I see my love, drawing near
He's carrying two drinks
Suspicion begins ascent
He perceives, and speaks
"I brought your favorite drink"
"I don't like chocolate"
"Oh, my sweet, this isn't chocolate...it's MOCHA
.....and this MOCHA is from Columbia"
This unexpected JOY bursts forth
Like a fairy being birthed out of a flower
"You see, I would cross the Ocean just to bring
You MOCHA from Columbia"
...refreshment for a weary soul
Written by Trudy Schrader on 09-17-2026
The meadow of my mind
dried desolate as the desert dune.
The mist of concealed passion
suspended with mystique opacity
in the sunk halcyon horizon,
waited for the southern wind
to surreptitiously blow
from the fervent sparkling sky
with your sequined charisma,
swathing the shades of my blue.
In the titular template of loneliness,
the secret motif of my longing
designed the lattice of desire,
carved the furtive image of my heart,
the quivering willow in the wilderness.
The dormant dreams blazed in inferno;
I breathed the ashen memory smoke
afloat stealthily in the sky of vacuity.
The design of desolation intertwined
the splinters of my desire icons,
flew on the trajectory of covert longing
to the clandestine corral of anonymity,
lay within the poignant crypt
as the skeletons in the closet.
Engaging a young fellow's dream,
Covertly by small flashlight beam,
With quick-moving spoon
He found out quite soon,
The meaning of too much ice cream.
I need to go back to school
Where I am not easy to fool
You think your funny
And are paid sums of money
Your life is a big deal
While my happiness you like to steal
It’s one lie right after another lie
All that’s left is a weakened sigh
The truth is nowhere to be found
Kindness is nowhere around
Mocking people with so much conviction
Mixing it up with some good old superstition
Makes a perfect recipe for something strong
To combat all the deceiving wrong
There’s a haunting chill
With telling lies as your thril
You sneak in a torture or two
Saying you don’t when you actually do
If the truth is supposed to set me free
Then I pray someday that will be me
Clandestine rendezvous beneath the moon.
Sweet kisses gentle swayed by undercover serenades.
Hush the covert fling’s asleep.
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
Covering the flaws and imperfections,
They're the heart’s intentions,
Outside are prying eyes,
Around are curious looks.
Twilight sees those recalcitrant flaws,
Daylight hides them behind masks and shades,
Glamorous faces await the camera lens,
Perfect looks grace the cover pages.
It’s bedtime,
Behind closed doors in a tranquil clime,
The mirror shows the real self,
An apparent self has walked through the daylight’s arena.
In the world’s eyes,
There's a price to pay,
For beauty and adornment to hold sway,
But the night is to be walked alone.
May 3, 2024.
Faint flame emergent from neurotransmitters.
The brain, a torch arranging patterns of awareness,
patterns of recall, encounters, adventures, and ordeals.
Covert consciousness realized in coma patients,
detected in vegetative invalids by the analyzers
of EEGs, the probers of the mind.
Bedridden with no signs of life,
These sufferers were long thought braindead.
The only question; when to withdraw life support.
But our deepest traces do often linger with immobility.
Our hardly perceptible scintillas send measurable signals.
They offer no bodily changes, no responses to cues.
They never give themselves away in behaviors.
Yet, science now knows them as genuine.
Are these the souls and ghosts felt by our ancestors?
Are these the wraiths and apparitions feared
by so many?
Created from the temporal, assembled from
life, is their structure entirely in the mind?
Maybe part of their energy resides in other realms,
places in and out of which they drift at our death.
Accepted for publication: The Opiate Journal, spring 2023
Covert Operation
What do you know about operation 333?
An assault operation to take control
The most successful one in the history
Triple three brought red storm and destruction
This conflict left blood stains,wounds and dead bodies.
Note.Greed for power is the cause of violence...
Once a milky winged stallion,
I mistook you for an angel.
I believed your majestic prowess.
Like Zeus, I too hitched my chariot.
Once the sparkling points of night,
I mistook you for sky magic.
I believed immortal your cosmos,
your dazzling namesake array.
Then your avatar sold oil.
I watched your B movie at fumy gas pumps.
I witnessed the curse of your hydrocarbons.
I lost faith in your Earth poisoning moniker.
Then your appellation found home in the dirt.
Assigned by mercenaries feeding slithering snakes,
tracking and tracing, extracting all our privacy
for any perversion of power.
I weep now knowing how far you've fallen.
I should have known.
You were always the prodigious child of Medusa.
Spy game continues
Disguise deceit cheat
Expose leak tweet
Do did done
Under the sheet.
Note. Everyone deserves defense.
Eyes think they see me.
They see nothing.
No one.
Some think they do.
I smirk at their ridiculousness.
I am invisible.
Ears think they hear me.
They do, but they do not get it.
My meaning is known only to me
Because what I really mean is held silent.
I cover up the real words,
Not trusting them.
I am covert.
Hand reaches out to shake mine.
I yell “Six feet!”
Pretending to be someone I am not
So they will not be able to get close.
I keep them away.
I am in charge.
Tribal beings
we fight fierce wars
death to all adversaries
then appears a microbe
a virus
to happily kill us all
humanity bands together
we fight back
with screams and shouts
how dare you kill us
only we can do that
GPS and I have a covert relationship. She is my operative, I am her mission.
She seeks to get me places I am supposed to be, and she often does a great job.
At these times I am her minion, happily following her,
but forgetting to praise her.
Other times the mission should have been aborted in the middle,
but she does not know it yet.
She leads me into the middle of wheat fields,
or under graffiti-laden bridges, in outskirts of nowhere.
One time my operative led me to the edge of a tall cliff,
staring out into sea, six hundred feet down.
Was I teetering on the brink of a disastrous fall?
No, but it was still horrible, and it could have happened.
While my GPS cheerfully sang “You have reached your destination.”
Do you suppose she meant my FINAL destination?
Haters are fans in disguise
And what takes up alot of there time
Is talkin about people
That are not there equal
& For that to be so
They'd have to learn how to climb
What really upsets me
Is not what they say
It's just the fact that
most of It is based on envy
Your own progression
Leads them to question
There personal value
And all that does is depress them
I have a suggestion
Maybe stop all the hating
Do a 180
And start congradulating
Brexit Sonnet No.12
‘The Man in Covert coat’
What words used he, the Man in Covert coat,
Did he dare to speak of a second coming?
Of a Nation’s choice, a chance for second vote,
Or is it simply part of plan most cunning?
So ‘May be just’ I heard him say out loud,
May be there, but ‘Just’, I thinketh not.
So give me a second vote, I remaineth proud
To cross my paper and rid us of this plot.
So in these confines, let slip the dogs of war;
Cry ‘Havoc’, let carrion feed on Brexit’s bones.
And bury the deed ‘neath curséd altar floor,
To leave as dust and spare the blesséd stones.
His words flew up, his thoughts remain below,
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
©Keith Murphy
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