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Nat Lipstadt Jun 2015
Preface

(not even 9:00 am and
I've wet myself

this was my to be
my Poet Palm Sunday,
when my pen is in
some room,
by other's well hidden,
and composition is a prohibition,
the hours yet to come,
come negligently but happily,
whiled and whittled,
reading the better poetry of others,
on this, a day of rest for the
body's satisfaction
and the body of the soul's,
even greater

yet a day of rest,
be not South Pole opposite
from a day of no North Pole work

this early I-am-risen Sunday dawn,
finds me focused, two dog ears alert,
forty one poems in descending order,
read and wept over and upon,
a real, not a faux Bush,
"mission accomplished"

lived long and occasionally prospered,
of poets, I am familiar some,
of writing poetry,
have learned my sums,
know what is likeable
love what is
loving and loveable

it is the poetry of every day life

of strange noises of strangers
in the mid of night,
dogs rhythmically snoring,
while you curse/overcome
the bright eyed, darkened alertness of insomnia
by word whittling yourself,
by the softness of skin of a grand kid
that momentarily manages to convince,
it was indeed,
all worth it

the zoo animals of the lawn and trees,
singing concertos in any minor they please,
as long as it's major enough
to command the world's attention

six stanzas and yet have not commenced,
the task God gave me this sabbath morn,
for the problem with seeing the world,
thru the filter of aging eyes,
is you grow vulnerable, wistful,
distracted by your own ancient feeling streams
that lie too deep in the Manhattan schist
of what others call, your heart,
but somehow still manage
to bubble up and geyser out your eyes)

~~~

Joe Cottonwood

as Patton said to Rommel,
"I've read your book"

the book of forty one poems
that are the products of
years in the making, with tools
that hang upon the belt of yourself,
that you acquired long before
the leathered and weathered
tool belt of four decades of you daily dress,
was first ever worn

you tell us of your ancestry,
thus reveal your story simple intimate,
and by the fourth or fifth essay,
our poetic ancestor,
Walt Whitman,
was readily apparent,
in the little life things
the American and all families  
celebrate

of my six decades,
I yet
still struggle for a summary definition
of who I am,
what I'm worth,
yet weep at your simple eloquence,
self described scribe and man
detailing a life well lived

Hammer nails. Write poems. Bake bread. Shake hands.

is that all there is?
Oh god there are veins
in this poet run deeper than the
iron ore that makes his nails,
the sun ray mines that electric heat
his bread oven

they are mined by me this morning

he does not write of
anguish, blood, love or scars,
that are newly born on a
summer's day youthful blush,
no, he writes of
anguish, blood, love or scars
that humans accumulate,
and in poetry encapsulate
of a life very well lived

I know you Joe,
and apologize for the
paucity of mine,
in honoring yours...


~~~
Postface**

the coffee beans grinding,
the pots banging,
the music suddenly turned softer,
surely constellation cosmic signs
that a lover's breakfast soon to arrive

so I away, but in earnest plead,
share the simple joyousness
of his poetry,
and our communal Sunday
and everyday lives
will be indeed come
as a day of comfort blessed,
the only toil,
tear removal...
If your value a skill and love
that captures more of life and love,
please read
http://hellopoetry.com/joe-cottonwood/

a single excerpt,
no two, a sampler
~
Coffee and corn bread.
They putter about with weekend chores:
she waters plants; he snakes the cursed toilet.
They take turns riding the exercise bike.
He cleans the hot tub filter;
she stretches yoga-like while listening to an audiobook.
He makes a wooden toy, gift for a grandchild;
she prepares chicken burgers and salad.
They watch a movie from Netflix
about Miss Potter, Beatrix
a rebel of another century.
In the dark, outdoors, scarred bodies
water-slick in the moonlight,
they soak in the hot tub
while a dog guards, sphinx position, ears *****
to the rustle of raccoons in the underbrush.
At fifteen minutes to midnight
as steam wafts in moonbeams
she says, “Hey — it’s our anniversary.”
Almost forgotten. The forty-sixth. Or fifty-first
in a different calculus, because at the wedding
they’d already been lovers five years. He sings
     Oh my love is a wallflower
     so pretty and so shy
She answers:
     No boy I’d ever marry
     until you gave me a try.
Under water, their toes touch.

~

old bronze
your cheek, so brown
old bronze
brushed with down
shekels of freckles
over a dusky moon

bronze is an alloy
forged in heat
shaped in art
durable as stone
darkens with age
glows when rubbed
still warm
against my lips
Michelle Lynne Feb 2014
From my rotting body, flowers will grow, and I will finally be beautiful.

The marigolds that will bloom will not flee and vanish from the glow of the sun
They will aspire and capture its power, ever basking in its majesty unlike all that I have done
For they are enduring and evergreen, quite a contradiction to someone always on the run

Helianthus will burgeon from my corpse in the Autumn, cordial, acquiescent and jolly
Luminous hues of gold, superiority in the form of a blooming seedling, free of worldly folly
Irresistible to butterflies and feathered creatures, who shall evermore adore the perennial dolly

Snowdrops with delicate pedicels will pepper the frost polishing over my long corroded flesh,
An impeccable ability to synthesize with the world effortlessly, so that I may at last mesh
Nevermore will I acquiesce to let the world negligently toss me about, instead the world will thresh

Irises in the spring will be next to transcend, ripe with nonconformity rooting from their eccentric peridot petals
For the world encompassing them may be wrapped in blissful ignorance, but  they will forever hesitate to settle
They realize that life is for naught, putrescence is inevitable, so why even make a vain attempt to mettle

As sure as the sun will ascend, the summer will materialize, and the sun's glimmer will rage from dusk until dawn
For the world will strive on, long after I am gone, and my effulgence on the Earth is perpetually withdrawn

I am not fearful of death because in death there is ignorance and blissful uncertainty
From my rotting body, flowers will grow, and I am in them and that is eternity.
The sky split, cracked open through sheer force. A spectre’s mind is hailed away to a foreign shore, nestled amongst unsolidified generalities, binding it to the aftermath of time’s relevance. Hope came in a voided sun, imploding in the sky over Bethlehem, and through its transparency, a vision of the end was brought forth to this unjust land, where filth rules supremacy, and dominion is granted for a grandfather’s pittance. It displayed the market value of a soul through a diminished stance, collapsing on the shore as violent waves crash and beat the resonant senses held within.



Contemporaries held in fear, chucked and pushed down back alleys, ending up under the pier, vandalizing a vanquished peer, awkward glances insuring no one is near. Washed away with the evening tide, passed up to the coast after a lifeless ride. Broken down, drifting with the stream, token now, drifting with the dream.
Naturalized and neutered before a board of advisors, composed of highly unsanitary elders, pieces of flawn stuck to the chin, picked up while eating from another’s bin. Dictated and deemed to seem all right, recreations shown on daily late night, refracted and turned into a joke, remuneration held as big brother had spoke. Patience restored as order forms in line, hastened into place by fluorinated wine, individuals return to their lives, and negligently pass over recent lies.
Micah Rion Jul 2015
For breakfast, I brought my self-loathing undisguised by bruised, hollow eyes and disquieted moaning,
all crunched up into the contours of your hard edges,
like thin-veined broken and browned, misused leaves orphaned from its parent.

My desperate limbs always reaching, wretched, to shoddy fill into the gaps that your self-confidence casual posture had formed on the floor;
empty-air spaces and pervasive shadow caverns I have claimed without verbal invite, promise or asylum.
No self-confidence to speak from, anguish and primal, seeking shelter;
pain entwined with pain making easy comfort in forgetting.

A soul disquieted;
there are pieces stripped straight down, pinned together in different places, unspun and uneven smears of paste that don't ease closed the obvious imperfections.
A harmful machination unexplained, fitted negligently back together,
the design with no catalyst to begin, untended and purposefully without purpose.
No comprehensible enrichment, selfish perversity plodding culmination,
almost complete.
Build, re-build; conspiracy laced with nonchalance; twisted person alchemy.

Any or Each of Many becoming
the godhead of a shallow, malcontented deception,
rudiment contortions to mangle, punish, ruin
an altruistic heart; a beaten wooden phoenix shaped from past wrongdoings and misery.
More burning away, combustion of reclaiming, bones and sinew steeped in the truth of the universe.

Unjustified and never the differentiation my heart once blamed, not good nor bad.
We, two souls alike in circumstance, circumference, cylindrical,
watching the world make more of us, clutching bird-like shoulders merged through a pale waning.
Existent time-limited victims of disappointed alliances,
made in the land entrenched in the business of making monsters who make monsters.
EJ Aghassi Jan 2019
Moving from zone to zone
My sense of home now
Carries your scent.
I walk along
The dimmed sun rays and
Find a new feeling in the morning dew.
A feeling unfamiliar, uncomfortable
Yet similar to the only thing
I’ve ever wanted sits with me
In the living room.

My feet remember the feeling of gravel,
Of jagged stone caught, scratching skin.
They recall carrying me along,
Fluttering freely with the wind at my back.
I've learned that
Love is like the loose gravel
That gets caught in between your toes.
It is the wind that pushes you along.
Other times it is like a vine
Intertwining with another in cosmic symbiosis.
Sometimes it is like cheap linen that bleeds
Its color when it is washed negligently.
Sometimes love crackles like a cat in your lap.
Sometimes love is a sleepless night.
Love is like drinking enough water
Before you fall asleep drunk.
It is also waking up with a permanent marker
On your face, because you fell asleep drunk.

Sometimes love is like plunging your feet
Deep into the soil.

But most importantly, love is close enough
To being led home safely by moonlight.
love time life eyes dark moonlight close sleep free
altun Dec 2017
If the time ever comes,
And I’m forced to choose between duty and passion;
Between playing in the realms of reality
And pretending in the realms of treason;
Between love and personal ambition.

And I’m forced to lose my sense of compassion.

And I’m forced to give up
Everything I stand for; everything I work for;
Every belief, only to relieve
Myself from the pain and lies I indulge in.

And I’m forced to choose to engage in beauty
For the sake of the pretentious,
Not for the sake of beauty, not for her glory.

And I’m forced to stop
Searching for the beauty and meaning within.

And I’m forced to marvel at the death of art,
Even in the slightest fraction of a second.

Now will I? Will I even lie?
Will I even care about the truth I bare?
How careless I was? How untruthful I was?
The truth was just a lie, amid writing, now I realize,
Negligently paralyze myself with thoughts of rigor.
Another delusion in the forest of lies. With vigor
The term “I”, so arrogantly I use
Just like the term "I", the confusion,
I deliberately caused myself with the conclusion:

O love! O beauty! O passion!
Oh, for everything I give up,
Oh, for everything I do,
As long as I don’t give myself up,
All I ever do,
Is long for purity of success.
Just like the dreams,
Oh, the dreams I confess.
Gods1son Apr 2020
The store shelves are all empty,
where do I find a heart sanitizer?
A substance to cleanse my thoughts,
to wash off anything that isn't God's.

How do I rid my mind of all these doubts
Is there a disinfectant for the mind?
Having a ***** mind is worse than
swimming in a septic tank ( ew! )

They say germs and viruses will get you sick
But the state of a man's heart and mind
are treated negligently
Maybe it's time to focus our attention
where it ought to be –
The condition/quality of ourselves within.
taylor Dec 2019
that ramshackled wax house situated in the lonely ‘Sticks,
where flocks of muddle-minded sheep would whimper,
this obscure grove you attempted escaping to for it only to retreat infinitely further,
birds shrill that knee-knocking prayers were not to heal your sickness,
leaden dirt kicked up in the driveway by his stuttering pick-up truck,
    his hefty-booted footsteps cracking warnings,
two folks roosting there,
    they skimp along on scanty paychecks,
    when’s the last time you spruced up?
hushed deeds done behind doors, back porches, piddling sheep ranching, 9-to-5 waitressing,
a domestic trophy, coaxing you to product with a simper or an act on her knees,
a bride of winsome nineteen
from a limited nuclear family yet disowned as an unfaithful *****  for hobnobbing with the riff raff,
traded names to be a ‘Cherry’, unbecoming displays of skin, hootin’-hollerin’, shake her fist to the Heavens and toss her mane, sneering and bad-mouthing, rebellious attitudes of subsisting on the ‘wild’ aspect of life,
did you think you could your persist youthful life negligently forever?
psychotically ‘steadfast’ to her brutish man,
RIDE OR DIE!                    hard whiskey, cigarettes, and phone calls,
he narrates her stories, she sings delusioned hymns,
their day comprising of blackberry kisses and black coffee grippings,
of bitten bottom lips and benign bruises,
    violet caressing her inner thighs, unbuckled passion to the eye,
                        pose on his knee, crooked grins
dancing for him in wiry linen lingeries, to strut her lithe yielding legs,
                          straddle her in-between those hush sheets,
                                    one hot breath,
does he flinch when she first handles him unexpectedly? does he gaze into distances far and mumbles abstractedly?
       “No one will love you like I do.”
    spoiled excess wool in wicker baskets,
                         does she stash a packed suitcase beneath the bed?
                         red lipstick,
                                        polished pistol,
                                       hotdishes,
to you, the lamb of which she stalked,
    what transfixed you? was it her beggar puppy eyes or the muscled haunches? some boyish fantasy for a mature woman who you observed sunbathing on her lawnside?
                he had that lean meat where his sighings exhibiting his ribs,
                that fond, innocent sense desiring a mother-figure,
you met her under the hollowing light of the street lamp,
what meager knowledge of each other did they know? she cannot fulfill her promise to whisk you away to coasts free,
        soaking the laid-towels in fields, a rhythmic guidance for the inexperienced,
did she think of him instead, preferred? and a warm bed?                                         preoccupied,
caught! in the act of entanglement,
did they hear the din? his baleful bark? your blanched bleat?
springing in defense, muddied soles as tangible sins,
his flash-fire eyes, pulsing veins with an envious rage,
a preaching of her ****, his fractured heart, love so sacred one can NEVER betray the boundaries,
did he clench his hands around her throat? oh!
his demands that he pronounced! **** you with the pistol he brandished zealously,
MANDATORY!
          Moon as my witness,
                            who was your Savior in that moment? where was your merited divine intervention?
but slow of action, faint of heart, grasping her hands he forced the weapon, he plyed her finger to pull the trigger,
             the lamb’s final shallow breath, the hounds smacking their ****** gums,
one cold breath,
The snow must have felt blistering,
how frightened she became, alter her standpoint,
but she could flee as she thirsted! the yank! the ******! to the ground,
                    the punishing baseball bat to ******* her legs,
dousing, saltish tears, rouge lips gasping, sporadically whimpering between bitter laughter,
his hand on her neck skimming gradually, gracefully, between her blades, warm,
gingerly cradling her, splintering voice, apologies like flurries,
            that day summer’s day when they first married in front of the grove,
         she remembers her billowing linen dress, the way they waltzed in lush grass,
                                would the world chasm off beyond?
        he would kiss her again in precisely the same manner as once before,
fall desperately in love with him, firm, truely steadfast, unpacking her suitcase,  
mosey back towards that lit house of wax, that far-flung street lamp and the dispersed sheep,
“Take me home.”        
                                “No one will love you like I do.”
Varsha Manohar Aug 2019

It's about a random pumpkin seed that I threw into a ***..
The plant started growing when the Spring started and now it's almost Winter and you know what would happen to the plant.

As I watched it grow and realized the winter is coming..
I let my thoughts flow on a piece of paper. Please do read and give me a feedback.

*****************­

I tossed you in, so negligently, to the muddy soil
Very little did I sense that you were a seed..
..of faith and hope, of love and trust!

And on one gloomy morning, I saw a green sprout.
Oh it was you!
You brightened my day with cheer and hope!
I laid my eyes on your tenderly grown leaves.
So delightful it was to watch them flapping gently in the breeze.

You drove your way up the ***** pile of mud..
proved your strength with your smooth, delicate bud.
As you slowly kept springing up into the air,
you left me fascinated, about your worth and power!

When those extremely sunny days almost knocked you off.
I still remember how you fought the heat, kept your calm..
..and watched you steadily grow up tough and strong.
You endured the pain and yet looked green!

Many days later..
I saw graceful yellow blossoms,
between enormously grown green leaves..
Treat to my eyes!
What could be more sweet(-er than that)!

Serene through the day,
serene through the light,
serene through the dusk, dawn and night!
As the seasons pass by and the winter takes over,
I will keep in mind what I learnt from you forever..
..and I HOPE to see you again next Summer!

*NOT the END**
Never lose hope. Never give up.
july hearne Jan 2022
now that the season turned to hate
i'll take this hate and take you down

for a time, times, and the dividing of time

you do not see your own reflection in the iced sidewalks
never salted, never shoveled
just ***** ice to trod upon

the slippery filth of hills to

skip and laugh and break a neck
pet a dog who will soon maul all your children
but for now your laughter is an ugly war cry in the air

a ghislaine maxwell with longer hair
all her customers going free
a negligently tolerant church bell ringing somewhere

dog takes a ****
for a time, times, and the dividing of time

pack the filthy ice and pet the ******* dog
every time joe biden ***** his pants
for a time, times, and the dividing of time
And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time. (Daniel 7:25)

— The End —