I fail, miserably.
Tonight, it was
the mad dash
to the grocery store.
I had just run 6 miles
in the 80-degree dying day
and I smelt like it.
I looked like an extra
from a bad horror movie,
or an escapee
from the local asylum.
My hair was loose
and wild, a half-made
nest for the robins,
no doubt.
My makeup had
rearranged itself
in odd places
across my face.
I just needed coke,
chips, and who knows
what else.
No one was looking at me
and I wasn't looking at them,
until...
"Miss Jen!"
Ahh!
I've been spotted!
I spoke in mumbles
and the usual
babbling nonsense
and sculked away
after I met
the whole, unimpressed
family.
I managed a joke,
horrible and trying,
yet there was
mutual understanding
in all our fake chuckling.
I was wearing my black
bike shorts, Panama Rocks
tee shirt, pink sneakers,
and I smelt to high heaven.
I grabbed a jar of triple
succotash, as if
intentionally.
Earlier, I was well kept
and wearing a ladylike dress
to a friend's birthday party.
Then, I had it together.
Who can maintain
that level of normality
for a whole day?
I'm not going
to the grocery store
tomorrow.
Death breaks heart
People live
Life goes on.
Waste of youth
Waste of time
Waste of life.
Scratch to staff
Rugs to riches
Fate by design.
Whatever cost
Hope and dreams
Aspire excellence.
Need no permission
No laws require
For love, joy and peace.
Unlisted number flying under radar
keeping low profile to avoid undue attention
~ wallflower melts into the background
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
A-nonymous
N-ames
N-ever
A-fford
R-evealing
A-uthors,
Q-uietly
U-sing
E-ach
L-ine's
V-ivid
I-magery
V-iewed
A-t
R-andom
©bfa051825
Monocrostic (Birthday of Anna Raquel L. Vivar)
She was incognito, so I pretended not to recognize her that day.
It was the little female turtle who lived down in Oyster Bay.
As a disguise she was wearing round granny glasses and a pink wig.
I avoided her eyes, so she could feel safe smoking on her cig.
Sometimes,
I open a message
from there words
fly like butterflies,
stabbing my face, stabbing my back
I sit all in the dust,
I start to glow from the inside
for there are people on earth
wants to talk to me
drink with me like the sun.
Inked Confession
Innocence stolen
Defending my elders extremism
Fields of olives, roots never sowed by me
Dagger dripping red
Inch by inch the watermelons are mine
Dancing in glee, I bury tiny white robes and red stains
Forever blind to, denying all crimes
Faded Morality
New flowers will bloom on top of Ghazi
We thieves soon to face our just reward
Their children lie buried in the ashes of sorrow, in silent grief
Insanity, Oppression, Fabricate
Insidious allusions of grandeur
offerings of the human flesh
forever, crimes inked in history
Iniquity, Oppression, Forlorn upon a childs bones
As we await His second coming
We know not who we look for
As we speak, He walks among us
But as yet closed is our heart’s door
From paintings, movies and dreams
We carry a mental image in mind
But is He a being so limited and bound
Who in narrow church pews we’ll find
Jesus visits the so called fallen atheist
And finds within his heart pure light
Made in God’s image, a child asleep
Who’s yet to awaken to spherical sight
So Jesus takes the hand of his brother
Wake up, He urges, life is but a dream
Love alone is real, light the flame of bliss
Rest where no fears and desires stream
Jesus becomes vast space, that holds all
It’s the first thing we see, right before us
Look not for forms and images, oh hermit
In childlike trust, get aboard Gods bliss bus
There is no judgment, sin is but ignorance
All of existence is entwined by God’s power
Know that we are living light, not this form
Surrender and let His benign grace empower
26-April-2023
The most mischievous of culprits,
A tough veil over its secrets;
Devilishly keeps patrolling incognito
For the unilateral contracts it enters into.
The Eternally Incommunicado;
But easily us reaching without ado,
No signature endorsing after a collection;
Merchandise shipping to abysmal direction,
The reason why I can’t praise its business empire,
Indeed, any transaction with no umpire.
Fallout of Eve’s naivety,
And unwitting acceptance of Free Captivity,
After “a Do-this-and-not-that” instruction,
Making allowance for reckless decision,
Its fulfillment the handiwork of Cherubims,
Behind leaving their Seraphims,
For a continual swinging of fire-vomiting swords,
That must implement God’s voiced words.
Today, my ugliest frowns at sabotaging spade,
And the longest sigh for being a mortal made.
The incognito noise,
The unhealed trauma,
The endless distress,
The suffering infinite
Become the idiom,
That is testing us,
Breaking us from within,
The perennial angst and despairs
Need to be burnt into the ashes,
The pyre of it
Will detoxify the existence,
The Dawn...
The thirst is unquenchable
Joy eternal not in sight
Blind by day, in fear at night
We pray for a miracle!
We are anchored in desire
Caged in feeble body prism
We search in vain for freedom
Mind knows not how, heart afire!
Relax hermit! Just go in
Drop the ego bag of grief
Shift to the heart for relief
Renewing there bliss ignition!
16-November-2020
(syllabic enclosed rhyme)
Trance
like state,
hypnotic.
We melt therein
to savour the throb
of each offered flavour.
Within the time span we are
captive to each nuance at play.
Softened attention, one with the flow,
imbibes each subtle pulse in gentleness.
Half the story known, we shift to intent,
our response to chosen vibration,
determining path of ascent
or for that matter, descent.
Mind body vaporised,
as we be surprised:
are we awake
or asleep?
Where are
we?
30-October-2020
You can manage a human by love,
In case of if not a human-
Beast can be managed only by bait.
I have no such a loaf to rule
A rampant animal.
Nor I hate, that is not my manner.
The world a stage,
Shakespeare noted.
And we the imposter,
in our final call.
A few catch our last show.
Unwitting, they s on cue,
our fatal prelude,
our convulsive caricature,
our final self-deprecation.
A clown milking our last mockery,
our closing burlesque pratfall,
our irrevocable tremor,
our departure in floodlights.
The guffaws intend no harm.
No one knows our real name.
We are just the familiar disguise
of impulsive chuckles.
Yes, the stage is our world,
where we regale in our farcical regalia,
where we playact the death we die,
defined abruptly only by the privation of others,
their season of grieving like elephants.
Perhaps it’s better this way,
decomposing, never to be recovered,
just the sound of laughter lost,
or the fading fragment in someone’s
sleepless night.
Published The Magnolia Review 03/2020
As They Danced Incognito
From where I sat that night in 1971,
I could see in the distance south LA,
Lit up like grounded stars in black mud;
As a rude wind brushed up against me,
I saw you wearing navy blue with black shoes.
You were at the Roxy with my best friend.
Making out in the back row with popcorn and ice.
Tears of rage filled the ego ducts for two dark hours.
Then Broten visited, sitting distant under crushed stars,
My young earth, shattered in haphazard fragments,
You flitted like a engorged fly away from me, and us,
Your silent watchings and downward betrayals then,
Killed whatever love-embraces connecting our moving souls,
Our bodies, always lying clenched and breathing in a tangle, your
Milk chocolate cupcakes set before me in the naked candlelight,
With salty, salivating tongue-lickings bringing you to rise in my arms.
We lay with spent emotions in the dark room with doors closed.
Now we exit the bricks and the mortar to spy on the seven sisters,
As they dance above incognito in the cold firmament of trackless time.
“I wish someday to go to sleep and not wake up in the morning.”
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