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Dawn King Jan 2015
Obligated attentions often wander
While mention of you has become obsolete
The natural order was but a paradox
As if malevolent incantations drawn behind obsidian palisades
Moil to counter the divine

Each sunrise on countless days past
Out near the eastbound pines, totem ravens cast out
Narrations from night time Goddesses
Visions of the prospective, ironically incongruous

The palisades must be breached

I have not the strength

Yesteryear’s unified heart
Now cavernous barren wastelands
That blow eternal drifts
Toward the obsidian palisades

and

Permeate the baneful fractures of the unintended
M Harris Apr 2017
Lightning Enchantress & Her Diamond Absolutes,
Moaning Fluxes Of Her Satellite Pursuits.,
Phantasmal Intents In Her Indigo Silhouettes.

***** Eyes & Animatronic Bliss,
Her Cherry Lips Calling For Her Symphonic Kiss,

Inimitable Raindrops & Iridescent Perpetuity,
Condensed Laments Of Her Kaleidoscopic Sphericity,

Purple Palisades & Platinum Charades,
Pheromone Verses Of Her Propelled Shades,

Shapeshifting Reveries Of Her Hourglass Fictions,
Charming Archangels Concealed In Her Convictions,
Glasshouse Perspectives Emitting Luminescent Predictions,

Magnetic Canvas & Her Stainless Vibrations,
Her Aesthetic Amour Diffusing Amplifications,

Satirical Saga In Her Spiritual ******,
Lyrical Charlatans Of Her Velvet Creativity,

Crystal Flowers & Supernatural Dreams,
Befuddled Effigies Of Her Cryptic Realms,
Her Feral Gleams Illustrating A Prophetic Queen.

- 02:32 AM  -
zebra Jul 2017
i come to you half mad
with desire
like slithers tongue
i wish
to have painfully stitched
to your silky ****
an act of desires supplication
my *** turned to poison
deprivations effulgent
obsidian flower salivating
your every smile
fleshy bells ringing
warping tintinnabulations
i am a starved incubus
drooling at your knees

behind me
a frothy junket of misdeeds
for loves sake
your feet the scent of lavender and salt
their shape evoking numberless poems
and begging adorations

your belly
a tender cauldron undulating
tummy ***** dancer
sacred *******
temple of worship
the site of your rounded bottom
naked red mouth calling
my sacred liturgy
your *****
velvet tulips for a tremulous kiss

I seed you a thousand times
a raging bludgeon
storming wounded gates Palisades
drenched and florid
fruit and milk ****
until jaws lock
and spire drops
turning me
to midnight cadaver
***** black hollows
a dark eyelid, blink-less
dead **** face down
a slumped snake

then soft dew
and cool ales
clear thickened muds saturation
lighten heat and peel
the warm palate
with agile caress
tender haunches wide and spiced
milk and butter thighs
her hair in mine
rushing river life
again i animate
an embryo id
dressed in fire
all vices and virtues
blood and sky
*** ADULT EXPLICIT
All day long in fog and wind,
The waves have flung their beating crests
Against the palisades of adamant.
     My boy, he went to sea, long and long ago,
     Curls of brown were slipping underneath his cap,
     He looked at me from blue and steely eyes;
     Natty, straight and true, he stepped away,
     My boy, he went to sea.
All day long in fog and wind,
The waves have flung their beating crests
Against the palisades of adamant.
1
Who will honor the city without a name
If so many are dead and others pan gold
Or sell arms in faraway countries?


What shepherd's horn swathed in the bark of birch
Will sound in the Ponary Hills the memory of the absent—
Vagabonds, Pathfinders, brethren of a dissolved lodge?


This spring, in a desert, beyond a campsite flagpole,
—In silence that stretched to the solid rock of yellow and red mountains—
I heard in a gray bush the buzzing of wild bees.


The current carried an echo and the timber of rafts.
A man in a visored cap and a woman in a kerchief
Pushed hard with their four hands at a heavy steering oar.


In the library, below a tower painted with the signs of the zodiac,
Kontrym would take a whiff from his snuffbox and smile
For despite Metternich all was not yet lost.


And on crooked lanes down the middle of a sandy highway
Jewish carts went their way while a black grouse hooted
Standing on a cuirassier's helmet, a relict of La Grande Armée.


2
In Death Valley I thought about styles of hairdo,
About a hand that shifted spotlights at the Student's Ball
In the city from which no voice could reach me.
Minerals did not sound the last trumpet.
There was only the rustle of a loosened grain of lava.


In Death Valley salt gleams from a dried-up lake bed.
Defend, defend yourself, says the tick-tock of the blood.
From the futility of solid rock, no wisdom.


In Death Valley no hawk or eagle against the sky.
The prediction of a Gypsy woman has come true.
In a lane under an arcade, then, I was reading a poem
Of someone who had lived next door, entitled 'An Hour of Thought.'


I looked long at the rearview mirror: there, the one man
Within three miles, an Indian, was walking a bicycle uphill.


3
With flutes, with torches
And a drum, boom, boom,
Look, the one who died in Istanbul, there, in the first row.
He walks arm in arm with his young lady,
And over them swallows fly.


They carry oars or staffs garlanded with leaves
And bunches of flowers from the shores of the Green Lakes,
As they came closer and closer, down Castle Street.
And then suddenly nothing, only a white puff of cloud
Over the Humanities Student Club,
Division of Creative Writing.


4
Books, we have written a whole library of them.
Lands, we have visited a great many of them.
Battles, we have lost a number of them.
Till we are no more, we and our Maryla.


5
Understanding and pity,
We value them highly.
What else?


Beauty and kisses,
Fame and its prizes,
Who cares?


Doctors and lawyers,
Well-turned-out majors,
Six feet of earth.


Rings, furs, and lashes,
Glances at Masses,
Rest in peace.


Sweet twin *******, good night.
Sleep through to the light,
Without spiders.


6
The sun goes down above the Zealous Lithuanian Lodge
And kindles fire on landscapes 'made from nature':
The Wilia winding among pines; black honey of the Żejmiana;
The Mereczanka washes berries near the Żegaryno village.
The valets had already brought in Theban candelabra
And pulled curtains, one after the other, slowly,
While, thinking I entered first, taking off my gloves,
I saw that all the eyes were fixed on me.


7
When I got rid of grieving
And the glory I was seeking,
Which I had no business doing,


I was carried by dragons
Over countries, bays, and mountains,
By fate, or by what happens.


Oh yes, I wanted to be me.
I toasted mirrors weepily
And learned my own stupidity.


From nails, mucous membrane,
Lungs, liver, bowels, and spleen
Whose house is made? Mine.


So what else is new?
I am not my own friend.
Time cuts me in two.


Monuments covered with snow,
Accept my gift. I wandered;
And where, I don't know.


8
Absent, burning, acrid, salty, sharp.
Thus the feast of Insubstantiality.
Under a gathering of clouds anywhere.
In a bay, on a plateau, in a dry arroyo.
No density. No harness of stone.
Even the Summa thins into straw and smoke.
And the angelic choirs fly over in a pomegranate seed
Sounding every few instants, not for us, their trumpets.


9
Light, universal, and yet it keeps changing.
For I love the light too, perhaps the light only.
Yet what is too dazzling and too high is not for me.
So when the clouds turn rosy, I think of light that is level
In the lands of birch and pine coated with crispy lichen,
Late in autumn, under the hoarfrost when the last milk caps
Rot under the firs and the hounds' barking echoes,
And jackdaws wheel over the tower of a Basilian church.


10
Unexpressed, untold.
But how?
The shortness of life,
the years quicker and quicker,
not remembering whether it happened in this or that autumn.
Retinues of homespun velveteen skirts,
giggles above a railing, pigtails askew,
sittings on chamberpots upstairs
when the sledge jingles under the columns of the porch
just before the moustachioed ones in wolf fur enter.
Female humanity,
children's snots, legs spread apart,
snarled hair, the milk boiling over,
stench, **** frozen into clods.
And those centuries,
conceiving in the herring smell of the middle of the night
instead of playing something like a game of chess
or dancing an intellectual ballet.
And palisades,
and pregnant sheep,
and pigs, fast eaters and poor eaters,
and cows cured by incantations.


11
Not the Last Judgment, just a kermess by a river.
Small whistles, clay chickens, candied hearts.
So we trudged through the slush of melting snow
To buy bagels from the district of Smorgonie.


A fortune-teller hawking: 'Your destiny, your planets.'
And a toy devil bobbing in a tube of crimson brine.
Another, a rubber one, expired in the air squeaking,
By the stand where you bought stories of King Otto and Melusine.


12
Why should that city, defenseless and pure as the wedding necklace of
a forgotten tribe, keep offering itself to me?
Like blue and red-brown seeds beaded in Tuzigoot in the copper desert
seven centuries ago.


Where ocher rubbed into stone still waits for the brow and cheekbone
it would adorn, though for all that time there has been no one.


What evil in me, what pity has made me deserve this offering?


It stands before me, ready, not even the smoke from one chimney is
lacking, not one echo, when I step across the rivers that separate us.


Perhaps Anna and Dora Drużyno have called to me, three hundred miles
inside Arizona, because except fo me no one else knows that they ever
lived.


They trot before me on Embankment Street, two hently born parakeets
from Samogitia, and at night they unravel their spinster tresses of gray
hair.


Here there is no earlier and no later; the seasons of the year and of the
day are simultaneous.


At dawn ****-wagons leave town in long rows and municipal employees
at the gate collect the turnpike toll in leather bags.


Rattling their wheels, 'Courier' and 'Speedy' move against the current
to Werki, and an oarsman shot down over England skiffs past, spread-
eagled by his oars.


At St. Peter and Paul's the angels lower their thick eyelids in a smile
over a nun who has indecent thoughts.


Bearded, in a wig, Mrs. Sora Klok sits at the ocunter, instructing her
twelve shopgirls.


And all of German Street tosses into the air unfurled bolts of fabric,
preparing itself for death and the conquest of Jerusalem.


Black and princely, an underground river knocks at cellars of the
cathedral under the tomb of St. Casimir the Young and under the
half-charred oak logs in the hearth.


Carrying her servant's-basket on her shoulder, Barbara, dressed in
mourning, returns from the Lithuanian Mass at St. Nicholas to the
Romers' house in Bakszta Street.


How it glitters! the snow on Three Crosses Hill and Bekiesz Hill, not
to be melted by the breath of these brief lives.


And what do I know now, when I turn into Arsenal Street and open
my eyes once more on a useless end of the world?


I was running, as the silks rustled, through room after room without
stopping, for I believed in the existence of a last door.


But the shape of lips and an apple and a flower pinned to a dress were
all that one was permitted to know and take away.


The Earth, neither compassionate nor evil, neither beautiful nor atro-
cious, persisted, innocent, open to pain and desire.


And the gift was useless, if, later on, in the flarings of distant nights,
there was not less bitterness but more.


If I cannot so exhaust my life and their life that the bygone crying is
transformed, at last, into harmony.


Like a Noble Jan Dęboróg in the Straszun's secondhand-book shop, I am
put to rest forever between tow familiar names.


The castle tower above the leafy tumulus grows small and there is still
a hardly audible—is it Mozart's Requiem?—music.


In the immobile light I move my lips and perhaps I am even glad not
to find the desired word.
Dustin Holbrook Aug 2012
++every now and then i’ll look again
out an opposite window to see
the same things, in the same light
i asked for peace
and to fill my head with perspective
i’d look you in the eyes
but this recurring scenery
sets me back face down
where my eyes pierce the air
to the gouged and grave ground
the colorful bracelet i wear
doesn’t mean as much as i wish
you would
i’ll hang you so high
i’ll hang you from a street light
if it meant you’d be there
but we don’t have many of those around here
i guess the silo
would fit your ego
and the tractor will knock it down
to be collected and fed to the world
...
if i ever got the chance
to make my way to the moon
the only place
where you haven’t been found
i’d write your name in the dust
like atop the mountain
where we made love
but the wind was hot that day
and the woods blocked the sound
of the fault giving way
to our blanket and our bodies
so we dove deep down
where i’ve stayed until today
i’ve lived and breathed
all the air beneath the seas
in an open field where i cut my knees
the grass breaks to wheat
i was either born again or realized home was dead
and the high school i attended
tried to coat the walls in my tongue too
put a pump jack to my lips
tried to surface the words i said
but i’ll say it again, i’m mine until i’m dead
don’t make me say it again, i’m mine until i’m dead

++in italy, where all the roads are made of dirt
the pebbles make a sound
and whisper the rest of what we know
to the gouged and gravel ground
your fingers touch the stones
where your mind seems to seep
down into the earth
and back up through your teeth
your hair is cut so short
compared to what it was
your arm is torn to tethers
that keep your body bound
leather like the face of love
so beaten like the wooden screen
...
through and through, and threw
your scarf
into the wind
into the snow
bright beaming colors wrap around your lips
and into the drain
around the brick
i’d wish for the patterns i sleep with
to be everything they could
in the sense that light won’t ever slow
so pace yourself against the wind
the gears will turn as you type them in
the hammers have been built
and the hand shakes have been firm
coordination isn’t key
but opens the door to the fighting alone
but i’ll say it again, i can make it on my own
don’t make me say it again, i can make it on my own

++i want a movie inside my mind
like the arms of her dress
burying books in the sand
on a black, flat stage
on every morbid wednesday
(the beach blonde scars
on every bleach blonde head)
your face looks squished
from the weight of your brain
juggles ignorance
i’ve done things i regret
but wouldn’t take back
that’s called sorry
it’s all called something sorry
...
like blue synthesis capsules
full floating, flying
lick the side to make sure tiles flow
automatic black glass
opaque lights
glowing blue lines keep the glue on tight
hospital bracelets keep your archetypes
fatherly fatherly fatherly hugs
inside the apartment
kicking the front steps
porches absent on our heads
your green t-shirt
taken off quickly
and faded blue jeans
with no belt to lock them
ready and not waiting for no one to jump in
off the dock in new jersey
at the palisades cliffs
i felt the back of your neck just before your lips
the scars from your dad melted away
they morphed into something pretty
and i remember you gripped
on the wood where we sat
and all my dead cells begged to be brought back
as we both looked into the other
a blue blanket and a pillow too white to be confused
with anything other than something owned by you
apart so quickly, laid content and prepared
to wake up and die
like any sane person would do
(for us the tiny grains of sand meet the hanging paper lamps
lines next to curves next to lines
is a way to write what we said)
but i’ll say it again, i’ll never give in
don’t make me say it again, i’ll never give in

++clear plastic ridges
painted a lovesick sky
(cut the sun with the branches
your eyes, your eyes, your eyes)
timidly timidly timidly
you said look at the moon
but i’d rather see you
your face looks better sideways
like the way you walk
outside when the moons orbit the halo
you never folded up
or tried to conceal inside
like the treaty you signed
around the insulation
that dampers your thought process
that dictates your walking steps
(love and LSD
blood and rusted trees)
on top of the world
falling through the streets
the scents are the same
and remind me of safety
that i applied to the dimension of the squared and faulty
lines
buy i’ll say it again, i hate that you’ve absorbed others’ dreams
don’t make me say it again, i hate that you’ve absorbed others’ dreams

++(i would like to smell a pool)
i think we lost it all
but it happened while we lost ourselves
or we’re knitted together perfectly
so we’ll never understand the whole scheme of things
i wish you’d tell me everything
you’ve become a mold that all your friends will fit into
the opposite of trees
we will **** it down through our feet
(not through our teeth)
I will wear my bandana once again
blue stained gold
even your hair has lost most of the effect
that it had on my soul
colorado was a place to remember
where i remember you most
even though we never went there alone
should i be glad i no longer feel the pain
or sad it’s not there?
because what that entails is me  not caring
and forgetting that you even forgot
you’re forgetting how it felt
you remind me of my dad
how every thing’s connected
and you stay away from the earth
and touching the ground
and we know i’m intuitive
so it means something when i say things
it means i’m right on some phase
or some plane of things
don’t tell me you’re not falling because i’ve seen it too many times
to mistake it for anything other
than what the passed over people do
it’s hard to look forward
and tougher to take a step
part of finding what you want is saying it’s there
but catch up into the trailer
fibres into the helium we wear
the generations have not been remembered
...
(the murals on the walls fade to intersectional colors)
...
primary walks into a green room
and says we’ve never made a thing
to make our lives better
and he talks about what’s underground
he talks about the padding on the seats
how that’s where we should’ve stopped
we’ve been backwards since the beginning
we’ve been backwards from the start
but i’ll say it again, i’m alive, i’m falling apart
don’t make me say it again, i’m alive and i’m falling parts
Catrina Sparrow Apr 2015
i dropped to my knees
digging deep for water
     and felt the clay take shape beneath my fingers

this place
     this is home

so from the dust i sculpted doorways
          and windows
          and halls
     lifted up walls
and made myself a castle out of the sand

now i drink beer at the edge of paradise
and ask the thirsty to come inside
     and play in the shade


i never ask them to stay
     but neither do i point them towards the door
it's tough work tending to a secret garden- what good is a secret, with no one to whisper it to.
M Harris Apr 2017
Elemental Metamorphosis & Transcendental Milestones,
Sempiternal Origamis Of Her Temperamental Clones,

Spiraling Perpetuities & Her Sacrosanct Fortitude,
Procreating Tipsy Ruptures In Her Permeating Solitude,

Perplexed Momentum & Her Outlandish Constellations,
Nuclear Decay Of Her Masked Radiations,

Verbal Shadows & Her Tranquil Ascendance,
Encasing Her Tears In Liquefied Transcendence,

Yearning Oddities & Entropic Oceans,
Vitalizing Inexorable Emotions Into Phosphorescent Potions,

An Hourglass Existence Of Her Fabricated Virility,
Dwelling In Quantum Ascents Of Ardent Agility,

Silver Ghosts Of Her Prismatic Abyss,
Convicting Glass Houses In Her Ecstatic Bliss,

Telepathic Shades & Hollow Palisades,
Detrimental Novelists On Uncharted Crusades,

Pernicious Scars In Her Profound Gaze,
Erupting Genesis Inside Her Dimensional Maze,

Perplexed Periphery & Digital Fictions,
Annexed By Her Hourglass Depictions,

Breakdown Sanity & Her Concealed Screams,
Lifelike Dewdrops In Her Visionary Dreams,

Satellite Searchlights & Love//Less Progenic Mutation,
Paralyzed Sunlight Sparking Genetic Alteration,

Monochromatic Streams & Cinematic Realms,
Static Screams Of Her Toxic Schemes.

- 05:43 AM -
Craig Verlin Jul 2013
didn't shower
sitting in the cubicle
for long hours
didn't shower
and blood
is still on hands
and feet are still riddled
with dirt
staining cheap
carpet floorprint
afraid to touch
anything
coworkers peer
over
their fabric palisades
eyes burning holes
through ripped shirt
and crooked tie
head down
don't exist
no one has to
know a thing

didn't shower
hair is manged and
disoriented
I can feel blood
drip off fingertips
pat - pat - pat
on bland slate
carpet design
can't concentrate
didn't shower
everyone stares
black eye
swollen and scabbed
everyone knows
have to
it's all puddling at feet
washing with the dirt
look away

******* look away!

head is severed
on the mahogany finish desk
black eye bulged
black and purple tennis ball
everyone gathers
whispers whispers
jaw opens
teeth fall out
pat - pat - pat
no one says anything
look away look away
look away
get up to leave
the head stays there
dark souvenir

quick drive
home
shower
hours melt away
infirmities recede
sink back below skin
didn't shower
everyone knew
what happened
last night
but now
no evidence
no witnesses
no one knows
the perfect crime
a cruel smile
emerges on
bare white teeth
as night sets in once again
Fowl floating and flapping across an ocean canopy.

Lightly squawking and ascending in a calm summer sky.

Waves shine and melt into the beachfront in a dull roar slowly thundering in diagonal collapsing sectors.

The top of the ocean. The point of a sphere. Its water that falls slowly to the bottom of..... Here!

Ripples and puddles and drinks full of life, the clearest the murky and bluest in light.
Mountains and palisades can be rocks that reach skyward. God on a gravel road walking through.
The golden purple cattails glow in the sunlight like strawberry fields that fizzle on my hands in the wind that can dance. The vinyl green stem leafs sit stagnantly silently awaiting the moon.

Hoppers crescendo in a frozen moment singing in stillness that refuses to relent.
The trees around them bask in the energetic massage from the moving sections of recently called air vapors.

The Hi- C haircuts that nature reminds me it inspired bobble from the vectors.  

This climate ecology scenery breeds the moments religions were made for me.
missing a florida vacation. went in my heart though.
zebra May 2017
are you my lover
in a dark heaven
come to me my beloved
kneel at my feet
naked
as i penetrate your veil
that shrouds cryptic ravenous ardor
and ask of me
your hearts desire

dissolution you say
that i may be eternal
for loves sake
bowing at the knees
as you tremulously brush and sweep your fragrant  hair
over my thighs
and run your pink tongue across
my butter filled velvet sheath
our kisses will be born over and over again
a spinning ring of desire

are there not the debts of love
will you promise not to anguish to much
as one harm heaps upon another
you swear to give yourself fully
thrill to kisses crepuscular
aching to be bitten and bitten
and bitten through
your scent
blood perfume

everything about you excites me
long stretches in a stained white gown
wet summer fruit
and spilling seed
your body filled with waters mellifluent
and lush
yield unto me
you are a titillating voluptuous awe
Palisades
of wild torments
dancing on a floor
that melts scorched feet
from
hallucinations invisible shadows
of burning witches *******

sweet girl incandescent
brooding
ridge pole bending
throat swollen parched
crude hair pulling
Medusa vipers in the grip of a god fist
loving you
with a hard drubbing
your all squeals and caresses
stay with me through the long night
of tender kisses and worship
and then prepare for release to paradise
shall it be fast
spiraling
will you spread wide
and plead
for all and more

what does it matter
fluttering with wild abandon
in the temple of rituals dark
to see you writhe
inviting ruin
we are a party of hydras
writing in blood and thunder
in the book of wonders

our hungers endless
Gods and Devils
thrill to our theater
of mortal coils unraveled
in the thick torture tuileries
of Dark Heaven
there's no advance
to this thing
i'm writing

i've heard tons on
tons of the palisades
and i've never lived
west of the
missouri and
where are the palisades
define it
geographically
a minimal

comprehension or-
some other thing-
of the perception
of how people
talk
here
in
missouri

would go a far long
ways in the palisades
somewhere in
flor'da                              or
califor'nia
god i wish i'd known
the weight-per-
pound a baton
centered on a
human forehead

but you had

i hadn't
OB
Tommy Johnson Mar 2014
There’s a boarding  house off the main road

Right by the park

It’s called The Roach Motel
And that’s where we had quite a number of our infamous get togethers

When it was occupied with Latin dance music and the stomping of feet, it was like a pulsating tumor on that side of town

The Roach Motel
Because you could drink till you blacked out and then spend the night on the floor as a guest with various multiple legged pests

Silverfish on the walls
***** dishes stacked well in the sink
Day old Chinese food in the table
And of course roaches weaving in and out of the crevices of the kitchen

Yet people always came back knowing of such dishevelment

Maybe it was the fully stocked refrigerator of at least four different kinds of ice cold beer

Or the vast array of liquors that were always present
Gin
Whiskey
***
Whiskey
Tequila
And the sodas and juices to mix them with or use as chasers

It may very well be the delicious, calming tobacco that was stuffed into the alluring green hookah with two hoses
One red
One blue

I believe it’s simply the vibe of it all

When you’re at The Roach Motel you feel free, you feel like all your worries are gone
And there’s always a drink in your hand and you’re always among friends even in strange company

Whatever it was we always found ourselves going back

The Roach Motel was owned by Venezuelan mother of six children who allowed these festivities to commence

And when word got out that there would be a party soon to come everyone spread that word all over like a pat of Land O’ Lakes on a warm English muffin

Kids from Bergenfeild
From Dumont
From New Milford, Palisades and Garfield

Drinking the night away with bugs and good friends

The mangy scruffy rat looking dog running around the whole party avoiding being stepped on
Unidentifiable arthropods crawling out the sink

Laughing uncontrollably
Conversing incoherently
Then passing out and waking up with a horrible hangover

I remember the time four of our friend puked their guts out there

One in the toilet
One in the bath tub
On in the bedroom
And one on the living room floor…there was corn in it

Two hours of comforting and clean up

I remember our 420 party
Where the legendary Quincy Valero ate his very first bud brownie and went on a trip he still to this day cannot replicate

I recall setting off fireworks off in the back of The Roach Motel and in my drunken buffoonery knocking over a lit mortar and nearly blasting the neighbor’s fence down but it was averted thanks to Quincy’s rare swiftness

This place is a backdrop of so many hook ups, so many good times and of course insect infestation

Although a great party pad it was filthy and you would feel itchy whenever you thought about how gross it was
I would never sit on a couch or on a bed
I had the fear of picking up bed begs and bringing them home

But despite that The Roach Motel was our own little slice of Dionysian Utopian freedom

It mirror all our rundown rugged ***** souls that just needed a place to unwind and fall apart and float down the bourbon river and just lose it

With a joint or an electric cigarette being passed around
And electronic music being blasted
It was always another night full of future stories to tell
The Roach Motel
touka Nov 2021
a lone something in the sky
flies near, just by mischance
dazed by the smog,
bowing
and diving
downward
into the parting, cracking,
quaking
bellowing of tar
from the firy, sputtering lungs of these alps
eons worth of cries released in mere mouth-ajar gasps
of the earth diverging and converging
into the debt of always running clean,
running me
always downward,
as in the deep
deep
tessellations of rock
I become.

too still for my own good,
I guess –
another voice on the ash-flow tuffs of
breath to fill the mosaic
of sinewy
stripe-patterned goodbye and bygone
plating into the deep,
deep,
deeper caverns of the unseen sea
slipping off the mantle, an accident with intention,
as an echo caving downward into  

nothing,

nothing,

more

nothing

polluting the depths from the palisades,
scripture rupturing lowshore into
surrounding tissues like
igneous stone
dreams of clinks ringing,
of noise
a voice
on the ash-flow tuffs
in the always running-clean water
the purity of which I intercept,
the clear-ness of it;
a sinners window.

through what's left,
I see the clam
another mouth for and of the sea
unseen,
the pearl
as unsoiled as ever
M Harris Mar 2017
Sacramental Elixir & Illuminated Blues,
Experimental Flauntings Of Her Midsummer Hues,

Radioactive Eyes & Her Fairytale Lies,
Seductive Abuses Across The New Divide,

Vivid Intersections In Her Phenomenal Rage,
Shatterproof Reflections Splattered Upstage,

Midnight Passions Of Her Perplexed Lust,
Starlight Rains Glittering Hybrid Dusts,

Transitional Paradigms & Engineered Moans,
Theatrical Concoctions In Her Symphonic Tones,

Flirtatious Illuminations Under The Darkest Light,
Stained Animations Igniting Kryptonite,

Palisades Of Her Collated Reflections,
Cascades Emitting Her Sedated Projections,

Contraband Infatuation Resonating Magnetic Love,
Raving Constellations Provocating Atomic Dove,

Divine Catharsis Of Her Cupid Amour Eternity,
Valentine Bliss Mystifying Her Restrained Insanity,

Charismatic Futility & ****** Binge,
Cinematic Tranquility Emanating From Her Bulletproof Sins,

Neon Subways & Fragile Foreplays,
Sensual Arrays Of Her Red-Light Decays.

- 03:53AM -
WS Warner Mar 2013
Seasoned Love's silent discourse,
Dusk of the long distance,
Beneath the mantle of lament
The peak bloom, gnawing decay,
Obscure
The weight of favor;
Annealing fire, moulded by
Winds of duration
Unfastening the raw surf of sorrow.

Incipient caprice, theft of occlusion
Colored by common defiance,
Vile tremors of privation-
Native enclave,
The province of
Vacant, age-eaten elucidation.

The tangled weave, pathos and ethos
Vested
Interior acquisition,
Furrowed paths of countenance
Evincive and drawn,
Affinity found, inhabiting the palisades
Of Immersion.

A furtive glance harbors
The trained gaze whose
Immanent flame-
Emergent
Serous source,
Imbued piercing latency;
A taste of
The fountainhead.

Unprobed theater of the absolute.

Thin supple pith
Identity sealed in skin
Perambulator of meaning and
Lineaments of cure.
Bearing the image of ubiquity
Perceives in the other,
Immortality.
Sacramental Eros,
Subsumes the
Capacity to treasure.

©2013 W.S. Warner
Hex Birthright in Hellenika

The Celestial Spirit of Vernarth began to walk through the Castellum del Horcodising, after the parapsychological regression in the conclusive auction and purge of him. He was looming at the Horcondising Keep; here all toilet modules, food, and medicines were well equipped, except for the inks and writing papers that were totally exhausted. Here you can see his mother Luccica, who was in a position to scribble and write on an upstairs deck, and in the other hand, she had a rosary of liberation, which anonymously appears before her purging in the presence of the protervative spellings that still wander through the cells and bedrooms of the Castellum del Horcondising. Her mother is seen twisted over the voices that polished the eight moons that she had designed for her son Vernarth from the very machicolations of the Castellum, but now with a rosary of liberation. It was clearly seen in the leaves written by her, which said that “My son abandoned his weapons, now in fluids of holy water, symbolizing real chimeras by the projections, to those who read his life verses in our Castellum, in Gaugamela and Patmos ”. Vernarth, mostly Hellenic, awaits to manifest healings for all creation, dumping water from moon storms on Rhodes, and lighting Matacan wall light at the door of the Messiah stand.

Vernart says: “my adolescent look, she has to be reborn with that of my father Bernardolipo; a whole Chamberlain, making himself free and a supporter of the baronies that were part of the servants of my servants…! Although now to climb his cabinet I have to raise my knees higher before his amplified step, calling us all and trying to be closer to a new bell to call us to dinner, as an entity of pride of architecture defined by his pen, ink, and white sheet that I mention. The mother I have to mention; My mother Luccica, rests not condemned or corrupted before her flesh, rather perfectly united to her spirit that envelops her free of sin, so that her company would be of complete solitude in our Castellum, we will continue to be in conformity with the spirit because our mansion is a beautiful spirit of vicissitudes, life, and peace, that our esplanade holds hunger and coldly indifferent to loneliness, cooling and pleasing the company of its own cold, rising from the first rays of the day, as well as rising from the first pinches of graduated ink, agreeing in the corrals where my father already lived according to his life among debtors, mortifying what he has not been able to mount on his steeds that inhabit his senses, leaving not so far to greet them in the mornings free of errors of not greeting, even When the minimum space is left to think of him as a joint-heir. Because the laments sob and others are born in the virginity of the light of the world with other lines Luccica can scarcely write, writing her co-age spirit, manifesting itself foolishly in suffering perfection; manifesting itself as everyone's delight, although ringing with anger at not freeing itself from glorious freedom. Not all sing to the tune of the disability of putting the strength of the grapheme of posterity, rather we blind ourselves by putting hope, but of patience that we arm ourselves by losing our courage to have it. Our will is of the magnitude of saints when doubt and fear entertain us, according to all the things and purposes that irreversibly will surprise us. I do not know where I have to walk here in this tower ?, because I know that myths of the unknown will fall according to the fact that I am his son, being the first-born of all men in the world, speaking of who among many intercede before tribulation or anguish, that strips me of all spirit still asking for it and justifying that I keep talking about them, but that I have been gone for a long time. For this reason, venerated mother, wake up from this frozen cell of the courtesy tower, because I am jealous and I believe that neither death nor life will fill the dead suspended in your room, which support more lives with their angels adorning their bindings and paragraphs, with principalities that are increasingly so distant more than imminent to come to please you. When your name is tried in real vices to increase, they are being stripped of the sons of the principality in which they shine from afar, but with our feet dancing on despotic brilliance, and not of the hollow that still does not fill my heart for you”

Emerging from the last lights of the Castellum del Horcondising, Vernarth bids farewell to his reign, leaving his mother Luccica in the company of three Angels who mined him with the amber mistletoe, of sallow light. However, she will remain frosted on her desk with ink at night and by day, so that when the day ceases, she will draw ink from the darkest night to continue writing that she can already be without Him! Near the Halleniká Necropolis in Rhodes, a statue of Peltasts stood, shielding the site where the “Vas Auric” Auric Medallion would sporadically rest, which came between the bilges, now inside the Eurydice. It came predestined with sacred amber garments alloyed, to make up for the between Peltast mediators who guarded them, to deliver it to its Commander Vernarth.

The Apostle Saint John says: “The Sephardim like us in exile did not see reasons restored in our union and tradition, we resembled a diaspora that did not derive voluntarily, according to events that occurred in my case in Judah at the hands of the Romans. The Alexandrian Jews form on my part certain Israelites dispersed in my prayers, leaving us where the radiance of our faith makes sense and dispensed power to us. My economy is to create the furniture that will inhabit laborious houses in the Staurós histos, even among those Jews and mercenary soldiers, freeing themselves from prejudices and clothing that represented them alone and fragile, being sensible by the diaspora. The world separates itself from the matter cell, clinging to the consciousness of the unity of dispersed Mosaicism as a sacrificial cult, to cater to those who write history more distant than a synagogue without a Rabbi. When bad winds blew there, they often made the situation worse for those scattered in a foreign land. At the end of the Hellenistic era, we had Jews in Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Phenicia, Pontus, north of the Black Sea, Cappadocia, the rest of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Cyrenaica, Carthage, Greece, Macedonia, and Italy. Now I in Rhodes with the Vas Auric, to trace the true effigy of Judas Thaddeus, my co-religious in pursuit of an intellectual and theological religious activity of edifying centers of prayer and universal unification, here in the Necropolis of Hallenikka, where some Davidian Psalm will be in more regions of here documented in precession, and as a reciprocal religion to Hellenic situationism. Its religiosity is felt, it even remains open in proselytism that causes the indefiniteness of the half-convert and that implies a risk for the identity of the Jewish religion as the support of a people with not a little original conscience "

He sings The Delphic Sibyl: “He bears the crown of thorns of the Coronation of Jesus, which also happened in the Praetorium, and as in previous cases to the scene represented in the corresponding neutral. In Eritrea Stauros, rather Herophile, if chaste and Delphic clairvoyant and apologetic, her vernacular artery made her a native of Marpeso, Troyana-Troade. As in fantasies of being the daughter of a Nymph and a Shepherd. Her elegy was escorting her to the Duodecim Evangelii, from Samos she is docking towards Patmos at the foundations of the Megaron. With the same polygon of the Sistine Chapel, in the quattrocento, where Vernarth had assistance in the parapsychological Regression of the Quattrocento Duodecim Evangelii, announcing that Vernolatry would be part of his Apologetic life, inspiring prophecies with the Iaspis Parables, commending scholarship after the grave that He was in the forest of Apollo Smintheus, returning to his origins in a sinkhole in Mount Coric. The idiomatic cross was its interlaced fractal, with threads and kashmar pole, surrounding the crossed palisades with linen threads, and Koiné to display the cross in the hestion or towards the Staurós or cross, in the capital event of the material instrument of execution for the man who falls into no man's land "
Codex XXXII - Mundis Iudicatam Vas Auric / Rhodes - Kímolos
BarelyABard Feb 2015
I am the kind of guy who goes to bars alone with my headphones in, munching on a cigar with half my brain on iambic pentameter and the other half on the feeling of a girls thigh under my lips.
I love the moon and I love the sun but both can be too bright and too dim at the same time. Red lights don't exist and my soul wants to be wild.
The colors of the world scream at me in silence and I smile with closed eyes, just living in the few seconds given to me by whoever is holding the knife next to the string.
This world, these people, living their lives like caricatures of trendy Hollywood films and fashion magazines leave me weary and disoriented. The laughing man next to me in ragged clothes and missing teeth calls to my curiosity more than the man in a pressed tux trying to sell me expensive cologne on expensive advertisements.
I don't understand, but I want to.
There is a pain I feel every morning and every evening.
It flows through my bones and courses through my veins like a patient army, building their palisades around my heart.
It makes my mind swirl in anger and beauty. The pain on being here. The pain of floating through the universe on a spinning fishtank.
The pain in every breath. The hell in the foundations of eden. The pain of my existence.
Scarlet McCall Oct 2016
Setting sun splinters
on Hudson’s frozen currents.
Sea of gold shimmers.

Palisades prop up
wooded banks of New Jersey.
Springtime beckons boats.

Hazy summer heat
thickens air and slows the steps
of earnest hikers.

Autumn leaves rustle--
wind blows downhill ornaments
of gold, red, orange.
for how long?
Who knows the Palisades as I do
knows the river breaks east from them
above the city—but they continue south
— under the sky—to bear a crest of
little peering houses that brighten
with dawn behind the moody
water-loving giants of Manhattan.
Sally A Bayan Dec 2015
We headed for Cold Springs
At past eleven this morning
There were countless cars rushing
My sister was driving.

I felt an air of incomparable silence
I sighed in awe...i felt, i knew of a Presence.
Overwhelmed by its essence,
It led me to a view that enveloped me:
The Hudson River, how it filled me with serenity,
The horizon, wavy mountains of reddish brown trees
The vast infinite blue above me
It seemed...all were watching me.

I could only stare at the perfect sky
That drew both my eyes
I could only think of God...feel Him,
In front of Him,
Below Him

...i am bare...body and soul...

like the endless rows
Of towering trees along Palisades Parkway
Bereft of leaves, fallen, and blown away,
For
He sees,
I cannot hide
He knows,
He understands, what goes on within me

I am naked.

On the same route now, going home
I feel again a breathtaking calm
I know i wouldn't tire
Of staring at this huge ball of fire
A yellow gold, still burning
And, oh, how stunning!
To a darker shade of orange...it is turning
Quickly dipping lower
the blue sky becomes purple...and darker
hoping later, a big round star is to hover
A creamy, glowing moon in December
One... i would always remember-

Alone or otherwise...night...or day
I am always aware
......
....i am bare....

He sees
There's nothing to hide
He knows
He understands, what goes on within me
In front of Him
Below Him
.......
.....body and soul.....
.......
I am NAKED.

Sally

Copyright December 5, 2015
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
Laokos Mar 2021
i'll raise an electric fence around
the gods up there
in mountains and ivory towers
and they'll all wear shock collars
too

i'll spread peanut butter on bread
and send it to them through
the mail

i'll write them letters from the
lower world saying that 'time
really isn't a bother anymore
because apples rot in home
baked pies down here'

i'll reach through my own
tainted build up of corrosive
discharge and pull a petal
from the flower of life
to eat in front of
them with a coffee toothed smile

i'll throw weeds over
palisades into
groomed gardens

i'll **** on the flaming sword
spinning like i do
outside
heavenly gates

i'll put AA batteries on
my ******* and force
feed the north star
until it bursts

i'll stain the glass in windows
extolling failures and shining
blunders under vaulted
ceilings

i'll be nothing less than
the imperfect son of
an imperfect man and
an imperfect
woman--

human
all too human
after all
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2020
Jottings from David Bagerow's "Quickie"

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

David Lessar's "To an Unread Poet"

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

Fawn's "Happy Trails"

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

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

Victoria's "Wherefore Art Thou"

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

Terry O'Leary's "Sweet Butterfly"

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

Fun with Terry O'Leary

"Buried in the Sand" by Terry O’Leary

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

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

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

"A Rebuttal" by Marshalg

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

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

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

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

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

Singing the Devil's Song*

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

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

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

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

Marshalg
After an overdose of Pulpit hogwash.
10 March 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sepia Sown

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

Addenum to "obituary" by V

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

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

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

The Kraken Arises

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bridges Burnt....

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

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

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

Perchance, in a Bus Shelter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Old Café by Steve Yocum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 replies

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

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

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

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

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

The stars grow blurry dots
as I slip into dreams.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Written by
Tony Grannell  62/M/Spain

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

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

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

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

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

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


Al Drood
The Merman of Orford Ness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

G Alan Johnson
Kafka's Bug

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

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

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

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

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

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

Response by Marshal Gebbie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by
Nat Lipstadt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Sally

©Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
February 11, 2020

Marshal Gebbie

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


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

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

We wonder....


Written by
Don Bouchard  60/M/Minnesota

Marshal Gebbie
  Slipped betwixt the then and now
Methinks, with finger on the brow,
Thee needs a shot of earthy ***
And a wanton ****, to rub your tum.
Thee needs a cheery pick me up,
Some hairy mates to help you sup
Elixir from the joy of life
To salve tomorrows' threat of strife.
Cheers mate M.
0
Tommy Randell
From a young man's parlance, tripping from an old man's tongue; Right On, brother, Right On!
M Harris Apr 2017
Sapphire Eyes Of An Astral Mermaid,
Perpetual Eternities & Her Sundrenched Serenades,

Myriad Odysseys & Spellbound Fairytales,
Veiled In Elysian Elegance Of Her Harmonious Tales,

****** Landscapes & Electric Fire,
Stellar Cloudscapes Of Her Ecstatic Desires,

Spatial Matrix Of An Emerald Queen,
An Ethereal Butterfly Perpetually Serene,

Colored Screenshots & Blue Moon Foundations,
Wrecking Overdose Of Her Summer Seductions,

Synthetic Transformations Of Her Sun Caged Maze,
Interstellar Canvas Painted In Her Galactic Sage,

Searchlights Trapped In Her Floral Vortex,
Eternal Burns Streaming Spectral ***,

Supernova Charades & Her Uncharted Palisades,
Dewdrops Verses Drenched In Her Toxic Shades,

Restrained Insanity & Crystal Heartbeats
Stained Perspectives Of Her Intimate Deceits,

Phantasmal Radiance To Her Billion Dreams,
Enigmatic Raves Blossoming Into Epiphanic Realms.

- 05:47 AM -
K G Oct 2016
As the clouds began to howl
More glorious than the gods
Of those evil neighbors of ours
Glory shows up
Exposes us
I’m naked here
Forsaken here
Strokes my ego
Echoes a hole
As the clouds began to roll
Into a thunderstorm
They shook loose
From the whispering fingertips
From the flickering flames
Standing in the sun
In the morning
We are new
To stiff upper lips
To crawling palisades
M Harris Jun 2017
Fractal Fountains Of Her Shattered Grace,
Radiating Sanguine Light Scattered Across Hyperspace,
            
Cinematic Stories Of Her Synthetic Heart,
A Pianistic Fairy Sonicating Into An Illusionistic Art,

Through Liquefied Eternity & Decoded Divinity,
She Glides With Her Electrified Wings Illuminating Into An Elegy,

Feral Essence & Mellifluous Fluorescence,
Resonating Luminescence Of Her Imperious Quintessence,
    
Fragile Fragments Of Her Experimental Masquerade,
Sterile Rudiments Isolated Forming Into Crystal Palisades,

Metallic Frequencies & Cherished Reflections,
****** Transiencies Starlit In Her Smooched Seductions,
  
With A Touch Of Insanity & Afflux Of Ecstasy,
Her Carnal Femininity Bleeds Of Promiscuity,
    
- 05:09AM
brandon nagley Jun 2015
Breathe taking marmalade
Swifting bellow shire's
More is less here wherein all tis best
Blocked by many attires

Crusade Palisades
Risking the discourse
Plottachunt
Unulent
Flous commers of shitva

Drenched
Playful smackers succulent wolves
Fierce howling to ungodly moons

Unleashed from tombs
Kaboom!!!

Slasher riddles griddled smittled
Muffled on days such as thus

Tis a must
To climb cheribum mantra's
Su mitra

Coming home
In baggage claim shock

Gliding on mothers womb
It can all be found down on Strutton Ground, or on Victoria Street,where the Angels meet up once a week to seek out worthy causes,
in between and between the pauses of the traffic that rushes past,eyes are cast among the cats eyes that sprawl on roads so lazily and look to see the racing of humanity.

Fleeting are the fleet of foot that shut away ,what, but only if they knew are people just like me and you.
And tanks tread leaden legs and heads no longer full,pull doleful souls to where the Angels stand and lend a hand.

Victoria has many palaces but palisades they'll all become,importuning what light there was and opportunities are light because,
the work has dried up,******* in the red tape of black crepe soled shoes that use the halls of parliament and only to abuse the lost,the friendless and the night seems never endless for this section of society.
Catrina Sparrow Mar 2014
if i could
i'd lasso the wyoming wind
and ride it like a wild mare to wherever it is that you now call home

you'd find me pounding on the door
     with a bottle of whiskey in my white-knuckled fist
     and a bubble machine eating the paint off your late model car
     and how far i'd come to find you would instantly become irrelevant when you'd smile
          it's been a while

i still catch myself wondering if you catch yourself wondering about me
and the places i've seen since i last saw you
     lacing up your boots and diving head first into the blue of early evening
you didn't even tell me that you'd be leaving

but you did tell me a thing or two
  about the birds
    and the trees
      and the sea
        and your heart
the way it missed beats like i miss stop signs
and you'd once said that it was scared
     always waking you up in the middle of the night
     and telling you that it's alright to want to run
you sure did seem to be good at running

so i swish scotch between my teeth
and atop my gums
to make my tounge believe in singing
and i climb to the tops of the palisades to slingshot siren songs your way

          "oh won't you stay,
               just a little bit l o  n   g    e     r..."


then the record skips
and i slip from my dreaming
back to a shoreline where the washing machine squeeks
and i can be found grinding my teeth
like a lost little god in the grotto

oh
     where did we go to
     when we left to get old
and brittle
     like a tree no good for climbing

we dissolved our youth within the golden glow of nostalgia
marked on a calander long since dead and torched
     that fall when we learned to feel
     and burried each other beneath the heaps of rotting aspen leaves

"until next time, my darling."
ponny jo Dec 2011
x
crimson rains when i see
here i was thinking free
sentences outcried
shackles clamp the lies
solidarity defines me
know i know
arm in arm
no show to go
regressing to masquerades
oh my everglades
rubble upon palisades
only sorrow here creates
watered things to take to sate
metal clangs, i close the gates
and a saddened whimper looks to hate
though anguish is all i can never fake
ripples alter feelings and sight
yet shelter offers no respite
the coldest frost the sharpest bite
with only my soul, around to light
gouge marks sink in
sorrow begins
clouds in my head
as nothing seeps in
all for willing within
I am somewhere between the nadir and the zenith with the wind that blows behind me and who will find me now?
or do I bow before the circumstance,or take a chance,step out from the twilight,two steps out to the dark night,slight chance that there just might be ,somewhere other than this place that seems to fit this soul so tightly.

Down there,
the air became pollute,resolution has dissolved into the swamp like stew we once emerged from, crawl and sprawl our signature as if our nature was the hunting man,
neanderthal.

And Cro-Magnon thought he had the lot,he had not and never did.

The times are dreary,weary men walk home from work,exerting pressures on their tired bones and California was a dream they had in famine fare when food was scarce as were the ferry berths.

Up there,
the air gets clearer,smelling sweeter but palisades are built and pirates sell it by the litre to the thirsty,nothing beats a bit of commerce,it could be worse
I don't know how
I think I'll bow to circumstance.
its now apparent
there is in my midst
one who seeks to usurp
a throne built with my own two hands

not to rest comfortably between
inlaid and intricately carved clawed feet
but to see it empty
for nothing more than the sake of watered down bloodline

yet calmly i tap toe
half impatient and watching
as a small axe hacks away a mighty oak
but not the roots

of the next growth
boughs spring forth more mighty
than the last
from which to fashion not one more but two replacements,
imperial palisades and a porch for a palace,
rocking chairs with armrests,
a mantel and mirror frame

so that we
my queen and i
can be seen together
as we should be
with no hovering specters
ghosts welcome on weekends
Nash Sibanda Jul 2011
Tell me all about your silent questions,
The images of life you fail to lose.
Talk about the long and rambling lessons,
The heartless anguish placed in front of you.
I've been down to beggar's end within a
Minute of exertion; I've been
Stripped apart by vagabonds with
Gloves made out of gold. I have
Walked across the valley with a
Donkey on my back, and I can
Tell a thousand stories that should
Never have been told.

Images and photographs of madness,
Lines of black and white, depicting grey.
What your eyes have seen, no-one could fathom,
What you can recall, no-one could say. I have
Seen a row of palisades de-
Fending empty spaces; I have
Witnessed refugees campaign for
Rights they've always had. I have
Seen the towns of concrete turn in-
To a sea of snow, and I have
Seen into the blackened souls of
All the nation's glad.

Resonate with life's emphatic madness,
The tinkering of bells and measured weights.
The litany of lives you have encountered,
Obituary passages await.
I'll recite the speeches made from mounts of
Manufactured diamonds, I'll re-
Late the frenzied feeding of a
Thousand hungry birds. I can
Tell a story resolute and
Free from tailors' hands, but they run
Few and far between, and they have
Apathetic words.

What about the men who walked beside you,
The ones you passed on roads of blackened glass.
The faces you have coloured in your libraries,
The memories of people that don't last? I have
Met a thousand socialites with
Blood upon their dresses, I have
Knelt with sullen faces in the
Shadow of the flag. I have
Studied with a poet, but I
Never saw his face, and I have
Met a thousand children living
Out of plastic bags.

Tell me where your path leads from this moment;
The journey that awaits beyond my door.
Imagine all the roads you may encounter,
The choices you can make, or else ignore. I will
See the face of tyranny with
Holes within its pockets, I will
Cast my piece of gravel with the
Millions I can't see. I will
Watch as boundaries fall, and new ones
Spring up in their wake, and I will
Reminisce on times I never
Witnessed, when we're free.

I will
Stand without a hesitation,
Free from selfish doubts, and I will
Point my finger proudly at the
Ones we've singled out. I will
Ride the waves of emerald wastes, be-
Reft of shallow waters, and I
Challenge all who hear me to ex-
Plain what it's about.
Can be found set to music here: http://nashsibanda.bandcamp.com/track/the-valley?permalink
Mike Hauser Mar 2014
Grab your wings
And we'll sail away
From the secrets held by darkness
Into the brightness of the day

From the moments that hold us captive
And have kept us down so long
Hanging by a single thread
To an old familiar song

Hold on tight as we prepare the flight
In which we'll be leaving soon
Over brightly covered mountain heights
Underneath a crescent moon

We'll find answers to the questions
As we float gently on the breeze*
Flying low over fields of flowers
Skirting the tops of Redwood trees

Visiting ancient ruins
From the Palisades of the past
Where we'll find a future awaiting us
In the die that has been cast

With all that is just, set up just for us
In colorful array
So grab your wings, no need for other things
*As we'll be leaving here today
David Leger Jul 2014
Walking along the desolate seashore,
Hand in hand with the breeze,
I think of you and the last we spoke,
Exchanging farewell pleasantries;

The road I walk now along,
Winding with the golden strand,
Palisades of rocky cliffs, you'd love to see,
As I muse and grasp your ghostly hand.

Though you're not beside me,
You walk this path and gaze this shoreline;
For all seas converge, all roads diverge,
And all distances vanish with time.
JAM May 2021
I see you,
You see me.
Eighteenth floor
Across the street.
Sometimes you dance.
Sometimes you read,
TV dinners, fall asleep.

Strangers in a dark room, laughing at jokes they didn't quite hear;
Frosted windowpanes and cheap champagne a face appears.
And anything could happen in these cathedrals we roam,
Where shadow people dance
and trade their glance and walk home alone,
In a lonely city.

Welcome to your life.
There's no turning back.
Even while we sleep
We will find you,
Acting on your best behavior,
Turning your back on mother nature.

We're talking away,
I don't know what
I'm to say, I'll say it anyway:
“Today's another day to find you
Shying away.
I'll be coming for your love, okay?”

So please, take me out tonight
Where there's music and there are people
And they're young and alive.

Driving in your car
I never, never want to go home.
It’s good times for a change.
See, the luck I've had
Can make a good man
Turn bad.

Still don't know what I was looking for
And my time was running wild,
A million dead-end streets.
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet.

She's staring out the window of the Roosevelt Hotel,
Shy kid, knees always bruised.
you pulled me close
Kissed my lips, it tasted like home.
Flashes of crosswords and chamomile,
The years pass like a Ferris Wheel.

They say we come from nothing and to nothing we'll return
And in between is gravity and bridges left to burn.

Oh, there is thunder in our hearts.
Is there so much hate for the ones we love?
Well tell me, we both matter, don't we?

Standing on a skyline, watching all the cars go.
Sleeping in the daylight, I was losing all control.

You bet I think I’m pretty dangerous,
Burning down the walls, breaking all the laws.

So needless to say
I'm odds and ends,
I'll be stumbling away
Slowly learning that life is OK.
Say after me
It's no better to be safe than sorry.

Oh, I Haven't had a dream in a long time.
See, the life I've had
Can make a good man bad.

It's my own design,
It's my own remorse.
Help me to decide,
Help me make the
Most of freedom and of choice.

Oh, the things that you say,
Is it love or
Just to play my worries away.
You're all the things I've got to remember.
You're shying away,
I'll be coming for you anyway.

You,
It's you and me,
It's you and me, you won't be unhappy.

We got a little place near the beach,
We watch the sailboats out at sea
And we ride along the Palisades.
Love is just a summer day,
Love is a four-letter word
That hurts.

What a hell of a feeling,
It is dark all day
But there is something in the sky that glows.
What a hell of a feeling
With such a brilliant light,
Can you feel your soul’s vocals in the air tonight?

What a hell of a day to embrace disorder
And there is something in your eyes that burns,
Light up, drag the river,
Can you see my soul’s vocals in the air tonight?

And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us,
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die.
And if a ten-ton truck
Kills the both of us,
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine.

We know, we grow, we fall, we crawl
to change proclaim,
for this we miss to breathe, deceive,
from fate to fate, exist, insist, we push, we lust.

There is a light that never goes out.
And there's a room where the light won't find you.
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down.
When they do, I'll be right behind you.

I tried to laugh about it,
Cover it all up with lies.
I tried to laugh about it,
Hiding the tears in my eyes.
'Cause boys don't cry,
Boys don't cry.

Oh, come on baby,
Come on, darling.
Let me steal this moment from you now.
Come on, angel,
Come on, come on, darling.
Let's exchange the experience.

So sad, we almost made it.
So sad they had to fade it.

So, if I only could
I'd make a deal with God
And I'd get him to swap our places.
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
With no problems (For the ones we love).

Who said that every wish
Would be heard and answered.
When wished on the morning star?
Somebody thought of that
And someone believed it,
Look what it's done so far.
What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing
And what do we think we might see?

Time may change me
But I can't trace time.
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream,
Form impermanence.
So the days float through my eyes
But still, the days seem the same.

Should have known at the end of summer
The innocence fades and the weak become stronger.
Should have known at the end of the summer
I'd be lost without you.

Please hold me 'til I'm not lonely anymore.
Is it only the crashing of the ocean to the shore?

We were the rebels, lone survivors.
We were the cult of deep-sea divers.
We were young once then we grew old,
We were shining, we were fool's gold.

I was a lost boy when I met you.

It’s good times for a change.
See, the luck I've had
Can make a good man
Turn bad.

So for once in my life
Let me get what I want.
Lord knows it would be the first time.
Lord knows it would be the first time.
A poem made of lyrics about the loss of a lover.

— The End —