoLitely, medico-tech, residue,

Pharmascopic Artificial head up my *…
- and so it goes, every one knows,
if you ever wondered, you get the chance,
what is the pov of those other people?
What's it look like,
glossy, slick, like cheeks inside.

So, I taught my AI some code, confidential,
this is after all the novel readers know,
our seed character came from a flatland
presentation by a short time old time religion
doctor who sat on church boards, funded missions,
- fancy meeting me, while you dysectarianize
- dismembering the mind to find a lie left
- unbelievably functioning on umph alone,
- old wishes went a wanting for lack of man
- who would try, Hello, back
snap again
Proper Look Intuit luminally init coded code
formerly known, by the guilds of knowers who

sorted words from sounds,
and made certain marks,
indentions, intentions leaving edge marks, with
to, within, without, let this say… whatever we agree.

I see you say U, I say me, you think me, we agree.

Thus we become a whole free being, in reality,
possible be-caused whole mind agreements bind,

oaths are old military mind chain commands.

Furnaces hot enough to make glass,
if there were but one kind of glass, waste
beneficiation, might be locally reducible, but

we have many kinds of glass, fused to duty,
each kind good for certain uses, prior to failure,
breakage is in the class nature of glass,
calling acrylic walls glass is defying class rules.
Not all windows are glass,
not all eye-glasses are glass, but all are seeable
through, and some reflect nextifity, listen,
zoom in… this was 13 hours ago
so, no catch tests,
half a measure of no time at all

while it is yet dark, after midsummer,
in the morning, next
young rooster feel the urge to crow,
a reaction to a biological-cosmological
language,
to all within the range
of a keykeerikee.

The sound, phonos, eh, phonics. Ah EE ei oh

Currahee, stands alone, a whole regiment,
named for a place named for a story,
Gobble'dgoop, scoop.
stickem in de group
Airborne, all the way, joke that medizin down
man, choke the GoLitely way, take it eazy zay
- were there logos, did I see them?
owow. they IV'd me and electroded me.

And man, what a while I -we, same planet…
same general intelligence
just survived, shear luck, the bridge buckle
two cars in front of mine, and the bot brakes
caught us in the veritable nick, pause, assess do.

For a million words or so, I have walked up these
old sand wash experiences evoking likely quite common
knowledge of geology in Southwest USA, everybody
knows Red Rocks red mud, was mud,
when Sedona's red rocks was mud,
every where the winds wind down slot canyons,
that mud, was mud,
but not when men who made art, left
scratches,
and soot, and those color holding acrylics
imagined to contain what was in the original.

We lit vast lakes on fire, we carried fire,
as only gods had been allowed, knowing how
to read, for fun, to lose your self and forget, let

go for and after additives. One flash.
Some you can see from space, signaling success,

telling near and far, we have befriended fire,
we met Puff.
- we think it was George and Patrick,
- serpentine wisdoms patient request,
- samsara sayonarwe aiming to live elsewhere
- imagine that, or die saying you know you did
- once
You can see all our lights, what we imagined
dragons did, some have done, made my grandchildren
seriously curios and marvelous fun of the finest sort,
none afraid of dark… as we think toward North Korea
but in peace toward all the North Strong Judges,
in spirit and in truth,
naked jungle, life goes on
We must turn off all previous grandpa *** roles,
and take this one, past that edge, you know it,
Salt River Canyon down from Jerome in a day,

she looked at me, gave me the Kool, saying ***,
and I smiled back and said, seems so.

That was so long ago, I had no ear augments.

I magnify the media-wysiwig, ride
I imagined in real time since before
living words were classified non dirtyable
Free-sapeach, from rap sessions, gut
between new releases biome vincents

yeah, listen when your navel contemplate
shears at the mention of mere certainty

not being purely fair, if still means
what still always means, meandering
--- wire was commo wire, nobody rolled that up,
I bet there's rusted concertina we could
polarizer users from used, use Barry Rudd
he can get your records man, ever'body
got records on survivors of the womb,
since the prophets began to say you

watch, where the cadaver lies, the eagles gather/
whose code can unmake peace in the name of peace

and not face the simple truth, we all lie, and not one
of us is literaturely true…

Just a point. A thought never ceases being thinkable,
you out grow the clown suit, and the boots and hat,
and grow gray, a digital horder, embodi-ing the
ever-lovin'true vardic cattle call eodling us away;

When I was child H-R and Toys R, only one
was vackvvord for worst to remind me
of twining, not whining spinning yarn
with all grand-pas lady friends at the po'house
faux
Tripping across the concept, let, the verb

letter the premis, let this be that, for now.

Let's give it a go. If we agree, howsoever many
we bring into being an all we, whensoever any
may dain disdain the mere idea, in a word, any
word spoken or signaled, red hexgon, hand
palm out thumb, tight… stop, just there,

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Science is using all the data on its pledges,
fledglings, nextlings, little devil details,
actual imaginary burrs, where no burrs ever were
- seeking idle word's, good answer
project the Inquisitor's wittiest new righteous use
of pine cones, and make every pre knower spit
pineal gland out without a doubt. Dufus.

A day such as today, they never en-dure, sorry,
one of them does, sooner or later, end at what.
one of them does,
next never gets out. Not so far as we believe.

--------------
Placer gold is where you find it,
said, myself to me, nigh fifty years ago

you can hear that bendingtwaygn agone
he come around,
this old town, one time too many now,
some body, I may be nobody, but, brutha

I can stretch a wire, where wire never was,
I can send signals to the stars, say hear I am
as I was saying, Heraclitus says some cool stuff.

- all rain falls in the ocean once. He did not.
- not that, if all is water, and flood survivors,
Paid,
and paid dearly to have our maxim, be third,
swing and a miss and holy baseball look what

never made it to the silver screen, until YouTube
became the critical place to appear magically, as
real, as any just as real, no better no worse,

no line between north and south, electro magneto
gut biome upgrade, 2023 7:22412,bzp.

Cold pizza and a dab

Well, yes it did take all day, to make it run.

Look around you old man-
if you cannot make believe
a single happy mind, you use

is used by others, in much the same manner, we use commas to breathe, interface compromise, first with promise,
But I you don't feel the shame,

and do the kingdom seeking
vbs virus I started just now,

where in you, does truth abide,
where in you opens as joy is
that strength life uses wisdom
to peaceably and joygnoshit deploy

redaining some aspects of military minds, suspicious- ah,

Never, just make one ever after function
under certifiably cursed ancestral karma load,
like each son got a proust load, to redeem
or find enough collective conscious use
of a we in gaseous we information used
bell ding ing, we imagined beginning

we can't really imagine ending;
HAL-ish laughter,
ever after

And for another thing,
we had druthers, I'druther be

any body who could find a mind
made happy by its mortal nature,

After the mantle of gee-old-ific
crushed and benifi-enciated
syllables fit olde stored, yes,
Paper burns, wax paper
greases slides and still burns, too

Many movies, swings in the dark,
in the winter, ice and cold offering

a summer dance, a winter chance,
wisdom called in eons ago, this

is what I hoped to be the judge of,
did this day firm previous viction
with pre-positings super posing true.

Holodeck rules on a ship of fools.

Sighing buys me nothing.

One more silver dollar
buy another time a chance,
it was a time, not a dream, and

now has been, after that ever since
wisdom swept over me, my reality,

yours, in the same time, our reality
on starship earth, where the ancient
spells have been found to loose oath bound,

if you read this far, I wrote this far, and loved
the company in a same yeast state, define
state in states where war is made possible,
by treaty, representational power,
aimed at the child in the old man
being given worst, worsted wool's my first
right twist to be available in culturally npc
blend, walk by, that guy 120 fps

You could always see first he was not there.
This is what I did in the calm around a mystic colonoscopy.
Jamie F Nugent May 2020
Bent over double,
my spine crinkling
and made from tinfoil.

Like an old concertina,
you wheeze from
the stress of it all,
so do I, quietly
to myself.

You're startled upon
an anthill's discovery,
as if it were found in
a lover's rumpled bed.

Beetles clamber away,
away from the sweat,
from the sighs
given freely away
to Mother Earth,
or anyone who'll listen.

An emerald frog
springs from
a verdant patch,
into a wet ditch.

Unkind to the body,
is this toil,
but the thoughts roam,
like a pig in muck,
laughing,
if it could.

White cotton flowers
coat the ground,
like peckish gulls
         on a landfill,
or a sailor's corpse.

After tracks are made,
here left for there,
blood trickles
down shins,
knee-deep
in brambles.

The nest of the lark,
the hive of honeybee,
the owl doesn't dare,
the sweet tooth,
nor bare hand,
doesn't dare.

I go on walking,
with Quasimodo slouch,
feeling the spring
of the cracked ground,
kinetic and tepid,
under my own weight.

I could sleep
easy and dreamless,
away in a damp ditch,
pillow of frogs,
(still soft emeralds)
blanket of muck,
stiffening under
the sun on high,
shimmering soft and
red as a Bolshevik.

Then,
in 2,000 years,
I'll join them,
those who I saw
in a museum once,
with skin like
bog oak,
jaws ajar,
with eyes of dust,
they couldn't
look away.
sandbar Aug 2019
Dandelions growing out blind eye sockets
Lose clutches of speech crutched up concertina wire
High flyer, blind buyer, accepting all risk
The vessel plunges, then lists, blisters on fists
Two tone tracphone ******* in to many things
The possibilities sparkle and teem, little salt waves
Potassium possum plunging into your pressure points
Cold water anoints ****** brow, wonder how
we got here
Some things far, nothing near, not even a
wheel to steer
Can't even drink a beer anymore, be sick for
four days
It's funny, the ways these pills will make you
feel
Like tarnished, peeled, a blank soul ready to
steal
What's even real anymore, I pose that question
My perception is subjective and ruled by prescription
Chemical diction, dictated by milligram
Trying to learn to give a ****
again
Yenson Oct 2020
Don't warble for me on your stolen concertina
your clowns lacquered in putrid red paint
can crawl to pick up giros and cheap beer from Albania
and croak freedom choruses that but taint
as full fledged members suffering from noveau mania

a million and one times I have played cupid's arena
done it with top style leaving them faint
dipped in honeypots ripe in ecstasies delivered from Africa
to leave asking is this a love god or a saint
as rhythmic passion held tight in love from Cornwall to Jamaica

what don't I know or miss with my undoubted flair
I've jumped soft hot bones danced leaving trembling hysteria
in chambers of fifty and more and each left with a cheer
roses for maidens but what gives a stallion who deserves hyacinthia
know in love and fondest thoughts you own a worthy spear

so don't cry or warble for me on your stolen concertina
been there done it with elegance and without a feint
charmed and anointed as if by the Blessed Lady of Fatima
real exceptional the being modern yet so deliciously  quaint
with the slow hands and easy touch and passion like magma
what's there to regret or miss when you gave it your all at the time...
Marshal Gebbie Jul 2020
Sunshine up the coast, just a single line of bright sunlight shining through the, ever present, rain.
The ocean lies flat, barely a surge on the West coast, which is a rare thing. They tell me they can't get out of the harbour on the East coast,
Big waves rolling in from the Pacific. There is nothing but a vast ocean between the shores of Chile and New Zealand then to the South, Antactica with it's massive glaciation surging to the sea.

That Great Southern Ocean, with it's parade of icebergs and permanent population of killer whales, that ocean generates the atmospheric depressions which whirl up in tight formation and hammer the islands of New Zealand with those titanic South East gales.
They only blow for a day or so but in that time they tear the place to pieces.
Curling into Cook Strait between the two islands the South Easterly generates mountainous seas which slam into the inter islander ferries, quickly shutting down operations. The big boats with their cargo of wild eyed, green, sea sick tourists and chained down vehicles, heaving wildly in the giant combers and fleeing with all possible haste for the shelter and safety of a lee shore port.

Blasting North from Wellington leaving deserted, rain soaked streets in the city, the South East gale howls up the island to concertina up against the 8000 ft flank of the Egmont volcano this further compresses the gale transforming it into a howling banshee which allows no man to stand upright.  100 year old giant mamaku treeferns thrash about like matchsticks, the gale shredding huge forests of vegetation, a phalanx of leaves and branches flying horizontal with the ground surface and freezing rain which sears when it hits the face and leaves the toughest men running, with panic, for shelter wearing torrid, bright pink, stinging cheeks beneath their wildly, startled eyes.

The gale endures into the night, all power is gone and no repair crews will venture until it is safe to do so. Outside the monster moans in it's fury and the wife and I cower sleeplessly under the covers, in bed waiting for the juddering roof to be torn off our dwelling allowing the deluge to saturate and destroy all.
There is no sleep to be had and as the night progresses the terror rises incrementally with the rising shriek of the gale and the blast of the teeming hail impacting like bullets against the windward windows.

The night is interminable...and then, suddenly, the eyes crack open to a beautiful calmness, the morning sun, guilelessly, pouring in the bedroom window!

M.
Foxglove, Taranaki NZ
5 July 2020
little tiny cheeses
come with wax to be
removed

what to do then

first we make funny lips
and make a photograph

to be shared with family

then it is wrapped precisely
in waste paper for kindling

saves that chopping

looks like crackers sitting
there on the logs so tidy

so unlike the ones that mum
made, then me, then her

mum could not afford that
cheese and I guess it is a
fairly current snack

she bought edam
i found it fascinating

i still make the concertina
type sometimes or buy

those waxy things from the farmers shop

— The End —