Friday, May 20, 2016

Light Effect

The sun erupted
Light rose like erosion
To wash away
The night’s collection


Night Songs

Her lips were like silk sheets
Wrapped loosely around my mind
Aboard a magic carpet
With our hearts intertwined


Science Fiction Haiku

Alien attack
Insects did not understand
One-inch invaders

New robots for sale
With feelings or no-feelings
I could not decide

Aliens launching
Sent inhabited comets
Like a Trojan horse

Cosmic waterfalls
Turned into streams
Of stars

The end of the world
She took a long time to dress
We both arrived late

Eruptions On Io
Material shoots out to space
With no audience

Alien hunter
Shooting at me in the woods
Orange coat season


Wind Dance Green

Trees dance
With each other
Some dance close
Some far away
Others sing
While others sway
Then settle softly
Till the wind
Kisses them again


Music Of Nature’s Wings

Hear the sounds and music of nature’s wings
Birds calling from the branches and the sky
A classical song of hidden starlings
The knock of a woodpeckers as they try

Sparrows in a willow the chorus sings
The hummingbirds buzz as flowers they pry
The orchestra plays on, the chamber rings
Birds calling from the branches and the sky

Onward they soar, despite what weather brings
Notes of a migrating flock passing by
High in the clouds screeches of eagles cry.
Majestic hawks join and predator kings
Hear the sounds and music of nature’s wings


Inside Sunset

Sun peeks into
Cracks between blinds
Dust infected rays stream
Across room light to light
Cloud mixed colors glow
Right outside the room


The Right Size

When stepping down on that bug.
Did you think his wife would miss him?
Perhaps the children affected.
Was the subject to small to matter?
Or just to small, to have feelings.
Desiring life, what size does that start at?
What height is needed to reach a dream?
Do insect threat small forms in their eyes.
The way we have since rising from the dust
Or does mixing among dirt and mud.
Bring a bonding of a certain kinship.

Denny E. Marshall 

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

John Ramm (appearing at Eunoia Review and at Writing Raw)

When first domesticated, John was given
A power tie and a mug with antlers
He was informed about corporate life

Now he paces in the offices
Snorting and bucking, attempting to climb

The heights are sheer
This is what his hooves are made for

They talk about him at the water cooler.

The Ballad of John Ramm (appearing on VerseWrights)

Munching twigs, scenting
the air, hidden in a thicket
of leaves, brambles, thorns,
agile feet take him to flight
but not soon enough

Hailing a cab, trying to make
his way to work, he remembers
distantly what it was like to be
in the wild, but that was so long
ago, it seems like a different
animal lived then

While others preen, he pummels
While others rant, he rams.

Legend of John Ramm (appearing on Squawk Back)

Not sure why he spells his name
with two m's sometimes. Maybe
it's just been that long.
You can tell by the way he sniffs
the day, it's not all good here. He
wants you to think it is. We all do.
How are you, I'm fine. Do they
even give you time to answer? I
sit across, study his antlers, want
to set him free. But his handlers
just won't let me.

Like Ramms at Play (appearing on Venus in Scorpio)

He was a creature of the forest,
at work and at play,
then forced into an office.
But all that has been said before.
Now the family
must manage the remains,
decide if they will return
to the forest glen, scamper
and rut, or make the continual
business climb.

John Ramm's Retirement Party (appearing on Poems and Poetry Blog)

This poem is for the recently departed
Mr. John Ramm, a dedicated co-worker
who was found one day grazing in a field,

and who now exists in the halls of this
great company’s memory, a horned figure
once stuffed into a business suit, now
mounted upon the wide victory wall.
 
JD DeHart
Anonymous

If I asked you who you were,
would you hesitate before answering?

Layers upon layers protecting
someone in a mask,
whose identity has become lost
in a stream of unknown
consciousness. 

Hitting another key that
buries the truth as
the lies surf through
your very existence.

Can you find yourself
in this labyrinth
of cosmic mythology?

Lily Tierney
Monty

poppy hooded how rain hit you then like a feeling you could not
get out of, but how could you know this was the last time you would
be together and so every thing you tell each other in this moment
will be so unbearable in retrospect, but time is inside of itself
and you are not invited to its machinations only your own voice
testing its faith faintly, balloons draw your eyes away and wide, if you only knew how much I love the idea you inhabit, without skin, you are
a story, with skin, you are a song, and the words are 
musical so only a qualified magician could play the right notes 
in the right way and from out of my ear pull rabbits and the coat you 
wore and your brown hair against my cheek "I'll send you post cards from the road" this is how you hold the memory afterwards but the 
impression which had you then was that you were both something
for each other, even though neither of you knew exactly what that 'something' was.

***





Monty X

One day you will
return the favor
the flavor of hip skin
and eye shadow-less
loops of enduring
through the brokenness
your teeth
like Greek sculptures
smuggled from
wreckage,
the wild land
between your breasts
setting fire & burning down
the meadows
along the spine of your back
vertebreak-me-open
& place me
underneath your tongue
cracking, face to face
along the edges of you
into water you drew
from out of the earth
with a spell, a heavy sigh, a shrug
of your shoulders, smoldering sultry
forgive-me-nots
and 'how do I look
under this light?'
like sunken treasure
wrapped in rainbow paper,
like a shadows edge
punctuated by car headlights
on the side of the road
in a storm that will not end
like get-away-from-me
I can't be this close
to open doors
to paradise,
'oh please, I'm just your idea
of paradise, your voodoo doll,
your comfort
blanket, your safety break,
I'm as much of a mess
as anyone else'
& I know this, I know,
but still,
aren't ideas born this way
in the first,
the second place?

Can we reach the second place
barefooted, messy,
fantastically
smelly creatures
walking the great unknown?
Unknowing greatly- small bone
to small bone

sedimented Autumn
laid open
on tarmac

wild in our skins

fifty different Japanese words for rain

how when I say
each one
I mean
I love you

when I say
I love you
I mean I don't know
what to do with myself

paradise shuddering
beneath our eye lids

daylight closing
our bodies up
like thick walls
kissed with ivy

I'd finger your poison
until my heart explodes

but that's not love

it is obsession.

***




Monty XI

You are barnyard
covered in early morning mist
you are things to do
places to be
tongue that cracks open
peanut shells at 2 am
and leaves the casings
like empty bullets scattered
on the bed
and when my hand reaches
for you I come up with only air
& there are two versions
of this poem
one that I've written
and the one that I wish
I wrote, with a single
word, like glass or aspen
leaves that tremble
from the most inconsequential
brush of air
against its veins
when I think of you
the words get stuck in my mouth
and I don't know
sometimes if I'll ever
be able to say them
to you in this way
without you laughing
tongue-in-cheek
mossy eyed & barely skin
underneath skin the heat of sun
airing its origins out
on your fingertips
like porcelain falling from a shelf
in a family home
I run to catch you
but come up with only air.

***




Monty XII

If I could only write of mountains
& orange groves in June
mealybugs that dig into the pulp
juice at the bottom of the crate
despite the pesticide flowering
death knells with each bite
each tug the unfortunate
famished specks of only-doing-our-part
make, a taste like tang & welcome
to your death aphid number forty two
and counting, Pedro & Manuel
carrying out wooden barrells
full of ruined fruit and kicking
their boots along the side of it
as if to say 'ah fuck it, only gringo's
buy these oranges anyway'

but no, I am compelled to write
something about you, Monty, who
I know so little about really,
besides the basics, how your facial
expressions actually match the enthusiasm
in your voice & how your eyes thread all of this
together like trinitarian transubstantiation
hello and goodbye
each breath-muscle you exercise
like salvific wine
externalized into outer shells
of pinwheel blue
the carnival lights you swallow
until your belly glows
and you become like a beacon
in the night,
a light house for lost souls

weary
or wonder filled
and I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-I'm-saying
so upturned
under the smoky wood

this keepsake of flame

and I imagine we sit along different sides
of the same compass
one hand touching the other's location
letting go, coming undone
it's not so bad really.

***




Monty XIII 

light on or off
you are still roving
river beds
up my spine
let's settle this
you are spotty dream dripping
in my palm
& when I close my hand
I'm a complete fist
waving at the sun
as if to say: you did this to me,
didn't you?

If my eyes were green
we could twin our moss beds
together
you and I
shaking wet
& removing our skins
in front of each other
our fingers so electric
when we touch
we light the room

& the glow
mutually swallowed
why can't I feel my arms
when they're wrapped around you
(that's called a hug you don't want to end)
serotonin
addling – fucking up
the heart

hole
dug clean until I can sleep
all dirt deep and not remember
your smell- smiling
slipping into dusk
ash can of howl
& yelping sideways
you can't be kept
can't be held
in my arms
long enough
deep enough
to undo this damage.

***




 Monty XVI 

This peeling behind the mortar
left wandering
across three thousand islands of sleep

how close you aren't
in this dream I had

can't tell you how long I've waited
to spell my own name
without imploding at the last letter

without pulling the wool over my own eyes

it's this way when you breathe & I stand right next to you
counting each one
you ask “what number are we on?”
& I tell you “number one, still number one”

another way of saying “this life has not been so kind to me”
hold the hour (my body)
against your skin
I will count us down
to the beginning

that irreclaimable moment
your first throaty question on the orange bench
outside of eternity

how do I get back to that... who am I going
to turn to in the night
with empty arms
holding shadow

sister to the trees in winter

any wind could break me now.

James Diaz
MALIBU MINDED

I'd been walking down a dark and dingy
Alleyway for the last twenty years until the
Day, that joyous first moment, when She
Appeared and suddenly life had a meaning
A purpose, a way to make me feel damn
Good again

She is my Trancas beach, my Malibu sunset
The moment that will stick with through
Thick and thin; the good times to enjoy
The sand underfoot as the inevitability
Of those bad times when all we'll need is to
Sit back and work it out.


SHE’S QUELLED MY DESIRE FOR PERVERSION

Sitting thinking of her hundreds of miles away and
How in such a short space of time she's gone from
Fantasy to reality and how now when I think of such
Things, often for someone of my age because essentially
I'm just a dirty old man; it ain't all about the fantastic
My desire for perversion, the sexy clothes to be ripped
Disrobed.

None of this matters because when I'm with her it all just
Feels like a dream, a fantasy come real; a woman I
Just want to see, hug and be with.  Now she's reading that
First novel of mine and I thought I needed to write this to
Explain that those were fantasies of a disillusioned mind, dreamt up
Whilst horny and high

But when I return I want her to know I just love being with you
The way you are and how you make me feel and no fantasy
Could ever better that moment when I shall hold you
In my arms again, just the two of us with no bullshit
Eroticism needed to make me feel as if this is the greatest
It's been for years and years.
 

I HAD ENOUGH OF THIS

I sit in my room and drink beer surrounded by books of poetry
Hoping my muse will ignite but right now all I can think about is my shitty job
My shitty life and all the problems in it
Not enough money from my job
Too much money for everything else
What’s a poor old poet to do apart from drink
And hope that I can forget it all
So what am I going to do but sit here, get drunk and fuck it all up
Just because, I fucking had enough

NOT STONED

Another night all alone just at home
And i made it through so far I think unscathed and not stoned
Just a bottle of beer, a bit of writing and some games of chess against a machine i can easily beat
But alas there is always a but what night terrors will come and torment me tonight, who knows but the beer is dead
And the chess is done so there ain’t nothing to do but go squirm uncomfortably, not stoned in bed
Shit this life is dull but what else is there to do as tomorrow is another important day on the road to recovery
But all I can wait for is the day when someone says come round I got some decent weed and we can have a smoke
Just remembering not to buy some, take it home because then, fuck, it’d be back to square one.
 

FALLING DOWN

Another day at work and I’m falling down
Just like Michael Douglas in that film
An ordinary man at war with himself and his town at large
But now it’s Brighton not the city of Angels

I sleep badly that night as scenarios play out
In my mind as I grow scared of what my happen
If I get chastised by another idiot Londoner
During my next shift at work

PLEASE DAD

I can talk about anything me
Said the man who spent all his
Time doing nothing but sitting in
His chair belching, farting occasionally
Or cheering loudly when the right
Goal went in

Locked away in a cell of his own
Headphones on, almost seemingly
Sitting there waiting for death.

But the company he keeps love him so
They beg, they plead with him
Go out and get your old self back
Only to be ignored as he grows
Angry at the news in a country
He doesn't live in, please Dad do
It just for me. I want my friend back
And Mum wants her man back and as long
As you sit there you're depriving us
Of both.

Bradford Middleton
Used to be Cute

It is easy to see
as they try to sell
cookies, they used
to be cute

Adolescents who now
are becoming early
adults, caught between
being really young,
starting to pay car payments

They are in between,
and they give me bouts
of nostalgia.

Up and Up

I traveled up
and up, from the wide
roads to the narrow

To find that quiet place
where I could be alone
and remember my name

Remembering the word
heritage in a solitude.

Nicknames

They give others
nicknames, rude creatures
who take their beaks
trying to tear others down.

I will go behind them
scattering seed to replant
rebuilding what they try
to destroy.
 
Ridley Flock
Dancing Shadows

on the farthest
wall you can see
a portrait of the finest
elements

each aspect
of the story emerges
by the firelight

telling a story blown
out of proportion
by the flame.

When I Lose My Head

when the executioner
comes remember my name
or at least what I stood for

as soon as I decide
what that is.

Mailbox

I'm going to make a mailbox
in the shape of my face

So I can chew up junk mail
and digest love letters.

Red Ink

I find my jagged
old name written
in the forever words

I find my future
and past in all the words
of an ancient tome.
 
HR Creel

Helpless I do not know if good intentions prevail among the elected, among the appointed, leaving me apprehensive that the fate ...