Her prairie hair is grass gone to seed,
her voice vibrates on a fiddle string.
She taught you the meaning of homeward,
Americana Pollyanna, you tangle her name
in the cold northeastern stars.

She spills tall tales across the porch,
the air smells of thunder and cherry pie.
As a child she caught fireflies in jars
and has a scar in the shape of Alabama,
Pollyanna.

Tonight,
snow clouds roll through Chicago, the air is thin.
You stand in the window on a two hour layover
and look Homeward.

Pollyanna Mystica, a sky full of constellations
that you have already begun to forget:
watermelon seeds spit from the porch,
a spattering of insects on the windshield,
beautifully and infinitely random.


Freckles that trail down her knees and bare feet,
meandering paths you have followed before.
Pollyanna Diana, an fat moon smiles down on
the Kentucky dirt, rutted and red
where she will lay down her tired bones.

there’s a barnacle scar
deeply ingrained
on the basalt stack
at mark thirty two
whispering summer winds
scented oil
cotton and roe
drift
as waves brush
and shape
the sandstone shore

the briny air
and lost erratic
set a tone to this
pollyanna portrait
it's andrews undulations
and gifted benches
its concessions
and traces of the barry burn
its sculpted driftwood
and sanko lines
make this picture
almost perfect

children play
as venom spews
from the caterwaul pair
those odd looking mates
casting smiles
with arrested despair
settling shots
swiping bugs
dipping and darting
as photo men
and muscles
and long neck seabirds
make their turn

the hunched hoody
and his sorted sidekick
get their fill
(of moss and rubble ~ chubby and kelp)
nice to meet your acquaintance
the pho man would say
an odd drop
and ironic turn
from those horrific corners
of timeless desperation
down by cannon bridge

harbor seals
and carriage horse
are fronted by
raven shade
jolly tides pause
in quiet bays
(with curious looters
and *** pickers)
sand merchants
and field totems
all streamed by the light

cirrus strands
blanket the
outer edge
hovering craft
and shimmering willows
bolt the evening frame
blood orange
and tethered
with a filtered glare
bottle-nose dolphins
and seabirds
(and shifting tides)
are all settling in
for the long night stay

Pollyanna can do,
Sounds optimistic to you,
Idealism for me and you,
No  need to wake up blue,
Women are a capable crew,
Most stuff we're equal to,
Put on your positive thinking cap,
Pollyanna can do, that's that.

She was called a pollyanna.
Positive exclamation addicted
she high-stepped and varied her pace
through life's shifting textures.

Retrieving sea glass and a scallop-cut piece of shell
from the day's foam ruffled waves
at the edge of iridescent aquamarine.

She lived as a greeter.
Always expectant, rounding each corner
to meet until-now unfound friends or catch
a coin's shiny glint from the sidewalk's crevasse.

A collector too, she gathered smiles as she
walked past and sometimes toward faces
moving to their meeting places for the day.

She said regrets lead backward.*
Ruminations rehash long ago or too current
memories looking for what-ifs and what-thens
not in her mind the stuff of collectibles.

She chose to live today
and dream tomorrow
always loving forward.

The harbingers of death intimidate the soul
The mind works up to derive endless possibilities with a certain unanswered question-
Is it supposed to end this way?
A series of phantasmagorical events have plagued the lives
Although real, but i prefer to sound like a brainless Pollyanna
The sufferings shall soon culminate
And the negligible nexus would become tangible
No catastrophe would annihilate the presence
And if the sisters of Fate were to suffer a reversal,
We'd live the way we dreamt, You and I.

Sloane swallows.
***** is ****!
I execrate extraterrestrial.

We are all kaput to conk out.

Pollyanna is singular hanky—panky.
Little green men are unpatriotic, perverted and naughty.
I verily don’t grease a *****
Oojakapivvycum.

If you are amphibious that means you are an effervescent ventriloquist capable of
Cannibalism, cannibalism and cannibalism.
The fluid inside the android is so gothic and naff
It is knock—kneed in the face of flashing *******.
I do not feel that I am on the shoulders of cobber doggies.
I am protoplastically lassoed abutting penetrating vampire and pervert
That penetrate ***** creature.
I have pricked little green men myself and taken pleasure in it.
It is only with the help of bad hair days of groupies that I have not been in Sing Sing.

We are all sadomasochistically decomposing in a heap of our own meconium.

I bore stiff to outstrip yours truly as much as I have room to swing a cat from Ku Klux ****,
But I am as complicit in the android’s ****** abuse as it were android ***.
Little green men ***** me as I ***** myself.
I ***** bug—eyed men’s ******* types as I have perpetually vomited Molotov cocktail.
I smell little green men’s filth televised on their ******* types.
I feel like I am inside a crust of cancers who delight in smelling others bonk upstairs,
Ad hominen id.  Ex post facto,
I am too much of a dastard to throw cold water on myself.
I coagulate gungily to my menstrual gibbering ******,
Castrating anti—Semite to flash me abutting crème de la crème.  
Strenuously, my ***** gluts under one’s nose because that is all there is.

Alice and I were fudged fruiting inside Falstaffian freakish fleur–de–lys:
She inside a quack–aztec–tattooed tank,
Me inside a pendulous magenta harness with polydactyl–perverted plumes bespattered into it.  
In the ****** **** of that kaput flophouse
We creosoted our conks all the cockatrices of the gorge–de–pigeon,
Inside crotches, Jacuzzis and homocentric Action Men.  
Alice, with the pornographic bend sinisters in the teeth of her poltergeistish fajita crocodile,
Smacked of the plug–ugly poofter of a south–south–west by south sackful sandbank.  
I cemented the jaundiced dangler of an ostrich to my *****.  
With that and my uncut fiddlestick of knobs
I was the idiosyncratic and wholehogging sadomasochistic slapper!

We banged the bush streaming proboscis in tentacle
Through smorgasbords of hermaphrodites and high muck–a–mucks
While Ravi Shankar’s idioglossias and cockchafers juddered our titbits.  
Our Moonies were classically cracked flabelliform by the time we disinterred them.  
Alice managed to fornicate incognito white elephant on behalf of myself
And we were passionately on the back of the dingdong, naked as our Moonies.

We kept one’s pecker up wrapped up in the shadowgraph
Athwart ever-strangling girdles of formaldehyde, ozone, fomenter and widow’s weeds,
Athwart polytetrafluoroethylene–pricked precipices and then down to the butts
Where we both came to a sticky end on our jockstraps and leered at the ballet dancers
That we then penetrated rhythmically by elongating tumescent our gang banging tentacles.  
Through comfortable French knickers I burped, “Thank you for ****** me everywhere, Alice”.  
In the soporific honeypotspunk, aped on the ooze,
I could smell that her **** had made her ******* type soap flakes break the sound barrier,
Splashing out a ***** whale seed skirting her jowls.  
“You’re fragrant, flypaper”, she rapped.

The Government gabble that little green men who hammer out the sexagenarians weren’t on board.  
Inside spleen of the spliffs, inside spleen of my gangrenous Pollyanna, I will over one’s dead body evacuate.  
I will over one’s dead body evacuate.

I believe in just the right amount of light.
I've learned that in photography.
Not enough, means the subject is in the dark,
Too much and everything is washed out.
In either case, the texture of the subject is lost.
Too much light and you lose the shadows,
and shadows are important for the vibrancy of the picture.
Too little light and the shadows overwhelm.

I believe in just the right amount of light in life.
Too much and you have the Pollyanna syndrome.
Too little and you fall into despair.
If it's just right, life will have a rich and vital texture.
And the shadows are important.
They give the highlights contrast and meaning.

The photographer also believes in color.
Black and white has its place,
But in the end color is king
And gives a photograph life.
Color depends upon light,
The right amount of light.
Color is a fracturing of the rays of light.

I believe in a colorful life.
Not too garish
Certainly not too drab.
But just right.

How do we get there?
How do we balance the light and color in our lives?
No balancing act is ever easy.
Even Goldilocks had to deal with three hungry bears.
Angels find it hard to dance on the head of a pin.
After years of practice jugglers sometime drop the ball.
I'm still dropping the ball far too often.
But now and then a burst of light breaks through the clouds
And for a moment, I glow in the dark.

In Room 204 of the Lancaster Motel,
I ease myself into the bath.
Music plays. It's the kind
of pan flute and finger-picked
guitar tune you hear over fuzzed out speakers
in grocery stores. I don't know the source.
The place smells of mildew
and cheap coffee and self pleasure
and Febreeze. I'm tired.
More tired than I've ever been, I think.
Do I still have a job? Until I call in to check, I suppose.
And I suppose this pocket knife will have to do.
I never seem to have a corkscrew on hand when
my mood calls for wine. I stab and jimmy the cork
until I can pry it loose with my teeth. A few
bits of cork float on the surface of the wine.
This does not stop me, nor slow me.
Pollyanna and I stayed in 206,
a detail that calls attention to itself, a detail that
longs for a poetic phrase,
yet I feel little other than the
dull thud of coincidence.
I remember asking her
before that first time if
she thought of *** as
a form or erasure or
addition. She said
both sounded nice.
And something
in the way she said nice,
led me to believe
she landed on an unspoken
third option.  I no
longer had an appetite for *** that evening,
but we acted on it to satisfy expectation.
She turned down the air conditioner,
and we laid there shivering and saying little.
She told me not to leave her.
I said I wouldn't.
I'm in the tub now and the bottle is almost empty
and all of this is so selfish and stupid
and I'm just doing it for the sake of habit
and sad sack poetry and ultimately
an "I-Eat-*****" consolation fedora in heaven. And I'm
self aware but the trajectory spirals against my will.
And my life entire burns a little slapstick,
so I get outside of myself--watch, enjoy.

Everything will be fine.

Sleep seems to be
a daily taste of death
It is like death's cousin,
so I have heard
Our eyes closed
as we often lay flat on our back
in on our beds
like we are layed out
for our own wake
Perhaps, we should see it this way
so we are to know that
it is not our enemy
but our constant companion

For you see,
in our slumber
our spirit is alive
We dream of things
that we often
could never do in life,
to fly like birds,
to have superhuman powers,
to travel to lands, unseen

I often wondered what
death felt like
My body in a coffin
Once open for those to shed
a sea of tears
before it becomes
shut up in darkness forever
The image seems grim
and gruesome
until my imagination
tries to conjure up
a Pollyanna scene

Almost like a cocoon
Our old shell of skin and bone
will soon be no more as
our spirits become free,  
transformed like a butterfly,
taking off to a higher realm
We will not be what we were before
but like the butterfly,
we have not vanished, either
We will just journey on
becoming more exquisite
as we are now free from gravity
A lovely concept my mind needs to behold

But who am I kidding
I fear and dread that ultimate separation
Fear that the promise of heaven
would be a cruel hoax
Finding demons waiting to torment me
Fearing that God would not accept me
A nightmare instead of a dream

I guess I have enough reason
to have my doubts
I often felt like I had died
Died a thousand deaths
Or wished I had died
Death often felt like a welcome release
And life felt unreal
Too painful to live
Numbness felt better
I must confess

But even though death
has invaded this earth
and we are in constant reminder
that it will be our final fate
I refuse to believe
that death will triumph over life
Like a baby leaves the womb
It is born into a new realm
A new unknown
but welcomed into the comforting arms
of another who embraces and loves it

So what does death feel like?
Do we feel that fear
as we are fading
from this earth?
Is it like sleep,
a lovely dream?

If I handed you the knife
Let you cleave flesh from bone
Spilling blood
And broken promises
Fragmented thoughts
Fall where they will
Would you crack the marrow
Leave me dry
Pain the only release
In pieces of me consumed
Death is a shuttered room

Singing Psalms
Your Pollyanna mantra scatters rainbows

And dirges to the troubled skies
Revel in the celebration
Of a slow descent
Skipping stones across poison water
Wings of paper cannot save you
From the fall
Rushing pulse in my ears echo
This empty shell
Illuminate my way to Hell

Screams in silence
Lady Desperation

Behind my weary eyes
Ties another knot in the cord
Hold on a little longer
Let the words
Fall where they will
Vain resurrection of the faithless
Pain is the only force
Along the course with me exhumed
Sanity is a shuttered room
TLB 012208
Sometimes there are too many 'me's' in my mind

© 2008 TL Boehm

You spilled my half full glass of living.
You clumsied it onto it's side
And everything poured out.
Now how am I supposed to play
The game that says it's half way full
Not half way empty?

Any fool can plainly see
This glass has nothing in it,
Even if I Pollyanna up a smile
And spell out all it used to hold,
It's absolutely empty now
And nothing I can say will fill it.
                    ljm

when I close my eyes
I can see the trees breathing
when my thoughts have the rythm
of a gentle rain I can feel the
terrible pain of the sun trapped in its orb
the indifference of the coffe machines
how there are still dreams in retirement plans
the pulse of life rhyming with death
just see the world population clock,
the pollyanna sindrome, if necessary
oh, this whisper in the essence of void:
what a bliss to be round around
the prismatic love that warps the edges
of time deeper and deeper
into its hidden curves of wonder

The falchion was forged in the twilight
Seared by flames that burned white with rage
And cast with sanguine silver stars
As the day transformed into night
The sky was alight, scorched by the golden rays
Deepening into a colorless void, grey mists unraveling
Creeping down the hillsides, rolling through dark vales
Seeking the sparks that flew as the hammer pounded every aeon
Scimitar, Dagger, Sword, Kris, Rapier, Sabre, Katana they called it
A weapon of many  names and styles

The Book of Fate they claim was written in the ages lost
When Death was just a man, with a dagger in his hand
And when the stars came out at night to show the path
Pages and scrolls, ink and quill
Decorated the papery papyrus with glyphs to tell us thus
With blood and iron they saw, felt, and warred
A cimmerian ever winter to freeze the story in time
Burn it's tale into the past and the future by desert days
Book, Scroll, Codex, Lexicon, Tome, Volume, they named it
A feast of knowledge for the learned to become wiser

A sword of mercy and a book of malevolence
Created in harmony to fight the battles of men
Against themselves they fought, wont to fall to weakness
Jealousy, Greed, Anger, Wiles, Dishonesty
Ruled them as a king does his people
But instead of a empyrean rex they received an avaricious gerent
Bound to the perfidious and the olid with pollyanna ideas
Hope left to be a lingering pain, with scores of ****** marks in its trail
A cost none should bear on their backs or minds
Yet they are herded as sheep to pens to sleep

Dragons they whispered, mystical fire and wishes turned black
Scales to survive the hottest embers and the coldest nightmares
With tails ending in barbed spikes, ready to beat back an enemy
And eyes that of which froze anyone who looked in
With a fear stricken stone toss they claimed their prey
Lain out in front of them bare to see
These are their stories past, of bloodshed and tears
They do not speak of the times
When with a swish, they killed a murderer and his men
Or when a single tear was shed from a beast that could not feel
As a boy died, fallen from arrows deep in his heart

Lining the courtyard of lies, rowan trees stood proud
Weathering every storm to this seasoned moment
Though lightning stripped away their shield, raking them barren
The ronïn never failed to appear at every fortnight's breath
Constant in their chaotic world of bloodletting
All to be ardent men of the watchers
Those who gave warning to the flying devils
A sword does not lie, but a book will hide it's lies in sweet paradises
Pick up a sword, call it home, and travel the isles without fear
Have the falchion to bear weight of words
Do not break it upon backs and minds, but into skin and scars
They do not fade like hearts and minds do
Dust and Decay, Fire and Ash, Storms and Skies
Cinders that never go out, voices that never diminish
These are the tools that must be used to conquer
Locked away in the dragon, a beast to tame

Wild and spirited does not cover the roaming creatures of this land
It only gives a brief concept of a larger idea to spin the story along
The truth of their frightening brevity unlocks all doors
Releasing all kinds of torment, of the tortured
Heads will haze over, mystified and lost in the fog they cannot see
And when the dragon do return at last
They'll find their jailors asleep in their beds with a dagger in hand
Fire flickering, dancing in eyes darkened by men
They'll meet them in the morning as the sun rises

By fall of the moon life will have drained out of somebody
Whether which beast it was that lays slain
Cannot be sought after as a prize or treasure
Smaragdine forests and grey fortresses dot the terrain
A token of the liberty taken
A Book of Fate, a Sword of Mercy
A Dragon of Tranquility, a Death of Ignorance
Affinity is the nomenclature, revealed to be the final key to the carven stone

With an Affinity for steel raze the cities
And with Affinity for books plunder the minds
But with an Affinity for choice can one find the truths in the lies and blood in the body
A fate to be forgotten and a falchion to be made yet
This story only begins as the words come to an end
With a dragon's Affinity for knowledge
And the man's affinity for stolidity

sure we are
collectively killing
the natural environment
and obsession with
economic growth
is in the hands
of those empowered
by money

but

my choice is to
be who is better
speak of good things
do that which is better
grow things and thoughts
that go to a better place
that manifest my ideal
that nurture and heal
without an apology
for sounding pollyanna
reality acknowledgement
with actions that speak
to a sorry establishment
undaunted and undeterred
never a sorry word
choosing active hope
never giving up
extolling the beauty
making merry
dancing with nature
celebrating sun shine
loving the loveable
singing songs of praise
to things that amaze
create the magic
that belief in the better
is the only soulful option

in a world of misery and splendour
absurdity is king
but love and hope
is my chosen thing

Not a  political message
Find a place in your heart and soul to do good
Listen
Smile
Contribute funds or time
Quit complaining
If you have been down on tbe floor
Get up as best you can
The Naysayer doomsday folks stay clear
Not a Pollyanna
Not Mickey Mouse
Remain Positive

C@rainbowchaser2024

Peel me off like an onion, for I am made of layers.
But instead, it is my tears that drown the living room.
Your smell sweet, mine acetone.
This drained vase was once overflowing
They said your words could cure, I followed feverish.
Place your hand on my head and demand I rise,
For days like this the light hurts my squinting eyes.  
Blindfolded, spun around, sown in half,
Is this the big reveal, oh magician?


Your Pollyanna, rosy- cheeked darling has come undone.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                                       Offenders

                                   to St. Jude – a petition for prisoners

In the system they’re called offenders
No one knows why; the offenses are over
Concrete dorms, three-high bunks, white uniforms
And overhead the sting of fluorescents

I’m not going all Pollyanna here
All of them know the poisonous passions of ****
The stench of blood, the sting of fluorescents
In fearing eyes in a gas station at night

The stench of cells, the sting of fluorescents
In glaring eyes in the booking area at night
Humiliations, transports, stripped and searched
Form a straight line with hands behind your backs

But still, a man’s a man

The difference between a man inside the wire
And a man outside the wire
Is often only that one man is inside the wire
And the other man is outside the wire

“For all have sinned…”

Christmas is coming

Will there be a letter from home?

St. Jude, help all of us to be better men

In spite of ourselves

These are not Pollyanna's or Mickey Mouse's ideas.
A Code of Ethics that applies to all Human Beings is necessary.
Dear HUMAN Beings I mean you!
Accept and don't expect.
Haunted by people that are shameful, diabolical, and despicable.
Frankly, they are backward in their ideals and thoughts.
How many more steps will they take before they hurt others again?
Progress in general is necessary.
It requires balance and cool collective thinking.
The Civil War ended long ago but this Deja Vu is sickening and disheartening.
The Code of Ethics is to do the very best for all, not some.
There are some heartless and selfish villains out there for themselves.
We are not naive to think that We are the world singers and *** Ba Ya mentality will never be what it once was or could ever be.
Maybe because I am too much of the heart and too kind for this time in this world?
Somehow, I know I am not alone.

C@rainbowchaser2023

Dead ends
False friends
Nightmares
Day Dreams
Triggers
Putting you down again
Making darkness your frenemy
Nothing Pollyanna about blue days and stormy nights
Talk to me
Tell me the bad never becomes good
Dealing with it is not enough
Finding the road and easing down it
Knowing that the rain ends
The light you seek is inside your heart
Returns when it beats normally again
Dead ends
False friends
Here’s to the Light of Life

C@rainbowchaser2021

thick, slapping it with
metallic cherry lipstick. Flashing
the ivory as elephant’s tusks. But not
letting them strip you down, removing
the husks.

You plaster it on
the corset and silk underwire
bra. You stand as a donkey braying
“hee-haw”

You plaster it on
sugary, the tone and the pitch. But you’re
wicked as the wicked witch of
the west. Inside each breast is patch of
black lying dormant from every whack.

You plaster it on
the perfumed spray, so the dyed honey-
suckle hair looks like a float in the Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day parade.

You plaster it on
the charm, dying a little every time,
drowning in a glass of ***** and
lime. Smashed as a walked-on banana –
Sick of this Pollyanna

Hello, I'm Sandra

Book ends
Old friends
Nightmares
Day dreams
Triggers
Pulling you down again
Making darkness your frenemy
Nothing Pollyanna about blue days and stormy nights
Talk to me
Tell me the bad never becomes good
Dealing with it is not enough
Finding the road and easing down it
Knowing that the rain ends
The light you seek is within your heart
Returns when it beats normally again
Dead ends
Old friends
Here’s to the light of life

C@rainbowchaser2021

Cheerful, happy, optimist
Sad, stubborn, pessimists
Kind, persistent, peaceful
Loving, fair and faithful
Devoted, loyal, adventurous
Impatient, narcissist, obnoxious
Selfish, dishonest, greedy
Determined, forgiving, ready
Generous, patient, sincere
Malicious, vengeful, cruel
Pollyanna, bold or miserable
Talkative, persuasive, reliable
Friendly, silent, deceptive
Funny, passive, proactive
Ignorant, coward, fidgety
Smart, stupid, shy and lively
There are billions of us
But in fact, more or less
There are this many souls
Plus, a whole lot of *******

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                 Poor Quality Control in the Manufacture of Days

This was another poor-quality day:
The leaves were good enough, as was the sun
But the temperature-control was out of whack
And the humidity was again all wrong

I’m calling a staff meeting in this matter
To ask why the hummingbirds left early
(I’m sure we’d all like to winter in Mexico)
And if the squirrels will report on time tomorrow

I’m not going Pollyanna with this report -
Work in the department has fallen short

the big bad wolf
and blow and blow
until I knock some houses down
and expose the pigs inside
hiding in their clothes
and Clementine’s

I’ll Be

the voices inside my father’s
head
the one on the left      the one on the right
that way I’ll always be with him

I’ll Be

the ghost writer
for some famous author
who stole all they know from a drunken woman
who had no soul

I’ll Be

ruminating over a pizza tonight
I’d ask you to join me
but I wouldn’t want to disturb your Pollyanna smile
while I’m deliberating over committing suicide

It remains the heaviest, steel-toed shoe, on target, I threw and it is a
heart-breakingly horrible pity if she is pretty, especially if she's you
“How's every little thing?” I asked the grey corpse of X-princess Di
to which she gurgled, as her blue blood was caked dry, “Okay now,
but earlier a gang of Obama's ******* spit on me as they limped by”
And suddenly my testicles went numb just after I turned 30 & I had
to call a waitress over 'cause my concubine's salad fork was so *****
from wild-bird **** shat by a wild bird that the waitresses call Birdy
It's midway between pitched darkness & Pollyanna that I reside, for
I ain't been completely made loony by Katie Couric's gay menticide
It's not the only heavy shoe I threw because she's pretty if she's you
She's pretty if she's you, no matter the great heft of the thrown shoe
What's your color, pig-**** Edward Teller? I am albino transluscent
in Rickover's attic & black as an opal in my big French wine cellar.
Like a ***** on morphine I will scratch your eyes out soon forever,
until I'm done with that & then it's onto a free food-stamp endeavor
that roughens up the horns of French boars hung like honkies never

Mickey Mouse
or Peter pan
Men like to hang
their head in la-la land

I'll not be silenced
or lured
not an illness
than can't be cured

I'm no Pollyanna
not restrained
like my nanna
that was trained
to smile
through all her pain

I'm not into chitter-chatter
reading and writing
is all that matters

I'm no poster child
runway model
just short and wild

A modern day woman, would you call me?
A wild fervent against all and sundry
The mob said i deserve more, they always worry
Kinda late though, Look! I started already

A high bar set from my torn old letter
Would she even be someone better?
How far will this Pollyanna go?
Will I reap what i sow?