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Stephen Moore Jul 2019
Council coin counter padlocks the  door,
**** here no more they pronounce.

The lady Mayoress of 1952’s dreams are dead,
How she simpered,
Cutting the municipal ribbon,
Beckoning flys to open for her creation.

Now,
Coffeers in the red,
Fred from the chrome door plated department of the WC’s, bolts the whole fancy and flys zip back up.

Brexit ******* means no exit from our miserly mendacity in the face of civic decline.

“You can **** in your own home”, the local Wig proclaims,
Fiscal pressure means a motion that stops your motions mate.

The council bids your poohs adieu and asks you to refrain from complaint.
Jeremy Duff Jun 2013
Reflected onto the face of the sun is you.
You, who shine so bright
are an everlasting symbol.
A symbol of what?
Of the moon, of the stars.
Of it all.

And at the end of the day when I think about you
and I think about all of them,
The Boy With The Sunshine Face,
The Boy I Love More Than All Others,
The Boy With The Bandanna,
The Girl Not Named George Lopez,
The Girl Inconveniently Wearing Boots,
and all the others,
I think about love.
And I think about this group
and how we will undoubtedly fall apart.
And I think about how there's nothing we can do about.
Things change.

*I'm the same, trust me. It's only that everybody else is different
Dawn Treader Jan 2017
I reluctantly gave my heart
To an island boy who treats people like toys
With wavy raven hair and deep emerald eyes
Who longs to learn and is good with lies

And no matter how hard I push
He'll push right back
Countering my pessimistic logic
With his own brand of truthful facts

Opposites are we
In time and space
In maturity, in race
In love, in grace

And yet here we are
Inconveniently in love
Me, the old cynic
He, the young optimistic critic

Yes, I know that my disconnect frustrates him so
His mood swings like a pendulum as the wind blows
He strives terribly; eager to please
Which makes me wonder am I difficult to appease?

Daily I question his unyielding affection
And daily he replies despite my perplexion:
"I love you, it's all I can do
Whether you believe me is all up to you"
And to myself quietly I say
"I guess it's ok; come what may"
With that he professes his love for me every single day

As his days grow longer, mine grow shorter
Mine grow colder, and his even warmer
You see, he and I are as paradoxical as they come
I am the night, he is the sun

No matter how much I wish to flee
He's always there pulling at me
I imagine one day we'd live happily
Desires of his love plague me so inconveniently

Dear sweet island boy who brings me much joy
I pray you aren't playing with me like a toy
Because my heart is quick to build walls and slow to heal
After this I doubt I'll be able to feel
My eyes full of tears, stomach is in knots and my mind is confused.  My logic is being ******* by heart and the love that should not be.
LittleFreeBird Jan 2015
A woman asked me
How it felt to see my lover again
And I found myself
Most inconveniently out of words, darling
My mouth opened
I almost said
Being with him
Is like Summer rain
In the Sahara
Or the first sip of water taken
By a thirsting man
Like the cool feeling of grass beneath bare feet
In the spring
The smell of blooming Wisteria  
Like a bonfire in Autumn
The sound of leaves falling from the trees
It is like the first snow of winter
Blanketing the world in white
Or the the steam from a cup of tea

But instead I smiled
And closed my eyes

"It was everything I needed it to be."


.
Thia Jones Oct 2014
I make no demands of you
for love makes no demands
I give to you what love
demands of me
There was a time when I might
have made demands
and you might have responded
as on our first meeting
or at that later time
when I joked about kidnapping
and you said "yes please"
because you have that side
it's something I recognise
perhaps you do not yet
need to let her out
perhaps you never will
but if you do one day
then I hope you find
one who can guide you
or perhaps the day will come
when your guide appears
unbidden, perhaps inconveniently
but reaches within
touches her and bids her wake
when that happens
there is no denying of truth
just acceptance and knowing
that you are truly home
in the place where you belong

Cynthia Pauline Jones 19/1/2014
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2020
Jottings from David Bagerow's "Quickie"

Shame on she, the selfless *****
Who caused your temperature to fire,
caressed your sandy, sweated brow
To rivers of desire,
Tho she fled at poignant time
To leave you in the lurch.
Best you weave your magic touch
And promise her, the church.
Then woo her and caress her
In your happy, carefree way
Then at that moment of exultance,
Laugh and run away.

David Lessar's "To an Unread Poet"

Dave, You are right ,of course, once committed you raise an expectation and once that expectation is released to the world you are obliged to maintain face...but that damnable thing called "Life" intervenes and totally stuffs up the programme. Take the current interlude of coronavirus...the whole world has been taken by the scruff of the neck and jammed, inconveniently and complaining, into seclusion, all systems ground to a halt, production lines vacated, malls and city centres deserted, blown newspaper cascading across the deserted pavement...a testament to mans ultimate frailty when his house of cards collapses, without a whimper.
So you see, as life intervenes...we are excused from maintaining face.
But fear not, like McArthur, we shall return.
Cheers mate M.

Fawn's "Happy Trails"

Were it not the touch profound
That doth caress my feathered ear
Would thou wish a thousandfold
That I should shed a tear?

A glistened tear suspended there
in iridescent light,
While you, my love, with parted lips
Await, the ruby night.

Victoria's "Wherefore Art Thou"

Strides, he does, through corridors of lust bound lessers,
through forests of small penised dwarfs, through canyons of would be's who could be.....just to countenance the promise within your words....Dear Vix!

Terry O'Leary's "Sweet Butterfly"

You enter the portals of entomology where bugs, flies,butterflies and moths are the true rulers of the planet.
A world vastly magnified by compound eyes, of lightening lifetimes and vivid, saturated colour. A world where life and death are synonomous with the culmination of a single ****** union and the reproduction of a batch of precious pearly eggs. Yea Brother thee hath entered the portal...rejoice!
M.

Fun with Terry O'Leary

"Buried in the Sand" by Terry O’Leary

A beggar clump adorns a dump, his pencil box in hand -
With sightless eyes upon the skies he’s lying there unmanned.

He’s fallen down in Shantytown, his knees too weak to stand,
With no relief and bitter grief too dark to understand.

The Bowery blight is hid from sight, it’s covered up and bland,
And Robin Hood and Brother Hood lie buried in the sand.

"A Rebuttal" by Marshalg

So Hood lied low, despite the show ensueing without help,
One would have thought a British sort would spring forth with a yelp!

Would spring ***** to help deflect contusions which occurred
When beggar Clump adorned the dump confusing all deferred.

Whilst sister Ant, attired in scant, ran forth on spindly legs
And brother Frog with shaggy dog said "****" and drank the dregs.

It all became too much, as such, a meelee did ensue,
So all called HALT and as one did BOLT...to the local for a brew!

Phew...that was FUN & hard work!
M.

Singing the Devil's Song*

There is no Makers formula
This life depends on chance,
The way you play your given cards
Depicts your daily dance.

Oh dogma flows in utterance
From pulpits far and wide
From those who claim to understand
Eternity's vast hide.
From those who hold damnation
As a weapon from on high,
From those who claim a judgement
As their finger points to sky.
The good, the bad are absolute,
The right bedevils wrong,
Redeemed shall live eternally
The bad shall singe for long.

Old men stand in pulpits
Across this Sunday's land
To threaten with damnation
If you should cross God's hand.
"Belief" is now their catchword
Abomination's wrong
Is to seek to proffer proof of claim
....to Sing the Devil's Song.

So gather all ye faithfull
Go listen to your man,
Sing the Gospel loud and long
And pay your tithe, as planned.
...But should you find you're dying
From cancer's frozen claw
And the the Godly fail to sweep you
To eternity's gold door?
Remember my clear message
Your life depends on chance,
You live within your own good sphere
....There is no Maker's Dance.

Marshalg
After an overdose of Pulpit hogwash.
10 March 2013

Singing the Song of Angels:
A Response to Marshal Gebbie's "Singing the Devil's Song"
By Luca Anselm
There’s a church in the city with pillars of stone
And windows like sea-glass, still and alone,
A fountain, and cloisters of ivy, away
From the noise of the street, and the hum of the day.
There my father would tell me of Christ, how he died
Surrounded by soldiers and thieves, crucified,
How he wept for the women, and fell in the sands,
And loved those who hammered the nails in his hands.  

Marshal, dear poet, you have heard the priests tell
Of a god who left heaven to walk into hell?
Of a god who wept softly for men he had known?
Of a god who dripped blood in a garden alone?
Of a god who sent men with book and with sword
With eyes bright as fire for love of their Lord,
With limbs dressed in black, on altars of stone
By windows of sea-glass, still and alone?

So they give up their lives for a lie, as we say,
And toiled for centuries, long as each day--
And our money built palaces, lofty and tall
With frescoes and candlesticks, gold on the wall--
They preach with words awful and deadly and free,
Of gorgons and hell-fire, worms and the sea,
Of the last day of judgment, and mankind amassed
By the wailing of angels and bright trumpet blasts…

But Marshal, they preach something sweeter and kind--
Of a mother’s soft love, of a father resigned,
Of a still, soft voice, that comes with a light,
And gives hope to the hopeless, and conquers the night.
Of charity, piety, sweetness and love
Like fiery ***-cakes, but soft as a dove,
Spicy as Christmas, solemn and grand--
(Like throne-rooms or magic or the roar of the strand)
Then you wake, and the house smells of peppermint-pine,
And a child is laid in the crèche, now a shrine.  

And all that I long for, dear Marshal, you see,
Are the gold-blooming gardens that soar by the sea,
The mountains and dragons, the prophets and kings
And Icarus falling with fire-fraught wings,
The grey-shifting sea-lanes, the flutter of sails,
Temples on mountaintops, graves in the vales,
And Dido who bleeds from her breast as she cries
For her Love, and stares helplessly into the skies.
But more than the shadows of worlds that might be
Of fairies or phantoms or rocks by the sea,
Dear Marshal, I long for who made me a man.
And would love and give glory as best as I can.

But these days oh! sad days, the loss and the shame
In which all of my loveliness falls into flame--
Where gardens have withered, and sails have been furled,
And kings plodded off in the dust of the world.
Our cities rise higher, and burn through the night
And rear into heaven with noise and with light,
The palisades echo with horns and sound
And the churches with voices and quarrels resound.
But the statues sit silent, and some say they cry
For the shame of the sins against children. Oh! My God, Why?

And those old men—well—they taught me the loveliest things
Of my gardens of gold, and the sunsets of things,
They told me of kindness, and honor, a way
That winds to the West, where the end of the day
Breaks bright like fresh bread, and crimson like wine,
And the sun sets to purple and green in the brine.

And still I remember their words and their songs
And the churches which taught me so well and so long--
Though I’ve turned my head, to the lands where the sun
Will rise again brighter when starlight is spun,
Somewhere fresher and pale, where the cold and the air
Spreads the dew like a lawn paved of crystal, and there,
In the meadows of silver, with light in my eyes,
I will honor my god in the dome of the skies.

Marshal Gebbie's poem "Singing the Devil's Song" inspired this. It's in anapestic tetrameter, for you metric buffs. If you haven't, you should absolutely check out Marshal's stuff--it's awesome and poetry-inspiring--seriously amazing. Thanks again, Marshal!

Sepia Sown

Sepia sown as best it can
Where you and I, as one, once ran
Across, beyond a savored sea
Where lust became reality.
Where spiraled lust, entwined, entrenched
Left you gasping, pale, en benched...
a figment of a thought, now lost
Forever..at what cost, what cost?
M.

Addenum to "obituary" by V

So no one notices, at all
When golden greys of aged fall?
Except perhaps, for those who stay
To blend with every ordinary day

Plus you and I as time flies by
And too, those starlings flocking high.
That old man loitering in street,
Who eyes the million passing feet.
And she too at corner store,
Toothless face and wrinkled maw,
Exchanging cigarettes for coin
(With surreptitious scratch of groin).
Mailman, fat, long, loop mustache
Complaining long and rather harsh,
That they, gone, without a word,
Should vanish into air...absurd!

Someone in their every day
Feels the absence in the way
Details don't fall into place
And warmth is absent from the face.
M.

The Kraken Arises

From blue tranquillity where turquoise waters wash white golden sand, where brilliant fish school in myriad colour and shape, where magnificent squadrons of sleek tarpon and barracuda dash in perfect formation, grazing schools of silver mackeral through diamond flecked deep green shallows, to plunge vertically down to the depths of the black abyss and security.

Calm tropical waters which shimmer like aqua blue glass in the mid day heat and turn to simmering,red fire at the setting of the enormous, ovate, orange sun.

Sea birds flock above wind blown waves, their sharp cries a symphony of the sea, to suddenly wheel and dive en mass, to dine amidst teeming schools of flashing, shiny minnows.

The idyllic picture of a calm blue infinity of ocean framed, in brilliant sunshine, by white sands and gracefully bowed coconut palms.....and suddenly, at the horizon, a thin black line appears, It approaches with steadily, mounting speed, the coastline surf recedes dramatically seaward leaving exposed coral, mountains of seaweed and frantic flapping, beached fish everywhere. A sudden, oppressive silence becomes a distant roar. The sea birds, as one, take panicked flight... and a massive wall of water rears up and rises like a giant beast, to rush headlong, raging, at the coastline.

What once was blue and serene is now a huge cascade of violent black death and destruction, gigantically it destroys the coast, snapping huge trees like twigs, surging ashore, a tsunami of unimaginable violence it obliterates, housing, streets, bridges, vehicles, shipping, aircraft and people, thousands of panicked, helpless, struggling people, killed in a titanic, black, swirling maelstrom of inexorable violence. The wave is followed by another...and another, extending right along the coastline and beyond. Each wave larger and more violent than the last...surging inland for miles  until defeated by the accident of gravity in rising land.

Those who have survived, on high land, on tall buildings, in treetops....cling to each other and look on in horror and utter helplessness. They can only wait, in fear, for the monster to retreat before venturing down to the devastation below to render help where ever they possibly can.

Twice in the space of the last forty thousand years the Kraken has awaken and risen from the depths of the Tasman Sea to the west of New Zealand. It has risen to gigantic proportions and driven right across the Auckland isthmus to the Pacific Ocean. It has twice flattened gigantic primeval Kauri forests laying them waste, all lying in one direction, each time beneath twenty feet of debris and black mud.

Born in innocence from a natural tectonic adjustment of the earth plates, the Kraken doth arise at any time, in any place to wreak it's dreadful work upon we, who reside in our comfortable, seemingly secure and beautiful coastal idylls.

Marshalg
Dedicated to all the coastal population exposed to the threat of inevitable tectonic induced tsunami.
JAPAN. WEST COAST, USA. WEST COAST, SOUTH AMERICA. ALL PACIFIC ISLANDS. NEW ZEALAND. INDONESIA. AUSTRALIA. SOUTH AFRICA. EAST COAST, CHINA. MALAYSIA.
KOREA. THAILAND. PAPUA NEW GUINEA, VIETNAM. PHILIPPINES. TAIWAN. BURMA.

Part of My Job (A love Poem) by Nat Lipstadt

A little embarrassed by all the attention but great to hear from you Sweetheart...all fine and dandy, here...except for being forbidden to go to the beach and the park..and anywhere else except in cases of dire need..(And on punishment of prison time if caught out!)...but hey, I'm not really complaining...All for he common good, aint that right?
M.

Bridges Burnt....

Bridges burnt in Winter rain
Holds a saddened felt refrain,
Holds a touch of muted horn
Blown in passion unadorned.
Blown away in errant winds
Where no truthlessness rescinds,
Where a lie begat the night
Interceding lost love's plight.

Bridges burnt in Winter rain
Sacraments of loss remain,
Sacraments fragmented drift
Redemption clad in bloodied shift,
Redemption worn as wrong slays right
Till wrongfulness blots out the night,
Till no return this path can be
Until they torch eternity.

M.
SE Reimer's words float before me in his impassioned poem "Bridges"
allowing me to wallow in this, my own dark tangential refrain.
M.

Perchance, in a Bus Shelter

Here I sit amidst the ruin of a white winters' day
Convulsive rain and harsh wind outside, contribute tumult.
And in here, in this small shelter, there is a tension in the air.

We two sit apart, uncommunicative, remote and quite detached.
Not for any reason other than the fact that we are strangers,
We have never met, nor are we ever likely to.
She has an elegance and a stylish angularity whilst I am bald, bearded, unfashionable and somewhat overweight.
She is singularly indifferent to my presence, whilst I am uncomfortable with the circumstance that placed us in this small proximity.
We would, in truth, rather both be elsewhere.

I break the ice in throwing her a small smile and complain about the weather,
Her eyes flick across my face and immediately resume their distant focus on the rain,
She adjusts her seating to face,ever so slightly, askance.
Her choice of course, to assume an air of indifference or superiority...or adopt a measure of defense..or perhaps a combination of a bit all three.  
Regardless... I wipe my backside in exactly the same manner as does she, I  am definitely no less a person for my dumpy demeanor and friendly overture
And I really feel that I don't have to share my space with coldness and impertinence,
Better, I think, to be wet and content with my own company
..So, donning my cap and jacket, I stride out into the deluge to leave the remote and uncommunicative young woman alone and dry with her thoughts.

And then....
Howling rain and shards of wind
Pelt me as I walk
Along the foreshore wild and white
As hovered seagulls squark.
When all at once she's by my side
Walking pace for pace,
Her linen suit a sodden mess
Hair plastered to her face.

"Thought I ought to make it right"
She told me with a smile
I threw my coat upon her back
And walked another mile.
We called into a coffee shop
And sat down by the fire
And sipped a steaming latte
As she told her story dire,

"The cancer's all but killed me
My husband's left the home,
The baby's gone to mother
And I'm facing death alone."
We quietly spoke for ages
I held her hand in mine
Then suddenly she stood to leave
And thanked me for my time.

I sat there in a stupor
Recalling how it played
And felt the guilt impact on me
For judgements I had made.
Those callow, shallow judgements
Made in ignorance, my friend,
Will haunt me as she girds herself
To boldly meet her end.

Marshalg
On a bleak and blustery cold winters day.
Titirangi
5th September 2010

The Old Café by Steve Yocum

It's my go to place,
has been for years,
The Wildwood Café,
an eclectic tiny place
with a mix of old dinette
tables and mismatched chairs.
the cutlery also unmatched
and well used, old photos
and signs adorn the walls
and there is usually a line
of people waiting patiently
on benches outside.

Best of all there is this pleasant
girl, always wearing a welcoming
smile, who seems to know us all.
She knows my order by heart,
Ham and eggs over medium,
a half ration of potatoes, home baked
slice of bread, well toasted, well buttered,
home made salsa on the side, a cup of
"hot" Black English Tea. Tall water no ice.

If I arrive between the busy times, she may
sit down at my table and we talk a while,
It's not a big thing, just chitchat, I'm old
enough to be her grandfather, it's the
dessert before my meal served with genuine
friendliness and unforced civility, not often
encountered in these strange days and times, it's a slice of small town America at it's purest best, she and folks like her help sustain my belief that basic human decency is far from dead.

The food is always good, but it's the comforting embrace of familiarity and
simple warm kindness that assures my frequent return.
It's the little things in life that make living
wonderful, small moments in time felt and
recorded, this is but one of those.
written by Steve Yocum

It's the little things in life that make living
wonderful, small moments in time felt and
recorded, this is but one of those

Marshal Gebbie
  That old world touch suits you Stevo,
When I come visit your beautiful state of Oregon, We shall partake this delightful repast in the company of your fair maid.... and we shall tip her well!
M.

Scoot the Streak
One must believe in something be he misanthrope or gambler
In tomorrows omniscience or the future proof of God
The penance in a drunk's decay sets self destruct's imposer
Wether speaker phone's on disconnect or cellphone's in the bog.

Conveyance of a threat to adherents of St Selfwise
Show atheist's are proof here, in belief of disbelief,
Haunted by the images painting painful retribution
Picture sympathetic **** star's allocated hand relief.

A moments allocation of a syllogist abstraction
Shows perspective of the caliber we now reserve for Saints
A paradox regarded as autistic fascination
In a one act play of living disregarding all restraints.

Deliberately indicative of fraternal heat's expression
Notebook at the ready and deep frowning at the brow,
Question definition's collage of confusion's contribution
Do we sit it out pretending or just catch the late bus now?

Marshalg
13 February 2014
© 2014 Marshal Gebbie
Marshal Gebbie
Written by

victoria  Intriguing work...so I search the comments for help... Ah
0
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary  Marshal, I kinda like this (I read it several times since yesterday)... but I'm still not sure what it says... maybe I'll down a shot tonight and try again... ;-)) Terry
0

3 replies

Feb 2014
Marshal Gebbie
Marshal Gebbie   A confession Terrance.. I was half cut when I wrote it!
I have no idea what it means.
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary   :-)) Great... I'll be back in a bit... T
Feb 2014
Terry O'Leary   Well, in the meantime I've had a few shots... now I think I know what it means... hic°°.... hope I remember in the morning... ;-)) Terry
Feb 2014

Pradip Chattopadhyay
Residues
By the night one long dark road
the houses are deep in slumber.

Lucky I'm alive and awake,
can see the stars
in their vast magnitude of silence
gentle and not drunk
have love to count upon
filled with a will to live
feeling I'm almost done.

Having a life is a great reward
and with the residues
gets more valuable.

I won't cry over the lost years
would rather think
have been blessed with enough.

The stars grow blurry dots
as I slip into dreams.

I had a once upon place
and I'm grateful.

With dewy eyes
I hurry to the warmest space
beside her.

You slip into your years well, Pradip.
Your woman must relish your peace, your contentment.
Cheers mate
M.


Tony Grannell
Autumn's Sonneteer
Behold, upon yon ivy bunch, my darling blackbird sings;
I know not why nor shall I try to understand such things.
For born this morning on a song, pray hark, her sweet refrain;
to chance a sigh, oh, dare not I, for this is God's domain.

Out of the night the art of song in tuning in the day;
unknowed afore or evermore such music on display.
'Tis love begad, a lover's song, a diva, I declare,
in soaring o'er both vale and moor, this morning's love affair.

In wonder's charm, this precious bird in song to comfort me.
Alone I stroll, no proffered soul to share my company.
Yet rare this morn, in splendours all, true love like none afore;
let passions roll, in song extol, in verse the morn's rapport.

Be succour in such music found for autumn ails me so,
when summer's run, the harvest done, to rest my scythe and ***.
Of idle lands and nowt ado, to wait without employ.
Yet, hail the sun, my kingdom won, when sings that bird of joy.

Behold her charm and charmed, I am while autumn leaves still fall.
'Tis life anew, a sweeter brew when hear the songstress call.
Though winter’s nigh, with strength and will, we’ll bear our pain and fear;
'tis all to do, good hearts and true, sings autumn's sonneteer.

Written by
Tony Grannell  62/M/Spain

Marshal Gebbie  I stood out at the rock wall and gazed at the splendour of Autumn in Taranaki, as I read, aloud, your sonnet.
...and my heart sang.
M.

Dr Peter Lim
When?
When is the when
of when?  
rampant still is the ravage
which will not relent-

the claustrophobic shut-in
hearts toward gloomy moods they bend
no happy voices of kids heard outdoors
the green fields do not comfort lend-

the downcast look, the sinking feeling
are the joys and delights of yesterday years all spent?
the spectre of pain brings bitterest tears
in the faces of every continent-

oh, when is the when
of when?
such a wash-down
we could never comprehend.

Marshal Gebbie:  But isn't that the way, Dr Pete? Mankind builds his castles in the air, thrusts out his chest and proclaims himself, King of all!
...to be decimated, in an instant, by a microbe of infinitesimal stature. Oh! the fragility of it all.
Life cometh, life goeth....but somewhere, down the track, life shall come again.
M.


Al Drood
The Merman of Orford Ness

So long ago in King Hal’s time, our nets we cast upon the wave;
and drawing in did stand a-feared at what we’d caught in Orford Bay.

Entangled ‘midst our dripping catch, with eyes that stared all hellish green,
enscaléd like some creature deep, a Merman writhed as one obscene.

All webbéd were his hands and feet, his body dripped with ocean bile;
upon his head the ****-wrack grew, green-bearded was this demon vile.

Fast to the shore with awful haste we sped before the wind and tide;
Lord Glanville for to summon forth, the Merman’s fate all to decide.

Upon the quay his Lordship stood with men at arms and shriven priest,
and all did cross themselves in fear before this strange unholy beast.

“Enchain it,” cried Lord Glanville loud, “then to God’s Kirk with all good speed!”
The shriven priest prayed long and hard as to the church we did proceed.

With Holy Water, cross of gold, with candle and with testament,
the priest then exorcised the beast, who knew not what was done nor meant.

To all’s dismay he would not bow before the Host on bended knee;
and so to dungeon was he dragged to dwell upon his blasphemy!

The silent Merman beaten was, and hung in chains in for seven weeks,
and fed was he on fish and shells, yet never did he sleep nor speak.

And so at length his Lordship said, “Across the harbour tie a net,
and we shall see how he shall swim, but by his ankles chainéd, yet!”

The net a-fixed, the village folk came down to see the Merman’s plight;
into the sea they threw him then, with foam and wavelet flashing white.

He vanished ‘neath the waters like some seabird in pursuit of prey,
then surfaced laughing, chain in hand, and to his Lordship he did say;

“You thought to make me such as you, who walk in blindness o’er the land!
You’d punish me for difference!  You thought to treat me like a Man!”

So long ago in King Hal’s time our nets we cast upon the wave;
and drawing in did stand a-feared at what we’d caught in Orford Bay.
Al Drood
Written by
Al Drood  M/North Yorkshire

Marshal Gebbie:  Tones here of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
An original work in time honoured rhyme and metre.
I devoured every syllable..Bravo!
M.

G Alan Johnson
Kafka's Bug

When I shed the last skin
last year
there was left a hardened shell
protecting a patched up heart
and a petrified husk
of a soul.

You can throw your bombs
if you wish
and they will hurt inside
but I will just eat them
and **** them out
flushed and forgotten.

Sometimes my antennae
come out in a social setting
and people look at me
with an odd expression
or look off into space
a kind of awkward acceptance,
(the ones that know me).

My mandibles will at times
spit out a divine stupidity
a slacker kind of opinion
and no amount of saliva
can dissolve it
so it sits in the heavy air
stinking like a butterfly corpse.

It was an attempt
at transformation
that failed
(I'm too weak with ego),
and I'm glad that I tried
otherwise I would always wonder.

Vincent Price in a cheap suit
and a lost puppy daydream
a world full of flies, wasps and failed caterpillars
patient spiders and polished leeches...
and all I can do is write.
Written by
G Alan Johnson  65/M/USA

Response by Marshal Gebbie

Pelting rain adheres to soil
As spiders sprint and earthworms roil,
World in turmoil stinkbugs, stink
And Satan beetles disgorge ink
But thee, my budding, sodden flea,
Hath entertained quiescent....me.
M.

Nat Lipstadt
Pandemic Poems: Unclaimed bodies, There’s ain’t no anonymity in heaven.

There are more poems inside me, but I intuit it is longer fair to impose on you by sharing more.  The deep seeded infection of my spirit waxes and wanes, and there is no antidote, and unlike the virus itself, there never will be, a future cure, an inexpensive replacement cost for the spirit spent, the time and futures spirited away.

Perhaps you recall I was one mile away from Ground Zero on September 11th.  Rarely do I walk there.

The coronavirus poetry inserts itself unaided, never asking permission, a like minded, but a contra-cousin to the coronavirus.

I live in New York City, the epicenter where now, close to 800 die daily.

Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on Hart island, mostly for people whose families can't afford a funeral, or who go unclaimed by relatives.  In recent days, though, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day.^^

Each dies with no last words, no Kaddish recited, Last Rites, too late, no Ṣalāt al-Janāzah or Om Namo Narayanaya.  Each one, a numbered pine coffin, and each one will have at the very least, a poem of their own, so help me god.

Buried side by side in large trench, room plenty for new arrivals,
I hear the banging, protesting, resisting, this is not the way, I was promised, my ears left pounding!  Hillel, the great scholar in this dream, reminds that “the time is short, and the work is great.”          

He paraphrases, though, “the bodies many, the poems too few.”

There ain’t no anonymity in heaven, but I’ll reconfirm that with you later.

Written by
Nat Lipstadt

Marshal Gebbie
God! It's harrowing to feel the raw spirit in a New York City man's soul.

You speak for the dead, the ailing and the fearful.

You speak for beggar in the street, the broker, quaking in his plenty, imprisoned on the 14th floor.

You speak for the cop, in face mask, on 24th and Vine, doing, as always what he must, with authority.

And you speak for the White Clad Angels who carry the dead to Hart Island and who forgive you, your fear and safer seclusion.

You speak also for we, who watch and sorrow from afar your agony, in our own fear and seclusion.
M.

Nat Lipstadt
raw is the word, oft need to lie down midday to escape the the viral infection of every outlet we use to pass these days. don’t know when i’ll go outside again, because the virus kills and wounds in horrible ways... thank u MG for the kind appreciation natty

Sally A Bayan
Conduits
In distance and in proximity...in despair
and joy...in existing and in dying...in the
bliss of love reciprocated, and in the pain
of love unrequitted...verses dance and call,
awaiting......

poetry has its own pulse, its own heartbeat,
it calls, taps the shoulders any moment,
awake, or adrift, it just can't be ignored...
even in a tangled, or weird circumstance,
it sparks like a bulb or a comet, curving
in a rainbow...riotous some days, teasing, fleeing,
then, turning up at unexpected times and places.

in every bit and breath of life, in every seed,
in every drop of dew, in every ember burning,
there is poetry birthing, growing...

deep within us flows green, purple, red,
glum gray, darkened inspirations...fleeting,
but, when time is ripe, they linger long,
giving us time to capture them all
.............................................
we sense them...we give space
we speak them, or we write them,
:::::::we are conduits:::::::


Sally

©Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
February 11, 2020

Marshal Gebbie

  A touch, so light,
So sensitively slight
As to be caress,
In dead of night


Don Bouchard
And then
We become old men
And old women, and

We look back wistfully, and
We look forward hopefully, and

We wonder....


Written by
Don Bouchard  60/M/Minnesota

Marshal Gebbie
  Slipped betwixt the then and now
Methinks, with finger on the brow,
Thee needs a shot of earthy ***
And a wanton ****, to rub your tum.
Thee needs a cheery pick me up,
Some hairy mates to help you sup
Elixir from the joy of life
To salve tomorrows' threat of strife.
Cheers mate M.
0
Tommy Randell
From a young man's parlance, tripping from an old man's tongue; Right On, brother, Right On!
Lexi Sep 17
You don’t want to die.
No.
You want happiness.

You want to wake up in the morning feeling alive with each breath that comes easily and weightless; You just want stop feeling like this is a nightmare you can’t wake up from.

The possibility of happiness manipulates you into thinking you can have it then, inconveniently at the most in opportune time reminds you that happiness is just not something you can have no matter how deep the yearning you have to submerge yourself in it; happiness is there, all around yet just out of reach so that you can see but never manage to have it.

You’re hopeless, alone in a cold darkness that suffocates you, leaving you breathless and isolated from others by past wounds that wont heal.

At times you’re overwhelmed, like a deer in headlights you can’t move; feeling paralyzed not knowing what to do, say, think, should you sit? Waiting until you “unfreeze”
you’re frozen in an attempt to pullaway from an invisible hand that has a tight grasp of your upper arm. Eventually it releases its hold allowing you to move once more leaving you to now wondering, lost on what to do .

Sometimes you’re trying to find reason to live, more reasons than your kids. If it weren’t for the kids you wouldn’t be here. You have tried so many times. But are left to fight for yourself. You’re all you can depend on in the end. Whenever that will be.
I stood beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and asked
The Gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory tasked
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answered—”Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of sextonship,
And I had not the digging of this grave.”
And is this all? I thought,—and do we rip
The veil of Immortality? and crave
I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon, and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread,
For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton’s thought,
Were it not that all life must end in one,
Of which we are but dreamers;—as he caught
As ’twere the twilight of a former Sun,
Thus spoke he,—”I believe the man of whom
You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,
Was a most famous writer in his day,
And therefore travellers step from out their way
To pay him honour,—and myself whate’er
Your honour pleases,”—then most pleased I shook
From out my pocket’s avaricious nook
Some certain coins of silver, which as ’twere
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently:—Ye smile,
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I—for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a softened eye,
On that Old Sexton’s natural homily,
In which there was Obscurity and Fame,—
The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.
Don Bouchard Nov 2012
The garden meeting adjourned and moved...
Management abruptly cleared the premises,
Canceled return visits,
Speculations inconveniently disrupted,
Wonder-rousings interrupted...
We found ourselves somehow
Standing on the Great Outside.

No wistful entreatments heard He,
The Grand Proprietor,
In spite of our new knowledges,
Our now-wise forays philosophical,
Our sophisticated posturing;
He seemed without empathy
In His Garden's sudden closure,
In our ejection and dismissal.

Stumblers of unexpected freedom,
Following a shadowed river
Narrowing down into a Valley,
Darkening down into a pinprick end,
We gaze behind, ahead, behind,
To see, high sword gleaming,
The standing doorman, glowering.

Eden, receding from our view,
Serpent joins us as we walk,
"Where were we when we left our talk?"
His lowered voice renews.
We notice now, the air is chill
As an endless sun slips down
Behind a darkening hill.
ivory Jun 2010
Why do you always return out of nowhere at the most inconveniently convenient time
Where do magicians go when they disappear, it's a secret we're all dying to know.
© AlyssiaAnderson

Awkward reactions encouraged.
One4u2nv Mar 2012
The contraption they made for me wasn't made of mahogany or pine. It didn't have my name carved on the side or top or woven in between a lovely vine.

The mask I wore was hard and plastic, reaching down my throat, stealing my voice, my choice, my right for air, my only care. 

I'm inconveniently sewn wrong. Stitched little ***** with a piece of my hair going nowhere, breaking, splitting, and firing a blank flare. In that me made contraption, that not so piney box. I need to detox.

The mask grips my face tighter, the spider beneath the box is a fighter but not me you see. No no not me. I'm the malnutritioned meal deal for the arachnid to steal. I close one eye grieving the salty cheek, I can feel the watery streak leave it's message bleak across my pale cheek.

This plastic prison wasn't comfortable or maced with  satin or lace. I understand for light years beyond my grasp of taste that once upon a time ago I must have lived a life of disgrace.
Jonathan Witte Mar 2017
We never cracked the mysteries of Pittsburgh,
and Baltimore bled out inconveniently before

our eyes, another nervous snitch knifed outside
the corner convenience store in broad daylight.

Salt Lake City was too pure, too white,
theocracy carved into a wafer of snow.

We grew tired of watching Los Angeles
pleasure itself in the sun like a **** star,
interminably tan and vacuous.

And Chicago was too ******* cold.

So we settled here, where streets turn
the soles of our shoes to palimpsests

where every apartment elevator
offers a wall of infinite buttons

where grocery stores stock their shelves
with bottles and bottles of octopus ink

where neighbors open their curtains
and stand shimmering in moonlight

where weather mixes with nostalgia,
creating immutable, poetic forecasts

where water tastes like redemption
and the skyline rises like a chorus,

so much taller than the cities
we inhabited when we were

alive.
a genius metaphor
that displays wit and insight
is more a matter of inspiration
than of the will
I did not experience
the PCH a day removed
if not for the use of a muse
is the sun nothing more
than a mass of flammable gas
or perhaps a nuclear gumball
leisurely crushing the horizon
radiant backlit heavenly body
meets with a pacified body of water
for a consensual coitus
orange and purple
two thirds of
the secondary color wheel collide
panoramic dusk in the rear view
as the moon prepares to mount the sky
gathering waves like a shepherd
lazy tides that vacation on sandy beaches
beaches that conceal mysterious truths
beneath cold infinite grains
tucked inconveniently between my toes
b for short Jan 2016
A little ball of brilliance,
occasional stroke of genius,
has trouble finding Jesus,
but practices her patience.
Her mind? No problems speaking it,
so she never valued silence,
and depending on the season,
her shoes are just a hindrance.
Yet lady follows every sequence
achieving her achievements—
chooses paths not quite so lenient,
drums those patterns not quite so seamless.
Despite the lack of easiness
she never masters the art of grievance,
but lady loves with a vengeance
and makes love with ******* vehemence.
Although lady was obedient
and always vowed him her allegiance,
lady never found it quite convenient
to be inconveniently a convenience.
© Bitsy Sanders, January 2016
Chloe James Apr 2019
Her voice resonated through my mind, cushiony like cotton.
oh if only I hadn’t forgotten.
Her words would ruthlessly tare through my flesh like a dagger.
I try to tip-toe, but inconveniently stagger.
When will she become too perfidious for her throne?
if she were to atone for her sins, how would I know she had grown?
I will sedate.
my emotions for you will try and dissipate.
Now because of you I will never follow fate.
On the exterior people perceive themselves in a way that'll benefit their social status. It's in the interior where all their inner demons lie. Sometimes we have to be selfish, be cruel to be kind, but some people take advantage of that phrase.
Courtney Nov 2014
I'm sorry that I will find myself more in broken skin and ****** blades than I will ever find myself in another human being
I'm sorry that the bottom of the bottle holds every type of emotional bond I've ever felt with another soul
I'm sorry that "I love you" is never enough because my hands will never only pull your skin in closer and my hands will never only write about your breath taking, infatuating kiss
I'm sorry. I'm truly, inconveniently sorry.
But I will fall asleep with the smell of your hair wrapped up in my lungs only to be awaken by the choking I feel without you next to me
And I will spread my torn up broken pieces all over your bed sheets while you rub my head mumbling I love you's like you're talking to an incoherent second grader because what is love if you are never going to be loved back
Cate Mar 2017
Suddenly... Your idea of someone is shifted...irreparably, so it seems. At first. At the least. Maybe over time you'll forget, somewhat. That is to say, whatever disappearing moment may transition into a partial, fickle memory.
You will recall it, inconveniently, possibly with slight inconsistency, and they will claim, should you choose to mention it, some sort of factual discrepancy.
It may well hover, all the way to the end of your personal eternity, and it may go unnoticed, covered by each new epiphany, layering in thin, single coats to be reminiscently noticed as a shadow.
No matter how deep into someone's secrets you may go,
There is always more to know.
        
          There is always more to know.

2.23.2017
Jordan Frances May 2016
My aunt likes to tell this story / where her and my grandma used to have this vibrant garden / and she'd make salsa out of the Crimson tomatoes / from the crops. / one time when I was two / she / made this spicy salsa / and I / ate the whole *** of it / before/ she could catch / me
I am two / with hungry eyes / and a raging tongue.
I am sixteen / and I know every time I hear my / parents yelling or / my dad angrily snapping at my mom or / my heart like explosion in my body / killing everything around it / because I know the fire in his voice is about me
Our tongues both bleed Crimson / both hold salsa in our cheekbones.
Our tongues collide inconveniently / now every time I am home from college / I wonder when I'll be kicked out or / wonder if I should leave my room or / wonder if I should drive away / make example out of my dripping body / cut open my skin and bleed my overwhelmed corpse of its screaming / parts
Body, fueled by rage / family, fueled by fire / just like / my tastebuds and / my / yearnings.
echo Sep 2014
Start writing
the words will follow

Start asking
the answers will come

Start loving
let it change your heart

Fill the page. Fill the blanks. Love inconveniently.


Just start.
Arcassin B Jun 2016
By Arcassin Burnham

....For thinking that you could call me any name
You want,

.....Won't be the slave of love anymore to adore you,

Silly you ,
You had it all , you had my love , you were my everything,
Silly you ,
You had it all , you had my love , you were my everything,

Sitting here crying to myself about my mistake of finding you
So inconveniently in love with everything that you said
Putting me in some sort of trace in ****** Embrace where
Ones mind will link up to another,
You found you another,
Under pillows I smother myself in these walls , these walls,
Im reaching but I've reached long enough,
Can I bare...it all,
When you honestly left love it was tough,
Use to fall,
How could I put a decent price on a cuff if you regret it all,

Silly you ,
You had it all , you had my love , you were my everything,
Silly you ,
You had it all , you had my love , you were my everything,
I could stand the rain but in advance I can not stand the pain,
Silly you ,
You had it all , you had my love , you were my everything.
http://abpoefall.blogspot.com/2016/06/silly-you-featured-on-lp-titled-fallen.html
Saif Shaikh Jan 2013
Inconveniently
These thoughts wrap around our fingertips
dancing from corner
to corner
Circular edges enclose their flaws
Awkwardly stretched

Cowards
they fear the truth
Like their creator they run
from the flame
Paths tangential
to what we knew
Burnt away

Laugh at me
you will at best
To hide that ugly reflection
Mock what you always denied
Surely its not only me

Trapped
but completely free
With no barriers
we are both confined
You and I
Why ?
we ask ourselves
The answer uncomfortably apparent
Why endure the torment
Of knowledge?

The same reason we do everything else...
Love..
PK Wakefield Feb 2012
of your inconveniently perfect face
there 2 eyes utterly
big and effusive of laughter

almost larger
almost drunker
of beauty than the
rest of you nay never

there is of you a body
who is a divine rush
-ing river through my hands
is delightfully irridescent
with the heaped lather
of ***
Sabrina DLT Oct 2013
You know,
When I woke up I did not remember dreaming.
I did not feel defeated by the rising of sun and
Everything that it encompasses in second.
I ate a lonely breakfast and reflected.

In a day,
I am the person who chooses misery over dispute.
Openly accepting each movement and action I meet.
Not once have I pushed against the grain in vain.
I made my coffee and drank it in peace.

In minutes,
I get lost in an infinite timeless thought.
I come face to face with inevitability and its sisters.
Bravely I encompass every thought and feeling
That is placed inconveniently in front of me.

In time,
I have become a stone wall against the storm.
I have learned to live with everything I see
And soon my voice will be a whisper in the wind.
Soon, I will be deterred and I will rise high

And then come down on it all
So very, very hard.
12th October, 2013
Wave your solemn goodbyes,
And sink deep into
This murky clot of my
Broken memories
And messy past,
For you've chosen that as your
Dwelling place.

Is there such a thing as a beginning?
I refuse to believe it is so;
There are only endings.
Even this poem,
A safe outlet for the tension
In my mind to come forth into a
Half-sleeping existence,
Did not begin.
Before I wrote this line,
There were more, and before the
Very first of them,
Before I even put my pen to the paper,
There was a thought.
Even before that thought came to be,
It was a memory:

A memory of an event
And the events before then, spanning
History from its first breath
To its culminating heartbeat.

Shall we neglect the technicalities
And philosophical musings for a
Brief moment
And return to the single drop of water

Not quite yet, I rather enjoy confusing
My own mind.

Do you ever wonder why I
Tend to cleave to you now?
Because when one has nothing and
Gains even the most trivial of things,
It becomes infinity.
Everything in one's world becomes
Filled with the
Essence of what was once so scarce.

Give me a grain of sand
And my world becomes a desert.
Give me a pebble
And my universe becomes a mountain.
Give me a raindrop
And my eyes behold a waterfall.
Give me a seed
And my feet take root in a forest.
Give me nothing
And I shall remain in darkness,
As I was from the start,
But never from the beginning.

You dare give me your affection?
You're dealing drugs to the addict.
My empty life becomes a
Panorama of your love, and what more
Does humanity exist for
Than to be loved as passionately
As they do.

Lines blur as if
The world has inconveniently
Placed itself behind a foggy window.
My horizon becomes the sky,
My sea becomes the shore,
My feet become the grass,
And everything--
Everything there is--becomes you.
My heart becomes yours,
My mind becomes yours,
My soul becomes yours,
My skin becomes yours,
My lips become yours,
And my breath becomes yours...
Oh especially that , I am sure
Because you stole it right from my
Sensitive lungs.

All my senses can detect is you
And there is nothing better,
Nothing more I could want for.


I will be whatever I wish to
Because I refuse to sit still and
Settle into the
Preset mold prepared for me,
Yet now that I see you
I loose my identity in your
Fine dark eyes.
I wish to be noting more of less
Than what you choose to make me.
Who am I? All I can process
Is what thoughts sweep across your
Beautiful mind.

You finally realize what I
Questioned all along: how can
You love someone who is no one?

I am the grain of sand
And you are the desert.
I am the pebble,
And you are the mountain.
I am the raindrop,
and you are the waterfall.
I am the seed
And you are the forest.
I am nothing
And you are everything

To me.

Hastily recoil and retreat with all
You bestowed upon me
If that is what pleases you.
I will still be nothing
And my world will also be nothing,
And you will be nothing but a face
That tugs at my nothingness of a heart,
Sinking deep into
This murky clot of my
Broken memories
And messy past.
Zoë Jun 2015
my heart and my mind
are not effective
when attempting to work together
my mind keeps telling me not to
but my heart of course is inconveniently head over heels in love with you
this poetic prologue
a feeble exercise
to encapsulate common
place frustration
experienced by

this fledgling author.
yukon determine verdict
once ye peruse short
spurious poem
below decks
will consume scant minutes.

hoop fully byte size
format asper reflections
bing hobbled akin twin
frustrated cobbler
with nary a sole

to shoe healing power
of summoning
creativity words
stitched together
trying ma darnedest
to capture
fleeting idea.
filed within memory banks

jagged shoals of rock
illusory images frieze
leitmotif cerebral pad lock
forcing together mis
matched metaphors
or what not ad hoc

there a young lad skipping
with his lass in colorful frock
passing fanciful day dream
lazing about on the dock
while hands of time tick
on the clock

sober reality check tears me away
from idyllic distractions
rearing head of immense
frightful mental block
a bygone student of Antioch.

now an epilogue and expansion
of given thesis sans above premise.
i now oblige objective at hand,
and resume con sue mating

avant garde fashion express
sing difficulty for me
to seal craft building blocks
of english language in
a fitting manner does justice,

and gives liberty to leap
ping lizard like thoughts
that dart to and fro
hither and yon within my mind.

rather than censor or edit,
I pour out at rapid fire rate
the notions that flit thru
me noggin staring at black

strunk white screen. some
times eyes remain closed
to help initiate process
to summon forth this, that
or another barely
perceptible concept.

the task less difficult
when topic provided
happens to be the case
with self imposed

approximately five ***
dread word epistle,
which preconceived
subject automatically

narrows focus into
figurative box.
when provided  
with specified issue,
the effort arduous
to gather plethora

of disparate points
indicating directions
diatribe in question could shift.
any one of these paths
(if not most) take down  
moribund dead end

with only infinite abyss
as an escape. countless trials
and errors find exploration
(to state near physical exhaustion)
where each bramble strewn route

only finds this pensive fellow hopelessly
and inextricably entangled within his
own thicket of unprintable verbiage.
would you believe and/
or accept, that ah aha
eureka moment arises

(and vacuum powerfully
***** up every ounce
of concentration)
most unexpectedly
and inconveniently

per on the toilet,
when paragraphs
nearly tumble pell mell
of their accord

(defying laws
of physics) from
tips of these fingers
or bowels of this simian.

a frantic attempt finds
zealous effort to tap
unstoppable barrage
barreling forth

from fount of mother
lode, than finds
slightest distraction
(such as a delivery
of parcel, tornado,
cosmic catastrophe,

et cetera) to lose precious spider
thin thread forever
(at the eleventh hour)
lost along vast vista
abandoned like useless
obsolete materiel.

even upon minutes scrutinizing
satisfactory completion
sans lengthy manuscript,
an unbiased opinion

of displeasure frequently
takes place finds disappoint
ment, and these myopic eyes
blink and stare once again
at white washed computer screen.
Gosia Polkowska Jun 2016
Language stumbles
over edges of
teeth,
stuck in the lips’
door as I
contemplate
which word to
release next.
The universe
requests the truth,
but I am not
ready, I say, “I
need to think about
it some more,” but
clumsy phrases
waltz together without
rhythm, and
inconveniently
emerge,
without warning,
breaking out of
my embrace
and into the realm
of perception.
Najwa Kareem Jun 2022
All baby blue sky wide and vast overhead
looking upward
in front of me, behind me, right, and left
all clear and no red

Not one imperfection do I see
like that of any Father
if he chooses
if he tries hard
not impossible for that of a Father of one, two, or three

God's final Prophet and Messenger (PBUH), Best Ab Ever
rose when his daughter, Lady Fatimah (AS) entered the room
his willingness to take chirping birds, his blood and others to the heavens
a role model for men with kids, a captivating, best-selling book, so clever

The sun's bright and radiant shine
a freedom-for-the-oppressed fighting Pop
whose love and care were shown consistently
reminding me of The Black Prince of yours and mine

From miles away, a Baba inconveniently rises from a table of food and folks, a comfortable place to be
on the phone, he speaks with each of his children
at the end of a thought-provoking speech, three daughters circling around him
an inspiring, beautiful, unforgettable sight for me

Similar to the gentle, merciful, ocean-shore-sounding, trees-blowing breeze outside
a Father's "Nothing bad to say, Dad" influence
uplifts, encourages bravery, soothes, guides, offers peace, stability and flexibility when needed
motivation, joy, and a little wiggle and giggle by-his/her-side

The sky big, open, and inviting
a crow in a special air ***** its wings a bit and then glides
Abu's son or daughter once a child
all clear skies, the pilot's plane rides

He smiles She smiles
I'm glad
He listens
Nothing bad to say, Dad.

By: Najwa Kareem

*Written on 6/19/22
Happy Father's Day to all family members of yours and mine who are Fathers!! Today, I offer to you one important wish: After seeking Allah's/God's help/assistance, commit yourself to being the kind of Father whose child/children will have nothing bad or negative to say about you. If you haven't until now, please commit and start today (on a special day for Fathers). If you have before and are falling short, renew your commitment and start today. Your/Our God, your family/our human family, your/our society, and your/our world will thank you and this thanks/gratitude will show up in a variety of ways. When you've earned this distinction, you'll be able to wear the badge of Father more happily and more proudly.

P.S. To add one other thing 😉, please, please be careful of pointing the finger at your child/children if you're not pointing the finger at your own self, too. I think many parents in focusing on their child's/children's actions, neglect looking at their own as if being an adult/parent gives one the rite of passage, a license to do whatever he/she wants without the need for self-reflection, self-critique, being called out, consequences, retribution, correction, asking for forgiveness, etc. Please remember that as much as you're watching and observing your child/children, he/she is/they are watching and observing you, also.
Steve Page Oct 2018
The shorter the time
The more personal the view
Between the heads of those in front of you

The shorter the time
The stronger the lingering taste
The more intense the take away experience

The shorter the time
The easier to scoot and duck under
The inconveniently well placed barrier

The shorter the time
The more focused the afternoon stretch
On the sofa of your oh so limited rest

The shorter the time
The quicker, the swifter, the tighter
You'll find the undaunted feature writer

The shorter the time
To that unreasonable deadline imposition
The sweeter the release of the completed submission

The shorter the time
The better
Writing to order is an art.
nico papayiannis Feb 2016
Oh well! I just passed wind in the chapel of rest
I'm sure the old geezer laying  in the middle of the room would laugh if he weren't quite inconveniently deceased
Its this primeval instinct that separates us from the other animals, this ability to shake hands with fate yet still laugh in its face
A firm side swiping smack of reality is all it takes at times to just get up and get on with it
Yes i am the first to destroy and dissect the happiness that surrounds, but i am also one of the first to discard the misfortune and stride head on into my direction , far from the reaches of turmoil.
Never have i stayed for too long in a situation that undermines the quality of existence , the desire to carry on
There is always the next thing a journey to be had
There always will be another way to enlighten
A smile is never far from a frown
When the hard times press then push back harder
Forge an existence, one that compliments
One that takes away the unnecessary
The body on the slab, it cannot laugh,but I reckon just before the time of departure it broke into a small smile of content conviction
The experience is what takes you on
Its the memories that fill your empty box
When my time comes my smile shall reign, it will define
Time not wasted
For life was tasted
moyees Jun 2017
Her soul is a fire, it burns with an intent.
not to harm or cause destruction to those
 she crosses paths with.
But to keep those close to her warm and safe,
However,
if you dare to step into her flames unprotected you will burn inconveniently, if you dare to throw water to douse her she will break out stronger that you think.
Her soul is a fire, think again when you speak to her.
-moyees
Bryant Aug 2018
Your glare juts wide and traps me in an obtuse corner
Varying degrees of turpitude
Pivoting around the axis
Beaming rays of optimism
Linear into the continuum, until infinitesimal
An exertion with no assertion of retrieval
A harbinger screaming into a desolate chasm

"Nothing stirs."

You only have interest in superfluous self-degradation
Pessimistic introspection
Mocking your molecular geometry
Resisting the valancing
Fearing the internal reaction
Not noble, but wholly and completely nothing
Retaining no mass or substance
Your presence in the physical world is an irregularity, an enigma

I'm reaching for you
Breaching your flesh like an apparition, a translucent figment of the shell that once contained your potential

I am one of the few
I can observe you
Your spectral glow haunts and hypnotizes me like the spiraling eyes of the cobra

"If you could witness your fate in the the third person; would you?"

I can observe me

We converge,
Like vinegar and baking soda
Erupting with my bubbling destructionism; using your vessel as a medium

Ground zero
Inconveniently located at the epicenter of my quaking misfortune

Buried alive since exhumed from the womb
Every breath shorter than the last

A pilgramage of zombies
The festering runs deep
Curdling blood
Clotting and clogging
Coagulation in the vein
Withering remnants in are wake

Cyclical contaminyation
Praying for a cure
Begging for an antidote
Sleeping with the virus
Mayah Seals Feb 2021
Drowning in the air I can no longer sense buzzing and swirling around me in melodies and soft caresses.
That would spring my steps and twists my fingers into beautiful worlds of colour and chaos.
Now, it just blows inconveniently and loud around everything that surrounds me.
I have become anchored in this underwhelming realm of ****
No longer can I see past the flesh around me; the hazy shadows leaving sneak peaks to the souls they carry
Or feel the ancient spirits of the trees with milennia of knowledge and wisdom slumbering soundly.
Nor hear the Goddess sing in the crisp, quiet caress that came with the fallen snow.
No.
My life has become controlled by this...this small atrocity that absorbs all my colours and leave me dulled and gray
I'm calm and clear; but so calm I am empty.
There is no music in this new mind of mine
And my magick feels locked away
Is this normal?
Who would darken such a sunny day?
I say as I swallow the pills anyway.
Medication for mental illness: what can I say except there's pros and cons, my dudes. There's pros and cons.
Mateuš Conrad May 2020
i could write about... how i "trapped" a cat in
my bedroom...
kept the window open... and two mosquitos flew
in...
i would be a sadist... if i had a mythical
tarantula scuttling around the room...
but two mosquitos and a cat...
                that's just a tease...
                  it's not like i once fed two rainbow
trout eyes to this... no... the other cat...
or how i pinched a mosquito by the leg...
and... this... no... the other cat...
gladly gobbled it down...
            after all... i once looked at a spider
scuttle to a freshly painted surface and...
i guess he started drinking it...
          in an absence of retelling the story
of the 1960s and all the drugs...
the catholic school curriculum sentenced us...
to the remote part of the decaying
soviet empire - somewhere in ukraine -
we were warned about... sniffing glue...
and aerosol abuse...
             no mention of l.s.d. or: the rest
of the rainbow...
        but this is not part of the experiment...
i had a while sitting watching the moon...
yesterday's fullness and quicksilver flooding
the stones, the lipid of leaves...
        the metals... all that was missing...
frost... to elevate the quicksilver into
a red carbet walkdown... with that...
very familiar... paparazzi epileptic "flashing"
as the head twould tilt from one aspect
to the next... as the light contorted...

yes yes... the experiment...
to write! to write! what people want!
it's going to be hard...
i guess i'd do it... if i was paid...
  but i'll try... read up some pop pieces and
see if i can fake it, sly fox moi:
stealth myself beneath the gaydar...
and frown at myself... stand stark naked...
this masquerade is but a drop in the already
available ocean of masquerades...
i even thought about dressing up
for halloween for next year...
         me: april 2020...
                     lucky for me i have a face-mask
that doesn't details anything surgical
about it... more like... scorpion / sub-zero
from mortal kombat...
    problem: this beard doesn't help...
i can hijack two bottles of jim beam...
but...                     rat rat rat tat tat...
tic tac toe in a maze of: death's yawn...
             last chance trap: write what people want...
what's easily a digestive biscuit...
no fibre no grit...
                 hell... no point disguising my soon
to be disclosed efforts:
to write what people might like...

       under a pseudonym: anonymous?
generic stuff... but the quest to spot the generic
from the sly authentic...
will prove much harder...

for all the purveyors and connoisseur...
well... not much of the latter
concerning "low view count"...
who is playing this numbers game...
well... those who cite weight loss
via stones and pounds...
if you go down the metric route...
kilograms...
once upon a time... remarkable...
from 101kg down to 78kg...
and no strech-marks...
because... the bicycle because the bicycle...
and some swimming...
toning: exercise but more
the desire to gamble with traffic...
and the wind in your face...

    nothing as suffocating as a gym...
low life - *******... views? 945...
     that's... well... kingdom of the *****...
the kingdom of the crustaceans...
anything in the 100,000 view count is probably
atlantis: humanoid fish replicas
of both fish and man... mermaid and that
meme: top of a fish bottom of a woman...
versus: the obvious choice...

to write: what people want...
harlequin novels?
                    heavy on the rhyme...
rhyme like... kicking a ball against a wall...
superstious amalgamations of echo...
crisp bite into deep-fried stuff...
chewing like an attempt to find imitations
in sawing through wood...
not the sort of incision we'd be looking
for... more like a mutilation of wretched
muscle, bone and sinew...
by hyenas woken from slumber
by a wake of vultures...

   vultures in a group: is a kettle (when in flight)
                                    is a committee (when perched)
                                  is a wake (when feeding)...
perhaps i'm thinking about stealing
the eagle from the romans...
and the crow from the germans...
perhaps... just because... these caron barons
of the bald patch...
   leather monuments of skin's flagelation
                      their crown...
that sort of birth: i have in sight...

but no... it's not exactly a haiku...
it's... an astouding breath of sawdust air...
something to be sniffed when the dust doesn't
settle in the quarry from when
hammer meets the ***** of the incubating
earth of stone...
sand: add pressure... have rock...
ad more pressure: have ore of metal...
consecrate the bones...
             place them inconveniently into
envelopes of addressed: aeons...

but to write what people want... "like"...
i'd have to sift through...
stomach... the commets...
it's so discouraging to entertain these...
bothersome flies...
bought a book... pretended to scribble
on the back of the cover...
the author was nowhere to be seen...
or heard from...

               comments likes: metaphors! beautiful!
thank you!
  blah blah to no end of an etc.
i guess: no point writing anything that...
doesn't escape into the realm of thought...
i try to conjure up something in writing that
would make someone write a comment...
             i like an audience that knows it deserves more
than to pander me...
and i need of it... stitched up lips...
   since all of this: for gratis...
                        no browny points to create
echo chambers and niches...
of the "protected" penship...

  that doesn't imply that i don't want to write
an imitation poem...
without obvious plagiarism...
i just need to find that most melodramatic me...
the cheapest version of me...
i have to imagine myself *******...
what i'll be ******* i'm not exactly sure...
it won't be the words...
the rhymes...
           lack of! god, please! a lack of!
less rhyme more chance to spot beauty
elsewhere... an ****** festival of flowers
with near perfect geometrical replicas...

          is it possible that i care much more
for the anonymity of the reader?
am i like a guilty pleasure...
watching some 1970s italian *******...
eating a bagel with either:
    (a) smoked salmon, cucumber, mayo...
   dill... and that all important rainbow trout caviar?
or be (b) being sloppy... but still the caviar...
and the bagel... and instead:
some tuna and sweetcorn and mayo?

perhaps (c)... jack johnson was the best kept
secret... until he was given things beyond his audience...
and... no jack johnson after he was compared
to be the next bob dylan...
i'm sorry... how was that ever going to happen?
you'd have to like bob dylan in the first place...
and that's not easy...
you'd have to start liking him...
like i did... on an overnight train from
st. petersburg to moscow... to see metallica
play there for the very first time after...
rioting... famously... when: and justice for all...
harvester of sorrow...
and the crowd went mental...
                                       the rest is: history...

if all it took was a car to road-rage across
h'america... it truly requires a train to...
                                            get a thrill for russia...
other places require you walking:
holland...
            since everyone else is cycling to beijing...
and other place require you to cycle... poland...
england... france... i guess germany...
well... plucking one of your eyes out...
and asking a crow to safeguard your soul...
while you would be able to attach a little
camera to its body... that sort of *******...

is caviar a luxury?
          a concentrated fish-oil in a capsule...
it's hardly a chicken egg "luxury"...
nor quiet the abortion...
replicas? those vitamin d capsules...
fish-oil... luxury? depends on whether you enjoy
it... pompous foodstuff:
no need to call the: healthy body = healthy mind
brigade... no slightly pickled brain...
then no inquisitive palette...
i rank baltic herrings among them...
raw... baltic sushi... in a creamy sauce...
or a steak tartar(e)... with... all the trimmings...
the raw yoke... the raw: onion...
gherkins, capers, etc etc.

                    some people... just frown at the idea
of caviar... not to mention blue cheese
and oysters...
   and to think... oysters where the grub
of "gammon" in Dickensian times...
   since then... even gammon was morphed...
"back in the day" it wasn't a racial slur
as much as it was actually more:
******* and... swindler... con-artist ref....
the pickwick papers blah blah... blah...
            only now... oysters... wow! a... luxury!
only if you enjoy eating them...
otherwise? overpriced dogshit...

        i'll concede this point... the version of
existentialism in english... what was started by
the danes and the germans and the russians...
later implemented by the fwench...
english existentialism?
stastistics... psychology... and this...
world of darwin... and the atlas?
blind samson holding yet pulling the pillars
down...
this is anglophonic existentialism...
no gravitation toward: ontology on the grounds
of temporal affairs...
no gravitation toward: ontology on
the grounds of spatial affairs -
  english existentialism: oi! pass the torch, mate!
n'ah mate... we're sending this torch
back in time... to tribal invaders
and our hyper-sensitive exoskeleton
"souls" of hybrid -
the body is both a host and the parasite...
lest we forget the psychiatric evaluation
surgery of the holy trinity of freud...

or far further... krafft von ebbig:
******* was cynical back when
******* was a taboo and ****** for crucifixes:
looks like being aborted was:
rainbow-tinged: as was: this time soon...
why do i like wearing "p.p.e." equipment
akin to face-masks?
finally! i can compete with the islamic
attire of the niqab!
i can finally: bark cat! i can finally:
meow dog! - with less restrictions for
the eyes... ninja brigade: scorpio vs. sub-zero...
it really is the new normal...
now i can think about all the lost
****** recognition technology:
while i pillage... **** and assume:
laughter the new paracetmol...

slaughterhouse gown: a slithering tongue
of a chewed of proposal...
                 nothing like caging time in
bedroom antics of a cult personna of a german
lutheran... who wasn't...
that catholic ***** and a sobering up after
a prince albert antic...
                       gullotine for the slug of: fore!
i says: skinz...
                      skinz and skalpz...
alt.: skinß und skalpß...
                                         otherwise known as:
a steady diet of influenza and toss-***...
back in poland come the fall of
the iron wall...
a tight-knit commuity...
one of us was infected with ospa (smallpox)...
we were exposed to the infected...
and czerwonka (červonka)
                          dysentery...
i missed the measles... (odra)...
                     my immune system was not
exposed to it...
              i guess i'm living in times when...
bubblewrapping works...
                     prime-time "eugenics" of the post-soviet
empire... expose them to... the golden standard...
and if they survive...
god... an ear infection is about as much
of a trivial-***** pain as a toothache...

poland in the 1990s... like mongolia in the 1200s
or whenever those people were given
the scurge of wrath loose buckle of the belt...
that was then... this is nowhere new to now...
happens... when people read
two books like dogma...
1984 fetish and all those televangelist...
no new rats: no room left in the maze...

                 karen oi oi smithy loiters...
scraps the details of her meme haircut...
starts to bleach her *****...
          etc. etc.         and more etc.
                           well... so much for this... supposed...
would be experiment in: "sowering the grapes"...
hardly... where is the wrath and the horse...
required for the plough?!
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2020
in that there's an insufferable
immediacy of the heart...
whereby: a mind...
   and some "unbearable lightness"
      of ontology
is of little of no concern...
or that there's poetry like
there's carpentry...
         that there's the chinese
school...
              and people in the west:
who like fudge-packaging
narratives... the drama brigade...
etc.
  therefore no revision
therefore no "re-working"...
just what's writing:
not what's being written...
beside the heart having
nuances and labyrinths
for blind people...
       or the 5:1 ratio with an elephant...

it's so imperfect: but in that...
there's no reason to return to...
what's otherwise something akin
to ******* against the wind....

for a loss in enthusiasm...
for there to be no: and noah
praying for the whittle bits
of "excess" rain...

                 all the walls with
enough braile to catch cue
of the forgotten nose tip
with the two boggled tow
"oopsies" brigade...

                 there's a scenario
where an umbrella is to be used...
it either rains...
or it shines pwetty nostalgic...
and that's the end of
any proto-
                    "desires"...

          there's always then
that grand cispher in lingo...
that's like some smart-*** h'america
making comparison to
a mcdonald's on a dead-end
"concept" of a sunday evening
like he or she is
gesticulating with
bloom authority with and ottoman
               vizier...

it's just not that impossible...
if english: beside the people...
and if there was...
a "diaspora"...
   i see diaspora as pockets...
quantum and eventualities...

      but the conundrum
of entire continents?!
  
   my mother says: i'm still surprised
you haven't emigrated from
england...
i.e. to... where?
the fridge, the moon...
the loitering broom and "windy"?

england is somehow the old worst
where h'america is the best new?
or australia?
    even if... to seek...
the economic... furthered...
futility...
   "it can only get better"...
             that truly depends on...
what's the expectation surrounding...
a... "betterment"...

i see a vision!
         a cul de sac with an extensive
-esque dealings with Horace...
       i also see... a lawn of envy...
i see a tree...
it doesn't matter that tree i see...
but a wundersehen...
   i see a shadow...
         a tilt of frowning...
  somewhere where i can become:
inconveniently my best: disposed...

where i can find... english arrogance...
that's too lazy to become militant...
chameleon myself into a tidy
nugget of a mathematical puzzle
within how: shoelaces are...
bilingually mingling...

             a borrowed echo for a footstep
toward the ambition
of a mangling endeavour...
effortless words...

                perhaps "english" and perhaps
"arrogance"... but always the best...
in that... i will never visit
the maldives...
  nor will i have myself fitted to
a tailoring on savile row...
          second skin: tattoos...
maldives...
                  it's becoming too exhausting
to breathe with expectations...
there's no nuance there's
this old borrowed "saying"...
             stereo-typical... attempts...
focus bleeding.

the toothache conquered the lion...
the unicorn...
    the unicorn...
                   me and the youth
of elsewhere...
                      in the continental share
of the anglo-"diaspora"...
       best i weave myself with
some spanish...
   and end the expectations
of my mother's whims
on the crease that denotes
a geography akin to:                 Peru...

as i... will... beside the invested ambitions...
otherwise tow to tilt
the clepsydra of: peruse:
the odd braille... and the...
looking for vowels in 'ebrew.
Above title attests
how mine mundane mein kampf
insync as a veritable clogged drain oh:
flush with adventure overflowing excrement
er... rather excitement.

Apt aforementioned accurate personal description
believe me not, but urination
and defecation née emergency evacuation,
where majority of human league
smell bound with fascination
triggered (reasonably rhyming) inspiration
culmination of requisite time
sitting atop porcelain goddess
devoid of hesitation and trepidation
herewith follows mine poetic ululation
hoop fully invites veneration.

Poetic embellishment doth belie
ever since garden variety generic guy
long since experienced being little boy
mean kids constantly teased and bullied me
on account yours truly being small fry
barely invisible to naked eye
bullied (most my entire boyhood)
as scapegoat, I did decry
pleading lame feeble alibi,

especially when tawny punk
named Phil (actually a groundhog)
threw suckerpunch witnessing,
yours truly feigned falling
upon wounded knobby knee
to avoid me countenance being pummeled
courtesy knuckle sandwich
they threatened to apply.

One puny socially verily withdrawn lad
no surprise experienced suicidal ideation
throughout public school even as undergrad
never wagon figurative tail when fired
from one after another workstation.

Hence metaphorically hermetically sealed self
against incessant beastie boys squirreled away
amidst imaginative escapes courtesy bookshelf
isolates myself, viz remaining figuratively at bay
interestingly enough petrified livingsocial whereby
flesh and bone closely resembled hardened clay

hashtagged Matthew Scott Harris as pipsqueak
deadset to halt physical maturation without delay
anorexia nervosa (modus operandi) did buzzfeed
starved and emaciated lovely bones as main entree
unbeknownst then, but clear as a bell now
emotional state of parents unspooled and didst fray
father and mother aghast their pallor went ashen gray

grim reaper wielding large scythe intimating hooray
approximately half dozen years later
both parents relentlessly vilified verbally hammered
and especially didst inveigh
against their sole singular son
born thirteenth of January
hooded think those folks
who begot me more cruel fate
then being lynched courtesy triple "K."

Gambone builders bought property razed demesne
to escape vitriolic wrath atop roof at Glen Elm, I lay
nevertheless indelible memories emotional reprieve
spiritual succor delivered upon many a bygone May
when heat radiating off shingles served newgateway
passing time and wishing myself far as Norway
adopting role of bachelor farmer,
or even time traveling
back Catskills circa Borscht Belt,
also known as Jewish Alps oy vey.

Yours truly risk averse
which characteristic,
I declare constitutes curse
thus isolation found me sprawled out
upon wuthering heights
against regular diet of diatribes
delivered carte blanche
with expletive filled verse
toward solitary son ill fate
receiving nasty brutal abuse
considered dying far less worse.

Precious minutes and hours atop
seven gabled hideaway blithely did elapse
me gingerly scuttling out attic window
though agoraphobic and loathe to drop
distance and no longer courting death
no matter concluding life (during
early/mid twenties) total flop
merely wishing raging machinations
against male offspring would stop.

Hurtful words yelled after papa
guzzled bottles of vermouth
(not really, I admittedly prevaricate)
courtesy late father and mother
resoundingly, severely, terrifyingly,
wickedly, violently uncouth
subjected imbalanced earthling
(yours truly - me)
think venomous metaphorical
****** blackened barbs,
viz inconveniently grossly, egregiously

one after another hurtful
figurative daggers antithesis of truth,
albeit synopsis regarding
second born (middle child - sole son)
begat courtesy Harriet and Boyce
upon their psychologically harried
flesh out the womb of young mother
(both parents now long since deceased)
now said heir long in the tooth
wordsmith here wonders why forsooth
he tolerated torturous abuse.

— The End —