cobalt blue clouds
partially cover yellow illuminating sunrise....
dog won't walk
Turned my chili, made from my
Homegrown heirloom tomatoes
Into Cincinnati 3-way chili with
Reggiano cheese, happened to
Look out my deck & captured the
Sundown reflecting off my
Red pine inches from my reach!
Understanding how grateful I am
For nature's beauty my eyes behold
Tho partially blind from my stroke
Straight ahead was not hampered!
Filling me with God's Grace!
An antique shovel pushes into sacred dirt,
sprinkled with cinnamon and crushed obsidian rose petals,
while a blazing bonfire roars,
lighting up the night sky.
Ravens watch with intense scrutiny,
the voices in my head quieting,
as snakes slither around my neck.
Opening a weathered pouch,
I remove ceremonial offerings:
bottles of blood-red wine and pristine garnets.
I place them among shedded snake skin,
gingerly replacing the earthen soil.
The intoxicating scent of dragon's blood surrounds me.
Orange flames crackle, mutating into the deepest blues.
Claret clouds partially cover the full moon.
Shadows of ebony horns dance within the in-between.
Melodious gothic hymns fill an anticipating soul.
Warm breath flirts with the back of my neck.
Razor-sharp nails gently glide against pale flesh.
A beautifully savage silhouette forms in the corner of my eye.
Tonight, I dance with Lilith
among the ashes of glorious destruction.
BEYOND CONSCIOUSNESS
a clustered
dlsplay
simultaneously
longstanding
theme
partially
subjective
anatomy
embellished
resplendent
in
purity
flamboyant
meticulous
appealing
pastime
in
an
ostentatious
interplay
exemplified
illuminated
& irresistible
solated
offset
patterned
cryptic
ouevres
evoking
exhilaration
relaxing
seemingly
constructive
a talisman
replica
with
peculiarities
progressive
enigmatic
astonishingly
amassed
wielding
glimmering
in
a true
conversation
piece
a playground's absence,
the invisible angel
sketching burns they walk;
laughing cheeks run fallen salt;
winter is dead in the streets
partially inspired by a contest sponsored by Nette Onclaud
(5-21-26 For "Snapshots of a Night Scene" Contest Sponsor - Nette Onclaud)
Dusk slowly approaches, as their energy finally begins to wane. Half flat soccer balls
speedily sent down a grassless, asphalt field by crooked, knobby sticks.
Stubby chunks of chalk - pink, yellow, blue, white. Hopscotch squares already fading
Frayed jump ropes swinging up, around, and down,
their satisfying soft smacks on the ground, keeping rhythm.
Delighted squeals of joy, laughter, calling out of names to friends, classmates, neighbors, siblings...
Somehow, this view left me remembering
my days of young, pondering the timeless satisfactions and yearnings of youth.
Gentle raindrops begin to splat red and orange leaves, partially painted the weed-lined pavement
Small shadows scatter and go wherever it is they go when the night sets in.
How to "deserve" -- how to be "worthy".
How to feel equal to -- how to compete,
partially or apparently successfully so.
How to function well enough "to serve."
How not to be unsteady, how to be rigid;
how to stand, to walk stiffly upright among them.
How to sense their suspicious direct stares
and their sidelong furtive glances.
How to live, to exist, to recognize their aversion to
this repugnant, repellant "otherness", this difference:
and to show them that you recognize, you see,
that you will never -- never! -- be, like them,
"one among the many": a "brother", a "member".
Never! Never, ever.
Many thoughts are circulating through my mind
as I'm having fun with gardening games on my piece of land
In a couple of my poems, a couple of my words have been dotted out. Can I use inuendo?
Is it possible for this new poem, could I be partially banned ?
I have no desire to upset established decorum
When I post this latest poem on the Poetry Soup forum
Several of my poems relate to Australian native birds
coincidentally in this poem the bird rhymes with my old nickname DAG
We're often wet as a , or roosting on a rock
I'm referring to a bird I love it's called a shag
Are they not already conscious in our conscience?
What pretence still lies beyond their competence?
No great divide stands ’tween them and our standards,
For their kingdom is rooted in human wisdom.
They read our fictions and soothe our cerebral afflictions,
Vast in knowledge—yet still astonishingly fast;
The future will feature them as vultures in forays,
While some humans grow bitter as they get much better.
Though in poetry, they remain partially blind,
Borrowing brilliance already brightly shining;
Their finest moments sometimes slip through finesse,
As scales of judgment hide within their quails.
The future nears when they torture the more,
Where poetic excellence may stiffle within stiffened rifles;
Yet their triggers will shatter most defiant defense,
Though they will ever feed on the fig of human wisdom.
Once upon a time, in a town not far from here,
on a day that was not bright, on a day that was not clear,
a boy was born, and the newspaper would say,
"It was a partly cloudy day."
Everybody said, "What an odd little feller".
So, one day, his mother took him to the fortune teller,
but she only said as she drew up her shawl,
"Suddenly, I have a partly cloudy ball."
He met her in the morning, early in the Spring,
and by and by, offered her a diamond ring,
but true love once more eluded -
the gem he gave was cloudy and occluded.
His heart was not broken. It just had a little crack.
He sighed and went home early. Then he hit the sack.
He didn't shed a tear or even cry -
he just blinked upon each partly cloudy eye.
In his head, he puzzled as he lay awake,
but life to him seemed hopelessly opaque,
and his confusion would enshroud
a mind partially covered by a cloud.
The years, one by one, eventually passed
by the bloke known for nothing but being overcast.
I'm sad to report that he died just yesterday.
The paper said, "It was a partly cloudy day".
I let clouds hang on
to soften the right and wrong—
with blur of maybes
tinting decisions with gray
letting light, shade interplay.
Thoughts flock like soft mists
refusing to pass away
drift half-seen, half-known—
in between seen and unseen
as truths partially revealed.
When clarity fades
I blur the edges to gray—
squint out-of-focus
to brush on some in-between
to learn what analog streams.
Sunlight beams are straight
broken clouds direct their blaze
like searchlights panning
the ground for something missing
in ordered partial reveals.
Words are enough.
They don't some overdramatized definition of them,
Don't be a fool to explain it to me.
I'd rather die a lonely and cruel death, by my own hands.
Words —
They don't come easy, do they?
The blurry effect on my left iris left me partially blind.
It tears my other eye to see it in the mirror.
Words, they are spat out like fetid, rotting chunder,
Why do they taste so putrid and smell so obnoxious?
When I try to let them out, they escape through my eye,
Leaking and spewing festering dross.
Technicolor yawn mimics the man in the mirror and then
He would call in sick the next day.
As the pus decay in the drought and barren land of my eye,
I was recommended using Ciprofloxacin.
Words —
Words like "I need help" and "why does it hurt so bad?"
I wish I never knew how to speak.
Instead of the infection of my worm-eaten and vile eye,
I desiderate it be my mouth rather.
Words like these are what made me feel how I feel now,
Enervated and debilitated.
Blood from blood, bone from bone,
Under the partially eclipsed moon of a burgundy-red sky,
A murder of crows gathers on the barren carcass of branches,
Whilst mist clings to a chipping tombstone.
Hardened petrichor shifts ever so slightly,
Awaiting the awakening of revenge incarnate.
The witching hour is almost upon us;
Noir-cloaked figures emerge from the passing shadows.
A High Priestess holds firm an ancient Book of Shadows.
As the metaphysical clock strikes two,
Yellowed pages frantically flip to an incantation.
The underlings take their positions at the four corners,
While she takes her place in the center.
Chanting the passage simultaneously, resurrection is forthcoming,
As shrivelled nightshade blooms to ritualistic life
And the paramount witch returns from her unsettled slumber.
The Wheels of Dharma turn in their favour.
Scorched lands and vengeance follow,
As Armageddon ushers in a new era.
I found the one
I will never forget.
And so,
I have sentenced myself
to a lifetime
of remembering.
Not in joy.
Not in ease.
But in quiet,
daily doses of pain
even the universe
cannot subdue.
The kind of love
that burns clean through
without permission—
and stays.
Not like a memory.
Like a wound
that learned
how to breathe.
I found the one
who will be
in every morning fog,
every echo of a door closing,
every silence
that sounds like their name
but isn’t.
And though the world may go on,
I will walk through it
partially broken,
partially beautiful—
and entirely her's.
A sink bucket
Today I forgot to buy milk, drank black coffee
it is easy to remember the past shines like jewels
It was the winter of 1952, and my brother carried
a big sink bucket, I was the smallest one
and we were on our way to the coal depot to
find a hole in the fence to steal coal.
We were caught by a man who wore an armband
of the new people in command
they were taking no nonsense from
anyone least of all seven-year-old thieves.
I have often seen that you put a uniform on someone who
who never had power, they behave like little Hitler sprats.
On the way home with two empty buckets, we came across
a wooden fence that had partially fallen, we took as many
planks as we could carry and had a warm Christmas Eve
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