This vampire with unembellished hair,
how sterile are the scars from his bite?
He leaves himself all over your mouth,
an aftertaste of rust and vanilla;
How sterile are the scars from his bite,
with glossy eyes grotesque and vulgar?
I guess I’ll have to risk just one taste;
He leaves himself all over your mouth,
senses suspended you lick it up;
Warm and wanting from the inside out;
An aftertaste of rust and vanilla
blood mixed with his foamy latte;
Low key sensuality caught in tresses.
If I would be known as an advocate
Let it be for what’s just and fair,
As I see it, telling it right and straight
The truth is not in a lot of hot air!
In any case, I would much rather
Hear the story from original sources,
Unembellished with a lot of blather
So, let me rely on my own resources.
Opinion is opinion; news is news!
Tell me in plain terms what happened
Don’t give me any secondhand views,
Or try to persuade with a chart, and
Insult me with other “expert” points
I’m not interested in the sensational,
Your network’s biased viewpoints,
News should not be confrontational.
Tell me who, what, when, and where
Work your way from major to minor
Tell me the facts and leave it there,
For me, the evening news will be finer.
Written August 14, 2022
I wandered round the lonely graveyard.
The few mourners did not bother to look at me.
I ought to know the paths so well
Ah there it was, unembellished as I had left it.
Silence reigned everywhere, except for some bugs
I began to wonder what I was doing there.
Then a small group of mourners appeared.
Four bored men carried a coffin, plain as can be.
The burial took very little time to carry out.
A priest mumbled a few prayers and all left.
Except for a woman all dressed in ebony black.
She shed no tears nor mumbled any prayer.
And then she left without one glace at me.
There on the slab someone left a picture frame.
Curiosity got the better of me and soon I saw
It was a picture of me. The slab opened
And I just entered my place inside and all was calm.
Fiction, just a ghost story
As you read this poem, I’m mentally undressing you.
Word by word your protests drop to the floor.
Syllable by syllable I pare you down to honest flesh.
Utterance by utterance, your secrets are revealed
Until you’re nude, standing before me
Natural and unembellished, so you can truly appreciate
The intense sincerity of my words.
Then I’ll softly stroke your personal pronouns
And delicately fondle all your feminine articles.
I’ll take a most teasing interest in your superlative adjectives.
And for your pleasure, I’ll lovingly coordinate your conjunctions.
My linguistic interlocution will then slowly, slowly, slowly
Coax your previously in-transitive verbs to thrill
To multiple, unutterably intense and delicious
Spasms of orgasmic literary ecstasy!!!
And that’s just the table of contents.
P.S. Always practice safe text.
At times the cracks
within our souls
Are placed there for a
simple reason
Our lives possess
certain goals
Just assuredly as each
of the seasons
So we can find the one
who seals the cracks
Who molds us back into
an unembellished form
To be there for us picking
up what we lack
Becoming our thunder in
every brainstorm
That one person
who completes us
The light that shines
in our night skies
The one who gives
us undying love
When our soul cries
the one that replies
To finish each of our
incomplete sentences
There for us when we
become defective
Knowing each of our
own preferences
Even to know what is
our perspective
AMALGAMS of reality
dreams diversified
nostalgia
for the country
of his soul
colour
clarified
echos of nature
with
the universal
flying
floating
images of marital bliss
emotion elevated
imagination emphasised
magnified on high
with
stylistic symbols
amimalistic
beasts of beauty
in bovine backdrops
the unexplained declaimed
unembellished
fantastical
eclectic imagery
unique
childlike
in cubist
conception
bringing
revolution to
the eyes
Whores of Babylon, I breathe amongst you everyday
On city streets, in country lanes, along lone alleyways
Selling illegal merchandise, cheap, tainted, unrefined
Tempting this incognito angel, back into my own kind
Dens of iniquity, hedonistic programs, carnal pleasure
Take me to your pimp, I’ve got a wallet full of treasure
Bring good gear, Snow White, not crude crystal meth
Tonight I’m getting wasted, to within one inch of death
Seedy massage parlors, proffering rubdowns, with oils
This upstanding citizen, on tables of unembellished soil
Licking toads back, my penchant, as I pray to the gods
Yapping like a puppy, choke chained, spanked with rods
Cesspools of assignation, motel rooms, knocking shops
Gonna keep banging up, til my veins collapse from shock
Tomorrow chase the dragon, before addressing a church
Sermons of fire and brimstone, damning you, is my purge.
By
David Kavanagh
At times the cracks
within our souls
Are placed there for a
simple reason
Our lives possess
certain goals
Just assuredly as each
of the seasons
So we can find the one
who seals the cracks
Who molds us back into an
unembellished form
To be there for us picking
up what we lack
Becoming our thunder in
every brainstorm
That one person
who completes us
The light that shines
in our night skies
The one who gives
us undying love
When our soul cries
the one that replies
To finish each of our
incomplete sentences
There for us when we
become defective
Knowing each of our
own preferences
Even to know what is
our perspective
12/12/2020
Sponsor Chantelle Anne Cooke
seasoned apparel
fall has picturesque
donning and winter dress in
unembellished whites
2019 November 05
*3rd Place*
A late Fall or Early Winter Haiku
~~Tania Kitchin
"I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the moon's repose."
---"La Figlia Che Pionge"; T.S. Eliot
Que tan dificil es
decir todo lo que siento.
O! This emptiness,
this vacuity,
this unfilled mental space
not admitting place
to what does not pass
our tests of time,
or logic --
no crutches
in opposition to
unembellished fact --
no sweetened fairy tales,
no selfish constructs
to justify
seizing goods or power;
no promises of forever
nor of endless pleasures:
only bare existence --
"being" --
in this unguided,
ultimately purposeless
angst-filled universe.
And, always,
mere inertia, eternal resistance
or accelerating change toward
foreseeable, entirely predictable
end.
Act!
Construct reality!
Live your life.
All things must be brought into this world, one way or another.
Humans, cats, and octopi too.
Unadorned, unembellished plant pot,
Holds the key to a new life.
Tendrils filled with hope, reaching up and up and up again.
A lamp, now antique, still has that magic.
It brings life of its own into the world, a light in the dark.
A pen, flowing with ideas, waiting to be compiled.
Built upon a foundation of crisp paper,
Sturdy as ever, though it is frail.
One way or another, all things must be brought into this world.
For the past, the future was never apparent
its dormant projection lay in unformed
no thought ever counted it of concern
Time tripped and dawdled, discovering playful as children do
a continuous today absent of tomorrow
the truancy of sleep the night merely borrowed
Only questions to remember
more important than the befuddled them to answer
a nursery-rhyme of colour designed to wonder
Why,why, why didn’t care to reason
but considered the importance of knowing nothing
and still, and still be in covenant with everything
There was no path to tread, no spirit to seek
no doorway held fast by rusted hinge
no separation between exploring mind
All was held in a delicate of light
those angel hands of every child
so unembellished in their witness never defined
So it is as in the continuous today
until the futures chain to changeable edge
rattles the bars and locks us all away
Such a scarecrow death insinuates
and by contemptible depiction reiterates
damnations end of miracles
I want a plain substandard coffin,
Wide enough to contain my wishes,
The dreams that danced like fireflies,
Flickering in the night of my soul,
A much more humbled prospect;
A faultless, unadulterated vision,
Where simplicity cradles my last breath,
And the weight of excess melts away,
Like morning mist beneath the sun.
I want a bare but pure funeral,
An ordinary unembellished service,
Where the air is thick with the essence of being,
And the echoes of my laughter linger,
A soft reminder of a life well-lived.
With a short funeral hymn to rest my body,
In the soft embrace of the earth,
Perfect words worded perfectly,
Into the fit painted by another Kline,
A brushstroke of grace on the canvas of grief.
So when the cries of the remnants of Leteng bong,
Resound like a distant thunderstorm,
Goaded by emotions so strong,
They hum a little song,
A melody of memories and whispers,
A gentle lullaby for the weary heart,
A short funeral hymn to rest my body,
In the know of mine,
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