I hope body electrocutes itself one last time.
I hope right after I hear a church bell chime.
I hope I pass fast, gracelessly in my sleep.
I hope I attain peace: God's love so deep.
Cranky crusty Codgers
Skeptical scornfully scowls
Youthful yearning Yonkers
Heartful happily howls
Spurned spiteful Spinsters
Graying gracelessly grumbles
Marvelous merry Maidens
Ravenous richly rumbles
Two of us an unbridgeable dark chasm;
We strike sharp painful words full of sarcasm.
Finger pointing away to the other.
Imperfect we are to one another.
We used to walk amid rhythmic towers,
Youthful dreams and love each other for hours.
Alone and forgotten, gracelessly through
Melodic and rhythmic blankness askew.
Two of us an unbridgeable dark chasm,
No longer share the same enthusiasm.
Winter marches south
blanketing the world in frost
every time you turn to walk away.
Volleys of arrows from
your eyes stop the sun
from thawing out my hands.
The words roll from your tongue
to he seas teeming
with aliens, buckling
my legs as I sleepwalk on deck.
The gates slam their iron
spikes into my side as you
push away with hands pink
as embarrassment.
The birds fall from perches
in the clouds, tumbling gracelessly
when you close the door
behind you and the
doorknob burns my hand
as I try to breach the house
you’ve set aflame.
The conflagration spirals upward
and the searing current takes
you home, alone.
The bird cuts across the sky
slicing the heavens up
like birthday cake.
Its wings acquire the hot breath
of life and it rises higher.
The bullet rips through
air, sending cake and icing
everywhere and the bird falls
gracelessly, swallowed
up by death.
Did we finally just push things too far
step over a sign warning us "Avert"?
Roads newly cluttered and freshly tarred
with bodies of those our trodding has hurt.
Did we laugh, throwing caution in the air,
watch it bobble, wobble, gracelessly fall
Caps, but no masks, smiling "I don't care,
freedom is ours, we will march to its call!"
Judges, juries, jargon, jousting, and jails:
none up to the task of saving our lives.
Speaking quietly over loud, angry wails,
reason, persistence may help us survive.
Losing Democracy our biggest dread,
it hangs tenuously by a truth's thread.
an early mourning stroll, and hours spent passing through as many neighbourhoods,
and sometimes you sob so
violently that you cannot contain
noises breaking past your lips, sounds
usually repressed. sometimes you can only
sob while pacing the streets, and sometimes you
must spend hours shaking, shaking, pacing the streets.
step after step. you roll your shoulders, gasp;
i think of making you a playlist. i think about the order of the
songs so i can communicate to you my witness. oh,
how precious you are. my Love, we sit on secrets. there is more
to say, that which surpasses language. perhaps, music could help
approximate; and Dearest, i digress.
not a playlist. a poem instead,
gracelessly splattering ink
in an attempt at abstraction,
to bring another viewpoint of Love into focus.
just for you.
the house gardens contain miracles.
wrong pillow. neck knot. ache.
Taxing gracelessly
Axes department
This vexing pencil in turgid fingers I gracelessly hold
Sorcerer's lead conjures up casuistic captions, fools' gold
My peripatetic purple pen winks at my commands
Dancing to a distant drummer on sun-scorched parchment sands
A cunning keyboard mocks me, in cast-iron briefcase locked
Contrarian bent, loaded for bear, at my Muse pointed and cocked
What with erasers missing and forever low on toner ink
It's a wonder the poetic process has not driven me to drink!
Ghastly Grave Gathering
Gran and grandpa are gone
Giving grandchildren gifts
Generations greedy
Guilty, grabbing for gain
Granted gratis gold goods
Girls grovel gracelessly
Gluttonous grandkids grief
November 2016
Some people do not fall in love
They jump, headfirst, heedlessly
With little thought of where they'll land
Others dip in a toe and then
Either slide in cautiously or
Retreat with great haste, in contempt
Still others trip, most gracelessly
With much unseemly splashing
And left quite without their pride
Often, its some combination
Of the three above here listed
A thousand midnights tread,
Highwire circus acts
Traversing the lavender Horizon-crease;
I memorize such sudden perforations,
Keep them under my swollen tongue
Only to purge them gracelessly
Back into your fist.
Replace my stumbling almost-words
With vastness:
A self-induced universe freckled by
Cauterized cigarette burn stars
And half empty beer cans.
I fill my lungs with feral smog,
You fill your head with smoke;
My nose trickles blood freely.
And if it was not for such ongoing facades--
Psuedointelect, rabid romances,
My world on unstable axis--
We might have,
By now,
Enshrined our Hearts in plaster molds,
Traded our eyes for seaglass pebbles.
The cherry blossoms have yet to bloom under
This hemisphere of the city:
Bare branches claw against dusk
and, in masochistic frost,
You burn your fingerprints into
My back.
"You Must Set Yourself on Fire"
Jenna-Nichole Conrad
Wordsmith
In the endless ether wander aimlessly,
Words and images dying gracelessly
They were creations fondly reared
But on the net they disappeared.
Heartbroken and bereft,I do recall
That one did try Raphael to enthrall
In my feebly frail effort to outline
What poetry and painting do define.
The other did lightly glance at the naming of the parts,
More venereal ,rather than the military arts.
Lovingly it was my wish them to draw
To fill my reader with a sense of awe.
My one fond hope is they can truly be found
To complete the corpus of my writing round.
Should you know where they might be
What great joy that would bring to me.
Encapsulated, trapped,
energy reserves tapped,
vitality gone, sapped,
lost, though we penned our own map.
From the wings we watch, raging,
at the play they are staging,
we attempt disengaging,
meanwhile gracelessly aging.
Snow is building on the roof,
we believe, but have no proof,
grimly pondering lost youth,
children deafened to the truth.
Watch the fire as it dies,
astonishing, how time flies,
yesterday, sang lullabies,
tomorrow gone, with a sigh.
When I look back and see
those bright white lights,
those colored balloons in clusters,
I think about regret.ƒ|
You danced gracelessly,
and I didn¡¦t dance at all. ƒn
Would it have hurtƒn
to tap your fabric shoulder?
Maybe it would have ruined that
night, and the crystal perfection
of our conciliatory wine glassesƒz
the sparkling ginger ale, our laughter
like the rapidly rising bubbles in
our drinks.
I think about regret.
I regret thinking of this.
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