fame,
you bitch
it was you who taunted us
we walked
on razor sharp blades
of grass
gras
p
ed
at straws
covered in white dust
inside
on the surface
on the surface
we used the word art
and crapped on it
like so much hay
hey
we did it every day
in every way
without a kiss
we fornicated
on the carpet
where we rehearsed
our play
that was when
well
that was when
we jumped
from the edge
from the cliff
when our bodies
crashed into the rocks
and even a rock garden
punctures
through
the
layers and layers
of skin
of flesh
of tributaries
of bone
layers and layers
of blood
of platelets
of cells
of liquid…life
landed from a hundred yards up.
it was you on my mind
and you know we didn’t die
when we jumped
from our school
from the edge
when our bodies
transcended
matter
like
spirits
and
spirits
was our addiction
the smoke
the pills
the blotters
the powder
you caught my eye
and we
let our schooling
get in the way
of our love
what we loosely
called our art
but i did
fall
i fell hard
the day i spiralled
quickly
d
o
w
n
from the rock
where i stood
and you know
you were
you are
the edge
and you know
it’s you
the day
i fell
you
i fell for
and me who took the fall
from
my
my
my
oh
my
Copyright © Maurice Yvonne | Year Posted 2014
You can take my house
you can take my truck
you can take my money
I don't give a f***
but you can't take
what you can't break
you can't touch my heart
or the memories, anniversaries,
birthdays, holidays, or talks in the dark
you can't touch my heart
you can take my pension
take your alimony
take all you can get
just leave me lonely
I'll always be free
something in me
you could never hold
a rambling, restless
wandering soul
so you got the best
I had to give
now all I wanna do
is live
we're still friends
until the end
we'll help our kids
raise our grand-kids
we'll toast the life
we had together
but we both know
it was time to go
let the eight ball roll
i'll be back again
I don't know when
birthdays, holidays, anniversaries
but until then
I'll be under the moon
gazing up at the stars
serenading the night
on an old guitar
free as a bird
with a song in my heart
the sun on my shoulder
one day dumber and one day older
with nothing but nothing
before me
and nothing but you
behind me
not gone, not forgotten
just far away as a balloon can fly
that's all I wanna be
'til the day I die
so take my house
take my truck
take my money
I don't give a f___
you can't take
what you can't break
you can't hold
this wandering soul
only the wind knows
where I'll go
I'm wild and free
like I want to be
don't care what it cost
for me to be lost
just gotta go
wherever I roam
like the buffalo
it's all my home
and in the end
I'd love you again
but I'm all air
and you're all ground
your love held me there
kept me far enough down
to have a family
raise five beautiful kids
and when they were gone
you did what you did
let go of your balloon on a string
watched it sail away
until you couldn't see
does it still love you
it always will
even as it disappears
over the hill
so take my house
take me truck
take my money
I don't give a f___
you could take
and you could break
all of me
I'd still be free
Copyright © Steven Young | Year Posted 2022
Shattered Dreams
Miracle Man
4/12/2024
One downside of life,
is our shattered dreams.
We’ve put forth our best?
Yet harvest is in extremes.
It’s during these times,
when our craft will drift.
We pray daily for a tide,
that might give us a lift.
But oft times it’s caused,
by what enters our lives.
Our time can’t be paused,
Our past is archived.
Sometimes we’re reaping,
from life seeds we’ve sown.
Shattered dreams continue,
until we choose to atone.
Copyright © Tom Wright | Year Posted 2024
A lonely ant did stutter-step
'cross barren, friendless pavement
one chill Fall day in late November
a portrait of despair
It started one way -- reversed direction
It stopped and sensed the air
as if to say, "How lost I am
and forlorn beyond compare."
I contemplated its grim plight
my heart melting 'spite the cold
then bent down to lend it
but it spurned me something bold
The tiny ant, it did rear back
its dander clearly roused
and seemed to say, "Just watch me now.
I'll surely find my way."
And watch I did in wondrous awe
as the creature pointed west
precisely toward its ant-hill mound
--It'd surely passed the test
They say we learn industry
from the tiny ant---
all the more so perseverance
~ and never to use the word 'can't'
Copyright © Gershon Wolf | Year Posted 2018
Are My Words So Foreign Or Obtuse
That You May Not, Within Them, See Truth?
That We Live Together Within,
While Without We Share, What May One Day,
Become A Common View;
A Mutual Love Born Beyond The Forming
Of All Words.
A View We May Adopt As Living Love,
Grown Fervent In The Fertile Soil Of Our Species,
Forever Married To Each Living Heart.
A View Deserving Of The Title: Brotherhood Of Man.
Each Star Is A Condensation Of Universe.
We Are God’s Neurons, Only The Smallest
Synapse Of Space Between Each Soul,
Over Which We Send Our Communications,
With Or Without Love’s Intention;
The Membrane Of Our Common Memories
Holding Us Together,
The Muscles Of Our Motions Moving Us Forward
Into The Arrangement Of Another Thought.
Those Thoughts Are Carried By Rock Or Blade
To Become The Stories From Which They Are Made.
Where Were Your Eyes Before You Knew Them?
In All Finer Motions, Each Feather Balances On Times Blade
And Will Not Exclude The Heaviest Burden;
Truth, Which Is At Once
The Beginning And End Of All Things.
From Each Twilight Comes A Dawn
An Echo From The Rumblings Of The Earth,
It Is The Sound Of Our Continuing Birth.
In The Night’s Clearing Mist
You Must Catch What Is Taught
From Every Voice You Hear:
It is The Creation Of All Your Tomorrows.
Wake Gently Beyond The Reach Of Any Day,
Expecting The Miracles That Are Coming.
The Drumming Of Hearts
That Will Join You In Your Song.
There Is No Right Or Wrong;
Only Difference Or Indifference
In The Way All Notes Are Sung.
Inspired By A Hunger For The Stars,
That Shine From The Depths
Of Each Others Eyes,
We Grow A Newer Hope For All Lost Souls.
In Our Dawning Hour
And In The Rising Of Their Cries,
Faith Waves Away All Curls Of Uncertainty:
A Flutter, A Kiss, The Miss Or Near Miss,
A Ring The Sirens Sing,That Endlessly Persists;
Reminding Us Of Love:
The Only Anchor To Which Sanity Insists.
In The Living Soul Of All, Life Awakes,
Confronts The Hour All Clocks Will Tick Again
As We Awake To Make Another Day;
Pray Over Breakfast, Offering Our Offspring
The Smoke Of Every Fire,
Until Winds Shift; And We, At Last, Retire.
Each Budding Leaf, Thus Flowered Green,
A Story.
Brown And Crisp And Driven By The Wind,
Perhaps Another.
Around The Corner Next;
We Name It Other.
For What Intrigues Us Most;
We Are The Cannon Of Our Standard,
Hollow And Loud,
The Road Behind Us Littered With
What Once We Carried Proud.
Our Life A History Of Differences,
Each Cobble A Past Canning Of Knowns.
Our Being, Thick With The Sounds
Of All That Is Taught
Through Voices Other Than Our Own.
It Is In The First Step, The First Word Of Love,
The First Of AnyThing, That We Are Found.
Every Tree Is Not A Willow
Nor Every Horse A Stallion
Our Wish Is Only A Tavern Of Friends
Greeted By Each Others Laughter.
Arms like Our Own, Holding
The Hope We Live With Every Hour
That Every Drop Will Find Itself A Thirst.
For It Is Only The Middle
To Which All Men Arrive
Each Of Their Movements
From A Silence That Comes Before Life
And To Which All Life Returns.
So Wrap The Dark Around You
Be Sorry For The Ones Not Here.
And Sorrier Still For Those Who Are,
Whose Voices Disappear.
Lost Still,
InThe Cradle Of Their Breech.
We Can Only Teach
What has been Taught
From Every Sage
“ Life Is A Cage,
The Bars Of Which
Are Made Of Your Beliefs.”
To End All Griefs
Know Thyself,
In This, Will Be Revealed, All Things
And You Will Know At Last
Why The Caged Bird Sings.
Copyright © Vernon Witmer | Year Posted 2020
Your words cut- like a woodcutters axe
chopping me down,
blood spills onto the pine strewn floor.
Exhaling words. Spoken without thought,
or love, trapped in an unbreakable bubble
that floats around my head.
Purple memories emanate from the centre,
rippling into infinity, becoming distant…
lost to the edge of life.
I thought love would save me, but
it too floats away on a starlit stream.
15/5/2013
Copyright © David Williams | Year Posted 2014
The machine stood glistening in the sun.
"The ceremony has just begun."
Thats what the news reporters said.
“It will kill millions of people in less than a minute.”
"Of course, it won’t be used unless we really need it.”
That’s what the military said.
"It took most of our resources to build it this way.”
“And we're sure our children will thank us one day.”
That’s what the politicians said.
The minister waited quietly until his time had come.
“Dear God forgive us for what we have done.”
That’s all he said.
“Great prayer, a fine benediction for where we stand."
"It is good to know God is watching over this land.”
That’s what they all said.
Copyright © Sanford Weir | Year Posted 2018
I'm on a train to Baltimore,
my device, by insubstantive devices
tells me -
that somewhere,
around the wailing, wawling seas,
a girl has stepped back,
floated up, found the above -
by falling into her Within.
She's found her heart, and
knows it (once more) by heart.
A bridge is built, in Australia -
on linen. In Victoria.
In victory, Invictus.
The waters, the hard waters,
these waters flowed for years;
she stuck on one side,
as in a war...
Everyone is a soldier, everyone
caught on one side -
outside.
She chose sides,
like anyone in wartime.
(It's always wartime.)
She enlisted with her side,
as every soldier (whether peasant
or private or poet), as every
souldier does -
her inside, fighting
a sort, her sort, her sorts
of battles there.
Days became years,
years became endless moments,
Darkness became Blue.
She saw a red chair,
somewhere there.
She saw protest and quetch,
but stayed true with brush and sketch.
She saw tears.
She shed tears.
And she sat, brushing and brushless.
Zen and zenless. Again and a loss.
Again and a gain. Again and a zen.
She saw illusion...
and saw through it too.
She was fearless in
embrace of her fear,
her embrace of the fear
cast off, ignored, unmet by
Others.
Thousands of Others,
Thousands of days.
Few saw her fight.
They saw a girl sitting,
They saw a girl still sitting,
right there where she had been.
They saw a girl, when they did see
a girl...they saw a girl messy with paint.
She was fearless, but for her fear.
And now, a bridge
carries her over the
great, the noisy, the frothy burblings below.
And now, a bridge
carries my heart
to a land I'd forgot...
without ever knowing.
I'm on a train to Baltimore,
Track, trestle, catenary, crowds.
I can't see what I write.
My eyes are welled shut.
And my heart is well, too.
Copyright © Stephe Watson | Year Posted 2017
“Blizzard”
Thundering down the valleys
Tearing across the plains
Ten thousand steel horses
Their nostrils spitting steam
Bodies tense with anger
The bastard Boreas
Coming to claim his script
A monstrous armada
Assembled in the Dakotas
Let loose its cannons
In the Nebraska hills
Raining yellow dust
From hell in the early
Morning light.
Huge nightmarish clouds
Filled the sky
Mother cows braying
Horses stomping
Jack rabbits scurrying
Black birds fleeing
Weather man says
Storm on the rise
Laden with dynamite
Screaming and howling
Whipping and pounding
Bashing and thrashing
The ten thousand came
Their hatred brewing
Their ears laid back
The demons raged
The man ran inside
His adobe home
The door refused to close
The shutters shook
The tar papered roof
Began to tear
A mother feared
The trees bent
The angry winds raged
Tearing them apart
Limb by limb
A blinding “Blizzard”
The brown dirt turned white
As mountainous drifts grew
The insanity of it all
Off to school
Nineteen children went
In old Chevy bus
Card boarded windows
Lost in a ditch
That bastard Boreas
Claimed his script
A monument now sits
Frozen in time
It was 1931
Towner, Colorado
Inspired by
Towner Bus Tragedy “Lost in a Blizzard” (March 26, 1931)
Copyright © Lon Wartman | Year Posted 2021
May I sorrow with you and feel when you are feeling.
May I be strong for you when you are scared,
May I wipe your tears for you, so you can see clearly as the days go on.
May I give you my hand to guide you.
May I speak the words that will give you wisdom.
May I listen to you speak of the happy times.
May I hold you to let you know you are not alone.
May I always be there in you needs.
May I never let you forget.
May I always answer your call.
May I always love you from the heart.
May I guide the boat that takes you through rough waters.
May I always be strong for you.
May I always have the answers you need to hear.
May I always be your friend.
Copyright © Joe Tweedlie | Year Posted 2012
Damaged my heart drips; the
floor black from blood stains
Splintered from your beating;
crippled from the pain
Quiet I beg it become;
through tears I pray it be still
For my heart you asked and it
I gave freely; whole and distilled
It was not supposed to be abused,
stepped on, and forgotten
Now you see me filled only with
malice and ask “what happened?”
For a good woman you asked;
a goddess you did receive
Not giving thought to the repercussions
when this one you deceived
In this moment I am mourning for
the heart that you've destroyed
But it will pass; and you will wish
for a heart where you’ve left a void
2018
Copyright © Fj Thomas | Year Posted 2021
There's a story,
As old as time,
Cute little girl skipping thru the woods,
A big bad wolf who follows behind,
She's Carrying goodies for her Grammy,
She does it with love and because she's kind,
The wolf trots ahead,
He's a mastermind,
He eats her Grammy,
Wolfing her down with a glass of red wine,
Then making himself comfy in her big bed,
He Does this all in the nick of time,
The little girl knocks at the door,
"Come in sweet child of mine,"
The wolf yells with delight,
"What did you bring for your Grammy tonight?"
The little girl in her red hood,
Whispers, "something just doesn't seem right,"
Come closer my dear I could not hear,
Red yells,"Grammy your ears are outta sight!"
The wolf so cunning and clever replies,
"All the better for listening at night,"
"But Grammy I've never seen,
Such a glow in your eyes,"
"My child it's the reflection from the moon,
It lighted the way for you tonight,"
"Oh my Grammy, you have such big teeth!"
The wolf decided on a rhyme,
"Well if you haven't figured it out by now,
I'm not your dear Grammy,
You silly child,
I followed you in from the woods,
You came straight away,
As a good girl should,
Carrying your basket full of food,
In your bright red cape,
Under your little red hood,
I ate your Grammy,
I'm gonna eat you, too,"
"Hold it mister!"
Red interjects in time,
"I know the rest of this nursery rhyme,
You can't eat me because I packed,
A weapon in my little basket,
To handle big bad wolves like you,
So up against the wall,
And spread em mister,
Today's not your day at all!"
The moral of this story is tried and true,
Never take for granted,
A girls power,
Or intuition,
You bad, bad, wolf, you!
~Vickie Thayer~
Copyright © Vickie Hurtt - Thayer | Year Posted 2017
I met my love before the dawn
But all we did was nod and yawn.
As sleepy hearts of love can’t speak
So we, more rest did seek.
I met my love to break our fast
But quickly so our time did pass.
When leaving she gave me her smile
Which held me for awhile.
I met my love as it was noon
And sang for her a cheerful tune.
A kiss she gave me on the cheek
That made my knees go weak.
I met my love as evening came.
Undying love I did proclaim.
She fell into my warm embrace.
Our breath, our hearts did race.
I met my love beneath the moon
To vow that we would be wed soon.
Her life, her fate she joined to mine
Eternally entwined.
Copyright © Stephen Tefft | Year Posted 2019
In tertiary times, when two continents adrift
Titanically collided to tectonically uplift
The gasping ocean floor
Resurrected up once more
Left the water for the land;
Five miles high it made its stand.
And to these youthful mountains (that is as mountains go)
The monsoon clouds paid homage as they gathered far below
They strongly spouted fury and made the foothills wet
But the scornful Himalayas dried the plateau of Tibet
And then the disbelievers from the atheistic West
Where time is not a circle and there is no Ever-rest
Defiled up the silent crags
At the peak they planted flags
You, Himalaya, tried to hide those flags with snow
But...
We know.
Copyright © Mark Springer | Year Posted 2024
For all the kids young and old
a blanket of white white snow
winters prettiest of days
earth our house cleaned that way
pure was made the land
covered the wickedness of man
living water had a plan
clean the cities and the land
on inspection spiffy clean
sin and wickedness went unseen
oh how wonderful
the christmas scene
peace on earth
thats the theme
Copyright © The Situation | Year Posted 2010
Darkness
in it's truest form
is not fear
nor blood
for they are nothing but mere phantasm
in your illusion
You ask what truly is darkness.
"Follow me", I say,
"walk into that cave
and close your eyes."
I ask, "What do you hear?"
You answer,
"Nothing."
Copyright © Vermillion Scythe | Year Posted 2017