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robin moyer Oct 2011
This morning, out in lightly falling snow, I heard geese
as flights of them flew overhead. Like a shot
I was ten again, Grammy and I at the lake. I’d sit in the bow
of my canoe, pulled awkwardly ashore, neck craned back to watch the sky.
I was always sad to see them go; their calls so many cold goodbyes.
Ice encrusted water slushed against the dock in slow motion waves.

It was time to seek new horizons, where waves
of Floridian waters would embrace the geese.
My grandmother said that every new adventure started with goodbyes
to one thing or another. If I were ever to have a shot
at following my dreams, there’d be farewells as I reached for the sky.
Instinct would lead me onward to my accomplished bow.

One year Momma and Poppa Goose stayed behind, a nest in the bow
of my boat. The wintery sky turned black with departing waves.
They would call out as the flying ones filled the sky.
Wounded wing grounded Poppa. (Canada geese
mate for life.) Momma would not leave her mate, recently shot
during hunting season. She would not yet say her goodbyes.

This, then, was the winter of no cold goodbyes.
Before school, pony tailed hair with ribboned bow,
blowing in the stiff breeze, I’d take a shot
at keeping ice from the edge of the lake, waves
arrowing out as they swam. The geese,
with an itch in their wings, anxious for a return to their sky.

That summer Poppa introduced his flock to the sky,
practiced formational takeoffs leading to goodbyes.
Clouds overhead gathered gray with unfallen snow as the geese
took flight. My two watching for a moment, dipping heads in an elegant bow,
before joining in the aerial ballet of strong winged waves.
Grammy’s strong hand gripped my shoulder, then-- the parting shot.

Grammy joined the geese beyond the horizon. No miracle shot
or endless love could keep her with me. Heaven was in the sky.
I knew she was watching although there’d been no time for final waves.
Her new adventure started without time for goodbyes.
Outside, snow blanketed as I cried myself to sleep. Her final bow
had been silent, but she’d been telling me, as had the geese.

Overhead the geese are shaftless arrows shot
from an instinctual bow piercing the morning sky
with their raucous goodbyes. Time waves.
Perry Finley Mar 2013
Maybe someday
My lies will become truths

The future awaits
Take me and my blatant misconceptions

I wander searching
Acceptance, forgiveness, praise, simplicity

Why don’t I run
an orphan of society I wish
Streetlight glow and slushed faces
of hope, epicenter of wonder

Tell me.
I can only hope of genuine freedom
I am no maker, no progressive
Innovator by fault

Feel me
Catch me and carry my faults
Heavy and persistent

I don't ever want to leave
Tomorrow is a threat.
Nat Lipstadt May 2016
(Return to Shelter Island)^^

~

"And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love"^


   ~

the winter's quietude
slowly dissipates,
like a miser's reluctantanc to-part-even-with
unwanted, yet saved up tears,
now finally shed, 
tears easy ease on down to please,
morphing into spring rain  
creating a horn of plenty of
les amuse-bouches,
summer tastes,
hints of mint,
all to commence, orchestrate,
miniature, slews of budding teases
of what may yet come

t'is only summer peekings coming to refresh,
memorized friends, recalling a former full bosomed lover's
abundant bounty,
untying the quiescent, frozen tongue,
relieving it of its stale,
suffocating, whited, slushed crust,
issued a full pardon and
twenty bucks pocket money and
freedom
to see the
new full born poems,
without the interference
of grey baited, metallic bars,
poems, floating by, on summer breezes,
air borne for lovers

the same water vista,
under grayscale sky and
winter cloud cover,
is uncrackable and the
Hollow King of Words,
silently languishes, jailed alone,
wretched and deposed,
a wrecked winter's tale told,
an empty throne forlorn

no-way-out aperture extant,
no keyhole found to unlock,
all the songs
that to no avail,
the ineffectual poets impatiently
have prayed,
beseeching an unresponsive sky to rain forth
uniforms of pastel blues and whites

only summer sun-rays
seasonly ready now, fully ripened,
rays notably higher angled,
that can ***** and crack open
the skull and bones,
rejoice the soul's soil,
filling eyes with leafy canopy of green down,
while reheating the heart's chambers,
un-encoding the precise temperature formulae,
for the degree exacting,
where the words-wanting-for-extracting,
release and rouse themselves from a
deeper dreamless hibernating,
and even a last remaining,
napping, spring drowsiness

awaken to a symphony spoken
pitch perfect,
a woven rainbow color palate ensemble,
all full throated blooming

before and by my water view,
an old empty Adirondack throne has grown
one more winter-withered and wise and weary,
aging well,
if aging a well be,
and yet visibly poorly,
unable to speak,
bereft these so many months
of its human companion's conjoint, howling voice

chair asks him now plaintive,
not
where I've been,
knowing that any answer
immaterial

nor
does it inquire,
have I come to stay,
knowing any human answer
is always at best
an uncertain truth

only this it seeks ascertaining,
desiring a newly needed-seeded knowing

do I return
carrying with me,
a summer's secret love?

strong enough to make our single tongue
break the wet dog woeful silences,
to sing the praise of
those refreshed elements now blossoming surrounding,
that all come to enhance,
the secret purpose of the human

do I carry the tune
that will unlock,
at long last,
the somber silence,
that no winter's gale roar or
noisy, erratic spring chirping ,
however loud,
yet leaves nature, alone, clouded,
incapable of solving
the riddle of human nature,
that bring summers birthing to fruition

do I in my possess,
own the love,
that's strong enough to end
the silenced weeping
of the other season's mourning abscesses,
the absence of summer?

they say it is but the mechanical turning of
the hardware store's calendar, kitchen-walled hung,
that marks the man's semi-automatic returning,
yet the paper's crossed out, numerical dates,
cannot foretell,
if the necessary passion,
the requisite human love,
the provident kindling of summer's furnace
whose heat,
can provide life's
reasonings,
will arrive on timely so that


even silence will now have found the tongue
to haunt me all the summer long;
the riddle nature could not prove,
was nothing else, but secret love
5/23~28/16
^^written in anticipation
and completed
upon the return to
Shelter Island

^John Clare, English Poet
1793 - 1864
RMatheson Nov 2011
It feels like Winter’s fingers
and they’re pulling me under
by the ankles
once again.

I struggle but it is
never enough,

I thaw out from my freeze but it is
never enough.

I spend thirty days in a blast furnace but it is
never enough.

Oh save me, Spring,
that I might live,

as no matter my struggle,
or how strong I am,
or how well I swim
or tread this slushed and frozen lake,
chunks of ice
bump against my exposed flesh
splitting it as I am pulled,
choking,
down and under that frozen pond
where I am drowned.
Chris Rodgers Nov 2013
Slippery roads throwing you off track,
falling backwards, flat out on your back.
Sights and sounds fading out;
                   down for the count.

Sleep tight and eat right.
Spend each night thinking about
                                  the right track
Track your steps back through
the slushed snow and gravel dusted road.

Your abode; long gone, burnt black from
firey lights shone bright through the fog of dawn.
No more thoughts of home,
                                                 just the road to roam.
Marshall Gass Jul 2014
You didn't say you loved men with suits
dressed as barflys, buzzing around the counter
for that one last drink. Home a memory slushed
in ice cubes and excuses.

You didn't say either, you needed a sunday church- goer
dressed in a grey suit of psalms and canticles
and ropes of revelation wonders
which would send you scampering to the pages
of eternal life, wisdom and penitence.

You didn't say that you wanted a one-eyed wonder
with the other eye permanently fixed
on butts and guts, ***** and tubes
and one night stands in a circus tent
of  innuendos.

You did say, however, that you wanted
a quiet life, of roses and candlelight dinners
and wine chilling in a bucket of excuses
of fun and frolic and fame
and when I married you,
you danced the night off
in satin, confetti and cake and whatever
and I admired your mother
in her wonderful
up
lifting
dress.

I married right.

Author Notes

Joking.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 23 days ago

- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/11561722-Ceremony-by-Marshall-Gass#sthash.UDj0xs1j.dpuf
Pretty girl Jul 2018
:I am the taste of stale lemon cookies from grandmas pantry

I am room temperature coffee staining your tongue and stomach lining

A small tickle in the back of your throat causing gigantic miniscule sweet baby coughs

Not enough

A shower that just can't seem to get warm

I am entirely too underwhelming
Me.
Indelicate angelic **** up
Beige walls to match my mild touch.
I do not burn
You're feelings never hurt
Id say I'm sorry but my voice is a humming of drums on fingertips
Sticks beat the vibration of voice off it
My slushed thoughts slashed into I have nots caused you lots and lots of boredom so you stopped listening to me accept i don't think you were ever listening for me cause you just wanted to hear a story about a **** girl whose hips made circular movements not innocent but there were pink cotton ******* and i hade baby lips
Draft. -pretty girl
L B Apr 2018
Posted this some time ago and pulled it down after a couple hours.  I think it's time to leave it.  No, I don't write too many love poems....
___

I've often thought of splitting seconds down to nothing
how far it might be possible to walk into a wall
until my atoms slushed into the chalkboard
till the pressure where--
they are no longer fissile   
where time stops and everything stands still...

...except for that taxi in the alley, honking

I could tell you what is out there
but who the hell would listen?

Everyone kept asking what I'd seen

Someone, somehow told them something--
of the torrent rushing by me
of the torment of the all-stop
for a soul still fused by heat and light to longing--
--or how would they have known to ask?


When you get out there--
when you are really out there
it's all exactly where you left it standing--
every cell--
burning despair over the fuel of utterly alone
And how can anyone tell you....

I begged,
"I want to feel again!"
He kicked me
“You can feel."

A window standing open in the third floor of night
and I was hanging out it

A taxi in the alley
leaning on the horn

Heard-- my mother screaming out
from somewhere
Saw-- my body beside a car
below in snow

From behind me--
“Who the hell called a cab!”

...and when you're really out there
the windows all have opened onto nothing...
Death having long since-- left the scene.

When you get really out there
it's all--
and nothing


He came to lead me out
I begged
“Define me!
Wrap your loving words around me!
Give me all the reasons we should be!”

He touched my hands my face  
"We are"

made sure to catch my eyes--
again assuring

"We are.  We are.”
The intention of that night was for me to commit suicide, end the agony.  Perhaps the truest free-will act of my life was turning from that window.  It was not an act of strength or good-- not even desperation-- just response to silent urging-- to turn around.  Something snapped.  I could see it all, the evil ones waiting like starving vultures and then, the absolute mayhem of their panic as if they were shot around like rubber bands,  suddenly aware they were exposed.  I fled the house with two different boots and someone eles's coat.  

I escaped into a January sunrise of despair.  The evil watchers had sent one of their own to accompany me.  The same one who had assured me it was hell, the same who would assure me as we walked along that "I'd get used to it."  But the morning colors of daybreak over the Merrimack River and the songs of birds were far too beautiful.  One thing I was sure of:  I was not dead, but had somehow escaped the anteroom of hell, had torn a hole in the continuuum of their diabolical plan.  Yes, it is possible by a single decisive act to alter time, to change eternity.

Drug related psychosis (LSD) with thought-process hallucinations and audibles.  Lasted 8 or 9 months, during which, I hardly slept for more than ten minutes at a time.   It ended as suddenly as it started.  Yes, I was in my right mind again.  No, I could never hit the reset on my life.  Consequences?  I knew what would have happened to me if I had gone to a hospital.    I'd read The Bell Jar and Ariel-- knew what happened to my Aunt Lil-- Belchertown State Hospital, the shock treatments, the Thorazine with its tardive dyskinesia. "...Our names too close, confused too often...  

".  https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1911551/lillian/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2035619/drowning-in-the-shallows/

When it was really bad, there was this one guy, Jay, who could talk me down. He was like an angel.
AJ Farruco Dec 2018
Searching for my soul
Finding myself in wrong places
Lying on a bed of nails
Bug-infested crucifix blanket
Hitman in a hall of smoke & mirrors
Hot broken glass slippers, firewalking
Vanilla skies have fallen prey
Metallic wings bent out of shape
Möbius-stripped down to the bone
Until they break
Homemade wolverine claws
Scratching at the surface of a cracked mask
The real face has leprosy
This meal tastes like ashtray
A naked lunch of creamed corn
Life is a waiting room
Death is a closed door
The lady in the radiator serenades me
But the birds forgot the beetles
& turned cannibal
It’s happening again
I don’t know what day it is
Time is a tangled pile of tripped haywire
Pins in my head
My own anti-pop consortium
There is no bubble
That’s why I’m struggling
How can I not be myself?!!

There is no “real” me
Obsession is a ghost in a shell
Two charred braincells that short-circuit & spark
Cross-chatter, but the words are all slushed
Giant tarantula in the bedroom
Reality is a scramble-suit.
© + ® A.J. Farruco, 17/06/2017.

— The End —