With all the exhuberance of a child on Christmas
The smallest gift was received
Ten words on a page
Joy beyond measure deluged a happy heart
Pieces of a soul....more precious than gold

And in return
With all the exhuberance of a child on Christmas
The smallest gift was given
More excited at the giving
At the anticipation of joy

Waived off upon receipt
Forgotten on a page
Unread pieces of love
Bore holes in a happy heart
Chagrin unassuaged by reluctant glances spurred by pain

Longing for all the exhuberance of a child on Christmas

The Old Giant is finally dead,
I heard the battle raging,
Incessant howling, shrieking, wailing,
Rending of limbs, such screeching,
Unassuaged horror filling my ears,
Please, make it stop, please.

But, it did not stop, no,
And the Old Giant fought bravely,
Before finally crashing to earth,
A seasoned campaigner, yes,
Victor of many a titanic struggle,
Before defeat reared its ugly head.

He’d stood proudly, scarred, twisted,
It took a mighty foe to defeat him,
To deal relentless heart-splitting blows,
As I observe him, a tear wells, escapes,
Splashes delicately onto his splayed trunk,
Instantly absorbed by golden-white wood.

Then, in a tangle of broken branches,
Bathed in a shaft of canopy-filtered sunlight,
I spy a slender sapling, knee high,
And I know an ancient legacy continues,
So sad, but life flourishes, even though,
The Old Giant is finally dead.

© Paul Chafer 2014

By: Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2022.

As I turn another page
To embrace advancing age
At times I am engaged
At other I’m outraged
For feeling so encaged
Or even unassuaged
And otherwise upstaged
By my advancing age

But I’m learning to be adept
At trying to accept
Sometimes being inept
And at others just outstepped
By a well-kept
Overriding precept
That’s not a defect
Of my intellect

So it makes perfect sense
That my experience
Might be quite intense
Not suggesting that I’m dense
In a figurative or literal sense
As part of life’s suspense
I’ve learned to carry on
So hence

You deal the hand
You’re dealt
On the conveyor belt
Despite the way
You’ve felt
While fastening your seatbelt
And you refuse to melt
Because of where you dwelt

Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2022.  All rights reserved.

I had crammed a whole load of garbage
into the bed of my best friend's pick up.

Luckily it was made by us
as a message of how unassuaged
we were about living in a dirt bag all day.

So, I should say that this is a win.
I'd even sinned in my pants while
leaving everything up to him.

Only thing I regret binning was
my huge win I had with a hippy girl about a day ago.

Yesterday I met a poet and her poems
She stands and fights, lives by her heart
A heart of gold, never cold, never old

I see it in her
A spirit untethered by all but the vast sky and blue sea and the seven colors of the rainbow upon her shoulders strong
She knows the sore heart of a falcon gyring above red desert dust
She knows the blues of red sunsets on a crisp starlit winter night
She knows the wordless mantras of dying stars shedding their last stardusts above the great barrier reef
Knows how to number them off like lambs to sleep

She has walked from the break of dawn when the skies are stained with fiery reds
Till the last light of dusk when stars powder the night sky like salt scattered onto a black tablecloth
From the the shadowy allies of Tripoli
(Where peeling graffitis of revolutions beckon from the cracks and crevices of old)
To the stunning waves of Bell Beach
(Where every slam of killer waves against the reef synchs on beat with her pounding heart)
From every lash of the wind upon the harsh highlands of Tibet
To home, where the heart is.

Counted every rise of the full moon
Atop the moonlit snow of Kilimanjaro's peak
A lone soul exhaling softly between the downbeats of the moon's sighs
Knowing everything, everything
Everything goes

And to this poet I give my wishes true
That until we meet again
May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back

May you armor yourself with the emotions you bleed into words and the glasses of sorrow you get drunk on like art
Meld yourself into the art you paint
Turn every tear dredged from unassuaged moments of need into an artistic experiment called pain
So this world can hurt you
No more

Live through every second not just along
As though shrouded in a dream but very much alive
Shadows of people flicker across the stage we call life
Living their hearts on Cupid's lasso and necks in a tightening noose called time
In one's brief lifetime we can only bear witness to so many plays before we too
Fade away

But you, dear poet, are not a shadow
You're the black wind of the seven seas
You're the lone wolf who treks the seven billion unspoken corners of earth
Collecting lost tales from parchments yellowed with time and recounting them to winter constellations high above

May you leave no trace but your poems
So I can find you once again
Maybe not in this lifetime but in the end
We'd promise to meet in the far Milky Way