they always ask me to stay a little longer,
as if laughter came from my skin.
as if I could be unlonely
just by making sure no one else is.
I fill the room,
and yet I’m never
in it.
they love me most
in photographs cropped at the waist—
in group chats
where I type like a mirror
and vanish like fog.
I am the pause before the pretty one speaks.
I am the arm wrapped around her waist.
I am the voice that steadies the silence
but never stirs the heart.
boys tell me I’m safe,
like a bed they’ll never sleep in.
they laugh
and I laugh
and my laugh
is a little too practiced.
I know how to fold desire
into a joke
before anyone sees it.
I know how to be background,
the warm blur,
the easy comfort
you never imagine kissing.
and still—
when I cry
it’s always quietly.
as if I don’t want
to make anyone
uncomfortable.
Categories:
cropped, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form: Free verse
Where fire’s rage
no flame unfanned
The cinch retightened
no also ran
As horns go silent
the gate is dropped
On victory’s path
his legend cropped
Unbridled passion
distraction flees
A trophy hails
as reins go free
The end in sight
where roses wait
Ablaze in glory
— outrunning fate
(Paris Kentucky: June, 1986)
Categories:
cropped, horse,
Form: Rhyme
Started his career as a playback musician
He took no much time to reach the lead position
Renowned as a singer, dancer, and songwriter
Overwhelmed with heavy loads of musical flair
Stunningly, he used to swirl body like a snake
For him, dancing and singing were a piece of cake
with cropped pants, loafers and a suspended hair lock
Left crowds screaming with iconic moves of moonwalk
With tons of love, his fans called him the King of Pop
In roaring theatres, he used to make all scream and hop
Invincible Thriller, The Way You Make Me Feel
Rock With You, I Want You Back to the world to heal
(Third stanza- last two lines are his albums)
Categories:
cropped, dance, song,
Form: Rhyme
How Much Vengeance Is Enough?
By Mark D. Stucky
How much bloody carnage and rubble
is required to atone for sins of a few?
How many eyes must be gouged
to extract desired justice?
If wronged, is exchanging one eye enough?
What about two eyes for one? Or ten for one?
Is twenty enough?
How about a hundred?
Such revenge might feel like justice,
but it fuels hate’s endless cycle.
Can we exit this interlocked sequence
of oppression and reflexive violence?
Can we struggle toward implementing
a radical, restorative, improbable alternative?
Remember what a crucified carpenter taught
about loving enemies and turning cheeks?
Do such ideals seem impossibly wrong
when gushing anger from our wounds?
Yet, as he stretched on splintery beams
no carpenter would willingly build,
he said, while gushing blood for all our sins,
“Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
(See also my related poems “Your Order for Peace on Earth,” “Hate Vacuuming,” and “Weapons of Wonder.”)
(Cropped image is by Amin Moshrefi on Unsplash.com.)
Categories:
cropped, conflict, forgiveness, hate, jesus,
Form: Free verse
STRATEGY
a spatial
boundary
dismantled
from
memory
tranquil
cropped
in
an
encoded
facade
encroached
by
eloquent
realms
of unspoilt
semi- abstract
crests
glistening
phenomena
patterned
representation
consonances
plays of light
in recurring
ambivalent
composition
indifferent
intractable
invisible
dynamic
contrasts
summed up
in the
unfamiliar
ELOQUENCE
a
reticent
celebration
of ambiguity
latent
licit
straightforward
yet
oblique
interpretation
beyond
the
inner image
nurtured
in
connected
tendencies
to evolve
closely
obsessive
an ambivalent
narrative
observed
in
dreamy
abandon
of
unmistakable
pleasure
initiated
in
the
unconscious
made
manifest
by
desire
once
repressed
derived
by
a sense
of
intimacy
Categories:
cropped, poetry,
Form: Verse
As I cut the grass I curse Ben Franklin
He fell in love with France’s close-cropped fields
However, in the land of Kings and Jesters
Who never ate an orange wasn’t peeled
Knew not the toil of trimming, or re-seeding
Knelt before no one save for their King
Walked slowly the gardens of the peons
Felt not the thorn or hornets nasty sting
Strode beneath the banners of their quest
An ancestry of poison, knives and lies
Powdered wigs, perfume, a silken jest
To clip the wilting flower ‘fore it dies
Curse you Ben for being France’s pawn
For ever setting foot upon a lawn
John G. Lawless
©7/2/2023
Categories:
cropped, green, history, humor, work,
Form: Sonnet
I have power; this war I will win; Putin thought,
Hydrogen and nitrogen bombs war crews threw;
Ukrainian troops too like classic heroes fought,
Grief, fear, and rage within the hearts of people brew;
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, help from nations sought,
Some shammed to show concern; in truth, away they flew;
We're superpowers, the Russians float in pride,
It's then the Ukrainians took them for a ride...!
NATO battle tricks the Ukrainians did adopt,
Vengeance from Russians with vigilance they blew;
With bombs, within Russians, hatred topped,
Within Ukrainians, lo, patient calmness grew;
When Putin thought the Ukrainian heads are cropped,
From resilience, Ukrainians, their strength drew,
Thousands of powerful tanks the Russians lost,
Conceit crossed, tossed and frost, finally did exhaust...!!!
01 January 2023
Categories:
cropped, war,
Form: Ottava rima
Artist Mary Cassat so ' Henry James'
helped collectors with their acquisitic games
With meaningful moments of the 'well-to-do'
in attractive pics cropped&true
Categories:
cropped, art, people,
Form: Clerihew
The Only Star For Me
It’s my corner coffee shop, Starbucks
The cheer starts here with hot coffee
I’ll get yours, it’s nothing, awe shucks
A home away from home, my family
A blended Frappuccino, at lunch to boast
Make it a Sumatra Arabica venti
Fresh whole coffee beans dark roast
Patrons on Laptops, their cup’s never empty
Macha Latte hot tea, sweet and uplifting
Named after Starbuck, the first mate in Moby Dick
Originally intended on naming the coffeehouse Pequod
after Ahab’s whaleship, the name would not stick
At the brand’s core is the Starbucks siren, odd
The bare-breasted, two-tailed mermaid but
was intended to be as seductive as their coffees
Based on an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut
The Seattle’s Pike Place logo evolved in the seventies
They unveiled a cleaner image of the mermaid
She was updated, cropped, and repositioned,
so that only above the navel is displayed
Categories:
cropped, addiction, appreciation,
Form: Rhyme
Morning’s first frost
Ghost sprawled to lawns
Horizon sun
Snowman’s head rolled from fog
The backs of deer
Cut atop the cropped bean fields
Like circling shark fins
On the way
To my last years at work
I wait like any other
As a bus fills up with cut-out children
Red lights flashing
Engine trembling from its hurdy gurdy
The last of our birdies
Has flown the nest
What will be left
Of us?
Categories:
cropped, children, goodbye, loneliness, october,
Form: Free verse
Tale of two Cracks
__________________
Farmers Heel crack
S C R E A Ms
Bountiful harvest
is no time to rest
From Farm to Market
Middlemen exploit
Money lenders squeeze
Scheme benefit vanishes
Bumper crops
finally yield cropped price
Farmers lugged
on soil to survive
But best efforts
and worst System
cracked their hopes
created cavities on heels
Unable to crack
mystery of destiny
hung by rope on tree
World calls it suicide
But is a murder
abetted by apathy of society
Land Peel crack
S C R E A Ms
Ecology cycle of
Water-Vapour-Clouds-Rain
callously breached
Depleting water table
meagre network of irrigation
leaving soil parched
Brittle cracked pieces of soil
sliced sand gasping for life
Disregard for Environment
causing floods, famines
drenching, dehydrating soil
depleting nutritious layer
fertile land turning barren
Earth suffers miscarriage
feeding bosom dries
Blossom dies
Flora and Fauna cries
World calls it Natural calamity
But is ecology's murder
abetted by humans antipathy
____________________________
© Dr Hitendra Mehta
Categories:
cropped, farm, pollution,
Form: Free verse
Fields that once were ripe with crops
Now play host to blackface and cheviot
Where the children ran and played
Among the bluebell and the thistle
Now screams the wind in bansidhe wail
Looking for those who once dwelt there.
This land was once our land
Where we lived and loved
Rings now with silence
In this our last dance.
In wooden vessels on the clyde
Like the silver darlings
They were packed side by side
Across the mighty sea
To lands of distant shore.
Homes in ruin lie ivy on the roof
Grass cropped short by a million mouths
Flies the eagle his gaze on land below
Looking for the people who danced to natures tune
Still grow the bluebells among
Pine and birks and stream.
Apm 4/1/14 1.25 am.
Categories:
cropped, allegory, betrayal, longing,
Form: Dramatic Verse
They fired all the docents
In Chicago. This is why:
They’re mostly old white women,
Though they’re well-informed and spry.
They train for months and volunteer;
That’s right - they earn no pay,
But since they’re old white women,
They won’t be allowed to stay.
They mainly are retired
And, of course, a few are men,
But questions of diversity
Have cropped up once again.
So someone thought it would be wise,
Despite the years they’ve spent,
To replace the demographic
That they seem to represent.
In New York, I’m a docent
And an old white woman, too.
If my museum follows suit,
There’s not much I can do.
Categories:
cropped, anger,
Form: Rhyme
In the event that I forget what this poem is about
I refer you now to the birds outside my window,
they are singing but the song is silent.
I should have titled this poem ‘Windows’
but then the silence and the birds got my attention.
Days before father died in the Hospice
he would gaze out of the same window.
On the other side of that silent window
horses grazed in a paddock – nothing special.
We both would sit facing that expanse of glass,
I wondering what to say next,
he nodding and smiling at the horses,
the green cropped grass - the occasional birds.
Not a sound did all make
but father was listening
as only those close to the center can hear.
I believe the words end now.
In the event of my losing my hearing in the ensuing quietus
please look away.
Categories:
cropped, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Would that LIFE were like the magazine
each article proof read
buffed and polished to a fine sheen
edited and re-edited
pictures cropped as needed
photo shopped perfection
at odds with the “camera”.
A full faced “lie” on the cover
reveling in “romantic recall”
basking in the loneliness
of the present.
9/15/2021
“L” Contest New or Old Poetry Contest
Categories:
cropped, life,
Form: Free verse
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