A person can have infinite feelings, but among them,
the first is the one that comes from the heart
the most genuine, instinctive, and difficult to hide.
It reveals itself to the people around you,
especially to those who have seen you
through both your highs and your lows.
The second is the thought that follows.
The one your mind strikes for your own sake.
It makes you pause, question, and become more aware
of what you should do.
Sometimes, it is the second thought
that brings clarity to the first feeling.
The third comes from core memories and old habits
the parts of you that remember who you once were.
They create hesitation, sometimes even doubt,
when you're trying to accept a newer version of yourself.
And then comes the fourth, ego.
The one that calculates risks, rewards, and outcomes.
The one that often hides your truth
behind what feels safer, more acceptable,
or more socially convenient.
Perhaps we don't have just one feeling.
Perhaps every feeling passes through
different versions of who we are
before we finally understand what is true.
Panic
Doesn’t compute
Calculates worry
Uncertain doubt
Courage not
Questionable aftermath
The worry continues to go on
Don’t know for how long?
Unable to figure the details out
Worry, worry and worry
Situation in the circumstance
Standing in the center of no chance
Notice in advance
Uncertain anticipation
Through the struggles feeling like a storm
Thinking don’t be alarmed
Panic mode
You were named
to seduce hope.
Erik the Red
sold you with a lie.
Green land
for frozen bones.
Once unwanted.
Now desired.
Not for love.
For power.
Not for people.
For position.
America looks at you
with hungry eyes.
Not with respect.
With appetite.
But land
is not meat.
And nations
are not for sale.
You belong
to your people.
To your history.
To your scars.
Colonialism, they said,
was buried.
But greed
does not die.
It only
changes flags.
Gandhi warned us:
Need is human.
Greed is a curse.
When resources shrink,
brothers become enemies.
And friendship
turns into strategy.
America,
you were meant
to be a guide.
But you stagger
like a drunk father—
loud, lost,
and dangerous.
Europe,
do not sleep
inside borrowed safety.
The one who guards you
today
may test you
tomorrow.
Power never loves.
It calculates.
And history has taught us:
When empires hunger,
even brothers
become prey.
Don't be cool
Hate aloof
Cliche Spending is slow reading headlines
Lettings, yourself conceited
I wouldn't encourage feelings if me
Just raising the literacy rates
With Irish American letters is all time
But, I'm somewhere at
Unstable and content
Introverting caution
Lived from wars before my own ink
Extroversion is an extra paragraph
Treasury department extortion
On copy desk before rents talked about
In the newspaper
You exist
As an exit
Misnomers a banking poetry song
Calculates make wedding vows
Acquire before you lives and skip
Thousand Oaks California is based
On thoughts of being poor
Building affordable welfare support
Pet Shop Boys
Watching model prisoner chicks
Who become victims of war ignorance
Unable to
'I'm thinking positive thoughts,'
says the voice from an orange tent
in Suicide Forest.
Since he hanged his alter ego in effigy,
Mr T. Hashimoto has canceled
all his psychiatric appointments.
He lies on his back
and mentally calculates
his cortisol level.
His crooked smile
duels inconclusively
with a crack in a coffee cup.
He has learned that life
is as long as a roll of pink ribbon
from Mitsukoshi Department Store,
stretching from trunk to trunk
and ending in the arbitrary place
where death waits.
But here, under an old pine,
the wind has cast
a litter of new needles.
And as the mist creeps closer,
the whitecoats are dancing,
delirious in the drugged air.
First published in Takahe, New Zealand
A hummingbird, with a body so frail,
With electric blues, darting from its tail.
An emerald green head, and majestic small wings,
A bold punch of colour, and happiness it brings.
She hovers through wind, A flower she’s found,
A long slender beak, in the petals it’s bound.
A cautious move forward, before darting to the side,
As she calculates precisely, her beak she will guide.
The flower runs dry, for atleast another day,
But thousands are near, in meadows they lay.
The bird carries on, darting through the breeze,
Past dark green bushes, and branches from trees.
A town is nearby, with a small dainty shop,
Selling coffees and cakes, with icing on top.
Outside the shop, are baskets of colour,
Flowers of all kinds, from bright ones to duller.
The hummingbird stops, and takes a break,
Sees a crumb on the floor, from a piece of cake.
Then cautiously flies, to the baskets above,
And flies upon heaven, with the flowers she loves.
Dedicated to George
He walks by day the northern woods
He seeks by night the skies
He sees in stars a face he knows
And one he knows no more
He plumbs with vague suspicion
The abyss of his soul
And calculates the irony
Of what he does not know
He is at war, he is at peace
He is beyond the pale
A portrait of a modern man
At manhood’s tender age
Who knows of no restrictions
Nor limits understood
Yet knows the truths that must be told
To beggars, and the proud –
Accommodating challenges
Summoned from within
He looks beyond the you and me
For where he wants to be
And walks by day the northern woods
And seeks by night the skies
To find in stars a man he knows
And one he knows no more
If you spot a dot you must stop,
for this marks the spot.
How can this one speck of ink,
pinpoint your time at the end?
Then you move to another,
waiting to see another dot.
Some get confused by,
a question mark and want to stop.
while a parenthesis is,
yelling for your eyes to see.
As conman will divert your thought,
as does a complicated word,
you stop without a dot, wondering.
As the mind calculates and calibrates,
you want to stop but, there is no dot.
So, you keep reading until,
The End
(Not For Contest, i ran out of Dots)
The moon will sit upon her throne
With silver features cast in stone
She smiles not, nor shows her care
For mortal toil under her stare
She judges quick and harsh and cool
No aid nor patience for a fool
If humankind has stooped to dirt
She won’t disdain to honor Earth
The moon’s bright eye sees all concealed
And calculates ere all’s revealed
She schemes and plots to bring us pain
And sends us acid with the rain
High above our earthbound toil
She laughs behind a mask of foil
A cruel, conniving queen is she
Yet men still seek to set her free
the prisoner is restless.
he is aware of noises.
he hears imaginary footsteps.
he imagines eyes that watch over him in the darkness.
in his mind he makes plans for escape.
escape strategies.
he calculates the hours, studies the minutes.
filled with courage and cowardice.
he does not see that it is already morning.
he doesn't realize that the bars don't exist.
he doesn't feel the wind on his face.
he does not hear the silence of the desert.
freedom sometimes tastes like nothing.
“The Memoirs of a Cat Lady”
you slinked onto my sunny windowsill
winked with your one good eye
a no-brainer, all in your face, head
saucy marmalade pants
bittersweet No. 1 wins the day,
in my bed
oh to be dominant
in my realm of warmth
once again
Moonlight
calculates the temerity
of a head-over-heels
One-eyed Pirate upstart
heart-claiming
Love Cat
she remembers
shameless,
she silently grins
(LadyLabyrinth / 2021)
As though treasure lost
Cuckoo chirps in rhyme hiccups
Eggs lay in crow’s nest
She knows crow will care her chicks
For mother, every child’s hers
Does cuckoo trick crow
Persuading care for her chicks
Could one fully know
Nature’s rhythm that calculates
The roles of cuckoo and crow
While crow shelters all
Cuckoo brings food abundant
Each one protects all
No true parasitism found
Agape is the norm profound
N/A’ d in Brien Strand’s, ‘All Yours (April 24)’.
A Tanka Chain
Love not a doing
Compassion calculates not
Gentle breeze flowing
In the bleakness of disparity, the opaque of the darkness shrouds the frailty of life, however the power of a stealth heart and a nimble mind now commands the preverbial stage
As this grotesque form of ugliness dances in the shadows as to have its will with ones own self , such fowlness doesn’t deter the bruan and steadfast wielding of the soult that quickly turns the page
It plays a rancid game as it cowereds in the black abyss of contemp , iron will falters it’s play and conquers it ever so swift and ease
The stain of disparity lingers and tries to confiscate the dignity with in , protected with a coat of arms of immaculate design, with this the day is now ceased
Cold and adbrubt it calculates its next move to release its stench of vulgarity, in turn a stout spirit brandishes total valiance of tremendous certainty to noch yet another victory
In the backdoor it try’s to slither it’s repulsive polluted essence, reaching deep in absolution brings forth a the truth of inner peace from this day til the end of history
"Gutter Hearts"
He’s got a gutter Heart
bleeds words that birth
diamonds sharp on his tongue
They hit her like
bullets from an Uzi gun
Silent, her heart implodes like molten marshmallow
She’s standing in the cafeteria
moving grease with a smile
that cuts his goat’s cheese like sharp steele
He licks his fingers
his tongue stings, he's still burning in Chile
while his mind calculates her
Unknown to him
She moves white white to black calculated,
his cufflinks are mounted with Pearls
She spells him
a long sentence
dripping from her eyes onto
an empty plate of dreams
He writes what comes to his mind
on a paper napkin, a story
smudged with tears and cigarette ash
the words slip out slippery
antiquated, smashed.
“What would you like?”
she takes his order
“A Normal Girl,"
he passed his payment in cash
She smiles
and thinks, he’s the No Go Zone
He’s living in another world.
(LadyLabyrinth/2019)
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