Lay there sinking, thinking
under the surface of sodden anxieties.
Recall you darkly
the flickering hours, the tinctured years,
as sweat-stained sheets leech.
This room may be your last gasp,
but you can’t tell,
time distorts death as it does life.
Come morning, the body
(if it is still fitfully aware),
may be rinsed by an untried light,
an embalmed mind unwrapped
as muggy dreams are moped away
for one more uncertain day.
There are no more telephone booths,
not the old type - the glass coffins.
The Atalanta hub is rocking,
planes and people buzzing in and out
of an anthill nexus
of distracted minds.
Calling London,
a city
that has red telephone boxes,
concrete-set booths
that all ring at once.
Wrong numbers are seeking answers.
There is a cacophony
in the pressed ears of puzzlement.
The airport begins to spin around,
faster and faster,
a shaky orbit encircling speaking lips.
Dialing fingers sweat, are too thick
for changing conversations.
Talking heads are searching
for one direct call,
one line in an ethereal ball of string.
Red boxes are bellowing now,
every voice is angry,
nearby glass booths
are trembling with a frustrated rage.
All these images are an allegory
for the deaf and dumb days of yore,
a distant time locked in its own
transparent sarcophagus -
drowned-out mouths,
even now
fitfully trying to connect.
Noah Sharp wakes up in the middle of a fitfully frantic Friday night sleep.
Compelled to bring forth elephants, dinosaurs and tigers out of the deep.
The toy chest has fashioned itself into an arc, big, brassy and bold.
There is music wafting in that sounds straight out of heaven’s gold.
You are the keeper of the animals of the future, Noah is promptly told.
He uses his nightstick, commanding the creatures to plank up into the fold.
They come two by two, ready to take to the sea or Elmo’s fire.
We have to hurry, he tells them. To linger would be foolish and dire.
In existence, select the path to follow.
This is the most pivotal choice of your life.
Will merely delay or endure things to rife.
Roll the dice and check if you hit or are hollow.
Every day is grand, life allows a raw leaf.
You'll gaze at how other wanders to our pile.
Over time, we agonize over hope for a smile.
Why worry about fate, life books, joy or grief?
Fitfully, I need to shout a present tale a day.
If this occurs, on our page, bestow a prize.
How could this arise with no tears or sights?
Therefore, if it's deliberate or not, wish it may.
Could it be evil luck? I care about savory?
I'm still bearing a lot and becoming older.
Each day's tale is over success or failure.
In eager days or bane, we may pray for glory.
I learned late that hope conveys might.
To live hastily or slowly or meet strife.
My tale ends fearfully of hailing the rife.
Oh God, I am daunted; our life is a plight.
Written: November 15, 2022
The Crap Shoot #2 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: John lawless
Anemoi, the wind that de-horns goats.
Moorish Melteme, the ill-tempered one.
Simoom, the lung poisoner.
Rashabbar the black swirling.
The Squamish, the Elephanta, the Williwaw,
thieves that steal babes in their cribs.
Tebbard, the fever wind, it wanders through our bones;
the sultry doctor who adds heat to chills
until, like driftwood, we are salvaged.
Chinooks and the Mistral they follow travelers
to the edge of a world,
where the great four Celestial Dragons,
North, East, South and West,
roar like thunder in our sleep
until we dream fitfully of being human.
Visibly wore she my footprints
While bore I a Restarted Scholarship,
In 1993 flaunting The Dullest Glints
With streets that rather mirrored hardship …
Okigwe was The Sometimes Chilly
And irritably The Hilly
A thing of sure hatred by Asthmatic Roads Users
And of as sure by Escaping Criminal Losers …
I’ve heard ‘By An Embittered Dweller cursed’
And since A Metaphor for The Started and Paused:
Often a fitfully regular power supply
And a loss of University Town status, no reply!
Towards modernity, a laborious marching,
Never able Galloping Speed hatching;
For guaranteed steady strides searching
Scarcely for The Dependable catching …
Now, harboring A Community of Northerners,
A lot enthused about their fast-selling Suya
And a Not-Hostile Host Southerners
For them striking more bargains than fewer.
As spring showers soaked through to my soft skin,
In hapless home in youthful age akin,
Through stabbing sorrow's sleeplessness I knew,
I grappled grief as fantom fears came true.
He was gone, greener pastures caused his leave.
My haunted heart was left bereft to grieve.
For seven yearning years his loss for me
Caused suffering in mindful misery.
Those years that passed helped heal my hurting heart.
He returned, contritely claimed a new start.
My longing love fraught fitfully with cares....
God had answered this mourning mother's prayers.
3-19-22
*Note: when my son was 14 and a half his biological father stole him, taking him 2,300 miles away with promises of greener pastures. It was the worst regret of his young life. After seven years at the age of 21 he returned home. We remained very close until his recent death at 44.
~First Place~
My Lost and Found Love Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: JCB Brul
SURVIVOR
She was smaller, slower, weaker
easily unseen
as she slipped away
seeking the warmth
of an exhaust grate.
Innocence lost
she slept
fitfully muttering
lost words
……………………………….forbidden words.
She awoke
to an empty station
a trembling silence
muting the sound
of a distant train.
She raised a numbered hand
waving goodbye.
She had missed
the last train
………………………………..to Auschwitz.
©4/12/2021
Last Train To Auschwitz Poetry Contest
Kai Michael Neumann sponsor
Are you thinking of me tonight?
I sit on the warm carpet
in this mountain hut,
in front of a blazing fireplace,
where flames flicker fitfully
and logs crackle in delight.
Outside it's chilly cold,
snow softly cover the land,
owls seek shelter and warmth,
while windowpanes
are covered with frost
that looks like a lover's lace.
And you? Do you feel cold or warm?
Are you thinking of me tonight?
Outside of my inner self
I feel the fire's comfort.
Inside I'm as cold as the snow.
Of what use are the burning embers?
I prefer the welcoming warmth
of your endearing arms.
Give me your hot breath
on my cold neck.
Let me imbibe your fragrance
even for one instant.
You are so far away.
When will you be back from work?
You said in about half an hour or so,
We will be together in the warmth.
But are you thinking of me tonight?
She has a fever.
I leave her dozing fitfully on the veranda.
Halfway to the woods there is a farm gate
where she will often squat
and piss.
The grass is brown, but still thrives,
strangely adapted to uric rain.
Paris the giant poodle is here,
his nose a rapier seeking past and present.
Several dogs from good families arrive
to vie with each other
in search of her ‘wherefore art thou?’
Tragically, Romeo (a bulldog neutered last week),
today plays alone
with his squeaky bone.
Take two and a half peach, one blue round three elongated white.
My eyes are blurry; I cannot see any longer. My right hand is asleep.
Now my left hand is asleep.
I climb back into bed
Wait. This is only part of the morning dose?
The only one I know for sure is Benadryl.
It is bright pink.
Taking pills upon pills.
I smell medicine when I take a whiff of myself.
Fitfully wondering ….would I be well if I stopped
taking all of this stuff cold turkey?
Dare I?
I believe I do.
The Fifth of July
The noise is over now
celebrants nurse their foolishness
a small dog peeks out from under a bed
children sleep fitfully above.
Ah, the Fifth of July
battle strewn lawns show evidence
of our independence.
The acrid scent of fireworks lingers
mingled in wisps of fading smoke.
Birds warily peek from the trees.
“The Spirit of Seventy Six”
awakening from freedom’s festival.
John G. Lawless
©7/5/2019
I fitfully half-slept in our half empty bed,
Reaching for my lover,
Assuming you were dead.
Sweet word touched not my longing.
Passion's urge over
N'er rang my yearning phone.
I died a little bit more each lonely day,
Praying if lost
You would perhaps somehow find your way ...
Then, happening stumbled to my very door,
And such the cost
When I saw you've been with her, your whore.
There’s a war reporter in my ear.
There’s rain in my potatoes.
There’s tomatoes turning to running in my skillet.
There’s a life’s love fitfully sleeping away the Tuesday... in the next room.
There’s coffee on my tongue. And delighting my brain.
There’s dishes in the drying stage... in the morning light.
There’s a thought of Siddhartha,
who came to become the one who had no more becoming before him,
only after stepping outside of the walls, outside of the rules, outside of expectations.
There a thought of Siddhartha Gautama,
who came to see the broken, the bleeding, the aging, the hungry.
There’s a war reporter in my ear,
insisting on putting before us
what we so easily, what we so regularly, what we so willfully
put
out of sight,
out of earshot,
out of the grand and limited sweep of our attention.
Isn’t this reporter trying to awaken us all?
Isn’t this reporter trying to Awaken another?
Any other?
You?
Me?
As I lay in my bed lit room
I mutter to myself silently
"Powerless I feel"
But, compelled to thrive
Maddened by intruders
Yet mastered fitfully my role in life
Formless doesn't exist in my vocabulary
I will quench onto faith for evermore
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