We took a family photo at her viewing -
a mother of four boys and a wife.

I got a print and framed it in mahogany
and hung it beside all the

other crap on my wall. Let’s
glue them in a scrapbook and

call it the good ol’ days, buckaroo.

And why not? That’s what everyone
else does – framing this

horror with nice mahogany things
like “with time it gets easier”, and

“she’s in a better place.” You see,
the problem is I’m not in a better

place anymore. The place I’m in
gets worse and worse, and all

your pretty nomenclature means
nothing.

Explain to me how love comes with a
price – that I will hurt when

others hurt until the end when one
of us is gone, leaving the other

to wallow in heaps of this
“forever less” we call a world.

Explain it to me twenty years ago,
and get it into my little-boy brain

please so I can have it taught to
me properly and forgo this

mahogany-framed cosmic joke of an
experience, buckaroo.



chadwood: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission

Scratching the morning with
a sharpened knife i cut myself
to pieces– all tiny parts
that seem irrelevant when
laying lifeless, bleeding out on
white tiled floors –

and a mad sun laughs me silent,

I’m speeding over me,
my streets are covered with
deep holes, camouflaged
by fallen cherry blossoms–

There’s no scent nor
can i feel their flowery pulse and
i don’t sing nor love nor

can i bear that longing for
a lake, for waters make me tremble
with a fluid hand and

“You should cry the ocean deep”
says Time– lips in a snear

“It’s – you don’t play enough”
whispers the wind,
paragliding through my hair

and i just wish he wouldn’t stop
until i’m lost in loops in wind-swayed chimes,
until my chambers brim with water gnomes

and i forget my name

until he gently takes me and–

i let him.



Claudia
: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission

Forgive me
I am drowning
the carnations are waving simplicity
while the rain echoes solitude

I cannot find the reasons to not accept a fate
that has been laid before me
so clear
so concise
that the evolution of man
religion
and decent
cannot fathom the reality of my waning sin

I could be saved by loving like this

my lost half
my forgotten happiness
is found
in a visage of your watercolors
that breathes
life

Forgive me
for waiting so long
to speak your name




CrimzonRose: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission.

The hour is late and early,
but my mind, you see, is at a surly
sort of complex kind of whirling
feeling, and I most surely
am not this eloquent.

Sir you seem to know your disputes
well enough, indeed you are astute
at least in such a pursuit
to hide your faux repute
since you are not that eloquent.

I’ll suffice this all to say
that with no more such delays
that on my mind you’ve stayed
for, yes, days and days, and days!
I’ll never see you again,

thank God we’re not that eloquent.



Daft-Enigma: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission

Like Lawrence of Arabia
walking the train top
glorious and silly
overweight ego
in a skinny body
wobbling
twirling a dance

So happy
So accomplished
So worthy
So happy

Copycat walks on one of the rails
Crossing a bridge he goes …
Somewhere

Onwards

Jumping down from the track

Forests and waterways
The hills and the dales
the mountain valleys
and someday…
a long walk on the ridges
on the highest crests..
he walks on those rails
on the tops of those trains

Twirling a dance

So happy


moonflower-kimono: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission

if you are parched tonight,
the pale of your lips cracked
with thirst for that which
will not claim you;

if you hunger -
the deep and shallow collapsing
into slivered vibrations;

if blindness rejects you, says
no, watch now.
this is the way of it;

if you are breathing the world
into cinders, inhaling each poison
on purpose, striving
toward an apocalypse
because that is chaos
we can categorize,

then you may understand.


Kneeling-Glory: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission

as the venetian
simplicity of romance
wilts; we shift,
like light

there are no nouns
for what we call
‘it’
in minds auto-trained
to forget, we kiss -

the
unspoken language
caught between our lips.

as it happens
i am a coward, disguising
emotion with envoi’s, and

somewhere
between my tongue and
your lower lip
‘it’ lingers.


HippieHebe: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission

It’s finally snowing again,
blankets of peace falling
with a freshness that lacks innocence.

Nearly forgotten, they’re here as expected,
clearing the streets,
trying to push aside all the worry
that makes things unsafe, but

the steel mouth askew grates against my heart;
its thick bass scrape pushing more than piles of white aside,
it pushes my blood aside too,
piling it up in the corner of this pumping vessel that falters,
ice-caked and bitten, stiffened,
and keeps faltering,
again,
and again,
and again,
until the air is silent
and the street no longer shivers in torture.

The only evidence is the blanket of white
that keeps falling,
like fluffy stuffing that’s been yanked out.

All is silent,
except the fond memories that peel away
from my heart in little shreds,
and the plows, scraping fresh wounds again.


BeyondJen: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission

You are the sun, the cynosure
of that which can never be held.
I reach to you, regardless.

I am a selfish woman, and still
an owner of an ineffable devotion
that you, in your blistering ways,
could easily claim. And you dare
refuse me, as though I am not fit for
the piety resting in these palms
outstretched to you. I am losing faith.

I want only to be touched, divinely
and with dilution, by you.


FuzzyHoser: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission

Monsoon season -
the wind forgets
the shape of this land
and how the world spins,
paled with longing
to be still.
Air hung out to dry like laundry
we forgot and
the brisk taste
of water
pooling in the fields.
The windows are drowning,
wanting only to sleep
until winter
as we watch
that tether to the sky
break,
loosening the birds
and the tree tops
rebelling
against the clouds
until it is thick
with violence;
and the wet grows
behind
like a mountain
pulling up its roots
to flee.


Scarlettletters: Read more of my work
Reprinted with author’s permission