Car gone, home gone,
Job gone, reputation gone
LOVE brought me to nothing
Feelings in check, mouth muzzled
Actions slow and sure
LOVE brought me nada
Spiritual warfare raging
Attacks constant, unknown secured
LOVE brought me...null
In the losing, I gained
Intangible gifts
Experienced, but not gauged
In the losing, I learned
Holding until safe
Released, but not tracked
In the losing, I expanded
Occupying territory
Acknowledged, but not possessed
...balance in operation
Written by Trudy Schrader on 08-22-2026
Love you hanker for.
Life, evermore bright
As fair bloomed, joy-flushed through it.
Heaven in a word.
Ah! A wing'ed heart.
Angel's peaceful flight
Here, yet o're Earth not tracked for?
Whose nest then deferred.
Cooked, ready to eat
April 2027, we meet
The 2026 Finance Bill
A new order, bitter pill
With it you are tracked
Affairs, neatly packed
Taxed here and there
To them, you must be fair
The reverse doesn't hold
Not belonging to the fold
You produce, they don't
Work like you, they won't
Order the world, anew
To benefit just a few
Cannon fodder, the rest
To the front line, the best
Sorrow draws its own heart
Out a pool, stagnant.
Quail-tracked this quag around
Hear its plodding sound.
Gladness, from out sunned airs'
Vital-zephyr flows.
Finch-traced this field about
Hear its zealous shout.
Sweetness Ordained
Can you remember
a smell
or only a fact
Can a bakery
in passing
free a memory lapsed
A sensory
flashback
its sweetness ordained
Olfactory joy
surviving time
— and the flame
**
Breathing Closer
Death
I hear thee coming
but still see thee not
Death
your chilling shadow
Atropos casting lots
Death
breathing closer
inhaling my soul
Death
by day silent
— the darkness extols
**
Dark Symbiosis
You heard me whisper
I heard you cry
You tracked my footsteps
which bade goodbye
A star crossed tandem
in shared release
Dark symbiosis
— of love’s retreat
**
A New Calling
Don’t ever let life
deprive you
of what only
death can claim
Each day of excuse
and diverted
dreams
will lock your hope in chains
Only when final
divinely
inspired
and stepping through the wind
Toward a new
calling
and fresh paradigm
— are we blessed to rebegin
**
O greenish blue neighbour of mine
across my kitchen window, sunning in shine
perching very high on the doctor's house fig tree
resonating your tunk...tunk louder than metronomic glee
Saw you today, puffing your yellow throat,
the silk floss petals plucking with your hand glove
bobbing your red head and flicking bluish tail,
have you tracked a sincere mate?
have you picked a red berry or two for your consort,
hope allopreening is not building on snort?
what about fluttering your blue grey black wings side by side ?
start a "Beak Game" in a full stride?
Keep flight straight, with rapid flaps
Be away from that, extortionist Blue-throated barbet
avoid flying klepto red-vented songbird,
eyeing at your red berries and burd.
PS:A coppersmith (barbet) , very old next tree neighbour, annoying sometimes by her incessant calls ,many times reminds me that that is how a life goes on
Above these darker grown
Piny-shady woods
That, deeper, for its bears'
Hideout, enclosed in
Greatest of the great unknowns
Out-stares. Need more gin?
Only what reflects it
For this campfire's sparks
Goes out. As high tracked of
Homey, reassure
We, round about, in friendship
Warmer show its lure.
Must pester Uncle Fester our national jester
Mr dome chrome time to buy another home?
Property cartels fed cahoots loots free to roam
Like we’re being led by the laughing gnome
Coalition behind demolition of OG ancestor
Don’t let it fester about every oversea investor
Cannot cotton on to what’s wrong.. polyester
Kiwis remember embers of being a protestor
They were told awhile before the war make sure
To stockpile fossil fuels.. because more is more
They wouldn’t listen Oil companies shares glisten
Billionaire backed..society cracked or is it fracked
Fast tracked as guess who gets whacked the Poor!
Luxon adoring every glutton pushes that button
Haughty and naughty lies flies in roaring forties
Ignoring us imploring see the nexus of the exodus
As its lambs to the slaughter on the isles of mutton
WITH EYES STILL ON THE MARCHING PRIZE
(APROPOS OF AN MLK DAY REFLECTION)
With eyes on the prize,
Let us climb freedom’s mountain:
Topping liberty:-
Be a Drum Major,
Leading liberty’s parade
Up the mountaintop:
Guiding marchers onward to
Freedom, justice, and equality:-
Don’t let anything
Try to deter the journey:
You’re not Sisyphus;
Just keep on climbing:-
God navigating,
Let’s march to reality;
Our dream coming true:-
And nobody can turn us back:
Our faith, drum majoring us:-
Given the Dream’s route,
Let’s move up the mountainside:
Topping injustice:-
Railroading onward,
Has been tracked by ancestors:
God navigating:-
Today’s oppression,
We shall also overcome:
Flushing bigotry:-
Let justice’s waters unclog
Today’s red-pooped injustice:-
Let’s flush it all down!
Including red-stained echoes
From loose bowel-mouths:-
If you really cared— You would view humans as humans rather than disposable numbers to be tracked and replaced.
If you really cared, there wouldn't be tent cities growing like weeds in the shadows of skyscrapers that scrape heaven, while billionaires play astronaut in the name of "innovation".
If you really cared, mothers wouldn't have to choose between insulin and rent, between feeding their babies or keeping the lights on, rationing life itself like it's a luxury item, a premium subscription to breathing.
You write "liberty and justice for all" on every courthouse, but some "ALL’S" cost more than others, don't they? Some “ALL’S come with a credit check, a background screening, a ZIP code prerequisite.
If you really cared— the prison wouldn't be more packed than the classroom, the graveyards wouldn't be younger than the history books, and we wouldn't know the names of Black men and women only after hashtags turn them into tombstones.
You say you're the land of the free, but freedom's got a price tag, and it's in a currency most of us can't afford.
Peering from out this joint rest
Of boughs no winds bend
Time, tracked through each shadow-step
Markedly slowed up!
Whilst each beat, our anxious heart's
Further apart sounds.
The road, deaf to! That beside
Voiced, when wills collide.
The “Down the Road” girl is shadowing me,
loitering late at the end of my street,
lit up in fluorescents and pageantry
from the top of her head to the soles of her feet.
From where I stand, she is a distant sun,
with skin so pale you would swear she’s aglow.
She’s auburn hair that’s swept up in a bun,
bright eyes that bring back nights from years ago.
And she has tracked me here, this queen with no crown,
smoking a cigarette and looking coy.
She was a nova once, since dimmed and down,
come seeking revenge on a sun-worn toy.
Brandishing light that swells with darkness past,
she buries me deep, in long shadows cast.
10/6/25
Submitted for: Long Shadows
Sponsor: Craig Cornish
having been, seen and therefore known
the truth of consciousness full blown
as substratum of existence
etch if you will, our words on stone
there is no space, hence no distance
beheld when we shed resistance
seen in plain sight with our soul’s eye
recognised with God’s assistance
consciousness, the absolute I
is so dense even light can’t ply
energy intense tightly packed
omnipresent, so feels each sigh
each pulse vibrationally tracked
creation here-from is exact
wherefrom the universe appears
as God His will does so enact
An anonymous artist had named the painting:
'Bertram Crumm'
it was simply a depiction of a man
trudging over a blank Landscape.
No one had heard of this man,
but this enigmatic fact alone was intriguing,
and now he was perfectly framed.
After many years
an art critic tracked him down.
Crumm claimed to be a meatpacker
who worked in Allen Town,
yet no one could see him as a meatpacker
working in Allen Town.
Some saw nobility in his gait and posture,
some saw a furtive mindset, most declared
emphatically that Crumm was definitely
a poet!
If we had known
that Crumm had often confessed to his family
that he loathed poetry and was indifferent
to art in general
then that landscaped/portrait
would still be gathering dust in a Goodwill shop.
However, a billionaire owns it now,
and ironically,
he also can't write a lick of poetry either.
Tattered by bad decisions, misdirected, unheard
questions that remain answered.
In a dilemma unequivocally side tracked by distorted
thoughts that occupy one's mind in such a matter.
On many occasions succumbed by blindspots,
Yielded by one way symbols, directional lights.
Illuminated calmly on one's voyage a mission of a shift .
A changeover of uncertainty, and a realignment for
A wellbeing life.
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