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The waves undulated as if
they were the backs of 100 wriggling worms
The sky shed tears as if
a 1000 angels wept for the death of hope
black clouds roiled, sparking with fury
casting lightning down upon the mire
but below, upon the sea,
a miracle was set to transpire.

A boat rushed down and over the waves...
Back and forth,
a juggler's ball tossed and turned it appeared to be.
Yet, despite the malice,
and the seething spite of the sea,
the boat was safe
snug as can be.

And in this boat was a silent baby
his eyes stared out into the turmoil
he did not understand the frustrations of the elements
how they wished to smite him where he lay.
Despite the twisting of the boat
he did not roll, nor did water coat
his soft cheeks, his baby blanket
he passed on into sleep,
into dream he
went.

He awoke to battles raging about him
the crashing of thunder
was the desolation of a mountain
the world knew war for the first time
deaths in the billions, no pasture without crime.

He stood as a man
with bearded face
skin like the earth
armor embraced.
He realized he held a mighty weapon
it gleamed in his hands
power coursed through his veins
down to his soul
up to the heavens!
A beacon of light he seemed to be
but heir to destruction he truly was.
He did not know what power does
to the feint of heart
to the well-intentioned...
He struck the ground amidst the battle
the whole Earth shook, oh, the chattering teeth!
The mountains lumbered to form again
as if by the shovels of skyward giants!
The battle paused for the barest of moments
the awe was palpable
like a kingly feast
but the people's hearts hadn't forgotten the pain
their hate surged up, like volcanic bile
despite their peace present for a while
the massacres began again in earnest
perhaps more so than before his deed.
No one knew the power he wielded.

He still had hope, he could do something!
But what greater act was there than mending mountains?
His heart was up to good,
but his mind couldn't ground him.

"I must stop their wanton annihilation!"
He roared within himself,
"Are they not my people? Am I not their savior?"
He went to the most heated battle
struck the air with his weapon
and every person's foe was replaced by their loved ones.
The battle ceased in an instant.
Each person stared in utter disbelief.
By what power had this happened?
It was said that mountains climbed back into place,
but what could summon loved ones,
even from the grave!
The fighting ceased despite their hatred,
and the stories magnified in flavor.
Many who were hungry
for peace from the storm of violence
fed upon the hearts of those in doubt
they claimed they knew who stopped the battle
they hoped to mobilize a peace effort.
He gathered these hopeful souls
banded them together so their efforts became tenfold!
Soon enough, the stories crept across the lands
across the seas
and underground.
For once, hope had purchased ground,
but hate, when cloistered, beaten back, starved,
becomes ever more malevolent,
ever more conniving.

He did not call his people an army,
he called them the Samaritan Initiative.
They did not fight their war with weapons of battle,
they fought with hands that mend and bind,
they saved the sick and the dying,
they uplifted the oppressed and those denying.

As time passed, his efforts grew,
but someone used his deeds as currency,
mobilized the scandalous, the warmongering,
someone hated he who mended the broken...
Someone plotted his demise.

He led his Samaritans across the world
each place they touched was left whole again
and though war still did reign, rotting and true,
he did not tire to end the end.

A new beginning he hoped to create,
but whispers that he was a fraud began to sate
the ears of those whose purpose it is to doubt peace,
they sowed the malice back into the healing wounds
soon enough, his power began to abate,
therefore, rumors seemed to be true.

He grew restless when he was barred from homesteads
barred from cities,
even countries!
Somehow these echoes of forgotten civilization rose
only to defy him
and he smelled someone's stench in the air.
His weapon yearned for someone's death.
For once, it did not wish to mend, but break,
and he felt spiteful all the more.
All the adoration he had garnered
had blinded him from his true purpose.
He sought out the taint that spread its tendrils.
"Someone."
He said,
"Is ruining my... empire..."

One day, while regrowing a desolated forest with his weapon,
someone came to see him.
She smiled at him, marvelled at his work.
"Who are you?"
He wondered, suddenly charmed.
"Someone you know..."
She grinned.
He spent weeks distracted and curious about her,
what was her riddle all about
and why did he feel her in his heart?
She did not seem to threaten or scheme
in fact her presence was a dream
and he yearned after her like nothing he knew
his mission delayed
his plans askew.
Many around him questioned him saying,
"Who exactly is it with whom you're playing?"
He would blush,
"Oh, someone..."

One day,
she did not meet him at their lover's spot.
She did not appear for a week, then another.
His mind began to churn about the months.
Since when had he last sent forth his healers,
or mended cities and silenced weapons dealers?
He began to be suspicious of her
he could have summoned her with a flick of his weapon,
but he dared not discover if she really were foe,
for if he should break, what can he grow?

Eventually, she appeared again,
smiling broadly, like an old friend.
He then knew the anger that so many harbored...
Oh, the twisted things he felt by her abandon,
the sheer weight of his turmoil felt too much to bear....
So he ****** it upon her without any care.
His voice was louder than a church bell,
flashing out across the forest where they would meet.
She cried out in fear
she ran from him swift
he chased after with guilt he couldn't lift.
He found her weeping by a well
on his knees he apologized incessantly.
"How could there be darkness in you,
the mender?"
Her question struck him in all places tender.
Doubt crept into his addled mind.
His weapon's glow flickered
his conscience was blind.
Surely not now should he have such trouble?
Could it really be so simple to pop his bubble?
"I love you more than I can bear!
When you leave me,
I begin to tear."
She nodded and held him close to her.

Someone watched from shadows not far,
they saw his frailty,
like a door ajar...

The months passed and he went back to work
new cities to grow and malice to mend
people saw him more for the savior he was
even though the rumors of fallacy were abuzz.

A special time became the moment of his life worthy of note,
a marriage to the woman whose life he knew by rote.
They consummated in the night and in the day.
Time seemed to stretch on and shrink all at once.
His happiness was a thing of infectious charm,
but all that glittered soon became alarm.

Upon returning home from time spent mending the broken world,
he returned to find his home
covered in blood.
He knew whose blood coated the walls.
Bones, ground into paste, smothered pictured frames.
Flesh reduced to pulp covered the floor.
His mind fractured in no way subtle.
The light of his weapon winked out with no rebuttal.
He wept uncontrollably in fits of despair.
The world seemed cold, frozen over,
desolate of love or laughter.
"I can't bear to live."

Someone crept in through the doorway.
"It's a shame, isn't it?
No man is greater than any other,
yet no man is born equal.
No man lives without love,
but every man dies alone.
Maybe you can understand now,
why we deserve our own genocide...
Maybe now you'll let us fight to the death,
and have our peace that way!"

He looked up and,
despite the pure evil that stood before him,
he did not see that.
He saw someone lost,
someone abused,
someone desperate for truth,
any truth.
He saw someone fighting to love something,
anything.
He saw someone forgotten by loved ones
after committing acts that person was unable to avoid.
He saw a frightened being
lashing out at the world
in the hopes that the suffering would end.
He felt boundless compassion.

"I have no power left."
He said.
"No power to mend or bind.
No power worth your scorn."

"I'm going to **** you now."

"If I'm to die,
I hope my blood is enough for all who suffer."

"You're no messiah! You're just a lie we all want to believe!"

"If I was just a man...
I would have died when you killed her.
I would have hungered for torturous retribution.
But you have broken no one.
You're someone who needs to see your own suffering
out in the world
to justify the injustice dealt upon you.
But for every drop of effort you put into destroying her,
I wish you never experience my pain.
I wish to mend what drove you to break me,
so no one else may be harmed by you,
or anyone you inspire to deal death."

"No, I defeated you..."

"You tried..."

The weapon flickered.

"No, no, you can't feel love for me...
You don't have the *****."

"I have very big *****."

"You think you can love me?
After how I destroyed you!"

"If I could be destroyed,
I would already be dead!"

The weapon burst forth with light!

The killer realized they were someone foolish
Someone lost
Someone in need of healing.
For if "he" could not be broken,
surely there was hope.
If he could mend mountains
bring back loved ones and unite lost families
grow cities from the earth itself
grow forests from twigs
and deny a cold-hearted killer
the satisfaction
the honor
of seeing the fractures of a shattered soul
in blood-red, swollen, tearful eyes,
perhaps this man,
this one man,
could reveal what love is
to the killer's own famished soul.

He saw something shift in the eyes of that tortured someone.

That's when he realized...
That's when he understood.
He had the thirst for solving puzzles,
but humanity is not a machine,
it is a collection of gears
each just as vital as the whole,
for the whole does not exist without the worth
of every individual.
And to ignore an individual like this...
Someone who stood at the center of all the woe,
the evil,
and the tragedy in the world.
To ignore them would be to throw out the puzzle completely.

"May I mend you?"

Realizing they were someone facing an open door,
that person nodded.

He struck that person with his weapon.
Light flooded out as if by the sun itself.
Time seemed to stop.
People looked up in wonder of the light.
The very winds halted,
seas stilled,
nature perked up in unison.

When the light faded, he saw himself staring in a mirror.
The man in the mirror had blood-stained hands.

He stepped across the threshold and hugged himself.
His darkness hugged him back and the blood seemed to vanish.

"I forgive myself for killing her."

His darkness melted into a bulbous, gooey form and sank into him,
as if he were some kind of sponge,
leaving no trace of the darkness visibly.
He accepted within himself that he was capable of
unimaginable evil.
He accepted that he had control
and that he was responsible for the health and sickness
of the world.

Around him, the world began to shift.
In fact, it appeared to melt into liquid
and splash around him.
The liquid became clear, like the ocean.
It splashed and slid,
rocking him about.

Light flashed!

The baby awoke, curious about the world around him.
His boat had touched some distant shore.
Flecks of water spotted his cheeks and he laughed.

A couple crept up to the boat.
"I swear I heard a baby," a man said.
"You're crazy," a woman said, "Out here?"
The couple looked within the boat
and found the baby smiling at them with his
toothless, innocent smile.
The woman held a hand to her chest in awe.
She tenderly carried the baby out of the boat
and rocked it in her arms.
The baby laughed.
The man reached out.
"Not that hand!" The woman said, "You just cut yourself!"
"It's okay, no blood anymore, see?"
He pinched the baby's cheeks.
The baby touched his hand.
His **** healed in an instant!
"Woah!" The woman yelled.
Feeling for a scar where there were none,
the man stared in wonder at the child.
"Honey," he said, "This kid's got potential..."
This poem sort of came out of nowhere.
It does sit on the border between a poem and a story.
I've been fascinated by the Poetic Edda and the Iliad, how a poem could be hundreds of thousands of words long.

So here's my little poetic narrative.

Enjoy!

DEW
Martin Narrod Apr 2014
She had stopped crying.
All evening in her black-mesh coup de voodoo.
On the plane she had been crying
For her Summer pal. Yesterday she had been to market
Big brown bags and white bags, little pink bags filled with crimsony scents,
Capricornia, looseleaf newsprint, postcards, and colored pencils,
She had hands full of handles, bags bundled, stitched in strict Saturday fashion.
He could barely break a step, he could fake dance with her feet on his tip toes.
She was only three quarters the perfect size to fit inside his frame.
The grand disappearing act. And she was only ifs and suicides.
A stranded ray of sun-draped hair on a cooly porcelain forehead, the segments were all just wrong,
Something so wrong, trembling heart cries over a mute coo through a flattened tongue.
The sickle tongue, dodgy on Tuesday's, She had a simple mug, oh! But so cute and soothing, the nape
That wrapped around, my arm lapped its hands in a clapping ginormous duck's bill!
Lapping rhythmically. Thwack! Thwack!
Like no crying I had ever heard. Nor Earthen beauty I had never seen.
Her little lamb legs lumbered over, her awkward thinness and long limbs spilt on top of her,
Her tiny shoulders searching for support from her hips. White aurulent doll head on a stick,
She had sad defeated eyes, whimpering, pathetic,
Too small, and she shuttered and she shook,
And she shivered out every teardrop her body ever made. And she fell back on her bottom, and looked
Up as if to see a white steed standing with her guy striking a poised hand down to her,
He split down the middle, stammering, broken pieces of words crumbling out of his mouth
With eager intentions. He was too weak
To give her his feet, or pull her up in, he hadn't the gumption. He was fully occupied standing,
He wept too; then shuffled a little
Towards where she had fallen. He knew she wasn't right
She couldn't get the devil out of her piercing blue pupils, she couldn't
She lied.
Then she just piled on top of her knees and fumbled as if to rise like a demure lamb trying to rise off its Newborn legs, she just curled her legs,
So stiffly built, and narrow footed, built with such inequality to her siblings,
She got in the way of herself, a little lamb that could not manage.
Too whittled for him, he tried, he really tried, but three years had drained his strength, no real help.
When he sat her upright on her bottom, she opened her eyes, and for a moment smiled, grabbed for His hand but then after awhile she was lost, she lost interest, her pupils wandered.
He was orchestrating everything.
A real project, much more urgent and important. By nightfall she could not stand. It was not
That she couldn't smile or laugh or love, she was born
With everything but the will to live -
That cannot be destroyed, just like a love.
Melancholy was more important to her.
Life could not get her attention.
So she died, with her handles still in her hands, green grass stains her legs.
She did not survive another warm summer night.
And then he wept uncontrollably again.
"The wind is oceanic in the elms
And the blossom is all set."

2

The boy has come back
From the seashore, and atop the plateau.
The woes of women are like a genocide
In the morning, when the killing is over,
And the heat begins, and the bodies lie,
And stark life moves for its sobbing bones,
The curved women move with fire.
Father Father Father the girls
Are weeping, and crying and I cannot resist that gentle frailty
They are shucked in their skin suits rising from their soporific slumbers
In decadent leathers and frou frou dresses. They cling to bold faces,
Nothing can escape that cold crying of women weeping for their princes.
Blood-letting rage cannot overthrow the meadow from the pebble brook,
As a laden head bleats its tarnished tongue across a milky breast, it cannot
Escape the sounds of blue-stained teardrops cascading across the plains,
The sounds of woolbirds braying while their skins are sheared against the
Sluicing sound of water rushing through the flume.
All summer they have lamented, gorging on melancholy, tottering their cotton pyramid heads,
Shaking their cries in deliberation, bald skinny victim women screaming out!
Cotton-mouthed clams yaffing, hearts in panic, wholes of bodies clambering in a *** of woe.
They roost useless, pollard and wethered, jealous
Squinting out the last droplets of desperation from their eyes, screaming their mouths in awful
Togetherness, this cacophony of tortured tongue-song
They curdle the last notes of despair out under knotted breaths
With every inch of strength left inside them, they bray this way and that.
Their mothers scream out in wretched despair, ahhh!
On distant cliffs, on scrawny legs
Their stiff pain goes on and on in the September heat.
"Only slowly their hurt dies, cry by cry,"
Whipped bodies toting wergeld on a shore.

The Day She Died

Was the gloomiest day of the new century,
The first of calamitous, unfortunate autumns to come,
The first dying breath from piceous lungs.

That was yesterday. Early morning, soft rime droplets
Frosted to every blade of grass, not like any other
Earlier June day we've ever had. In the deep twilight
The syzygy announced the moon and demoted the sun.

The Earth-crisp frost nuzzled snow droplets.
Black bands of ravens whipping. Martens littering
Fresh kills of red-eyed rabbits on stark white stale
Summer lawns. A fox grayed, its cold bones
Mapped by ravaged feasts. A possum prowling
In a spot of tawny light.

The concrete spread into a maze
Of black veins ripening in the acute niello
Destitution of its widening cracks,

And when the summer left
It left without her. It will have to accept,
In the paley dim light of this vengeful wilderness -
She is gone.
But for now the warmth has not returned but a naked, half-pomegranate
Rotten moon for us two.
And a great vacancy in our memory.
Written for Britni West
Edna Sweetlove Aug 2015
This is one of the racier "Memories" poems by the great Barry Hodges, my alter ego.
It might well make you come involuntarily in your ******.

How happy was I once with the wind in my hair
Wandering o'er the dales with joyousness unmeasur'd,
In the sweet long passed innocent days of platonic love
When stolen gropes and kiss were to be treasured.

But all good and true things come to a sad close
And my poor first love lies in her grave so sorrowfully
Having been crushed to death by a runaway steamroller
Before I managed to go all the way quite thoroughly.

What a waste of delightful teenage flesh was that
Yet perhaps I had a narrow escape from the derangement
Which might have been mine had our trysting
Led to a semi-permanent matrimonial arrangement.

For I recall one afternoon in the old ABC cinema
In the delighful Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate,
Sitting next to my gorgeous love in the back row,
Exploring her not so very private parts on a hot date.

How I cursed the management's niggardly folly
In not showing a film with hot romantic blood
But saving pathetic pennies by putting on
Daffy ******* Duck and Elmer ******* Fudd.

But yet I perserved with my digital explorations
Unaware that the throbs my fingers felt were no dream
But darling Elsie laughing like a proverbial drain
At Daffy's hilarious anatine adventures on-screen.

'Twas then I began to wonder about the viscous liquid
I had hitherto imagined was Elsie's lovejuice flowing
(dear, dear reader, cease your perusal of my tale forthwith
if you are of a nervous disposition or prone to food up-throwing)*.

It was only a careful examination of my sopping knuckles
In the dimly lit gents after old Daffy's film was done and dusted
Which revealed that my dearly beloved had leaked
Big time out of both ends, leaving my fingers well encrusted.

O to think that, but for Daffy, I might have been lumbered
With a different kind of bird for whom double incontinence
Was a way of life (thus, the fatal steamroller she encountered
The very next day was a blessing from kindly Providence).
Patricia Tsouros Feb 2014
What do you see, people, what do you see?
What are you thinking, when you look at me?
Do you see a grouchy old man, reading my book?
Lonely on the doorstep, drinking my beer.
Is that what you're thinking, is that what you see?
Then open your eyes; you're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am as I sit here so still!

At 20 I have wings for feet and fly like a bird
At 30 my dreams of love,
Bound to each other with ties that should last.
At 50 I contemplate the future alone.
At 60 I think of the years, the loves I have known,
A life that passed me by.

What do you see when
I struggle on my zimmer frame
To buy my Bulmers ?
So you see a body broken,
A man of poor character.

Well let me tell you this,
Inside this lumbered body, lives a young mans heart,
And now and again my battered heart swells.
I remember the pleasure and the pain,
I think of the years all too few – gone too fast,
And accept the stark fact that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people, open and see,
Not a sad old man, LOOK CLOSER, SEE ME
A man of memories and dreams,
A Life story to tell.
*Paddy lived alone in a cottage on the lane way close to my avenue. He sat outside his front door everyday, drinking his bulmers and reading his book, watching the world go by. I spoke to him each day when I walked the dogs, just for a short few minutes. He died suddenly last week, from a heart attack, right outside my home, the ambulance came, I knew he was dead. Now as I walk the dogs I see his front green door shut and I miss Paddy sitting outside sharing the few words we did.  His brother came to lock up his tiny cottage. This is an ode to his life.*
JA Doetsch Apr 2015
Lewis had taken his date antiquing.  It seemed the kind of sophisticated, adult activity that he felt would reinforce the fact that he was, in fact, a sophisticated adult.  Never mind that he knew next to nothing about antiquing...except that it was a thing sophisticated adults apparently did.

It was clear within the first twenty minutes or so that she wasn't really feeling it.

She was friendly and amicable, but it was clear that she was being polite for the sake of being polite.  It was the kind of polite that meant she wouldn't be returning his phone calls tomorrow.  For his part, he didn't make a fuss.  He played his role and continued the date as if it meant something.

He even went so far as to purchase an ornate mirror at the last shop they visited.  A mirror he'd probably never have even looked at on a typical day.

Lewis dropped his date off at her flat, insisted on walking her to her door (had to keep up appearances), and gave her a brief hug before going back to his car.  The mirror was wrapped up in the back seat of his small Toyota, making it impossible to use his rearview mirror.

He didn't even bother taking it out of the car when he got home.  Perhaps, he thought, someone would steal it and save him the trouble of pitching it.

The next morning, to his annoyance, it still filled up his back seat.  He had to go to work, and he figured he'd have to get it out of the car sooner or later, so he pulled it out and awkwardly managed to get it into his front door, where he left it leaning against the wall of his front hallway.

Lewis walked by the mirror almost every day for a week before he finally decided to hang it up.  He had bought it, after all...might as well make use of it.  He hung it up in the hallway and then largely forgot it existed.  It wasn't until several months later that he discovered its strange properties.

He had been running late for work, and in his hurry had spilled coffee over his shirt.  His initial annoyance at having to change was replaced with a sharp pain as the hot coffee burned through his shirt.  He was haphazardly unbuttoning the shirt while walking by the mirror when he stopped.  He looked again.  The coffee stain had disappeared.  Lewis finished unbuttoning the shirt and looked at his chest, where he found no mark or sign he had even had an injury.  Thinking himself crazy, he ran back to the kitchen to find that there was, indeed, spilled coffee still on the table.

That had been the beginning.

The power had gone quickly to his head, as power is wont to do.  He could change just about anything in his environment, so long as he was clever and could do it in front of the mirror.  The more he focused, the more accurate the results were.  He imagined that he was holding the deed to a mansion that was for sale downtown.  He found that not only was this the case, but the mirror had taken care of all the pesky details that would have otherwise conflicted with this.  He imagined his bank account filled to the brim with money.  Lewis imagined a whole new life for himself.  

It was at this point that he decided to test the limits of his new found power.  He stood at the mirror in his underwear.  Not horrible looking by any means, but definitely not an attractive man by most standards.  His hair, oily and unkempt, fell listlessly down on his forehead.  a paunch belly accentuated knobby knees and elbows.  His face was rather round and a bit pudgy, though fairly average overall.  He looked himself over disdainfully, and begin to concentrate.

First his stomach started shrinking, as if someone was letting the air out of it. It flattened, and abdominal muscles etched themselves into the skin.  The rest of his body followed suit, transforming itself into his ideal.  An alpha male.  A leading man.  At the end of it all, he stood in front of a stranger.  Even his eyes had changed.  They looked back at him through the mirror, full of confidence and a spark of defiance.  He almost caught a mischievous smile playing at his lips.

The change was immediate.  Between the money and the new face, he became social elite, hosting parties, attending events.  The mysterious newcomer, whose fortune seemed to have appeared out of thin air.  He relished every minute of it.  Instead of chasing people, begging to be noticed, people were begging to be noticed by him.  It was everything he ever wanted, until she came into his life.

She was an environmental lawyer for a large law firm.  She had it all.  Intelligence...strength...beauty.  Her name was Claire. She could stare right through him.  She didn't care about his power.  She didn't care about his charm.  The more he tried to win her over, the more she pulled away.  That, of course, did nothing to deter him.  If anything, it made him desire her more.  It was driving him insane.

Things finally broke down.  He was at yet another party, but he was no longer enjoying himself.  He hadn't been enjoying himself for weeks.  He sat at the bar, downing glasses of alcohol almost carelessly.  He saw her outside on the balcony, and he stumbled his way over to her.  He managed to slur out something along the lines of "Hey baby" along with some semblance of a crude pickup line, which earned him a martini hat and five red marks across his perfectly shaped face.

He drove home, managing to get his car mostly in his driveway (that poor mailbox never saw it coming).  He lumbered into his house, intending to fall asleep, when he walked by the mirror.  Suddenly, his inebriated brain had an amazing thought.  Why should he continue chasing her?  He had a mirror that granted him anything he wanted.  

He stood in front of the mirror.  Once again, he almost imagined that his reflection was sneering at him, but he put it out of his mind.  He imagined Claire, in all her perfection, deeply in love with him.  He continued to focus, as much as his mind would allow him, when suddenly he felt hands around his waist.  He turned around, and found her standing behind him, beckoning him forward.

She led him up to his room and laid him upon the bed.   At first, he was ecstatic, but as the night continued, he became uncomfortable.    She was wrong.  She was not natural.  She was focused fully on him as she had her way, but he was unable to meet her gaze.  Every time he did, her face seemed to move out of focus, like a dark shadow was covering her.  He couldn't linger there long, and it filled him with dread.  Eventually the alcohol took its toll, and he fell into a fitful sleep, with her wrapped faithfully around him.

The next morning, Lewis went back to the mirror and wished her away.  Then he panicked.  He called one of his acquaintances and discovered that the actual Claire was still alive and well.  It had not been her.  He felt relieved, but this quickly turned to depression as he fell into a chair, racked with guilt at what he had brought into the world, however briefly.  Unfortunately, he wouldn't get a chance to make any more mistakes.

The next night, Lewis found himself awake.  It was about 3 AM.  He hadn't remembered waking.  Nor did he remember walking down the stairs to the mirror, but here he was.  He stood and stared at the mirror, back to the man he had become.  He smiled that mischievous smile.  Wait.  He hadn't smiled.  Why was he smiling?  Lewis attempted to move away, but he was stuck in place.  The mirror version of himself allowed its smile to widen, and Lewis felt his mouth tugging upwards to accommodate.  The reflection raised its arm, and Lewis helplessly raised his arm as well.  

Lewis vaguely noticed the entire room he was in filling with a dense fog.  The rest of the world blurred out into obscurity except the mirror with the devilish face of Lewis's counterpart.  The reflection spoke, and Lewis's mouth moved along with the words.  "I sure appreciate you helping me out of there.  Hope you don't mind hanging out for awhile."  He flashed that terrible grin.  "I'll see you around"

Lewis waved goodbye, and his reflection stepped away from the mirror...leaving him in darkness.
Written very quickly, probably could be better.  Feel free to offer constructive criticism.
History is written by winners

Their story's the one that is told

The loser's are like dust in a zephyr

Blown away by the wind and the cold

A battle is waged on a hillside

The armies are dressed in chain mail

One side is left battered and dying

So...which side will write down the tale?

A submarine sinks in the channel

It's just off the Dover coast shore

No one survives but the story

of sailors we'll here from no more

Villages destroyed by a virus

It spreads through the town really quick

You know that the story gets written

By the survivors who didn't get sick

Pompeii was wiped out, that's a given

A volcano did wipe out the town

The people were burned to a cinder

So who writes, when there's no one around?

In the movies the cowboys and Injuns

All fight for control of the fort

Do the Indians spread tales of their losses

Do they write it all down just for sport?

As years changed the stories came forward

Of the armies and people who died

They were defending their loved ones and country

It's too bad they were on the wrong side.

As time lumbered on to the future

The winners were not just the ones

Who told what had happened that day

They were not just the ones with the guns

Bystanders came and told what they saw

This would change how stories were told

There was now a new player with stories to tell

And the winners did not look so bold

Things now were written that no one did know

Of the other sides battle attempts

They were not heroes or winners but, losers no more

For these writings now made them exempt

They spoke of their battles, their loyalty, grit

To stand strong and fight for their lives

Even though it was futile, they still thought they would win

Thinking only of children and wives

Now history is written as quick as it comes

Television has surely changed that

You can watch things at home on your big screen tv

And you can feel like you're where things are at.

Deception is gone and the truth now is told

In seconds, not years like before

You see things as they happen, and the final result

May shake your soul to your core.

So....now History is written by winners

and by losers as well just the same

And no matter, whatever the story

You now know all players by name.

Regardless of whatever the story

Be it ****** or sports,  games or war

We can now see just how each one has ended

And their honor, and that's what life is for...
Hal Loyd Denton Aug 2012
Stitching

From a grand church in France to a rustic barn in Sweden the focal point and fascination is the door that
Has a key protruding in the lock but it has with time lost the screws that held it snug against the door
And the door frame there is no flat lumbered board now it is just a very deep splintered lines the color
Of auburn brown with a low gleaming in the setting sun I put my hands out and touch this rustic place in
Time an explosion of thoughts blast the mind a life lived well with purpose that endures with use the
Seasoned is expressed a stitching that is the fabric of life forms over muscle and sinew this outer
Garment does not belie the inner soul but in experience and in action it promotes and assures value
It passes through the vestiges of time the gray mist speaks with whispered mystery bur anchored at
Your center is the intractable character that sets the tone of your life a solid structure presents a forcible
Argument yes the elements have taken their toll but by doing so they have removed the green untried
Wood now the occasional creaking occurs but not of breaking but the stalwart rises in common skies
Privilege gleams the stranger or intimate friend is in the presence of the assured there is no pretense
This truth as sound as time and wisdom crowns walls and bedrock foundation you have come upon
The investment that God has provided and runs deep without constraints you can stand and muse
Here and as an invisible oracle your questions will be answered they will float on silent wind and mark
You as different you will be refreshed a redeeming will surge through you timeless affirmation will
Speak you will know it is sound it is steps that are sure when so much is cheap and just for show you
Will grow strong and tall your shadow will be the challenge to those who waste themselves on base
And worthless misgivings of life you will possess the power to be a place of refuge a fortress where
The powerless and helpless are provided comfort and instruction no longer will evil and its devices
Enslave the helpless there will be that irrefutable place of giving that will conquer a world bent on
Destruction.
Seán Mac Falls Feb 2017
( Sonnet )*

I once caught you naked by the sea,
No one noticed, such noble shyness,
Invited to worlds, aloof as sun breeze,
Of purple sands, heathered highness.

In novae of your eyes was shipwreck,
Forlorn beacon chiding the weary lost
Of new worlds lumbered on the decks,
Seabirds caroled up wing, heavens' loft.

Skin, fleshy of netted eel, salt and foam,
Was hide for a brigand, lubbers sessions,
Sheered by sheen, blinding sky of gloam,
Stars runged on their draped processions.

My seal, now fate, cloak within jubilance;
Coral sea wave, slips under moon dance.
In Celtic myth, if a man steals a female selkie's skin she is in his power and is forced to become his wife.  Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean.  Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him.

Selkies (also spelled silkies, selchies; Irish/Scottish Gaelic: selchidh, Scots: selkie fowk) are mythological creatures found in Scottish, Irish, and Faroese folklore.  Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land. The legend is apparently most common in Orkney and Shetland and is very similar to those of swan maidens.
.
Stacey Hecht May 2013
He sat strapped into his chair like a shrunken scarecrow.
A motorized miniature from the Wizard of Oz, roaming the yellow brick road in his chrome chariot.
His clothes hung from his stick thin limbs like fresh wash on a clothesline.
As new as the day his Mom brought them home from the store.
Adournments for a body on display, not designed to be used.

Around and round circles ring, whole, symmetric complete.
But the coil of life, puzzle pieces in a whirl, must be free, infinite, unfettered.
The text misprinted, the logic destroyed, the flesh misshapen, the extremties unusable.

Tied to his wheelchair like the scarecrow to his rack, guarding a field of linoleum on the hospital ward.
His eyes blind to color and light, I saw only clouds as I peered into his mind with my inquisitive scope.
The boy's hair had the texture of straw on his nubbin head and he smelled of dry leaves before the winter's chill.
His useless limbs twisted and fine, delicate as dried twigs, they draped his John Deere in the vegetable garden of his imprisoned life, bound with the barbed wire of his treacherous genes.

He could move his head, and played a game of cat and mouse to us tinmen, who lumbered by his throne with our toolboxes full of bright scopes and latex gloves, frozen saucers and wasp sharp stings.
His head would bow, limp upon his neck like an overripe sunflower at the end of its stalk.
As our footsteps grew louder his Jack-in-the-box head would fly up, a clown's grin upon his silly face.
Was this the boy or his disease we would wonder despite the reruns of his show.
What could he know? This crumpled moonbeam parading as a child in rumpled clothes.

But one day upon a whim, I took him for a ride into the big blue sky and over the rainbow.
I grabbed the handles of his chair and slowly, slowly began to spin.
His head shot up like a shooting star, his twiggy limbs stiffened even more.
Faster and faster, I whirled him and twirled him.
A twister on the hospital floor, sending doctors, nurses and patients diving for cover as we spun, building like cotton candy strands.
His mouth opened wide, a huge smile spread across his face like sunshine pouring over a mountain's edge.
Beams of light speared through the clouds that filled his eyes.
A rusty hinged croak jumped from his throat as he hee-hawed a laugh as I flung him to the moon, ruby red slippers upon his feet.
Sumedha Sharma Jun 2014
It wasn't not a cry
that he heard all night
It wasn't a man
loosing all sight
A tiny soul
Fining it's howl
Crushing all up
the numbered lines
For all
It lumbered
To brake the hallelujah
And who knew in million days
The men would say
What they conveyed
As all he could
To cough art
Sneeze painting
And cry upon music
For the illness
Became the endless
Hallelujah
The broken hallelujah
First four lines come from the song hallelujah by Jeff Buckley
Lily Mar 2019
He hurriedly glanced at his wristwatch again,
The shadow of the cross from the steeple
Landing in the middle of the watch.
A sigh echoed through the church courtyard,
And a few rats scurried out of their hide-aways.
They should be here by now.
The moon hung in the sky,
Trying and failing to shed light on what was below.
The harsh noise of a truck on gravel reached his ears,
And he breathed a sigh of relief.
The newcomer parked the truck and lumbered out,
Holding several filthy beer bottles in his large, grimy hands.
“Here you go.”
His voice was gruff, calloused even, as if it was being
Grated like cheese.
Money from the priest’s hands went into the driver’s hands,
And when the priest looked into his eyes,
They spoke legends of ******.
The truck drove away, and
Pretty soon the courtyard was silent again,
Except for the hoot of an owl,
The contented sigh of the priest, and the
Pop of a beer bottle being opened.
My prompt was "my priest drinks too much". Thoughts are welcome! :)
me again Oct 2017
the most dangerous person I know was a beautiful girl,
with a singing voice like white chalk:
when you came into contact with that voice, even momentarily
you found your fingertips lightly dusted
and the taste of chalk in your lungs
She settled on you.

This girl left pieces of herself everywhere--
anchors.
to things she knew should be
important to her, but instead she couldn't find the commitment
enough to make them important.

she could only find
fragments of a conversation
about anything
that affirmed her
self-importance
or made her feel
important.
even if only for a second.

she disregarded the pain that lumbered just beneath those
glimmering retinas,
only to step closer and see the light
was just a reflection of whatever stood before her.

so she anchored herself to humans.
she chose to connect with people
based on the "mutual" stars in
their eyes.
and how they felt important.
she anchored herself to
the expectations held aloof in
the eyes of her unattached lover.
Eyes that swam with the imaginary meetings and hopefulness
to obtain girls not her.

and so she swam.

at first, she treaded water like it the thing to do in the eyes of your
"lover"
then, the ropes she tied to herself
to make anchors began to drag her down.

the people she anchored herself to reached out as far as the cold depths would allow
but she refused to tread the last few feet and take hold
of a shoreline filled with
finite praise for not drowning herself.

The most dangerous girl I knew
made drowning the important thing.
and now she waits, sunken and waterlogged
with the weight of eyes that are not hers.

The eyes of her lover, who sparkle artificially
as the light is just a reflection of whatever stands in front of him.
friendships that feel like relationships. she made it my problem. and everyone else's..
Gretchen wept in her easy chair
And called for her husband, Karl,
They’d been together for sixty years,
Though both were worn and frail.
They’d met in the ruins of München, when
The ***** collapsed and fell,
Escaped to live in Australia
From their own idea of hell.

For Karl had served in the Wehrmacht,
In a Tank Corps at Dieppe,
Had served in the Panzergruppe von Kleist
Had roamed the Russian steppes,
His tank had taken him through Ukraine
They’d taken the plains by force,
But found their pain when the Russians came,
In their huge T-34’s.

But that was the world of way back when,
For Karl was old and grey,
He slept a lot in his tidy home,
The nurse came every day,
His wife developed dementia, she’d
Forget where she used to roam,
So she was parted from husband Karl,
Was sent to a Nursing Home!

He walked with the aid of a walking frame,
He couldn’t quite get around,
But listened for echoes of Gretchen’s voice
In the house that made no sound,
And all he thought was to rescue her,
To bring his girl back home,
But the powers that be said: ‘Wait and see!’
She was lost to him - Alone!

He went to visit her, once a week,
They held each other's hand,
She cried so much when he had to leave,
She never could understand,
And he was desolate every time,
He’d cling to her so tight,
That they had to prise his hand away
When they sent him away at night.

The nurses were harsh and businesslike,
To them it was just a job,
With no compassion for patients, they
Would leave all that to God.
Demented souls ran over his feet
With trolleys and walking frames,
When Karl grew angry, they shrugged and said:
‘Well - Everyone complains!’

One Sunday, standing outside the doors,
He saw his Tiger Tank,
It growled, and pulled up beside him there
And the diesel fumes, they stank.
He climbed aboard with his comrades there,
And ‘Schnell!’ they called, to a man,
Then lumbered straight through the double doors,
The nurses turned and ran!

The Tiger reared and it turned about
Tore carpet up from the floor,
The tracks ran over the matron’s feet,
Let out a fearful roar,
The patients cheered as the Iron Cross
Raced past their common room,
And smashed the glass in the office door,
And crushed the sister’s urn!

Then Gretchen laughed as he came in sight,
‘Here comes my husband, Karl!
He'll break us out of this prison ward,
Can you hear his Tiger snarl?’
He stopped and reached for his Gretchen then
Looked deep in her eyes, and swore:
‘I’ll not be parted from you again
Though hell should bar the door!’

They found them lying together there,
He held her safe in his arms,
They'd gone together where lovers go
Away from the world's alarms.
‘He went quite crazy,’ the Matron said,
‘He must have been insane!’
For lying outside her shattered door
Was his twisted walking frame!

David Lewis Paget
Sarah Spang Jul 2015
There is a trail in Pennsylvania that is barely tamed
That winds on down the mountainside and fractures into veins.
It lashes through the trees and wood, like man-made ligh-ten-ning
And offers streams of water tasting pleasantly of spring.
This way is framed with micro-caves and fissures in the stone
Where sweetest water rivulets feed moss that's overgrown
Haphazard wooden walkways dot the snake-like trodden path
Their clumsy steps all akimbo; they bridge the wild gaps.

And even further down the trail, dodging brown tree roots
That point like gnarled fingertips and target untied boots
Below, like uncut diamonds lodged into the mountainside
Gushing waterfalls sing aloud, in ranges far and wide.
Their surging torrents babble in a distinguished harmonies
The wordless wind responds by rustling through the countless trees.

There, at last around the bend, before the lumbered river
A bench there sits within the shade where coolness draws a shiver
The wood is at the mercy of the lichen and the rain
That rush to bring that broken boards back to the earth again.

And there, amidst the other foolish carvings in the wood
Scrawled with hopeful youthful hands that did the best they could
The chips and angles buried in reveal what once was true
This is the final place where I will always love you , too.
Visit my Blog for Notes and Extras:

http://sarahquil.blogspot.com/
Poetic T Sep 2016
Within the mists of the dammed each
droplet that forms burns upon mortal
coils. Searing upon the corruption that
hides beneath silken deceptions.

Shadows wonder on the waters of tears,
echoes of what was but now a mere image
of what lumbered beneath. With each silhouette  
that drowned beneath its weight of sorrow.

In the mists an echo of their anguish forms
then just as it was it fades from memory like
so many before it. And then another seed
wonders in the mist and its true form blossoms.
Milo Clover Aug 2015
A massive sea beast came to die.
It lumbered up and lopped down
on the docks of a grey castled city.
It’s arc heaved as it breathed
the damp sea vapors.
A final groan echoed from
the core of its heaped flesh.
One bulbous eye peered dead
deep into the wet night sky.

The gulls found it first.
Then the fishermen,
while making morning rounds.
Then the young,
then the curious,
even the lords came
to mend the unsevered.

The beast lay still.

The gulls were scattered by
the fishermen’s discipline.

The young found new spectacle around them.

The curious began to plan.
Some saw the meat.
Some saw their signs.
Others wanted it destroyed,
burnt immediately.
“Let’s be done with it!”
they said.

The lords quoted and pointed,
like they do.

The beast did not move.

A merchant arrived.
He owned the docks.
He had dominion.
“It is mine!”
he declared
“Go home!”

Embarrassed, the lords cowered and mumbled.
The curious shouted and bared their teeth.
The fishermen took sides,
the young stayed quiet,
and the gulls watched
the flames from afar.

A rain came.

The merchant,
the lords,
the curious,
the fishermen,
the young,
and even the gulls
all sprinted for shelter.

But the beast . . .

Rain became storm.
The horizon was hazed
by the mighty torrent.

But the beast . . .

Storm became tempest.
The sea swelled and smashed
against the city’s north wall.

But the beast . . .

Tempest became wrath.
Scythes of lightning set ablaze
the flags atop the tallest towers.

But the beast . . .

And wrath became the toothed face of a new god.

But still the beast . . .
remained where it was.

Nothing was said, nothing was heard
as the rain beat down on the oily carcass,
washing it clean.
Abigail Ella Jan 2014
I was vacant:
dust wafted off the window-sill, swirling in the afternoon sun
when you came, rapping green fists on my empty door
peering into my cloudy windows, glancing at the address
shrugging
and letting yourself in without a key.

You floated across the creaking floorboards of the foyer,
sweeping my cobwebs into a corner.
          Did I forget to leave you the dustpan?
You strode through glass-pained doors into the kitchen,
scrubbing my china with the cold iron-water that poured forth from my pipes.
          Did I neglect to provide you with lye?

After you lumbered up the stairs, coughing on mothballs,
I imagine that you shook your head at the tassels
hung on my fraying valence,
for soon enough you hurried your way
back down the stairs
into the kitchen
through the foyer
and out of my door.
I wonder—

          Was it the dust?
          Was it the dishes?
          Did you ever stop to open my curtains?
          Did you ever peer out the window, and into the gardens below?
Robert Zanfad Dec 2013
i drove into one of those famous tunnels beneath the Chesapeake
under a freighter that lumbered in its foggy distance,
still off about half a mile
i thought the kids might get a kick out of this experience
but they were busy in the rear view mirror,
snared in silent worlds of mini screen devices i bought to see them smile
there's only static on the radio now, like no more bourbon left in the bottle
and you're so quiet
this is my life - the thrumming dented van within a sterile white tile fortress,
ears on verge of popping
i hear humming tires, the thumps of each heart beat
trapped inside, heterodyned
Seán Mac Falls Apr 2015
( Sonnet )*

I once caught you naked by the sea,
No one noticed, such noble shyness,
Invited to worlds, aloof as sun breeze,
Of purple sands, heathered highness.

In novae of your eyes was shipwreck,
Forlorn beacon chiding the weary lost
Of new worlds lumbered on the decks,
Seabirds caroled up wing, heavens' loft.

Skin, fleshy of netted eel, salt and foam,
Was hide for a brigand, lubbers sessions,
Sheered by sheen, blinding sky of gloam,
Stars runged on their draped processions.

My seal, now fate, cloak within jubilance;
Coral sea wave, slips under moon dance.
In Celtic myth, if a man steals a female selkie's skin she is in his power and is forced to become his wife.  Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean.  Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him.

Selkies (also spelled silkies, selchies; Irish/Scottish Gaelic: selchidh, Scots: selkie fowk) are mythological creatures found in Scottish, Irish, and Faroese folklore.  Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land. The legend is apparently most common in Orkney and Shetland and is very similar to those of swan maidens.
Àŧùl Jan 2016
They are numbered,
They are few.

Rarity is their virtue,
Uncommon their traits.

They are lumbered,
They are new.

Clarity is their class,
Platinum their rates.

Governments avoid,
And people loathe them.

They are cumbered,
They are feared.

To prevent them,
Nothing can be done.

By any forces however,
Either collared or aided.
The intelligentsia are a strong constituent of any major successful social revolution like the Renaissance.

My HP Poem #978
©Atul Kaushal
Becca Jul 2013
In a world of tree bark and sand stone
she was silk.
Where others croaked and barked
her voice caressed. Where they lumbered along
with pounding footsteps
her feet ghosted o’er the ground.
Their age is painted on their skin
in wrinkles, spots, and scars while
she reflected newborn innocence.
They grapple, she embraced.
They bellow, she chimed.

Around her the brown,
the grey,
the worn and weary,
the walking dead
swayed like crumbling monuments
lit only by her glow.

But in a world of tree bark and sand stone,
silk cannot last.

Her voice, so soft and quiet
below their din grows hoarse
as she fights to be heard. She loses
her footing as the ground
shakes with their steps and learns
to keep their time
just so she might stay up
right. In their pain she wallows,
frown lines slowing eroding her as
the sorrow sets in.

She learns to match their strength.
Her laughter is drowned in their cries.

In a world of tree bark and sand stone,
silk gets caught, gets pulled.
Strands are ripped and unraveled,
the pieces are trampled,
covered.

The lingering rags falls to the ground,
forgotten but for the memory that once
their was something beautiful
where they lie.
Poetic T Apr 2017
When the sun slumbered beyond the falling
horizon, a deranged mentor of those it wondered
over below. False expressions were given in tribute
to that which watched with acidic smiles of their  
persecution beneath its gaze.

In its fading they were collected in truest outline.
Negatives of perceived imaginings, pigmentation
descended from form like coloured petals
turning to dust. They were the abattoirs of this
now discoloured imaginings.

Sweetened voices of lullabies were replaced by
disorientated shrills, that reverberated within
the halls, they lumbered in there contorted abodes.
Nesting into corners of despair that blossomed on
them with hues of isolation.

Feasting on warm carcasses, weeping with
trepidation at this momentary freedom they felt.
There home of tattered souls that were cleaved
from prey, no peace in death. They hang at
the windows clinging to lost hope.

Time was a nine tailed mistress that whipped them
into the binding once more. For the arising was upon
them, they were lacerated within colour once more.
All that was flaked away and became as it was.
Smiles on there faces paying tribute to that above.
Robert C Howard Mar 2015
Barreling through town
in the depth of night,
earth’s colossal magnets
hurled jagged fire spears -
flashing and ripping the midnight sky.

Whirling torrents whistled
and lashed against the glass.
A blinding fire bolt
Shattered an old rock maple -
quaking our shelter to its footings.

Cosmic strobe-lit concussions
stuttered and roared across the nightscape
like a feral timpanist gone mad.

The frenzied cacophony
subsided at last -
rumbled off  in the distance
as the storm lumbered on
like a barbarian horde
off to sack another village.

*July, 2007
Included in Unity Tree - Collected poems
pub. CreateSpace - Amazon.com
Bogle Oct 2013
Now I've got a few more thoughts in tact,
I think it's only fair you know what happened that day,
the longest day and the shortest day,
by far the worst day of my life,
and thats a fact.

It was late morning after brass,
when the phone rang,
It can't have been a good thing,
right then in my head,
there was so many questions I asked.

I didn't think twice,
I just picked up the phone,
because the truth is nothing matters more than you,
I'm always waiting here,
your call is irisistible and I can't help but be enticed.

A sob and a sniff,
my heart thumpped,
harder and heavier,
you said they know,
I said oh ****!

Then you said,
I'll tell you about it after school,
you knew that was one of the worst things you could have done,
but I don't blame you,
it was such a huge sorrow to shed.

I'd never been so hard hit.
then the minutes started to run into seconds,
I found my self collapsed in a toilet cubicle after music,
I twitched and I shivered,
I quickly started to lose it.

So I rang this time,
I couldn't resist,
I had to know where you were,
and what was happening to you,
but when you said hospital I lost my mind.

I thought of your mother over reacting,
and all the things they could be doing to you,
I was helpless and hopeless,
so I went mad,
because there was no normal way to act.

I then found Tigz and Grace,
to find some sort of confront,
but I couldn't cling onto any,
there was nobody to keep me safe,
from my own consciousness.

In my sick shade of pale,
I went onto my study,
and thats when I got your text,
I was hoping that wasn't the case,
but it was and I failed.

My heart was really beating,
and I collapsed at the bottom of the stairs,
I couldn't stop breathing,
But I heard a voice while I was now laying on the piano,
he's hyperventilating.

Cameron (the voice) followed me,
followed me down to the toilet,
where I pearched against a cold damp wall,
Mr. Moran found me,
and said the toilet was no place to be.

Mrs. Phillips then found me and got me some water,
I tried to get rid of her,
so went out in the rain,
I couldn't feel the bitter cold or the wet,
but she was still there to help me and tell me my orders.

She said I've wrung Mrs. T,
go there now,
she's waiting for you,
and so I ventured out into the rain,
and lumbered through the spitting breaze.

I sat down in the office,
and she explained what she knew,
and that she only found out 20 minutes ago,
I spewed out ******* for the next hour,
I cried in front of miss.

She told me how I should use you as my motivation,
how I should keep eating and stay strong,
how I should stay healthy to help you get better,
it couldn't get much worse than this,
so I had to keep fighting despite this revelation.

So on I went and played my saxophone into the night,
it was all going to be easier from here,
I didn't realise what I was going through till now,
Miss told me compassion fatigue,
I had my answers so I went home to tell my family my fright.
After the worst day of your life, it can only get better.
Harry Toye Aug 2011
Did you know that into the last glass of water that you sipped?

A dinosaur one day, may have bent down and dipped

A scaly tongue to quench his thirst

Or even lumbered in feet first


As he and his primeval pal recreated

In the prehistoric stream of this life-giving liquid

Which revives the lives today of all women and of men

For it’s the very same water now, as it was way back then.
  

How can it be that you and me,

Drink the same water again, that they did back then?

Well it’s no fluke or chance of creation

Take a look at this cycle for a simple explanation


The sun warms the ocean and this causes evaporation

Vapours condense into clouds, this causes precipitation

That’s rain to you and me as it falls down from the sky,

But precipitation is not the only reason why


Our streams fill and sometimes overflow,

Becoming rivers as they grow,

Liquid life in poetry of motions

Rivers turn to seas, ebb and flow into the oceans.

  
For the sun doesn’t just affect the seas and the ocean,

It heats the leaves of our trees and this causes transpiration

Because vapour also rises from the trees,

Clouds form and may even freeze,


In these clouds tiny droplets bounce around,

Fun for them but not for us on the ground

For when they hit each other, they stick together

And this has repercussions for our weather



What goes up must come down

And soon rain or hail will fall on every town

With storm and sleet on every street and gutters overflowing.

Rains lash, puddles splash and before long it’s snowing.


The levels rise in all our lakes,

But then thank God, the cloud breaks

The sun warms the ocean this causes evaporation

And he begins his work again to feed a thirsty nation.

  
We survey the Earth, water end to end

But it’s the same ole water, recycled again and again

Water, water is everywhere but less than 2% is drinkable,

Preserve, conserve and do take care, because pollution really is unthinkable.

Where to begin to save our water, is plain to see, it all begins with you and me.
Wack Tastic Nov 2013
I sat down after being told,
by the old hungry *****,
Not to worry but there was,
a better spot then this one,
Of course,
The pedistals that sit outside,
occupational windows,
That familiar unknown feeling,
O That town they call Dinky,
There sat a confusing aura,
the pious religious freak said aura,
he talked and gave change,
yet the skull girl,
you could tell,
didn't want any of it,
The scene was joined by Tank,
His armada pockets full,
towering and proclaiming,
fits of oratory rage,
them ******* in Washington.
He saw us and scared the poor muertos,
The friends she was waiting for came and fled with them,
I lumbered after her under duress to myself,
breaking Tank's train of thought
I'm sure,
To tell her sincere,
There are normal people here,
To which her friend said after
they'd gained distance,
"   You must have a target on your back or something!"
Jen Oct 2018
It’s not clear to see-
So, let’s finally go there,
You and me.

Now,
In this present time,
Is this finally happening?

It started as
Something imaginary…

You constantly
Aroused me with
Your intelligence.
Sapiosexual Sublime,
Suggestions and
Stimulating Conversations.

So, hidden in the
Painted Aspen trees
Imprinted on these
Sheets, only present
In Sweetly Torturing Dreams,
When you sneak up quietly,
Behind me,
And let’s just pretend
It’s innocent,
And let’s just barely
Touch,
Our bodies naked
Like lumbered pines,
Your hands warm,
Caressing my thighs,
From behind
Hidden vines
And unspoken
Notions
Needing No Words,
Just motion.

You play with my hair,
Like you said you would,
And in return I
Run my fingers
Through yours,
And just stare assured.

We combine our
Bodies and Minds.
Let’s go there
In real life.
Slow and cognizant,
Connecting underneath
A Blanket drenched
With what started
As “Hello,”
It now reverberates
Out an open window,
Disturbing the neighbors
Below.
Listening to “Kerala” by Bonobo (Music is inspiring)

Inspiration: A combination of real life and imagination
Poetic T Jul 2016
Could I be more empty than what I am, I 'm a room
within so many buildings of what are now vacant with
vagrants of contested thoughts.

Please don't think because my rooms are empty that
there is nothing in there even though it doesn't
look desolate it is full of lingering shadows of thought.

We fill the hollow vastness of non relative meanings
with nothing but essences of what we lumbered on?
My thoughts are of empty consequences nothing less.

Can you see in the deserted realms of a once awoken
mind, now it is hollow as each room of thought became
depleted of anything but unoccupied stagnant thought.
Wack Tastic Nov 2014
What the **** is wrong with you America?
Why can't you wake up and see,
Why aren't you craving more,
Doesn't the sight of obvious injustice,
make you shudder and quake,

The pawn shops, the walls, the harems,
The grotesque, vile eating establishments,
The silly, sadistic joke of their,
devourous wake,
The prison sentence of commercial onslaught,
The centers,
The hubs,
The craters in the sand,
The dead pools,
The pool halls,
The mess halls,
The halls
and walls,
Mingled together,
Why haven't you made the distinction;
Why haven't we done anything,
Indeed...
                 Who are you to ask?
I felt a crushing depression,
being among the people,
we all sat and glared,
my normal disposition,
unaligned by the new line,
the path unknown made me
Feel Uneasy,
I always pull out my Kerouac,
and start massaging my brain,
feeling the nostalgia of a past
                Soul,
             a zero soul,
            a poet's cries,
         reach my ears, the innards,
                resonate out the mix,
    usually it works,
          But the bus driver yelled at my ***** *** for not knowing
Hamline, of Course!
         He said it seven times.
Inside the current trend of atrocity,
      in the heart,
             the core,
                   the honey,
  in the mad swirl of current trends,
       the sway,
              swirling of the dilapidated ocean,
I was returning work shoes that were,
                                    (I hadn't bought them, but were intended for a                   now terminated co-worker)
Given me, but two sizes too big, floppy.
She talked to her supervisor.
(Should've just walked out with the new pair)
Supershit said no over walkie,
"try yo luck at the counter."
Went to the counter,
to try my luck,
Striked conversation,
with a rough,
dusty girl,
who told me they had ******* at her
for being there too long.
I just wanted to get the **** outta there.
I handed the box to Lucy (cashier)
She besmirchenly said no,
I didn't fight the decision.
Which I felt will always haunt,
a moment in my mind's heart.

I should've stood up and
pulled off my shoes and
whamped her for what
she represented,
None of it made sense,
I asked nicely,
I mean was I supposed
to walk barefoot in these
subzero temperatures?
Lackluster I slunk away,
None of it matters,
I positioned myself
toward the
beacon twin,
The personification of
Racism!

The super Target across from
the Mart of Wal,
Whose merchants bumble,
yet I made no progress,
speaking distressfully,
influently for them,
While the policeman shelved the chips,
I spoke as courteous as any,
yet was torn away,
tuned asunder,
Lumbered over to the far off
sigh, Red...
They don't even have,
work shoes at Targé,
What does that say America?
The serpent silly sneakers,
laughing and hissing as I leave.

The bus is right there and
I have to catch it,
Lest I spend another half hour,
outside in this turmoil of frost,
In a wheel of torture and rejection,
always missing the bus to,
seek warmth,
Thought I would be hit by oncoming car
but made a mad dash to the door,
Just in time to be ticked off
at the empire,
at the ruminating,
the fermenting,
the rheumatoid arthritis,
affecting the fingers of careful planners,,
the scent o futility,
the fertility of existence was barren,
anything...
something... I'll pop up 'ventually

There I groaned,
retracing my steps in my brain,
but would end up at a
better launch,
in the ***** of downtown.

I kicked myself when it
said my transfer was expired,
with no way to tell time,
I just paid the man,
Then kicked myself because,
I must've used the older one,
from the former veranda
of the morning 'fore all this,

Now I kicked myself off the bus
pulling the yellow halt cord prematurely,
then walked the snowy,
lonely streets,
the cascading thunder of cars,
shoveling the air around,
the city sighing beneath my feet,
Walked past and contemplated
jumping on the little
platform between the
stages of the coaches
of the train...
16... to 17,
St. Louis Park,
Where began the loud,
obnoxious cacophony,
Obliterating my remaining faith in humanity,
The reason for this rant,
in solitude now,
in grateful sorrow,
in menacing tones,
the joke,
that we should all wake the **** up...

A B-boy girlie,
talked of pounding *****,
taming ***,
                                                    (how literate heroes will view this is outrageous)
Her counterpart with fisherman,
camouflage hat,
remarks of suckin' **** for two dollas.
I pretended to put my headphones in,
silencing the onslaught,
of inhumanity.
I had already gone through
my circles of hell,
that charlatan-laden circus of consumerism,
Now on the home stretch were,
these monstrosities,
mocking everyone in the bus
They talked of drink indulged,
The B-boy girl was the ringleader,
it was apparent,
the lackey sat behind her,
taking pictures, documenting?
and sharing images on devices,
that all amounted to,
nothing,
but tragic decline.
They spoke of dads in jails,
They spewed out nonsense,
They reminisced of fights,
The B-boy girl had a cast on her arm,
She had lied and told the
story of how she had
coldly beaten someone in the ice.
how brutish and untrue.
Obviously I didn't have words until now,
after arriving finally to my haven away,
to express,
in the mullings here,
on the pages of existence,
That we all need to
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!
Mahima Gupta Mar 2016
I heard you're talking about
Splitting the fortune into two
With the silver revolver in her hand
Gasping her breath she's walking down the aisle
Burning red than fading blue
The odds of your lumbered existence fall flat
If only the armour was repossessed
By a harbinger from your mother womb
Would you realise the game ceases to exist
It's all in your mind in caught in your rigmarole of lies
Overhwhelmed by your streak of luck
You command the move to be played
If only you knew
the result already is checkmate
When the lady sitting across placed a bet
You lost it all to her and satiated yourself to her charm
But she's walking down the aisle now
Burning red than fading blue
Black and red you lost it all
You went home and pretended to be unscathed
But this time there's no way back
It's the lady coming towards you
With the biased musket at her disposal
This is not your gambling den
Here comes apocalypse
It's Russian roulette.
Zani Jul 2017
This Hypnotic suggestion
Is shaking the shift above
The electronic connection
Negating us from looking wide
If you ask the question
You only have to look it up
So we forget reflection

Seek that connection in time
No one will ever ask why

We have been
Become so disconnected from our love
I know
Its easy to get lost with all we know
Be free
Begin to reconnect and come alive
Before
The time comes for us to go home
When we go back to love

I’m sick of propagated confusion
Spreading vibrant illusion
To escape this contusion of the life we lead.
People dealing with people instead of loving each other
When that’s all you ever need when you come out your mother

She went through what we went through
So that you could rejoice
The fact she made a pact with man,
To land a place in samsara
Where we experience dharma
Let us remember that our purpose
Is to manifest our spirit karma
But we forget

Beware the others who are counting on amnesia
Pushing chemicals inflicting mass hysteria
Through the numbing of our patience and
Our sovereign state of being supreme
Placing all our sacred natural knowledge under lock and key

Do you follow me?
That through unity  
We start
To heal
One world

Let me ask you what on earth you’re going to do about it?
We should be asking sacred vessel what it needs to drop
This luggage stopping you from oscillating
Oh so eloquently frequently
To the point where grace can be achieved
To guide the life we lead

It Is being lumbered upon you
Through miseducated passing
Of convenient knowledge
Made to confine truth
To a political happening
Not a spiritual fastening
Between siblings borne apart and
Then taught to compete
But should we be working together
With our holy conscience tethered
To compassion, love and tolerance, forgiveness
All these parts will build a loving society
Where the meek are made stronger and
The stronger seek wisdom for sustainable ecology

Do you follow me now?
That through unity  
We start
To heal
One world

Dream to be free
Of all mind obsession
Together we breach
Another dimension

Seek that connection in kind
Its all that we need to survive

Here we are
In the moonlight wind together
We face the pain we see
With hearts’ desire
We made this love
To shine above
The darkness of this world
Before
The time comes for us to go home
When we go back to love

Serendipity brought planetary saviours
Ready to fight the curse
That wrote this act we rehearse  
Generating a familiar scenario
Where those who choose can make love but
Once they do they have to go
Because the basis of our system is ******
We won’t go any further
Until we stop this mass destructive suffering
Based on greed until we burst

Will you be driving the hurst?  
Through these secular streets?
Will you reap the benefit of a societal need for closure?
For disclosure
Of all injustice bought and carried out in your name it should give you nausea
For it is you that is responsible
It is we who choose the lives we save and those we don’t.

We shall do away with regiment sacristy
This living force we cannot see around us
Hums of superhuman energy
Which we can tap into with nurture
Through nature
Through living action
Putting time aside
For what lies in our childrens' future

So make a change
It might feel strange
You will feel pain
But for our own sake
Lets aim to raise game
Of universal gratitude
A whole new attitude
This one loving mind
Eradicate world solitude

Hear me now!
That through unity  
We start
To heal
One world
A new song I am working on. Have you ever thought about the dichotomy of technology  connecting us so much more mentally to the detriment of tactile emotionally significant experiences?

Find the music on my Soundcloud account here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-194933493/come-alive
Seán Mac Falls Apr 2015
( Sonnet )*

I once caught you naked by the sea,
No one noticed, such noble shyness,
Invited to worlds, aloof as sun breeze,
Of purple sands, heathered highness.

In novae of your eyes was shipwreck,
Forlorn beacon chiding the weary lost
Of new worlds lumbered on the decks,
Seabirds caroled up wing, heavens' loft.

Skin, fleshy of netted eel, salt and foam,
Was hide for a brigand, lubbers sessions,
Sheered by sheen, blinding sky of gloam,
Stars runged on their draped processions.

My seal, now fate, cloak within jubilance;
Coral sea wave, slips under moon dance.
In Celtic myth, if a man steals a female selkie's skin she is in his power and is forced to become his wife.  Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean.  Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him.

Selkies (also spelled silkies, selchies; Irish/Scottish Gaelic: selchidh, Scots: selkie fowk) are mythological creatures found in Scottish, Irish, and Faroese folklore.  Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land. The legend is apparently most common in Orkney and Shetland and is very similar to those of swan maidens.
Keith W Fletcher Oct 2016
Keith W Fletcher
Dec 1, 2016


An insatiable thirst
Quenched
By the flickering flames of change
As constant darkness
Opens up
To expose
The smiling faces........ arranged
In a ragged circle
As transmutation will
Click a quick tick
Time sets forth a measurement
And right then
Measurement becomes relevant

And the wall
Still and silent now
As it settles into the new place
Having moved backward......
Giving human spirit
A little more space
Nobody knew it right then
But space
Just got bent ..for the very first time

---------And GOD smiled---------

Coal carried the flame forward
Far beyond
Its original role
Iron became harder to tame
As they blend and bend
Creating and celebrating
The birth
Of the very first tool
And the wall slid back
Exposing a gap
In the continuum
As well as a broken chain
So GOD stepped in
Taking a chain in each hand
As to cover the span

Linking the past to the present
Creating a future
Where history will be amassed
To be categorized
Analized
Sorted and filed
And GOD held it all together
-------And again GOD smiled-------

That smile
Must have been
MAJESTIC
As GOD watched the intrepid airmen
Sail off the dune and fly toward the ocean
Taking a leap and an unfathomable chance
GOD may have laughed
As the slapstick unfolded
The two brothers laughing and whooping
As each does their version
Of a happy dance
To a whole new future -- to be
That they alone
Had the ability to see

It did change... quite magically
Unfolding like a roadmap
Inspiring technology
With each turn of the page

No smile could have been present
As fat man lumbered in
And little boy followed
Not too long after
And that guaranteed
The absence of smiles
-------The suppression of laughter------

TRAGIC

Still....
The wall slid backwards
By more than the QUOTA
The pattern expected
Considering the folly of man
Whose intelligence suddenly
Accelerating....so rapidly
That bit by bit
Humanity split

Religiously

Using a crutch
Saying its all just...
...TOO much
"If GOD wanted man to fly
GOD would have given us wings"

As others decry
"You spit in the eye
of. GOD who gave us the gift
of creativity
Intelligence and tenacity---
--maybe a bit of bombastity

All fathers want their children
To excel
So shouldn't that be true
For GODS children as well?

That wall is not to be breached
Circumnavigated
Undermined or climbed
We will never realize
The height necessary
To rise above the lofty wall
To see the sacred sights
Where GOD delights
In teasing us
Bit by bit
Inch by inch
Allowing us
To push the wall forward

Encouraging us to learn as we grow
As you know
We would have never  moved forward
Beyond the doubts of those
Who say that we're playing GOD
Then... burying their heads in the sand
Dooming us to crawl
Instead of proudly walking tall

If GOD didn't encourage those  children
By stepping back
And smiling upon us
As we seek to find wisdom
Just as we need it

We take pride in pushing ahead
As if we..... somehow
Actually did it...
... On our own
Managing ...to move that wall
----And that has to give...

...GOD

The biggest laugh of all !!
Fatman and little were the first nuclear bombs dropped on the  Japanese cities  of Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 1945 just barely forty years after the Wright brothers  first airplane flight at   Kitty Hawk North Carolina
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2015
( Sonnet )*

I once caught you naked by the sea,
No one noticed, such noble shyness,
Invited to lands, aloof as sun breeze,
Of purple sands, heathered highness.

In novae of your eyes was shipwreck,
Forlorn beacon chiding the weary lost
Of new worlds lumbered on the decks,
Seabirds caroled up wing, heavens' loft.

Skin, fleshy of netted eel, salt and foam,
Was hide for a brigand, lubbers sessions,
Sheered by sheen, blinding sky of gloam,
Stars runged on their draped processions.

Corals, sea wave, slips under moon dance;
My seal, now fated, cloak within jubilance.
In Celtic myth, if a man steals a female selkie's skin she is in his power and is forced to become his wife.  Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean.  Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him.

Selkies (also spelled silkies, selchies; Irish/Scottish Gaelic: selchidh, Scots: selkie fowk) are mythological creatures found in Scottish, Irish, and Faroese folklore.  Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land. The legend is apparently most common in Orkney and Shetland and is very similar to those of swan maidens.
.
jenny linsel Jan 2017
I remember as a little girl
On a visit to an aunt’s friends house
I was sitting reading a story book
As quiet as a mouse

I asked to be pardoned
To go to the loo
They were all playing dominoes
So I knew what I must do

I opened up the door
And placed my foot on the first stair
Then I heard someone in a low voice say
“Are you sure that she's all there”?

I felt a tear run down my cheek
I was doing what I ought
Only speaking when I was spoken to
That's what I was taught

When I’d done what I had to do
I went back down the stairs
The domino game was finished
And there were four empty chairs

They were all in the kitchen
Drinking cups of tea
My aunt she turned to me and smiled
And handed a cup to me

She noticed my tear-stained face
And stroked it with her hand
I told her what I’d overheard
She said I was too young to understand

I was insecure throughout my childhood
Never felt like I fitted in
Undernourished because I wouldn't eat
Now I’d just be classed as thin

From the age of five
My time at school was fleeting
Feigning illness to avoid the bullies
And escape another beating

I remember cowering
In the corner of the school yard
Cigarette butts stubbed out on my arms
Left painful, sore and charred

Name-calling and violence
Made me feel inferior
Set upon by bullies
Who thought they were superior

When I became a teenager
Things they got much worse
The bullies were now older
Younger ones they would coerce
To taunt me and lie in wait
And leave me in a battered state

When i got my first job
The bullying it went on
Because my face didn't fit
I was put upon

Got lumbered with the ***** jobs
That no-one else would do
Like swilling down the filthy yard
And scrubbing the outside loo

One afternoon, the manageress
Secretly asked me whether
I would do ****** favours for a delivery man
And I reached the end of my tether

I got my coat and quit the job
Never looking back
I later heard that the manageress
Was found out and got the sack

Now that I am older
No-ones victim will I be
I stand my ground, nobody’s fool
And i am happy being me
A Writer Apr 2015
The words were stuck like a chicken bone in her throat.
They wouldn't go anywhere,
They wouldn't go away back to the hell they were made
But they also wouldn't crawl out
They were lodged
They liked it where they were
They were safe
They couldn't cause anymore harm
They couldn't become a reality
But they could be felt
They were known and couldn't stew
And the feelings that came with them couldn't
Be shoved back down to be ignored.
To be left alone with no one to care for them.
That's what they needed, to be cared for
To be seen, to be heard to be felt.
The feelings
the words
The pain.
That's what they needed.
To be held gently,
To be loved and cared for
But they didn't get it
Because she was afraid
She was afraid of what they might do to her
They weren't going to love and care for her
She felt they were going to hurt her
She didn't know what was going to happen
If she poured them out and laid them on the table
And carefully examined and loved each one.
Tears might fall
Breathing may be lumbered
Shaking may take over
And shame might settle in.
So she swallows them back down
Into the bottle where they're not looked upon
And screws on the cap as tight as she can
And then new begins a new day.
But each new day brings more feelings and thoughts and words
And eventually the bottle can't hold them anymore and it shatters
And they make their way back up to her throat again.
And the cycle repeats.
She's stuck, and so are they.
Prabhu Iyer Jan 2017
on this road to the world beyond the  horizons
the years, they unravel, casketed
events rolled like leaves on the trees
flanking the sides:
some, tall, a family of beautiful memories:
put down, now logged and lumbered -
there's a wound that cannot be healed
it's called heartbreak - cyclone that
breaks on our land, ravaging everything
some bent down, broken pride
and leaves, leaves, caskets within caskets:
there, yonder beyond the electric cables,
a moustached village deity astride a horse,
wielding a fearsome machete, under the wide sky:
where we stopped those many years ago
wonder eyed, to capture on our lens,
now passing by nonchalant -
shack where drivers always stopped for tea,
the stream-bend where cows crossed, the restaurant
that we no longer visit- now behind the new lane
the boulevard of green gulmohars blooming late
all rolling back like waves into the sea
it is a year ringing in:
it is years that have been rung out
like pieces in the glass cup-boards,
shell-dolls, them old books, deities put to slumber
of last worshipped, and books, them books, prayer books
mystery books, all untouched for a long long time
it's a quest that's over, past its prime
there rages that debate whether it points
only forward, never backward, but I say
my friends, there is no arrow of time:
only memories - every event, a flower,
plucked from the garden of life,
ever arranged in bouquets or coffins
in the heirloom collections of our reflections
Don Bouchard Jul 2015
He had always assumed that when his parents died
A kind of freedom would commence
For him to grow into what he could become,
But when his faher passed, unexpected,
His shock to realize the opposite was great,
And left him feeling numb and naked,
Weak and unprotected.

That he should realize his own mortality,
And the imminent farewell coming for himself,
And the sad goodbyes to other journeyers,
So gripped him then,
And robbed his sleep by bringing waking dreams:
Conversations with his father's silent ghost,
Worries of adequate preparations,
(What to leave behind, what to send ahead),
And desires to make some sort of difference,
So troubled his poor head
As to take the deepest sleep,
The kind he'd had whilst father was alive,
And leave him morning-tired and troubled.

Seeking solace for losing a life once charmed
With parents well and family whole, so tempted
Him to seek relief in revels far from depths-plunged grief,
That for a while, he lumbered on,
A wanton, seeking temporary pleasure
Who barely stopped to measure
The flying moments of his sordid life,
The cost of temporal flights with no intended destinations,
The emptiness of purpose-empty avocations,
The fruitless pursuits of mindless gratification.

But now he sits,
Back up against a lonely bedroom wall,
Violin and orchestra his late night companions,
Taking stock of where he's been and where he's bound,
Thinking deep and praying some,
Wondering what the waning mornings left to him will bring.

Lonely, he has become a different man,
Humbled in his un-sought and once-denied mortality,
A peace-begging supplicant beneath a tired moon,
While ancient winds blow ancient dust around
Outside his open window,
Just as they did while his mother moaned
Fifty years and more ago
Out on the dry land farm where he was born.
Seeking a purposive life.... Not all that much time left....

— The End —