We don’t really understand

How atoms behave;

Or infinity;

Or how winds carry the seasons -

Like ‘Olde April ‘ with it’s 'showers sweet' !

Yes, I’ve felt them...



The clean stinging scent of rain

Scratching at the earth,

Pelting aromatic plants,

Condensing the smells of seas, winds, continents;

Infusing the sum of all these aromas in its perfumery,

Marketing it: April, again.



And Eliot said,

There be April,

'The cruellest month'.

Oh my (!)

Appealing April, with its sunny flavours,

Cascades of cats & dogs,

And dead-eye jack,

Firing frosts that just might spend the tender herb.



It was snowing in April,

And Easter was early, that year

When I took Schrödinger’s cat walking

On a leash, And April was still new,

And capable of shocking...



Now any month - could bring pitiless ruin.

The year annually

Out of step with migratory designs,

Throwing epithets out of its greenstick pram,

Its months in disarray ,

No-one knows what’s going on...





The drunkard earth sups up it’s own tears,

Reeling in its spin,

Until,

Saturated,

It can drink no more,

And every dip fills,

Every meadow spills,

Banks overflowing,

Its resolve drowning,

Questions washing

Up like a tide of interrogative curiosity.



OK – so I am really hiding in my acres...

At least I can tell - it’s April !



Enquiring lily-of-the-valley,

Puts up green periscopes.

Peering through the sodden grass,

The remnants of last year’s soggy leaves,

Cosset primrose & ramsons.

Daffodils are past their best, but soldier on

Like hungover squaddies,

Snowdrops have fat capsules where white drops shone,

Hellebores have been up since the crack of time -

Good movers - they could dance all spring!

Dingles are glinting green with native bluebell leaves,

And their mophead mates have muscled in the garden,

Quiet violets lounge on the field’s chaise long,

Coy, understated,

How British!

Oxlips and cowslips join the brave primroses

Who have been on the razzle for weeks.

White & purple lilac in green cassocks,

Will soon burst out

Like kiss-o-grams.

Boughs hung with clematis,

Still tiny shoots like birds on wires.



I am giving a prize for the first celandine on my patch;

Each little celandine - Rannunculus ficaria - is

A miniature sun uttering: Oi! You up there, old currant bun!

Here’s the template for a perfect summer sky !

The yucca plant from my mother’s garden sits
unattended and on the verge of death next to her
eldest rose bush, now wildly overgrown and lightly
blushing in the cosset of the midmourning sun.  Its
withered rosettes droop down to its bed of maroon-stained stones
in crisp, harum-scarum patterns as if the plant is spending its life
like currency trying to touch its toes.  I oftentimes
find myself wondering if the reason behind this
slow rotting of mother dearest’s garden is hidden within her
five-year absence.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say
her nursery missed the d
                                              i
               ­                                  g
                                                     g
                                                        i
     ­                                                       n
        ­                                                        g
of her weathered hands.

She was the biosphere of my world; I suppose that
it only makes sense for the earth to match my thirst.  We
sit side by side, that yucca plant and I, as we struggle to
nod our heads towards daylight while we rise on
the side of the house that is more or less
cloaked in shadow; the side that she would sunbathe
on during scorching late afternoons.  Perhaps without her
body giving shelter, all her garden is doomed to
atrophy like muscle in the sunlight.

I find irony in the way that my mother’s favored plant
was the “ghost in the graveyard;” a perverted parallel
to the game that she never wanted us to play.  I think it to be
sort of sardonic that her pride swallowed the possibility of
a cure being found within that ****** plant’s roots. She,
a third generation American girl,
had blood as muddled as the mud
that buried that yucca’s heart.
The boundary line between Mother and
nature coalesces into one:
                                               Gaea
                                               six feet under
                                               melting into soil
                                               I hope she becomes seawater.

A body encases a heart and a mind,
No simpler answer could you ever find,
Look deeper inside,
What lurks within,
Beneath a mantle of silken skin,
Skin with a face that sports a smile,
With eyes that twinkle, sparkles sprinkled,
Some have tresses that glow in the light,
Under the hair, the location of care,
The seat of emotions, locked up in a head,

A neck, slender supports along with a spine,
Arms to hold close, to cosset and care,
Rib cage encases the heart of poetic art,
The heart when she functions, is easily broken,
When love falls apart, it cuts through the heart,

A series of chemical interactions,
Disturbed a great deal by other's reactions,
Bodies are beautiful temples,
A place to retreat,
Bodies need pampering to keep them sweet,
So look after yours well,
Treat it kind,
Respect your body,
Respect your mind!

By ladylivvi1

© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

When I saw you in the gloaming
sat beneath old Herod's tree
The heralds made you think of one
so unalike from me
Weren't you a fawn who with them bore
O' such a troubled breast
That when you sat beside yourself
found there no form of rest.

And was it I that saw you there
Or was it someone close?
Is't good to question weary eyes
with sweet nepenthe's dose?
O' agèd doe, Ignore me so
to temper thine own soul
O' springtime eddies eb and flow
Cosset the wintered vole.

I want to hold the back of your head,

and pull your mouth into mine.
I taste you.
I taste you.

Baby, your soothing lips taste of bitter coffee and mint.
Your beard tickles my face.
I smile against your mouth,
I move to the tender hollow of your neck,
and amidst the sweet cosset of my lips,
I whisper,
“We can't stay long.”

Our longing held captive by a relentless hurricane.

Yet, we’ll find our way.

I'll see you soon in the eye of the storm.

Let's not leave this spot
This little piece of the universe
For which we have fought
To keep for just us.

We'll stay inside today
Make our resolutions for the year
A map that shows us the way
For all the days in our lives' calendar.

Let's not go outside yet
Into the never ending storm
It's safe in this our cosset
Together we can keep warm.

We'll create a beautiful memory
Watch films and make meals
A 24-hour remedy
To combat the year's ills.

Violence grabbed me, pushed me around, assaulted my ears.
You made me crazy.
Staggered up in a blind rage.
Decided to put an end, to this vile situation.
Left it intensive care, the ****** alarm that got in my hair.
Terminated its existence, for a little while.
Gave it a shock of CPR, I charged it up again.
Tomorrow, cosset it I shall.
For it will be my day off and a good rest one and all!
(C) LIVVI X

a few words to
knock my mandible loose
I set it back into place;
she can be sure
my ears are ripe to listen

her nails grew
in her rearing days
clamantly
clawing
'til quiet is connate to me

condign, burke
a silent sting

spoil, spoil, spoil
spare the rod
save a disparate word
and you turn to strike the wind from me with it

snag my heart
on something keen
rip it from my filthy sleeve

cosset my mother when she cries
bleed my wounds to quell her whine
I could never spill enough
to sate that empty barathrum

just waits to lay me in her snare
lets the bile sleep on the tip of her tongue
best to burn the skin that's young

upheave and hurl my cares around
would I wait for your sorrow?
for your penitence?
I long for it
but it would be swallowed up before the moon could set.

“Coastline and the ghost mirage as I sometime see afore,
Seashore of such perfections that linger into the morning,
Shoals in the distance I imagine things we once dreamed of,
I beseech to thee come and join me from this place of ours,

In my alluring may you fall on me from wherever you are?  
Secluded aft the deep inside where emotions stay hidden,
Occulted enigmas of love and secrets can no longer obscure,
Reverberated nucleic flow deep within my soul where you remain,  

Dubious poetry gives a sense of affinity to ones love torn soul,  
Celestial cosmos and is a sense of beyond the feeling of pain,  
As the ocean once whispered its breath sand across our bodies,
Perhaps best to have you belong in my unknown sentiment in life,  

Perhaps one day we shall meet on an islet that we cannot assent,
You can whisper your words of amenity as you epicarp my agony,
Cosset fervently in your arms as I’m washed of my indiscretions,
The last cinders of the autumn air will spend nurturing the winter,
I as a sybaritic will follow you in this our silent observance,
  By Andrew Guzaldo 03/03/2019 ©

I'll roam
With emancipated souls
I'll marvel the windows of god,
A spark of hope
To the sickened
And doped
I'll run the maze of mobs!!!
I'll weary mine ways
For I am not them
I'm a flower
A budding beast
A being of old trend
I'll taketh that needle
Shoot to high speed
A buzz and a boil
And a terrace of green
The benign hands to hold me
To cosset and mollycoddle
I'll insufflate mine request's and intentions
Invention of augury and forecase hours!!!!

And what is love? It is a doll dressed up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss's comb is made a perfect tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Till Cleopatra lives at Number Seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.

Fools! if some passions high have warmed the world,
If queens and soldiers have played deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The queen of Egypt melted, and I'll say
That ye may love in spite of ****** hats.

Darkness wriggles in my body like grape vines,
With their skin not so pellucid
And eyes all bloodshot,
They cosset my body gently,
Only to inspect my phizog bounteous with torment.

Bucketing their malevolence charisma into me,
They beam.
I could feel my heart crushing
And my breath slowing down.
I try to breathe
Only to find myself
Choking into the deadly littoral of darkness.
-Khushi:)

“As that of butterfly she sits not afar off from me,
Ah I notice a glance procure every so often,
Oh the body of excellence the skin of papal host,
She has made me feel alive again with her allure,

The wind blows the aroma of galbanum,
From this ethereal beauty,
As I now sit with an apothecary of emotions,
Abasement has slain my inspiration to continue on,
Light of another diurnal is not sufficient for my cogitation,

Could earth be cloistered in some obscure place?
In her curves and the galbanum of her body,
I am besieged by the enlightening celestial beauty,  
This could be the most ecstatic point of my life,

Your skin, your big eyes, alluring one be my alluring one,
You are beginning to be my light my shadow alluring one,
Magnetism is what you are alive in front of me my allure,  
I can feel the Tender Touch of your hands the tender lips upon, mine,

As the sea influxes collide in the sea before us,
As we cosset in the sand you are now my,
Ethereal ALLURE”
By AG 04/1/2018

Yea,
       I seeketh one with me to build ourn own synagogue,
       One made out of kisses, and midnight cosset!!!

I smell like vanilla extract
I taste like cherry wine
My skin is as soft as silk
And so is my kiss

Even if other men silhouettes reflect in my eyes
I will only let you read from them
Even if I'll be cosset by other men gaze
Saturated I will feel only from yours.

The more we move forward the more
we go & become backward

Near is the time for me & perhaps for
us all, to get ready to exodus  

From a very insipid & hypocritical world
that we knowingly have spoiled & mired

Soon I’ll lay my body down, for me to
kiss the ground. No more unforgiving-
people-stuff to cosset & propound

Nothing left to justify, to glorify,
to try & figure-out, & to reason why

Perhaps I’ll be remembered for some of
the better-stuff that was me. Maybe not;
little merit nor ever profound

The joy was in the doing, the creating, not
for any applause it might’ve generated

That’s the way it should’ve been & not
the other way around

For the world has grown too old to dream
& other hallucinations have taken-ground

I don’t think I want to be around when
the planet takes it’s final bow & becomes
an even biger-bang slaughter-house grind



— Ray Laccetti

I AM THE WEDGE

O blackguard or fellow. Arise!
Nay.
Bridge that light that bridges all.
Nay! Peace…
What peace!
In sleep’s blue rictus, borne naked, supine—I am…roused.
Opine!
I exhort ye:  know thy fine.
Be bold or benign, be ****** or divine.
But know thy fine.
Exhort? Harbinger:  we are One!
Ye are cloven! And these be your bridges:
Worms.
Sss!
Maggots.
Sss!
Bigots, charlatans, sycophants, thieves…
Ignominious leeches all!
Ssssss! Ssssss! Ssssss!
Yes, yes, yes—ye art ethos without sinew,
Eloquence without spine, witting captives of World’s design.
Ye are carnal, mundane:  ye are sane, sane, sane—
Sane beyond redemption, sane beyond profane!
Prithee peep, prostrate. Now behold:  ye are Mine.
O piercer of nights!
I am he.
O dasher of dreams!
I am he.
Truther! Augur!
I am, I am.
I am all ye allege.
Be still!
Nay. I am the wedge.
And ye shall labor and love with accountability!
Ye who menace the frail shall burn.
Sss!
Ye who lie with same shall burn.
Sssss!
Ye thick, arrogant, groping,
Proliferating plumes of flesh…
All conformists shall burn! And burn and burn
And burn afresh. Within thine own World, where Virtue rots—
Miscarried, misnamed, unrealized, unborn—Nay!
Do not cosset possessions, nor flatter the beast!
They are myth, they are illusion. They are soulless.
It is not death…it is soullessness I scorn.
O be caring. O be kind.
That one egg might bind, all sons must bleed.
Womb and grave lie equidistant.
******, madness, sorrow, sickness, are seed.
And I am fecund.
O Life!
Hypocrites.
Ah Love!
Hypocrites!
Peace! Peace!
Hypocrites all! Blind as cadavers are ye,
Running in lockstep, sniffing thy self-serving,
Snuffling peers’ rears; disdaining the night,
Succumbing to light. And I? I?
I am Neutral. I am Gray.
Then name thy vein.
I am he who severs One; soldier’s specter, specter’s son.
Of faith and compassion mine fibers art wrung.
Ye living die a thousand deaths, yet remain in arrears.
Let thy live corpses lie a low while longer.
Sweet coma, black drug—
Beware thy Pale Master’s tongue!
Blasphemer! Vigilante!
Vengeance is poetry. Vigilance is mine.
I am he who doth sunder, to center from edge.
Thou art…Comeuppance!
I am the wedge.
And this blade ye ride be thine own design!
O Sunlight save us!
Save? To cling to the light, heaping woe upon woe,
Forever hurtling downward, smashed outright, yet still crawling?
Broken beggars bleeding, drowning heartless, gutless…
To, on dying’s cue, lift thy shattered fingers in brine
And be born anew?
Assassin, then!
Thy logic is *******. Have the greatness to be mute,
Suffering seaward, to that brave expanse where all salts art borne.
But we—
Unwitting? Never be!
The same tide shall return for ye:
Aweigh, forlorn, into the ravening
Tempest torn; a million billion testaments—
Defrauder!
Am I? Consider the beast:  electric pastors preaching,
Merchants plump, in line, beseeching.
Still ye puppets slumber, too rife to number,
Too fay to vie; strutting for thy hollow “Maker’s” eye.
Whirling, jumping, twirling, pumping;
******* random shapes and shadows,
Prancing in tandem, dancing solely to die.
Nay. I am the wedge, both hawk and dove;
Neither This nor That, neither Either nor Each.
Descending, I rise, thy facade to breach,
Mine soul well-bled of light’s lovely lies.
To the vortex, then! From one whose essence
Waives assimilation.
No grace! No peace shall ye posers reap!
Lash thine ears, thine eyes—Run, lemmings! Leap!
Preen thy prettified husks, let Inspiration go!
Or rip out thy roots and…Grow!
Sacrilege! Make public thy shame!
Shame? Shame? Ah…Ash, conceive us!
Brief spirit cede, sweet Flame relieve us,
Sunlight leave us lie.
May ye ****** and ye wicked
Fall to thy knees and cry.
Through gates of naught I lead ye,
Bleak day, bright night, precede ye.
Butcher!
There is black! And there is white!
Between extremes lies only gray.
Nay!
Said stain bleeds left and right:  less black, less white,
On that stage too deep to fathom,
One dapple distant, one ripple wide.
Outrageous!
’Twixt solace and horror,’tween torment and balm,
There ye will find me, in rages of calm.
The wise man hath his discipline, the lunatic his ledge.
And I? I am he who doth sever, I am he who doth cleave.
I am the wedge.




(Sorry about the missing italics and indents. I don't run this site.)

Copyright 2019
contact Ron Sanders at:

ronsandersartofprose(at)yahoo(dot)com

In my dreams
They skim across the turf,
Like white swans,
Weaving patterns with the ball of brown leather.
Mackay with chest puffed out, strong and hard
Blanchflower threading the ball through enemy lines
To the Welsh wizard, Jones
Who turns on a sixpence,
Leaving the defender flat on his back.
The ball floats into the box
The crowd lurches forward as one,
Willing the burly Smith to plant it into the net.
It groans as the ball is punched away by a desperate goalkeeper,
It spins high into the sky
And for a moment,
It is lost in the glare of the floodlights
But one man keeps his eye firmly on the ball
The tall, noble Norman leaps into the air
And we hear the thud as he heads the ball back
From whence it came,
Thousands cheer and then weep with wonder
As the Ghost, White, appears from nowhere
To cosset it with his right and flick it with his left
Into the path of Greaves who turns to acknowledge the roar
Even before it crosses the line.
He runs to the centre circle,
His hand outstretched, to thank
The mighty centre half
Who stands like a sentry at the castle gate
All in white – white shirt, white shorts, white socks –
Apart from the cockerel sewn in blue onto his heaving chest,
Which encases the throbbing heart
That now beats no more
Except,
In my dreams.

Whom then to love? Whom to have faith in?
Who can there be who won't betray?
Who'll judge a deal or dipustation
Obligingly by what we say?
Who'll not bestrew our path with slander?
Who'll cosset us with care and candour?
Who'll look benignly on our vice?
Who'll never bore us with his sighs?
Oh, ineffectual phantom seeker,
You waste your energy in vain:
Love your own self, be your own man,
My worthy, vulnerable reader!
A worthwhile object: surely who
Could be more loveable than you?