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Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Basketball stands for war or battle.
That's why I think about the players'
personalities, in my foxhole or squad.
Danny and Ben are fast and smart. Dan
especially can pass making him master
and commander. To defeat them as we did
is very satisfying. Ben's five year old son
is intelligent but distant. Disdains to answer
my question Why are you you?
                                                       But I'm not here
to catalogue the men's personalities.
I like them. But each of us has moved on
many times, when  _______  suddenly died
the games went on with hardly a mention
and his name has since been forgotten.

But even this, absolute mortality
of not just our bodies but our names
and souls is not what I came
to talk about. Yesterday, between games,
I asked Joe how Molly his daughter likes
the high school. He mounted an impassioned
defense of reading as the indispensable skill
when I suggested math, the scientific method
and history are essential too.
                                                 Also between games
Bob diffidently asked why my kids are bald.
I was moved by the care he took to satisfy
his curiosity, concerned the subject might be
difficult. He's a political science teacher so
I took the opportunity to ask What ails
the republic? Of course I answered myself
wanting mostly to hear myself talk about Iraq
and how empire is self-correcting. For once I was amusing
I thought, treating the subject with a light touch
heretofore lacking.

But none of this is what I came to say.
A new guy, very big and strong, a
bulldozer under the boards with a good
outside shot if needed got into a dispute
with the other Bob who likes to tell people
what to do sometimes, about an offensive
foul Bob called which we almost never do.
The new guy said If you can't take it don't
play under the boards which is what I say
when I'm ****** and don't give a ****.
Bob said You've been pushing and shoving me
all day. I said He doesn't want to be
pushed and shoved which got a wry
smile out of Danny as I put the ball in play.
Left Foot Poet May 2015
for Tascha

deep in the pond of unhappy, swimming,
drowning the next contemporaneous
depression thought quickly swallowed,
desperation in quick glances everywhere,
dawn is no consolation but just another
daily drawing tighter of twine cutting
disillusionment


dear god, commences every thought,
delayed answers have yet to arrive,
**** the deity's non-responsivness,
dare not say out loud lest,
deserved fates be worse, be realized,
didn't know? how can that be?
disguiser par excellent, I am the original
deceiver

But I never think about

death or dying, for that would be
defeat finale, a statute to, a status of none, a
destiny some wick spark, still insists can be
deferred

differed always,
diffidently, but grasping yet at the
double entendre that is my
dark vision of a future already past

May 2015
may 2015, back when I could write...
Raymond Walker Apr 2012
From the alleys and streets, from the door steps and heaths, from the meadows and farmlands,
A mist rises, and forms, from the rivers and rills, valleys and hills, from the fields and fissures
It swirls and turns in the night air, forming and fragmenting, failing and fermenting, till it yields.
A figure, blessed and bare, in the late night air, steps into the moonlight, baleful and brazen in its
Nakedness and knowledge, the pall of the shining moon, drips, Grey and silver from his eyes
Youth drips from his thighs, vigour from his lips and fingertips, crimson is his mouth  and *****.
Lions race across his skin as clouds scud across the moon, feral and wild this child of the moon.
Wild and *****, his face shadowed with growth, excited with his youth and desire. On fire.
Panicked by distaste, his own waste and needs, brewed in a mighty beer of disgust, a sire
Of demons, with packaged might, swooping and rearing, devilish and dervish, spiralled, a pyre.
For the noonday sun, wishing hope on everyone yet giving them night and darkness and doom.
Holds my hand and holds it tightly, grapples with me daily and nightly, even in my own room
Where hope takes hold as quick as fear or death or charity, spilling, humors, ethers, exhume
Nothing but a buried evil that has come to see the light. A paltry being, exhumed, of the night











Whilst over all the night comes creeping
Then I go out a’ stealing,
O’er tombstones and moss, where the dead lie sleeping,
Passing the fungi , sarcophagi, and the smell of weeping
Be it from crypt or hall or farmhouse steading.
collecting the shades of the bodies they’re shedding

Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilight’s last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.

Whilst the morn sunlight, over hills comes creeping,
There in the shadows, I’ll be steeling,
Darkening daffodils, turning bluebells black and foxglove steeping
Poison filled and passing the narcissi, and the tears of the leaving.
It may be birth or anniversary or wedding.
I’ll be collecting the souls they are shedding.

Through all the breaths that you will still be breathing
And all those breaths that have passed
And all those breaths still to come you are dreaming
One day you shall take your last.
And that’s where I’ll be stealing








Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilight’s last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.













A ****** of crows blackens the noonday sky,
Called from their nests and eyries
And so many ships have gone by, black masted and steering
Into the wind, Sails tattered and the keel close to shearing
I stand on the nest and watch you weeping
Till the bodies fall into the deepening sea and there lie sleeping
And that’s where I’ll be stealing.

I smiled and laughed
Till the black mast
Fell below the sea
I whimpered and moaned
With those overthrown
Till they lay with me

And I took my place once more at the forefront of man’s destiny.








I crept and waddled and watched and bustled my way to the front of the crew.
I stood behind some and fell behind few; I had come here to see.
I pushed and shoved and elbowed my way to the front, shuffled over and tried to find my pew
I sat with my heart in my mouth, beating doubly in my chest and wondered were the culprit I?

It seemed I had sat in the stalls or in the balcony, way out in front
But it seems I had not sat at all just fell into the orchestras’ well.
But I remembered that I had sat, adjusted my clothes, my underwear, my hat.
As a man should do, are we not gentlemen and so I took tea and sat.








Paying court; To the girl with the blue eyes and the thin lipped smile, the girl that knew.
As most girls do, the thoughts of men, or think that they do. And I so I tried to find her,  
But it seems I had known a Girl with no thought of love, no turtle dove, cuddled
Close, no heavenly host, called to her, but she loved as love must befuddled
Drew her breath deeply but not freely, Took air, perspiring, muddled
Thoughts spinning in her head, amazed, this pale eyed temptress, The girl that knew.
As most girls do, emotions that drift, or think they do. And so found herself alone,
And weeping, a girl that did not know that they could love found that they could.
She murmured words of love and shook sand from her pelt, howled to the moon.
She stood tall on her haunches, praying , baying, to the moon goddess, one of hers.
Baleful eyes pale and moonstruck, seemed star struck with love  a mother with her curs.






Not the focus of her attention, her pale imitation, a pale shape creeps from the crepuscular woods
He slinks into the shadows of the night paying court to this matron, with his smell warmth and lust
She stalls and smells the night air
Little of care, for all stalks the night air
She sidles and smells the night air
Nothing there, In the dark and silent dream that is the night air.
She bridles and hush’s as the night drips onto her
She has cares; for children that whisper in their sleep on the night air.
Bovine, equine, feline and canine and warm fur
A sleep comes upon them all, a pale imitation of life, and a pale shadow creeps into the light.
And smothers the light of day languishing in his power and majesty sending chills unto the living
He waits in the darkness and shadows.














A child mutters unknown words and the time has come to die
Utters words of fortune and Questions your reasons why.

My dear, my love, child, why do you cry?

I shook myself awake
From my bed of dreams
And warmth
I pulled the duvet over
Took to my feet and felt
The chill

And so I stood, took my bow,  and then knew everything, everything about what I was witnessing,
She looked at him and he looked at she, both knew nothing of how its going to be.
I walked downwards, right down the stairs And I saw everything even the killing thing
He slapped her face and she bloodied drew the knife for all of us to see.
A joyous muse, my heart sang,  witnessing the killing, witnessing the killing and I knew everything.
He looked up at her, she down at him, she was so lucky that she had set him free.
I watched with glee for all I could see, to jail the police said as I sat, as I sat listening.

I heard your excuse I hear your plea, please madam judge don’t let that happen to me
She stood in the dock and sat on the chair,  and told everything, the things I’d been witnessing,
Told how she had murdered he, in a fit of rage it was not her fault she should be set free.
Not the judge, not the jury, but I knew everything and shed knowledge of my fury.

I remember the blade, I remember the fury. I now have to thank the jury.
A just verdict, a wrong righted,  a sacred trust bighted.  And just penury.


















These children are mine sayeth the lady
Though the money I earn is a little shady
I look after them through the day
And at night none can say.
Little darlings,
Wont come to no harm, I keep them apart,
Little darlings, are always in my heart.
Sleeping and dreaming and held apart,
They’re just kids and held in my heart.  

Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilights last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.



I have heard your thoughts ideas and whims
I have heard your excuses , you hacked off a limb,
Because he was bad, she was a devil, and I have never heard so much drivel.
She was a monster, he was a slave, you never thought of the love that they gave.
I saw you had it hard and it must have been so bad
It was trouble, never ever had you been so sad
She was a *****, with an eternal itch, a witch that was not worth forgiving.
She was a dragon, he was a monster,  it was no longer a life worth living
She pulled me down, he dragged me down into a cesspit of hope.
And off they loped into the night.















'
Publicly he seemed alright, not the ***** that he really was. She was so cool en vogue, en vie,
She pulled the love from this heart like a harvester, reaping all that he could sow, all that she was due.
She meditates on her  betrayal and justifies it to herself and thinks so few, so very soulless few
Would not, and she is more, so very much more and then lifts the knife and delivers his due.
In the early hue of evenings last breath, he drew his and she smiled, just his due.






Sorry tales; I know
Tales no one should know
Tales that diffidently show
The differences, the shocks
All the stops and blocks
That love mocks
In its immortal way
Tarnished and bloodied
It soldiers on, unhurried.









I looked for the heartbroken, the tarnished, the burned; and found them all
For there were so many. Loves that went good and bad; those that hurt  and those that fall
I looked for the unforgiving and hopeless and found them all, some happy in their own way,
The traitors of love I looked also for and found hopeless and alone, shriven but hearty in their own way.
I looked to the martyrs of love, those that have loved deeply and have lost,  for many do







And I was one that did. I knew love as pure as a mountain stream,
Unsullied, clean and precious, but no love is as true as the perfect love
No thing is just as wondrous and perfect as it may  perfectly seem,
Chaste, virginal, and all just yours, lest it be a gift from angels above.

And I loped off into the night
Full of sweat and blood,
Flushed with heaven above
And hell below
Both knew my hollow soul











And through sunlight’s bright blast trampling daemons I came, shamed and hollow
Risen from this earth, cursed to death, in twilights last gleaming, brazen but sullied
The seeds of doom are sown  by such as I  and they were sown deep and fertilised with blood
And reaped by those that know,  reaped by hands that touch, lips that kiss and know,
hunger and want, lust and lie, eyes that darken and hooded, draw lust from liars,
Build from truth funeral pyres,  and fires for the ****** and yet I remain and sullied
Smirk with each passing glance or circumstance at the great and good, the unwashed
The hooded and deep, the shallow and callow, the wanton and unwanted, the sane
And simple, the masterful and master less, musical and malleable, the strange and straight.

These I trampled under heel with little feeling or thought
The form I took was human, the place I came from; dread
I looked and watched and took note, I spoke and listened
Pay’ed heed,  Culpable and crazed, yet my form remained,
this spectre.
Dying now.
Paid heed.
A rather long poem and the first I have added being a new member. I hope you like it.
Francie Lynch Mar 2014
A cardinal in full regalia
Splashed down like the last drop of blood
From an anaemic sky.
He preened diffidently,
Drinking from a melting boot print
Left in the snow,
Before shooting up
Like a dart
Past my window.
He made me blush.
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2015
~~~

"When she was a young girl, Clemantine displayed the large courage to endure genocide. In this essay she displays the courage of small things: the courage to live with feelings wide open even after trauma; the maturity to accept unanswerable ambiguity; the tenacity to seek coherence after arbitrary cruelty; the ability to create tenacious bonds that have some give to them, to allow for the mistakes others make; the unwillingness to settle for the simple, fake story; and the capacity to look at life in all its ugly complexity."

David Brooks, NY Times, July 7, 2015
"The Courage of Small Things"
~~~

and you ask yourself
could I write this any better,

and you no/know/no
the answer well before the asking

but these combinations of letters
don't mere resonate,
they sound bells, all kind of bells,
wind chimes, mean car alarms, church bells, door bells,
sounds of nature soothing,
harsh noises so terrible
only humans can devise and extract,
not found in nature

the ringing sound of
the compartments of your brain,
clashing for predominance,
each with their own agenda,
and you silence them and write

thus compelled,
to review, define truths egocentrically,
examine your spatial perceptions,
ask the better, important question

do I have the courage of small things?

The easy answer is a runaway
yes or no,
the certitude of a familiar self-
(confidence, hate, righteousness, loathing),
the sadness of deprecation,
the pleasure of surety

and you know,
even the fools know,
neither are true answers,
only easy ways out

you chew and chew each small courage,
acknowledging insufficiency on any scale,
some here and there, maybe as good as average,
some here and there, far worse than most

in only one do grant yourself a passing grade,
and even that,
barely, minimally

"the capacity to look at life
in all its ugly complexity."


for here you are,
measuring and minding,
tallying and totaling,
in full public view,
knowing what only you know,
if, you this small courage, possess

I answer diffidently, fearfully, dangerously,
treading the line

in this above all, I must be a striver,
for all else,
even the simplest life,
is complex beyond reason,
see the ugly, say the ugly out loud,
permit to admit

for without this first step,
threshold, door jamb, Styx crossing,
you will never be able to summon,
you will never possess
the starting line courage of
asking and answering,
running when the starter pistol fires,
in a manner
unexcused, undisguised, fully disclosed,
and find the
beauty in
simplicity

do I have the courage
to do the summming up
of my smallest things,
that together
are truly
courage writ
large?

~~~
July 8, 2015
8:00am
NML
Please read the article in its entirety

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/opinion/david-brooks-the-courage-of-small-things.html

if you cannot access, message me and I will email it to you...
Nat Lipstadt Jul 2019
hapax legomenon “Texas Women”

(hapax legomenon: a term of which only one instance of use is ever recorded)
(Texas Women: a term of which only one instance of use is ever recorded)


for
ꏳJ LꂦVꏂ  & Cne’

once again, they sweet sweep me off my feet,
carry me to the Court of Finger Wagging,
to be accused of hating and/or loving Texas Women
simultaneously, diffidently, consequentially, unclearly differentially

this is no flower picking exercise, shaking of the head,
“he loves me, he loves me not,” rinse and repeat,
a northern trick to confuse the plano truth,
warns the Judicial Triumvirate

your Honors, I swears,
never wrote those conjunctive words,
Texas, Women,
never ever, until just now,
a genuine hapax legomenon

akin to taking god’s name in vain,
if one dare ever utter these words, and
blows the opportunity,
well, shotgun, if you know what I mean,
one gets only
one chance

so cut me quick to the chase’s conclusion
let’s go to my defense single & singularly:
true, of women I have written, and
“too much,”
is a mere theortical constriction

I love to love women,
and a 57 variety pak is a-ok by me

an inordinate number of poems may have referenced
females hailing from a certain great state,
but never together, side by side, have I ever employed
that phrase, for my imaginations
are more than sufficient

have loved women from many places, too many faces,
some beyond measure, now a forever,
a hoarded memoir unpublishable treasure,
some, it’s true, possessed jeans and a cowboy hat,
and dangerous boots, which one admired from a
goodly distance

they brook no con, tilting their heads quizzically,
there is no maybe with women from this place,
maybe you love us, maybe not, but either way,
there ain’t no maybe in our emotional lexicology!

ok.

the only woman I ever hated is dead and buried,
and yes, I shot her dead for being ornery cactus mean,
so by this roundabout roundup summation,
you may put your head on pillow tonight,
smiling confident thinking that your hapax legomenon,
is deep in the heart of a grown boy hailing from nyc,
still a crazy straight shooter
Molantwa Mmele Apr 2016
Her beauty glows perfectly
Like a dawn through the dark

Even though
She was a biltong
Shrunken like lilies of the desert
In a broken summer time

Lean with bold head
Her eyes gleaming tears
Still beautiful like aqua in the sunshine

Her smile full of sorrow
I evoked the resemblance
We once hold hands back in the village
And my heart still melts
And smiles when nearer to thy soul
Thou amazing woman

Diffidently she came close
Her lips dry and emaciated
Her hands cold
Felt gaunt like chicken feet
Her young face wrinkled
And whispered in my ears

Her quivering voice
A dulcet harmony of the dawn chorus
Serenading the nature of my being

Soon I could die
Please let your heart
Not to fall in love with me
Look what cancer has done to me
I have Leukemia
The smell of death is all over my breath
It feels like my body is rejecting my soul
I’m dying

Exhaustion of Sleepless nights
And the sun rises with slurs
The world stares at me with insults
And diagnose my disease with their eyes
Apparently I’m *** positive

Is this what you also see in me?
A disgrace
A ** who got what she deserved
Yet she used to be divine and reserved

You know
It is so sore, so sore and sore
To see your own infant, your own flesh
Frightened in your arms
And crying for someone else
It breaks me apart

If you could feel the pain I'm in
you would understand what I mean
I’m scared of living
And I’m scared of dying too

What do you really love in me?
The resemblance
Of your teenage infatuation

Really?

And I said
There is a cure
A cure for your disease
Cancer can be healed
I can never let you die

You are the lamp of my soul
When I’m drowning deep in the dark of misery
I was born incomplete
And you were the missing part of my life
Without you I’m just a song with no rhythm
A piece of poem with no theme
Let me love you more
Because I do love you more

And after sometime in fairyland
After her chemotherapy treatment
We were engaged
Wk kortas Dec 2016
The collie, fur grayed and patchy, lopes away from his house,
Ostensibly bound for nowhere in particular,
Knowing only that it is that time, his time,
And, as he wanders away for to await that last solitary purpose,
Meanders past a pock-marked and rust-patched single-wide,
Occupied by a young woman (a girl, in truth)
Nursing a newborn, child whose father
Is one in a wide range of unpalatable options.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

They walk, the residue of some boy meets girl,
Along the quiet main street of an equally quiet town,
Utility poles garnished with benign, contented snowmen,
Low-hung five-pointed auguries strung with tinsel,
Brobodingnagian candy canes swaying rhythmically in the wind.
They have arrived at the unspoken yet mutually understood conclusion
That they have taken their particular accident of birth and geography
As far as such a thing may go, yet they walk hand-in-hand,
Fingers intertwined, though tentatively, in some interim rationale.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

On a hill above town, there is a rambling, low-slung edifice
Multiple-winged single-story octopus of a house
Well appointed though sparsely and diffidently decorated,
More hotel than home, decidedly transitory in form and function.
In one of the rooms, dimly lit with little ornamentation
Save a Charlie Brown-esque tree squatting forlornly on a bureau,
A woman is reading softly, almost mechanically,
As if it is a story she has read out loud countless times before,
To a man who is heeding, perhaps, though it is clear
That the act is more essential than the words on the page.
They have a daughter who would be there,
Sitting in a chair or on the edge of the bed,
Hands clasped, though in service of or supplication to nothing tangible,
But she is home with her toddler, a whirligig of a child
Who has found some hidden presents
And is tearing away the wrapping from the boxes,
Laughing unrestrainedly as he showers himself
In a red-green-gold ticker-tape maelstrom.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Kat Apr 2018
From what I see everyone fits in somewhere
I stare enviously at the people who others who shower them with so much care.
It’s uncomfortable for me to hang out with my middle school “friends” they all have similar interest and have forged something deep.

While I’m over here trying hard just to fit in.
Like in a YouTube video makes by Spechie,
I’m feeling like a snake because my personality is kind of fake.

Of course, this has changed the way I see things.
I’m no longer naive and see things as perfect and pretty like I did in the 6th grade.
When my eyes were forced open my the things my “friends” talked about I felt like my life was a lie.

The people I hang out with they are a little weird.
I’m not weird enough to fit in with this group
But I’m not normal enough to fit in with everyone else.

They all talk about things that concern each other.
While I’m over here talking about things that concern me.
I feel self-centered and conceded.
That’s not what I want not at all but I don’t know what to say.
If I don’t have something to say quickly the topic will change.

Everyone talks about their own experiences
Everyone talks about what they’ve seen
When I do it though I just get stares because I’m not funny
When I talk about me I think that I am self-fish.
I honestly don’t belong anywhere with these people.
I diffidently hang out with certain people.
Some of them I hang out with.
They are really kind
But I don’t fit in with them
And I always feel alone even when people surround me.
I’d like to add a happy ending but it would be lies.
This is something I’m feeling now, any advice?
tbh the grammar is terrible there's too many mistakes to fix
Kiahlee Feb 2018
This heart                              was broken
   before you came           along. Now I'm singing
Love songs. Before yo   u, someone stole my heart,
  then ripped it apart. Your smile makes me melt,
  you probably don't know how I felt. Your laugh
    makes butterflies. You're diffidently not like
      other guys. Your eyes are unlike any hue, I only
        have eyes for you.  You're amazing, kind,
          fun and spectacular too. You're sporty
             and smart that is all so true. Your
               perfect for me I'm perfect for  
                  you. You do not know yet.
                   But I've liked you ever
                      since we first met.
                          So believe me
                            when I say
                                I like
                                you.
Please don't judge too harshly. I know its a horrible heart.
Cerebral Fallacy Dec 2015
A late evening time at Starbucks is pleasure undefined
I was expecting a lady tired at 9
But she looked perfect and absolutely fine
Whipped up her sweater and wore it inside out
Pretty and gorgeous she looked anyway, without any doubt
A very pretty young lady you see
She offered her hand to me in greeting and I accepted it gladly
Her hand was soft and smooth like silk and gripped mine firmly
In my large paw her little hand was almost like that of a child
In silence we continued to shake hands and I just smiled
She then turned away and bade me follow her saunter
I followed her exotic heady fragrance to the coffee counter
Silently she glimpsed the menu mounted on the wall
A latte with cream and do make it small
Even wearing flat footwear I marveled at her daintiness
Only reaching the dizzy height of five foot three more or less
The straight smooth hair cascaded onto her shoulders softly
A fitted silk blouse complemented her waif-ish frame perfectly  
I know not of her covered  waists and the hips
Then the shapely feet perched up in a cushioned stool
The overall effect was stunning and I was smitten I will confess
Then light illuminated her form through silken dress
The sudden transparency left nothing at all to the imagination
Seemingly completely oblivious to the effect she had achieved
On the red-blooded man in her wake she’d never have believed




And then she paused with a vacant look and looked at me
And the illumination in her eyes lit  her entire body
The vent of her dress caught in the seat
The glimpse of her footwear confirmed the intent I had
A she elegantly slipped into a comfortable position
And gestured towards me to take my place
She is not coy neither is she proud she is upright and confident
Her hypnotic voice was crystal clear yet soft
I was mesmerised enveloped into her intoxicating looks
She opened her bag and gently took out her laptop
Like a precious work of art she had paid for at Sothebys
Every stroke on the keys was like a brush stroke of an artist
As her well kept hair cascade to her shoulders like a drizzle
The light above made her skin sparkle along with her strands
Golden droplets like a stream caressing her neck gently
I was transfixed and my thoughts ceased momentarily
Then it started like a wind blowing in the land of fantasy.


The light flickered unassumingly her strands of golden hair glistened
A small streak like a golden rain tumbled and caressed her nape gently
And rested on her soft shoulders diffidently
The hues of colours made me question the rainbows dedication
Her eyes were captivating and pieced through me like cupids arrow
And her nose the seemed to constantly sense goodness as it tingled
Her mouth extended stretching her lips signifying the enormity of her heart
Her words come forth from her moist lips and decorated my heart
On brief occasions she let he lips do a waltz in her mouth
I glimpsed at her smooth arms a few shades of same colour
Those delicate fingers those nails were like **** for a drug addict
Few rings clung on to her fingers and I envied them
Jewels adorn ordinary mortals she had none - the radiant jewel herself
Her keys dropped to the floor and she bent to pick it
Her blouse gaped revealing her breast a wee bit
A milky white flesh in crimson blaze and I avert the gaze
It was time to leave but my emotional storage tanks were full to the brim
I held her cheeks for a second and then she was gone
Her dazzling beauty turned on the stage lights and I was blinded
My language centres seemed to have gone on an vacation
There were no words to leave my mouth
I held tight to her fragrance that lifted me up in the air
Behold i could fly.
Wk kortas May 2017
It was every bit a part of her as her fingers or her voice
(That being an instrument mostly unused now),
And it didn’t matter that she might be wearing stripes or checks,
Not that she spent a great deal of time fiddling with her clothes,
Preening herself in the mirror like some dried-up peacock,
Not that she’d done so at any stage of her life,
As that was for the vain:
Young girls justly so, or faded prom queens who,
Despite all evidence to the contrary,
Refused to accept the primacy of decay.

It’s not like I was never young, you know she would demur,
And, in fact, she had played along-- she’d gone to the dances,
Gossiped at the sleep-overs, tried her hardest to work up enthusiasm
During the pep rallies before the games against Ridgway or St. Mary’s,
Even allowing herself to be courted by a shy, gentle offensive tackle
Later lost in Korea, forgotten boy in a forgotten war,
But there was always something not quite right,
A certain air of fragility and impermanence,
(Even though the presence of the Montmorenci Mills,
Hulking solidity of brick and mortar and yelping machinery,
Cradled the town in its enduring embrace
And beyond town, endless hills encumbered with spruce and pine
So thick the forest floor never saw so much as a glimpse of daylight
Between December and mid-March)
A curious buzzing, droning and mosquito-like,
Saying in a persistent whisper Surely this can’t be all there is;
There must be something true, something fine,
Something enduring to hang one’s dreams upon.


She was right, certainly, on the larger point;
The mill closed, thrusting the town into a collective limbo
Where they couldn’t divorce themselves from a reality
Which no longer existed, and, as the years rolled diffidently onward,
Morphed into something that never truly was
(Meanwhile the woods, inexorable as some ancient, half-blind old bear,
Digesting the odd abandoned hunting camp or hobo’s lean-to,
Seemed to creep farther toward the main roads each year),
And each year brought fewer inquiries
As to her availability and amenability
Until her solitude was final, impenetrable;
Indeed, she never found reason to look back upon on those days
Where she could have been half of something,
Save for the several occasions when (for no reason she could fathom,
Which in itself perplexed her to no end)
She thought back to the time they visited the fortune teller
Who had a tent, the opening of which she watched nervous, hawklike
At the county fair over in Clearfield,
And the mystic had taken one look at her hand,
Tracing the palm mournfully
And said, in a voice shackled in an unspeakable sadness,
*Poor little thing, you’ll never see forty, I’m afraid.
I’ve never seen a lifeline that short.
DC raw love Feb 2015
If you don't know ask
No question is a dumb question

The words Yes & No
Are complete sentences
no need to explain

your thoughts are your own
your life is always second

be your own person
who cares what other people think

if you do nothing wrong
**** them

stay real
never put up a front
never lie

live to help someone
show that you care

if you need help
i can find it for you, seriously

i always open my mouth
step in if something is wrong

i talk a lot
I carry a wise mind

i am somewhat demanding
i don't mean to be overpowering, but I sometimes do

i don't *******
i keep it real

I diffidently know what i'm doing
I don't play games

And I am no better the the next person
I just follow a different agenda

love another
Diffidently, so as not to disturb the silence,
I dip dripping paddles into the distorted image
of blue-broken green above my head,
each quiet splash sending my little vessel
flying across this peaceful mirror sky.

Beneath the moss-draped canopy, all is still,
heat-oppressed and thick with clinging moisture while
reed-throated and washboard-legged insects
spill their lullabies into the laden air
just for my thin-blooded heart to hear.

Before me stretches dark mystery,
possibly shallow, possibly deeper than I imagine,
murky liquid hiding the algae-cursed treasure
of some forgotten Spanish explorer, to whom
these still waters would have seemed so alien.

To me, this place is as familiar as the distant peals
of treble laughter that awaken memories
of my not-so-distant past, more simple and refreshing
than the drops sliding down the browning skin
of my arms as I work to pull myself forward.
Aug 2018
e J Feb 2018
A light on the screen of my phone
After many long months of
D
   A
R
   K
N
   E
S
   S
Coming back to me
To cry over a broken
H
   E
A
   R
T
To tell me that you’re
S
   O
R
   R
Y
That you miss me
D
   E
A
   R
L
   Y
That you never meant to hurt me
B
   A
D
   L
Y
But I've been down this road before
I've been broken like this before
But this is all
D
   I
F
   F
E
   R
E
   N
T
I'm smarter now
No longer self
D
   E
S
   T
R
   U
C
   T
I
   V
E
I don't need you to be happy
And I diffidently don't need your false love
[SEND]
DC raw love Feb 2015
**** these dysfunctional thoughts
that takes my thoughts away

i can only get mad at myself
why do delusions consume me

i know all the pieces should fit
but i can only point the finger at one

i need to rediscover my computations
or at least know the dangers of my path

trailing dreams from my days gone past
haunt me and live happily in my mind

**** this roll of film stuck in my head
if i could put a big magnet on my head
to erase my past i most diffidently would

it's burning a hole in me
this life of delusions

a life of only breathing
noren tirtho Feb 2020
A cottage left languishing
looks diffidently at me with a
welcoming eye.

A carriage abandoned
lends its hesitant hand
to offer me a seat.

Breeze of a lost past
turns the page of a forgotten chapter;
Time sets the clock back
A vanished glory comes
echoing in silence.
jeffrey conyers Sep 2020
So what?
So what if Christ was married?
Would it be such a bad thing to admit?

Obviously, he would most diffidently been a great husband.
So what?
So what he was married?
And that spouse might have been Mary Magdalene.

We live under this image marry a wholesome or saintly woman.
Equally yoke.
Yes, sound good.
But what if Mary Magdelene was his type?
We can't fight the choice of some picks because it doesn't fit us.

Look, at the parents, he came from in general.
His stepfather stepped up to protect his mother's image.
A sign of a great impression.
So what?
If Christ was married?

We know he had brothers sometimes talked about.
We know he has sisters hardly ever mention.
And scriptures don't know the true picture of Jesus' personal life.
All because he fit this certain planted in your mind image.

Adam had Eve, with not a mention of a ring.

So what if Jesus was married?
Would this be a bad thing?

— The End —