Lover, Lover
The nighttime sings our names
Ballads of the figurative Juliet
Radios hiss hearts spilled the shadows hide naked ambition stilled
Neglected emotional hills wafts through valleys of past lives
Karmic backlogs review their closing percentages
Futures flood the floors hold the line between fate and tears
Shadow people alone in the twilight
Illuminated letters, walls woed to sleep
Dreams from the shoreline as phantom vessels waltz on the silver linings
Postures of stable footing, top of the line, kings and queens of value
Thumbs circle the knuckles, bone kisses bone, the familiar taste of home
Haunted hems lines explored in tribal pursuits
Please keep me waiting
The specter of tender frames evaporates
Morning ghosts caress the memory in travel
Neckties versus deadlines
Power brokered, breath that betrays the dream
Folded napkins
Cocktail napkin epitaphs
Check please
The summer of 1961 stays with me in small, steady ways. Bare feet on hot Texas sidewalks, jump-rope songs drifting between houses, mothers calling from screen doors—all of it part of the quiet world I grew up with. The box fan's low hum, the sharp crack of ice trays, the porch light warming the dusk—ordinary things that felt like the neighborhood holding itself together.
Rock ’n’ roll floated out of transistor radios, bicycles waited in the yard as if they knew we’d be back, and fireflies stitched their brief gold through the evening. I didn’t realize then how memory was already gathering these moments, saving them without asking. I only knew the slow stillness of night settling in and something larger than childhood holding me close.
dusk in my bones~
old summers rise like prayer,
soft and unbidden
Hello my love
What a beautiful day
Last night was special
to us, wouldn't you say
What ah beautiful morning
"ooh we auh, ooh we
ooh we auh-auh ooh
Yahtune dootaha, doo we ooh ooh!"
Try my luck
With a kiss
One of those
How about this
Toast and coffee
that's just fine
Get something later
If I have time
What a night
What a beautiful morning
"yahtta doo ooh ah we
auh ooh auh we
yahtta dootah doop;
ooh doop ooh ooh!"
What's up partner
You doing fine
Don't rush around
take your time
we gotta long way
to go
radios on time for
the show
What ah fabulous night
What ah beautiful morning
Saw the game
After the show
Excuse me Didn't know
You wanted to go
It's on next week
Just let me know
What ah beautiful night
What ah beautiful morning
Hello my love
What a beautiful day
Last night was special
to us, wouldn't you say
What ah beautiful morning
Try my luck
With a kiss
One of those
How about this
Toast and coffee
that's just fine
Get something later
If I have time
What a night
What a beautiful morning
What's up partner
You doing fine
Don't rush around
take your time
we gotta long way
to go
radios on time for
the show
What ah fabulous night
What ah beautiful morning
Saw the game
After the show
Excuse me Didn't know
You wanted to go
It's on next week
Just let me know
What ah beautiful night
What ah beautiful morning
Hello my love
What a beautiful day
Last night was special
to us, wouldn't you say
What ah beautiful morning
Try my luck
With a kiss
One of those
How about this
Toast and coffee
that's just fine
Get something later
If I have time
What a night
What a beautiful morning
What's up partner
You doing fine
Don't rush around
take your time
we gotta long way
to go
radios on time for
the show
What ah fabulous night
What ah beautiful morning
Saw the game
After the show
Excuse me Didn't know
You wanted to go
It's on next week
Just let me know
What ah beautiful night
What ah beautiful morning
Hello my love
What a beautiful day
Last night was special
to us, wouldn't you say
What ah beautiful morning
Try my luck
With a kiss
One of those
How about this
Toast and coffee
that's just fine
Get something later
If I have time
What a night
What a beautiful morning
What's up partner
You doing fine
Don't rush around
take your time
we gotta long way
to go
radios on time for
the show
What ah fabulous night
What ah beautiful morning
Saw the game
After the show
Excuse me Didn't know
You wanted to go
It's on next week
Just let me know
What ah beautiful night
What ah beautiful morning
Hello my love
What a beautiful day
Last night was special
to us, wouldn't you say
What ah beautiful morning
Try my luck
With a kiss
One of those
How about this
Toast and coffee
that's just fine
Get something later
If I have time
What a night
What a beautiful morning
What's up partner
You doing fine
Don't rush around
take your time
we gotta long way
to go
radios on time for
the show
What ah fabulous night
What ah beautiful morning
Saw the game
After the show
Excuse me Didn't know
You wanted to go
It's on next week
Just let me know
What ah beautiful night
What ah beautiful morning
Hello my love
What a beautiful day
Last night was special
to us, wouldn't you say
What ah beautiful morning
Try my luck
With a kiss
One of those
How about this
Toast and coffee
that's just fine
Get something later
If I have time
What a night
What a beautiful morning
What's up partner
You doing fine
Don't rush around
take your time
we gotta long way
to go
radios on time for
the show
What ah fabulous night
What ah beautiful morning
Saw the game
After the show
Excuse me Didn't know
You wanted to go
It's on next week
Just let me know
What ah beautiful night
What ah beautiful morning
One could not avoid the putrescence clinging to every atom in every direction
Stoplights blinked caution in cruel irony
Racoons only emerging from city sewers at night had no instinct to return underneath such bounty
Tho power was erratic & petrol a memory radios still broadcast updates on weather patterns to avoid toxic ash-fall
People waited in long lines
Water
Food
Blankets
Protesting was useless
No one is listening
Life reverted to tribalism
Faces emerged from clouds speaking a language similar to Egyptian their message unclear
The clouds began to break-up spewing hordes of elf-like creatures with horrid pinched features if there was a message I guess that train left the station
Oh, I was teased by nineteen eighty-four.
When the TV listened to all I said.
I didn't realize there was a backdoor.
Come on in the bright Utopian door!
You're part of a long bright Internet thread.
Oh, you're appeased by nineteen eighty-four.
We'll travel the Internet forevermore.
Our Bot's on a social media thread.
It didn't realize there was a back door.
Beings strive to attain good credit scores.
TVs, radios, and phones hear your head.
We have been seized by nineteen eighty-four.
Digital eyes will lurk forevermore.
Secrets will not be easily shredded.
Bots know there is information galore.
Nineteen eighty-four thrives forevermore.
Years ago, its mighty code was embedded.
Oh, we were pleased by nineteen eighty-four!
We didn't realize there was an entry door.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I traipse along the seashore
where the tide forgets its name,
where the seagulls cry like lost receipts,
where the sand, pale as a sleepless page,
whispers: Look down. Look down.
But I search the horizon instead~
that bluish orange hyphen between here
and whatever comes next.
The ocean licks its lips,
spatting out a shell, half-cracked,
a confession in porcelain.
Is this you? the waves murmur,
rolling their r’s like a drunk god.
I hold it to my ear~
hear the static of a thousand voices
and the hiss of dead radios.
A crab scurries by me, dragging its life
like a piece of baggage with damaged wheels.
You’re overthinking it,
says the wind,
but the wind always says that.
At twilight, my silhouette stretches long,
a black rope thrown toward the sea.
I tug. Nothing tugs back.
And the moon, that cheap spotlight,
clicks on—illuminating
only how far I haven’t gone.
Poem published at creativeramblings.com/writing-prompts/writing-challenge-27/ on February 22, 2026
Snowballs met with red iron bullets
Someone
Has lost their compass
On the neighborhood streets of Minneapolis
The direction
Of wet splat on an officer’s back
To the metal response from a pistol splitting a windshield
Then a brain’s mesh
No one really knows
How the Albatross finds her way
Three times around the globe
Gliding on winds from one Pole to the other
What pulls her what pushes her
What power gets in her head
Ruffles her feathers and tickles her wings
Points her in one direction rather than another
It is to wonder
From the ice cold shale tumbled by glaciers
How she bares but one child every few years
While she shields with her feet and belly
A nest
From carbon bombardment
She can only fight with snowballs
Ducked under
By the President’s soldiers
Weighed down
With the oil and Crypto of Teflon vests cannisters badges radios
All our heads
The entire world
Spinning spinning out of control.
Get out of me before I scream
voices of children and dogs
of radios and telephones
of the exhaust of buses
of dead birds frozen in the gutters
Don’t touch me or I will explode
faded hands of the old with their old smell
blighted hands of beggars
crumbling trees
electrical wires slicing the lucid blue skin of the sky
Keep out of my mouth my heart my loins
Don’t murder me with your voices of the dead that speak forever
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re-live the nineteen-sixties? Don't! We all
imagine mop-tops, surf, free love and sun,
conveniently forgetting Watts, De Gaulle,
the Tet Offensive, Audrey Hepburn's nun.
Imagine! Mop-tops, surf, free love - and sun!
Transistor radios, Italian suits!
The Tet Offensive? Audrey Hepburn? None
of those can overshadow kinky boots!
Transistor radios. Italian suits,
the spirit of the age - la dolce vita!
No woes can overshadow kinky boots,
The Fugitive, short skirts, the parking meter!
The spirit of the age! La dolce vita!
Your Normal Joe thinks former times were "swell":
The Fugitive, short skirts, the parking meter!
To get to know Uhura, really well!
Your Normal Joe thinks former times were "swell".
He wants to join the Enterprise's crew,
to get to know Uhura really well,
and satisfy that inner yearning, too.
He wants to join the Enterprise's crew,
conveniently forgetting Watts, De Gaulle,
and satisfy that inner yearning to
re-live the nineteen-sixties. Don't we all?
Trial and terror.' What lies endeavour? Glass and steel..Invasive bidily entry so real'
To what portent.? While conjecture and
Invent..Transist a word.' Into a vision so blurred, once radios made.' that tunes could be played ( now there is 5 g ) and
People were subjects we see.' Experimentation was advized many Natiions
Decide..Now digitized id..Oh my not me.)
What if they get a chip? To morph with the
Tech? being shoved down our necks.' Would it be then plain.? That to survive would not be any gain.? As a robot unalive
So better to take (the chop i won't be loosing a lot.' I'd rather
be with God than a
Zombie i think thats going to be my shot.'
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