Tomorrow is the day – the day I dread.
The first of March. Declare the dividend.
I hate a scene but I, by nature’s quirk,
endure the drama, seated on the stage.
I never met a shareholder who said
‘I know you are the CEO. My friend,
we really do appreciate your work.’
Hostility is not so hard to gauge.
Today’s the day it all comes to a head.
A thousand profit-sniffers will attend.
Their eyes will flay me, glaring from the murk,
and though I do my damnedest to assuage
the fury, ‘carbon footprint’s tread’ –
it will not help me. Why do I pretend?
They want more money. Explanations irk.
Their unearned income is the war they wage.
Their eyes and exit signs pulsating red,
No Confidence the motion that they’ve penned,
malicious in the darkness where they lurk,
creators (or the symbols?) of our age.
Poetry does not belong to those who write it, but to those who need it.~Pablo Neruda
A blank page is the bane of all writers.
Examples that are written are blighters.
Frustration would stay.
A word that escapes you for the moment
to capture a perception, you lament.
You should step away.
It has been said that good poetry heal;
it expresses how many people feel;
but others might flay.
If a reader should find it a comfort,
I’ll ignore ever-present discomfort –
I won’t lead astray.
How should I spend my Day?
What would Bobby Flay say?
He'd say..."Just Flay the Flavor,"
"And then Savor the Day!"
She came down screaming, cloaked in flame,
A bolt of spite, no soul to tame.
From hilltop high she cast her spell—
The art of slander, taught too well.
They built her shrines in whispered breath,
In gossip’s grip, they danced with death.
Her tongue, a blade that cuts unseen,
Yet worshiped like some vengeful queen.
She taught them how to twist the truth,
To poison joy, corrupt the youth.
No proof required, no facts to weigh—
Just sharpened words to flay and flay.
I walk beneath her shadowed reign,
Each rumor like a drop of rain.
It floods my name, it stains my skin,
A war I never asked to win.
They speak as if their hearts are stone,
No warmth, no grace, just undertone.
Their minds are mirrors cracked with spite,
Reflecting only what’s not right.
No thought of kindness, no repair,
Just venom laced in vacant stare.
They feed on fear, they starve on hope,
And swing their lies like braided rope.
Yet still I rise, though torn and bruised,
Refusing to be so misused.
For truth, though quiet, holds its ground—
And Slanderella will be drowned.
captive by vista
your flay is ivory white -
sweet magnolia eyes
we have AI in every single room
plays music, but cannot put us on Zoom
we can ask her the weather or facts on TV
she will explain about Simon Legree
We ask her questions ten times a day
She is always there, never wanders away
how old is Jenna Elfman or Twiggy we ask.
In seconds she can complete almost every task
If I could teach her to wash a dish or flay a fish
If I could teach her to vacuum or grant a wish
If I could teach her to plant a garden or shoe a horse
It would make my husband’s life easier of course.
The river breaks its mirror with a scream,
Moods whip the trees — calm, then storm — then gone.
In love, I drown; in fear, I flay the dream.
A thousand selves pull knives inside one dawn.
The eyes of others turn my skin to glass,
Every slight — a spear, each kindness — pain.
Abandonment’s cold breath will never pass;
I chase and bite and beg and start again.
I wear my bleeding heart for all to see,
But shame is acid poured upon my seed.
Rage blooms in seconds, vanishes in cries,
While emptiness gnaws marrow from my thighs.
Unchecked, the soul dissolves in fractured light,
Births deeper wounds: addiction, endless fight.
With hands unmet, I spiral through the gloom,
A body living only to consume —
And none can save me if I don't choose soon.
Dun days? Clouds above in greys?
Sapphire? Purple haze?
Deterrence, dessicate, cays.
Buildings on the raze.
World around in twilight.
Months ahead a-grim.
Heart within me, burn with fight!
Crater, have thy rim...
Ocean, boil. Intestines, roil.
Ignite, O my soil.
Lightning, fry. My music, broil.
Serpents, time to coil.
Torment, grip each human life.
Quest, on edge of knife.
Fate and Fortune, seethe with strife.
Demon-sultan, fife.
Tyrant of tomorrow?
Of him I never heard.
Surcease sorrow, I borrow!
Tower dark, thy third.
Wind, tear down. Abhor, my crown.
Demolish the town!
Carnival chaos, thy clown.
Hope, see self as flown.
Flickering flame, explode. Death, come.
Doom, hover o'er all.
Chord suffering, play for some.
Family, how ye gall.
Terror, strike. O Panic, lurch.
Bake and flay, O life.
Silver were the trees of birch!
Wisdom, thou art rife!
I swore I'd turn and back away,
Resist the call, from the lurking flay.
For the life of me, I could not allay the stay!
Before me lay a morsel, a mere tit bit.
A taste I took, another, another, but could not scoff remit,
For the life of me, I could not help it!
I told myself to turn away, to quell the surge.
To resist the temptation with a denial's purge.
For the life of me, I could not resist the urge!
Danger lurked, the danger warning plain to see
Alas, the hurt to me was not meant to be.
For the life of me, I could not flee!
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out.
Why was my will so weak, and prone to doubt?
That my life was so worthless, such a sellout!
Can anything be colder than a day
When clouds of winter make the sun’s embrace
Become a shadow of its former grace
And summer’s verdure gives in to decay;
When snow like burial garments shrouds the hay,
Bleak nature trudges with a mournful pace;
The winter’s gusts make sharp cuts on the face
With blades concealed, as though designed to flay?
Yet, when love’s ardent flame burns out in vain,
The silence answers all unselfish pleas,
The tired wings can’t find their resting nest,
Not even death can ease the inner pain.
Thus, winter’s cold feels like a summer’s breeze
Compared to what remains inside my chest.
A skeletal smirk at the school door -
the greeter-teacher; 50 years later,
I feel his gimlet eyes at my back,
that leer is now plugged with dirt,
yet it can still be traced in the brown water stains
of mottled toilet walls.
A female slave-unit named ‘Miss,’
She never did speak directly to a kid,
only through the thin lips of her personal intimidator,
a third level teacher who lubricated nerve endings.
I am ‘put right’ by a serial wrongdoer
with a goose steeping gait,
his guppy mouth is a blubbery hellhole.
Next,
a second-tier maniac with a penchant for angry rhetoric,
his large hands flay like windsails as they
slap books and heads.
A last Piscean reflection,
a teach sporting a fish-head grin
as he opens a school exit door for me
while I gladly leave forever.
They would all hate to be in a poem like this
so tightly packed together
like oily sardines choking on the phlegm
of what they could have aspired to,
could have been.
I wonder what that sparrow thinks of me,
As it flits so easily from branch to branch on tree,
While I’m stuck here earthbound, decried to strut all day.
A silly flightless biped with arms that only flap and flay.
Humans are naked beasts with clothes worn forlorn except at the beach.
Birds are ornately adorned in beautiful feathers, all over they reach.
Birds call and serenade each other with songs, chirps and trills,
With no need for endless verbiage and debate about bills and wills.
Birds thrill in joyous flocks soaring and swarming in formation,
While humans gather in angry crowds for fights in condemnation.
Somehow, I think that birds love to belittle and mock me,
For they're the ones, free to fly and frolic in fountains, carefree.
Sorry this party must end in such a grizzly way.
Next time maybe keep your hands off someones fiancé.
No I cannot let you go, you caused her such dismay.
Now a pleasant bit of vivisection, where's that tourniquet?
I hope you're ready for some fun because it's time to play.
You're going to be a work of art worthy of display.
Limb by limb of bone and all the skin that I will flay.
Oh, I didn't tell you here's the part I didn't say.
Ready yourself the surprise is you will be okay.
By that I mean wishing for death every single day.
Sometimes i wish
That i could crawl out of my skin
Bare all my sins
Flay myself open
And watch as i bleed
Maybe then i might feel
Some sense of release
A lessening of the weight
That suffocates me as i try to breathe
Maybe if i could breathe and i could see
I might not feel so dirty
But if i bare all my sins
And let everything out in the air
People would really see
The pathetic being i am underneath
UNLOVED 2 (EXPANDED)
The stinging is particularly painful today,
Needles of sharp cold burning blood stab and sear my heart
The jabbing jagged thousand little holes stay
And begin again tomorrow to flay each part.
Rejection is a drowning drunk
Gasping with each mouthful of pride
Another trophy now lies lifeless and sunk
Another screaming day that died.
For all the steaming dreaming part
I played in the capture of my choice
Flat failure is the guide of my loveless dart
And a choking silence is my only voice.
When the punished pillows murder cry
Silent clocks and secret swish
Of thick dark failing falling curtains fringed with notoriety
Rip the seams of a ragged wish
Until the spleen sheds its poison deep below
Swimming into the fathom of night and day
Where no tender fingers reach my depth
And only the claw grasps its prey.
Liar lord of loyalty the infidel of opera cloak
Sweep and cover a collapsing shroud
Leaving only the tomb and the weeping womb
For the remnants of the uncertain crowd.
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