Take your love back
Please, get back your love, pull out from my orphan soul
You took your desire and magic into my fast-beating heart
Stop killing, stop knifing, my tears are a river of your boat
Enjoy your journey in the depths of the ancient jungle’s life
In the garden of the paradise, I walk and walk there. Where?
No, I am the evil, the satan, the snake. Come to me, see me
I’ll give you an apple, eat, just eat it. Enjoy your lovely death
Delicious apple, hmm, full of cocaine, just eat, be intoxicated
I am a snake, a python. Come here. I’ll hug you around and,
then I will kill you.
I loved you
You were a hope
A beginning for me
You destroyed my life
You killed all my desires
I killed of being of your life
Pure
Now
This
Love
A Winter's Retreat
Snowy week here we come and go
Knifing thru the days with a nice flow
In time our skis find themselves fine
It's a cut above the week and forest line
Naturally, we take to our newfound hills
Garnishing the trails with thrills
1/16/23
Skiing Poetry Contest
Sponsor-Julia Ward
2nd
Play a Krishna mantra
Hear the rain pattering down
Cars knifing wet wind
Distant dogs howling
Even the tinnitus
ringing in my ears
Anything but the
narrative
playing in my head
Poison
from the well of
quiet desperation
of loneliness
of false perception
Just because the world
doesn't smile back at you
once
doesn't mean it doesn't
I just don't perceive
So
make the blood rush
into my brain and flush away
what smothers joy
Meditate
deepest desires
into existence
hear the dogs howl
hear the baby cry
But see the Buddha laugh
and smile back
It's good to breathe
It's good to be
Dame Gravity
As a dear friend battles
nocturnal EMT home invasions,
fainting spells, falls, forgetfulness,
fading like a plucked peony
my health guilt increases--
what right have I to two legs
that hold me (today)
while others fold under the impact
of an invisible wrecking ball,
collapsing into rubble?
Treachery beneath innocent snow
hid black ice last March,
when my darling slipped, fell backwards.
Knifing pain trapped him for a month in the recliner,
unable to get in or out of a bed.
The therapy pool holds
our motley shimmering wreckage--
aging apples bobbing up
and down; watery reflections quiver,
distort all we were and are.
In the weekly T'ai Chi class
we breathe, spread our “White Crane” wings,
aspiring to float over the carpeted pond;
after class, I push through the underbrush of jackets,
take up my pink cane to exit,
remembering how once I soared
so high that earth seemed distant,
and small below.
Dame Gravity has her say;
she rules all, save imagining;
our bodies bow, obey.
--Peggy Brightman
(c) June 2018
A Poem is Not
a lifeline to grab
when your foot slips
near the summit
and the heavens suddenly lurch and loom;
nor a salve for knifing rib pain
when your beloved falls on black ice,
and has to sleep for a month in the
living room recliner;
nor a miracle cure
for a friend's fainting, falling,
repeated midnight rescues,
his paper white face propped on hospital pillows;
nor a school of miracle fishes to
feed unexpected company
at your door; the cupboard bare,
a few crumbs wiped off the table;
but after the lifeline holds, the funeral is postponed,
words may offer up, jostle themselves together--
forming a ladder to climb, a spoon for a warming chowder,
a bridge to somewhere with a slightly different view.
--Peggy Brightman
(c) June, 2018
Knifing
Bread knife
Case knife
Clasp knife
Fish knife
Cut right
Such tight
Real life
Sheathe knife
Loose strife
Streak knife
Ex-wife
Wild life
after life
been cut
by knife
3/10/18
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. ©2018
K-nifing through the wave
I-s the ship of your journey;
M-idst the deep rough ocean, you're guided by the Almighty.
S-olid faith knifing through the wave
O-f trials is like a sailing vessel;
L-ife's difficulties are overcome,
B-ecause your trust is doing well.
I-n the morn January twenty-eighth,
T-ribulations make you brave;
A-s your boat of firm hope is knifing through the wave.
Priceless pearls scattered as the necklace
Was snapped, ripped away by greedy
Hands, envious of your sublime beauty
And even gentler encouragement. Bounc’d
Every one of them cross cobblestones, cracks,
And down the storm drain irretrievable.
Holding that golden empty promise string
Your fountain of tears so scalded my soul.
Could I but hold you, say comforting words,
I would have. But words are trite when the heart
Is blistered in injustice’s heat.
We gathered what we could, returning
To the Sea, knifing open more oysters
Restringing your dream, one pearl at a time.
Ethereal, fleeting, incandescent
I grasp loosely at the airiness
So vibrant on the escarpment
X-rays pass through bone and flesh
Leaving no mark
I hold emptiness
Where are the diamonds?
Filling my fingertips?
Brushing my lips?
Tickling my tongue?
Lingering within my heart?
Eternity breaks open
Inverting itself within dark holes
Moons, planets and stars swirl
My amazement blazes anew
When the jewels reappear
Woodland sprites alive on the bark
Knifing through the trees
Frolicking on the ground
Dancing amongst the foliage
Daring me to catch them
Clay vessel opens
Alas, it is a porous jug
Absorbing but not containing
The warmth of a brief embrace
My skeleton’s soulful journey
Light twinkles
Passes through
Leaving no pathway
Psyche refuses defeat
What has been will reappear
Eyes to see the invisible
Kathleen D Kroll
March 19, 2016
Inspired by light in Yosemite National Park
Why Crippled America?
Any presidential nominee thus far,
Anyone ever in long history’s past,
Could’ve called America crippled,
A high look upon disability to cast.
Disability is now curable sometimes,
And healthcare stands sturdily tall,
As a nation’s proudest profession,
As our greatest step and tribal call.
So the analogy to disability power,
The relationship of doctor/patient,
Could be used by any great politician,
To explain his policies and argument.
But I believe that any candidate knows,
To deliberately dismiss this slogan,
To in determination bypass disability,
As a succinct method of explanation.
It’s what goes to make a man great,
A politician tick and get it right,
A women see the good and justice,
Of the Syrian migrant’s plight.
So Trump should be sued, slammed,
By disabled people in a law court case,
For debasing their physiognomy,
For knifing their contributive face.
He does not pertain to disabled people,
Now, after all of that in any way,
And if you are aware of disability,
Then don’t give him the time or day.
Every time I lose your love,
Every time eyes open to dreams
That can't corral your quiet flame,
The silent corners of what’s real
Wash out, their angularity softens
As before a clear night sky
That has no moon or stars...
Still infinity surrounds me
Feels as close as my own heart beat,
Its darkness surprisingly light.
In this space the hum of fireflies
Becomes an almost tactile force,
(Possibly the sound of your breath beside me?)
And so much softer than a fan knifing air,
Almost like gnats trapped in your ear.
So lost am I in my “little death” that
The fireflies’ extinguished flash
Is really the only warmth
That calls me back to hope that
The sun will rise again.
But I suspect that all dark dreams must turn
At last to song, where petals
Touch is anticipated with joy,
Rainfall’s coolness floats God’s ark of souls,
And His promise shines in a rainbow...
For always when my dreaming ends,
I wake to find you there!
Brian Johnston
February 23, 2016
JACK FROST
January crushed the life of all
Angrily encased winter in the silence of ice,
Caustic cold burning the surface of the lake,
Knifing winds severing the threads of sunshine.
Frozen - in the moments of their hesitation
Ragtag groups of flaked snow mold themselves
Onto the shivering frames of twisted trees,
Silvery statues glistening in the blue moonlight
Traced by the fingers of the artistic Jack Frost.
11/26/2015
submitted to – Acrostic : Jack Frost – Poetry contest
sponsor – Shadow Hamilton
Chris Risum
1865 – 1920
She was the only woman who listened to me.
The only lady who cared enough to care.
For within my own dead marriage
I was sadly alone, pathetically ignored and ridiculed.
For while I was alive, I was an afflicted man.
A man dead inside himself.
A man endlessly looking for absolutely nothing to find.
With clenched fists and thrown shoes,
I was the man dodging the vitriol.
The man who felt absolutely no love
For the last twenty years of his life.
But alas, I met her.
The only woman who ever listened to me.
My lovely Gertrude,
The tall busty eucalyptus tree
On Rideout Way.
And there I would sit in her sensual shade,
On warm summer afternoons with my thoughts and desires.
And with the presumptuous winds
Streaming and knifing from the west
She would reach down with her long leafy flowing arms
And allow me,
A mere man worth absolutely nothing,
To touch her.
To feel incontrovertibly,
Her scintillating life force!
Do I have a choice
before knifing the page
for a meaning, when I was
drowned in a nostalgia ?
Cinchona bark. This was my
keyword for living bitterly
under a tryant inciting
the riots of colors.
The digital death comes as
a reward for insane truth.
You turn the back on home
and walk towards the sea –
to count the empty shells on beach.
Here life completes a cycle
from emptiness to emptiness.
You are ready to go in void.
•
On waking you find yourself
dead. Now every one is talking
about you. The words sink in a
womb – a death watcher.
The house was burning.
How tall you had become after
forgetting the prayer ? Do you
think a window will allow –
you to become immortal ?
The inner strength reverberates
in black stones who were sad,
you will not make them visible
any more in nightless journey.
Moon eater,
You were always hungry
drinking the elixir of death.
Satish Verma
*On the death of Steve Jobs.
Cherries pale yellow tinged with red
Colorful umbrella, mercurial spread
Mellowing veil hovers overhead
Hand staid until dark color, pungent odor wed
Nature's rhythms from youth nurtured in my head
In fowl, tell tale signs providentially inbred
Knowing beak is quicker than the hand brings dread
Before gravity can pull weighted cherries to rotting bed
My pruning hand to the luscious fruit is sentiently led
But wittier birds, for sweet treat, already fragile branches tread
Goring fruit: knifing peel, shredding flesh, tangy juices bled
Colorful, pock-marked marbles left for dead
Sun-dried, pitted prunes left in their stead
For aggrieved spite, all cultured inhibition shed
Manically, with fingers, stem lines forcefully unthread
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