Archival Review

[LeBroz]

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Some delicious phrasing going on here — just feel these words melting in your mouth.


Deliquescence by the sea
by Liar©


we all walk down that path
sometimes
and let attention wander
in tangent to the latest bend
wondering
what lay ahead
in forward motion
when circumstance
forged a new curve
into the binding
smooth walked trail

as if we could go on
off road for long
enough to make an impact
anyway

we all stand by that pond
sometimes
to sense real life
elusive out of reach
and patiently wait
for nonexistent currents
a gust of impotent wind
to bring promises
drifting
into our open hands

as if chaos theory fractals
were beneficial fairies
heeding to our wish
and curving logic
to please whims

we all dream
for something larger
than a tepid trifle's
twin edged kiss
something more
than this

for midwinter bloom
angels on pins
and elephants
though the needle's eye
we all dream of this
but do we know why?

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[LeBroz]

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Here's a little one with a bit of the cute factor; after all, it's about an event offspring never remember but parents never forget. Just think about it for a moment.


Delivery
by Artificial_I©


Mother pushed me out
Harder than father could ever push in.
So, there came a grayish baby.

Smack that bottom to a pout
Surely someone at least grinned
Hopefully, I have grown to a lady.

How my parents must have felt!
Maybe I, like a pizza delivered
At the door step, was just left.

But who remembers these things.
I’ve only heard the account,
Like those stories of queens and kings,
I merely recall a toddler climbing a mount.

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[LeBroz]

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An interesting form — not quite as formidable to format as I first feared. The things that dreams are made of in that state between sleep and waking.

Delusional Ballet
by jthserra©



Delusional Ballet

a
ballet
in...the
soft...night
as.....the
fog.....drifts
over...her..form
I am...lost...in her
perfect motion
a silent grace
subtle beauty
concealing
strength
and power
I wonder how
she can drift and
fly in such harmony
she becomes the
music in her
every move
a lilt of the
head a
soft note
a bend
of the
wrist
a soft
pause
a bow
she
fades
soft
into the fog covering the morning, into the fog of my dreams​

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[LeBroz]

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Don't know that this is so much about schizophrenia as it seems to be about middle aged regret — pleasures denied in youth that you now wish you'd experienced. Maybe that's why men in their middle age crisis rush out and buy a convertible muscle car and seek out some twenty something fun on the side.


Dementia Praecox
by Odeee©


Dementia Praecox





Crow's feet
And pouches under the eyes;
A touch of grey at the temples too,
Elegant, of course

Elegant, yes, and rotten within
Festering with desires unfed
Desires chained, held captive, subjugated.


But the devil too,
Does take his due,
Brings back to you,
That which you thought had renounced,
To redeem yourself as a man.

Today you dream of all those dreams
Which you in your youth condemned
As sentimental crap.

Today you lament
Crows feet
And pouches under the eyes,
A touch of grey at the temples too;
(Elegant, of course)

Forty-eight years worth of life
And are you a man today?

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[LeBroz]

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Those first two lines grabbed me and the irony that runs through this poem makes for some light humor.


Denial
by tungtied2u©


I am not in denial
simply California
a framework for paradox
where the organic produce
shines through an SUV haze

What better place
to ponder life's contradictions
where arrival sometimes seems
desertion and loyalty
becomes betrayal
cowardice morphs into bravery

as truth becomes blurred by need
loss is transformed into gain
yet emptiness still fills one's heart
despite trying to wash it clean
with a flood of tears

Three thousand miles
between two realities
I carry one in each hand
which one I open depends
where I think I'm headed

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[LeBroz]

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An image of a couple gaining strenth from each other, standing against all who would deny them.


Denial awaits
by RazzRajen©


Streams crossing the very ether,
Long gusts of wind ,
blowing her tendrils of thoughts.
Looks at them in wonder as
His mind slowly unravels.

red-tinged stones,
...............................sands of time and past lives,
ground into the dusky Earth.
Memories of what was, could be, and will be
nay shall be
...............................His will indomitable,
...............................hers bending
and Together
...............................hers wrapped and twined
with His,
They stand, immutable
against the railings of all
those scuttering around.

Those ghoulish ones ,
...............................opening closing seeking more,
ever more
and denial is what awaits.

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[LeBroz]

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Here's one whose word play you might enjoy — a rather thoughtful poem. Coming up, starting tomorrow, is a real treat from The Mutt.


Denied
by V Noire©


I can only whisper her name in dreams
The wakeful hours are mine to mourn alone
Behind the façade of worldly indifference
I watch the Opportunities, scarce and fleeting
Fall like petals onto a turbulent ebon pool

Pregnant, these shapes become the soft, pink lips of infatuation
revealing flesh and crimson
The colors of suffocating passions
Only when they burst from want
are they swallowed by the quiet waters of the black

This cherry blossom falls
and rests her head on my shoulder
Her lullaby works in reverse, stirring the monolith submerged
Her narcotic already weaves its mercurial talents
and I am held fast by my own desires

Hands slide around mine
Faltering desires flare, pounding against my chest
I am in an oubliette of my own design
A purgatory of empty longing
If only those lips would touch mine again
...but I am denied.

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[LeBroz]

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Let's start the weekend with The Mutt's social commentary series, Denizens. This morning's look is really powerful in the way it'll reveal your assumptions. Read it carefully to the end and check on your reactions as the full story is revealed.


Denizens: Ben
by The Mutt©


Ben sleeps in his uniform, people would joke,
and he always laughed as if it weren't true.
Ben wasn't too sure what were jokes anymore--
When you laugh over corpses you tend to forget.
Ben joined the cops 'cause he liked to drive fast,
he liked to shoot guns and push niggers around,
and he liked how he looked in his badge and his blues
that he wore like soft armor against a hard world.

No one much liked it when Ben came around
and Ben came around way too often these days.
He'd come through the door in a blast of cruel sunlight;
The afternoon drinkers would cringe on their stools.
Screwdriver breakfast and Absolut lunch,
sunglasses 24 hours a day;
He'd stop by on duty and stay for three hours--
Breath mints to mask the wet stink of his shame.

He'd talk about horrors as if they were sit-coms.
He'd talk about death while he ate pickled eggs.
He'd talk about niggers in front of the bus boy.
He'd talk to the waitress like she was a whore.
Ben used his hate the way people used air,
and chewed on his anger as if it were food.
He lived the illusion that he was maintaining;
ate pills for the demon that murdered his sleep.

Just a little black girl in a white Sunday dress
standing over her mother with blood on her shoes,
who asked him if she would be his little girl now
and clutched at his sleeve when they took her away.
Ben bagged the girl's mother and busted the boyfriend
and tossed the girl into the state care machine.
Now Ben sees white dresses around every corner,
in the dead eyes of junkies, in beckoning graves.

Ben tries to drown her with vodka and bluster--
Just another dumb nigger without any hope,
who'd grow up to suck cock and smoke rock and get babies
and die before she had a chance to grow old.
Now nightly she stands at the foot of his bed,
eyes begging for answers, with blood on her shoes.
He stares at his pistol and tastes the gunmetal
and holds his black face in his black, calloused hands.

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[LeBroz]

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Living on with imagined glories. The illustrated version The Mutt revealed on the Forum shows promise — ought to work well on this piece. Just wondering how he'll handle it on the preceding poem about Ben.


Denizens: Charlie
by The Mutt©


Charlie was a decorated Navy Seal.
That's just what he'd tell you, just that way.
Couldn't talk about it, he'd tell you, for hours on end,
classified, ya understand, but the stories he could tell...
Like pushing a Swift Boat up the Mekong mud,
once he had heard about them on the TV.
Charlie got promoted from barnacle scraper
whenever he walked through the doors of a bar.

His crew-cut was the gray of Biloxi sand,
and you hoped that the stains on his pants were mustard,
and his back was bent by the weight of lost promise,
and the girl in Virginia with eyes like a saint.
And oh he had been such a handsome young man,
and he'd had any girl that he wanted, ya understand,
but the girl that he needed had broken his heart,
leaving a hollow he filled with cheap beer.

And no one believed a word Charlie would say,
except about beer and the Saint Louie Cards.
There's only two beers, he'd say; Falstaff and Root,
and you can't find a Falstaff to save your damned soul.
If you bought him a Pabst he would tell you the tale
of the quick cup of coffee he'd had in the show,
of Dizzy Dean and Stan the Man, ya understand,
and the time he lost a ground ball in the sun.

He'd pound his left hand on the bar so hard you'd wince,
and cut your eyes to the stubs where his fingers weren't,
and the pink pork skin, stretched tight on the bones,
and the white-line scars, like a road map of hell.
His thumb went to plate glass in Norfolk, frost bit off three more.
His middle finger he left in Hollywood,
when Lupe Velez, The Mexican Spitfire,
surprised him by crossing her legs.

Gotcha, he'd shout, and laugh 'til he coughed blood,
and that was worth another Pabst, don't ya think?
Cos it's late in the month, ya unnerstan,
and the V. A. got his check screwed up anyway.
Black Ops and Wetwork, no records kept, yunnerstan?
Fuck a bunch of Navy... the thanks I get,
cos Charlie don't need nothin' from nobody,
'cept a beer and a smoke, and maybe a short ride home.

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[The Mutt]

Living on with imagined glories. The illustrated version The Mutt revealed on the Forum shows promise — ought to work well on this piece. Just wondering how he'll handle it on the preceding poem about Ben.

I'll just have to keep Ben a shadowy figure until the last panel; a silhoutte in the bar door, a gloved hand, showing people reacting to Ben rather than showing him, etc.

Thanks for remembering these.

 

[LeBroz]

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Yesterday, the men took the stage. Today, it's the women performing. Now we know where she came from, that woman that gets older each year and correspondingly more beautiful the later and drunker the men get.


Denizens: Debbie
by The Mutt©


Debbie was fading like the expensive blue jeans

that were painted on her womanly hips.

She was as brittle as the spray of hair that haloed her gaudy face,

and caught blonde-seeking eyes from across the bar.

She hadn't bought a drink since 1979,

and hadn't gone home sober since the senior prom.

She perched on a corner stool, an eagle on a crag,

scanning the crowd for Rolex fish to grasp in blood-red talons.



She knew just how to silhouette her basketball breasts

against the glow of the playoffs on the big screen TV.

She could feel the eyes on them like teenaged hands,

clumsily clawing for nipples under the wire and lace.

Silicone tickets that opened all doors

and kept the whiskey sour and the appetizers hot,

she brushed rose blush between them, to deepen the lure,

and sheathed them in cashmere that begged to be touched.



Debbie called one her pride and the other her joy,

and they threatened her buttons when she'd laugh too loud

at a salesman's jokes, just a little too dirty

to tell a nice girl in a place like this.

She'd lay her hand gently on his wedding band

and pat it just twice as she stood up to whisper

that she had to go tinkle, so don't run away;

soft breath in his ear and hard breasts on his back.



In the ladies room mirror she'd count every year

between her and the prom queen that she'd been in school,

who stroked cocks and egos in stairwells and cars,

and ignored the whispers that swirled in her wake.

She'd remember the boy in the red Gran Torino,

who'd written “UOY EVOL I” in the steam on the windshield,

and taken her cherry and left her a daughter

to kill in a clinic across the state line.



She searched for that girl in the faces of strangers,

and looked for “I love you” each night after work.


But she settled for "want you" and "need you" and "fuck you",

she settled for cocktails and “promise I'll call you”,

she settled on a barstool, adjusted her pride and joy,

shook out a Marlboro and waved it in surrender,

and she waited, a little longer every time,

for a strong hand to steady, and for fire to breathe.

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[LeBroz]

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An unpleasant visage presented here — sounds like another look at Debbie a couple decades later, all the worse for wear. Talk about looking for love in all the wrong places!


Denizens: Maggie
by The Mutt©


Mad Maggie walked with a crooked cane
of gnarled and twisted oak,
a knobby shillelagh, as Irish as her eyes,
and hard as the face she showed strangers.
She gripped it like folk wisdom,
and shook it like a fist,
at damned kids and damned hippies
and colored people - why must they always shout?

She wore her gray hair down to her waist
and it whipped in the wind like Halloween,
and the tattoo of the palm tree on her breast
had faded to the blue of Winston smoke,
and drooped like a dusty houseplant,
thirsty for water and kind words,
and her nipples were brown as tobacco spit
and dry with the ache of childlessness.

The nose on her face was as plain
as a rusty Esso sign,
hanging loose over dry pumps
in a barren and weedy lot.
"Running water never freezes,"
Mad Maggie would shout,
as she'd pat pat thok from dive to dive,
trading kisses for tales of failed love.

Mad Maggie called everyone Lover,
and kissed them with waxy pink lips,
smearing them with cheap affection
and the stink of truck stop perfume.
And everybody called her lover,
though none would admit it sober,
but most had spent their drunken lust
between her bony legs a time or two.

And she clutched her cane like a root on a cliffside,
afraid she would fall off the world,
and what had been an affectation
became an identity - Mad Maggie,
with the crooked cane and the twisted smile,
who called me Lover on desperate nights,
when whiskey kisses tasted like movie stars,
and mad love cured my soul like country ham.

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[LeBroz]

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Here's another done well, where you need read through to the end for best effect. A truly tragic figure you start out detesting till the rest of the story's revealed and you feel rage at what happened to him and sad sympathy for how his life's spun out of control.



Denizens: Trip
by The Mutt©


Trip lettered in wrestling, he still wore the jacket,
he still wore the nickname he got from his coach.
If you called him his real name he'd act like a stranger--
what the hell kind of man is named Myron?
Trip had a head like a Halloween pumpkin
and ears like the suicide doors of a Lincoln,
his belly was round and as hard as a fist,
and Trip never smiled because Trip was pissed off.

Pissed off at women and faggots and fate
and his god damned job and that punk over there
with the fruity haircut and watery eyes--
what the hell kind of man wears an earring?
Trip once beat a fag with a Louisville Slugger
for asking if they'd ever met in Saint Pete.
Hate rose off Trip like a highway mirage
and lived in his eyes like a rat in a cage.

Trip read a book once, he didn't much like it,
a book Father Murphy had shoved down his throat,
a book about pigs that turned out to be Commies--
why the hell can't things be what they are?
He still had the book on the shelf with his porn tapes,
a cartoon on the cover of pigs in top-hats,
and when he was drunk he would read the inscription
Father Murphy had written in delicate script.

When Trip was a boy he had served at the altar
of the church of Our Lady of Sorrows.
He liked lighting candles and swinging the censer
and the smell of the incence and funeral flowers.
And he liked Father Murphy until that Palm Sunday
he'd unzipped his pants in the rectory office
and Trip knelt before him in fear of damnation
and tasted the sacrament salt on his tongue.

"How can there be sin in an act born of love?"
Father Murphy said softly as he dried Trip's tears
and councilled that silence was pleasing to God;
The boy never whispered a word to a soul.
Trip never forgot and he never forgave,
but on hazy drunk Sundays he'd find himself kneeling
at urinal altars in truck-stop cathedrals,
sucking salvation from nameless, young saints.

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[LeBroz]

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My personal favorite of this character study series. It's very easy to empathize with James in this sympathetic portrayal of a man who's living life alone after, it can be assumed, his wife's died. In his actions he's reaching out to the waitresses at the diner though it's implied that he's really not prepared for any real relationship. A noble though tragic figure.


Denizens: James
by The Mutt©


James has his lunch everyday at 12:30
at the same corner table, the same corner bar.
He orders the same seven meals without fail;
today is a Tuesday, so he'll have a club.
Without the tomato, he'll say to the waitress,
as if they don't know all his orders by heart,
and know that he likes his wheat toast brown and crispy,
and know that he tips like a drunken rock star.

He shields himself safely behind a thick book--
a title he's carefully picked to intrigue
the waitress who serves him that day of the week;
Tuesdays are Tess, so he reads Ed McBain.
Sci-Fi for Annie, dragons for Kim,
political thrillers for Dottie and Gwen.
That way they can chat without having to pry,
and James can be dashing and Tess can be sweet.

Sheltered in sameness, pretending to read,
he watches his angels as they juggle plates
and fend of the feelers of boorish, young strangers
and laugh at their antics, but never at him.
James often wonders what they say about him
after he leaves and they sit counting tips;
he wonders if they liked his cable-knit sweater,
he wonders if they thought his shirt was too loud.

James dresses for lunches like they were auditions,
with careful attention to every detail,
and sits at his table in anticipation
that one day a waitress will sit by his side.
She'll ask why a man of such obvious charm
has lunch all alone every day of the week,
and ask why he's never once asked for her number
and tell him for once she is free Saturday.

But after an hour, he'll finish his meal
and close up his book and brush crumbs from his lap,
and stack all his silverware next to his plate
and walk to the door with a wave and a smile.
He'll walk past the window and hope they are watching
the confident stride of a man without cares,
then panic will grip him until he is safely
behind the locked doors of his house up the street.

He'll take off the jacket he'd carefully chosen
and hang it up neatly beside his wife's coat.
He'll call out her name, not expecting an answer,
and walk through the emptiness back to their room.
He'll lay on his side of the bed and remember
the purse of her lips when she sipped a bent straw,
and how they would talk when he'd feed her her dinner...
then he'll think about Wednesdays and corned beef on rye.

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[LeBroz]

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The poignancy in this can best be felt if you read this after the original from The Mutt. It's quite a tribute to any poet that another poet is inspired enough by their writing that they write another poem in response.


Denizens : James
by doormouse©


He's back. Same table, same book, same order.
James always makes my heart sing when I serve him
his club and side serve of fries on Tuesday.

The cable neck sweater
stands him out from the crowd
of the regular Joes and their steak and chips.

Dragons and demonology he reads most days
others it's sci-fi, McBain or some political crap.

Still his eyes never meet mine
yet I yearn and wonder with lust filled awe
that one day his blue eyes will gaze
and see my desire.

I watch him leave and sigh every Tuesday
and pray he'll return the following
with another book of wisdom
of subjects that make me weak.

I've seen his gazes as he pretends to read
over unskimmed pages
as he watches Annie, Dottie
and Gwen clear tables
yet he never notices me.

Tuesdays come and go
yet my desire grows with each
hoping his book
is for me and my dragon foe.

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[LeBroz]

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Here's a little oddity that might appeal to your tastes or perhaps you just want to try something a little different.


Denver's Beat Poetry Driving Tour
by hippiedude©


On The Denver Beat Poetry Driving Tour,
I looked back to discover
Kerouac, Cassady, and Ginsberg,
roaring across the Civic Center Park lawn;
during that torrid, tremendous, Benzedrine
season at the Colburn Hotel,
smoke, liquor, dream beat discussion
in the corner of the bar downstairs,
dying under the bright, hero lights of
Sonny Lawson Baseball field,
running after women and legends of jazz,
mingling near decrepit mansions
at Cassady’s Curtis Park,
hearing cat calls, curses, high pitched screams,
and bawdy, feline laughter,
a six year old pleading for money,
pleading for his father,
watches the clock on the department store,
sends letters to a friend from the reformatory,
and a fanciful writer pays an advance
for a house where he was never really at home.

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[LeBroz]

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Here's a piece that so nicely describes the whole transitional stage between sleep and wakefulness; a time that can be so pleasing. And I love that 'breath tiptoes' line.


Departing
by mummys dirty angel©


A hot sultry night
In a place between awake and slumber
Do I feel you?
I turn to face you
Your breath tiptoes upon my arm
My hand lays on soft plumpness
Moulded with your curves
Are you really there?
Now present, is a chilly air
A cloudy shadow rises
Eyes flutter as consciousness beckons
I see you drifting
On the gentle breeze
My weary arm lifts
And passes through the mist
Eyes awake as you escape
Through the partly open window

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[LeBroz]

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Here's one with the touch of the surreal about it.


Departures
by champagne1982©


The moon bleeds drops of luminescence,
Like pearls, glowing beads of ichor fall,
Drizzling cool opalescence,
Upon the deceitful pond.

Beneath the tranquil, moonlit face,
A sweeping current flows,
As lithe as a dancer's grace,
Or a willow's whispering fronds.

The breeze slips through the leaves,
With artful, turning arabesques.
Craving reality, perversly, man grieves
Ghosts held by Purgatory's bond.

But still the moon glows with Life's essence,
As souls pass without leaving a trace
Of that fabric warped in time's skillful weaves,
History's roving vagabonds.

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[LeBroz]

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Balanced presentation of depression — you can feel the emotion in the words while not getting depressed.


Depression and Damnation
by lostandfounder©


Depression and damnation
Wrapped around each other
Like the roots of a suicide tree
Which is the mother, which is the child?

Traveling alongside the path
But not on it
Cut by barbs and needles
Crouching in the underbrush
To escape the light of the son

Screaming at the cross
Roads that have no destination
Lost, found, and lost again
While laughing at blasphemy

Unable to feel nothing
Cloudy skies bleed
Salt-water rain
No way to keep dry

Curled up on the ground
A fetus out of utero
Discovers loneliness

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[LeBroz]

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This has a feel of classic timelessness — you'd almost feel that they don't write like this anymore.


Depth
by jthserra©


Depth

Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made:
.........William Shakespeare from "Ariel's Song" from The Tempest​

To drown, reflected in mirror
in silent echoes of form
a shadow light lost in color
suddenly rippled and worn
in fractured edges. A shattered
liquid embracing my voice
its depth of soul forever heard
this final whisper: a choice
not made in heaven, far below
in bones encrusted in sand
and what remains cannot bestow
what I felt slip through my hand.
A mirrored face lost forever
a heart, a soul, vain to sever.

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[LeBroz]

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Sparse and evocative — saying much with a few carefully chosen words.


depth
by Decayed Angel©


depth

the depth of light
reflected, wavering
in the breath of whispers
seemingly more, but no...
so much less:
a butterfly sipping nectar --
a branch bent from the weight
of a single raindrop
fingertips almost touching
the water, almost deep

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[LeBroz]

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Here you go — an excellent piece to gnaw on this weekend while I take a break {I'll be back in the sandbox Monday). I especially like the 3rd from the last strophe.


Dérangé
by Lauren Hynde©




Give me the ravenous eyes, the soft sequined flesh.

Set to pulse, the sun observes the slow mysteries
that swathe the zenith possessed.
I know up above. The bitter that is to slash the veins
to with a gaze harvest the incense, the signs,
the colourless language of the harps and the sound and the fingers,
the dreams of the roses as they rise from the skin.

The exquisite serpent.

Of lips are the texts as scimitars.

Simply peel open the birch through the long fissure of colour,
as if the spectacle were an embryo,
an oxymoron.

An all-embracing circuit warms through the light bulb.

A swimming pool of incandescent tungsten.

Give me the tenderness of the steel in blood-red milk
to mould the eternal corpses,
had I a ladle shell.

The volcano,
the magma.

It knows how to soften in tongues, the fire
that the wind stirs that stirs the water
that the water washes that the body weaves
that maddens as the tall brain
meekly eats the delinquent dream.¹

Give me the odd hours for the void silence,
the purple drawing,
the forgetting on mid-desert.

That I walk across the dunes, the fine sand,
amidst the clouds.



¹ "The tall brain meekly eats the delinquent dream" was the random product of a collaborative Exquisite Corpse writing game conducted on the Poetry Feedback and Discussion forum.

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[LeBroz]

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I needed that weekend so much that I took an extra day; couldn't let Canadians have all the fun. Reading the following reminds me of how differently men and women react to relationship stresses.


Desensitize
by dorksicle©


Amateur Prose

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I feel my lips trembling.
Then the wetness on my cheeks and my body shakes with sobs.

I bring my knees into my chest and wrap my arms around my legs tightly.
Crawling up into a ball.

I try to be as small as possible.

Put my hands over my forehead, I suck in air.
Breathe, I tell myself.

Music just makes all this shit easier to swallow.

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[LeBroz]

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A bit of humor as the critics pan you ~ and where poetry's concerned, everyone's a critic.


Desperately Seeking Calliopeia
by Miss Oatlash©


She sits in her room,
pen and paper at hand,
afraid that her missives
are nothing but bland.
Emotions unbridled
but no ink will flow;
She’s so much to say
that no one will know.

She can’t find her voice,
her feelings, her words.
Where is that harmony
written in thirds?
She’s anxious to write
a poem that will please
the others who seem
to write with such ease.

What is a poem?
she asks in the dark.
Inspiration alludes her;
she waits for the spark
to burst into flame
and swirl in her mind.
Instead she just sits,
her thoughts undefined.

Soon all her scribbles
begin to make sense,
her sentences still
in imperfect tense.
But maybe her scrawl
will turn into verse
clever enough to
break this damn curse.

With structure and cadence,
some meter and rhyme,
maybe the critics
will like it this time.
She logs on the ’net
to post it before
her courage fails and
she deletes it once more.

Next morning she wakes
and pulls up the site
certain she’d read
of the critics delight.
But to her dismay
they hated each phrase
Her work had received
not one word of praise.

Forlorn and depressed
she knew what to do:
She wrote a haiku
to bid them adieu;
Swallowed her pride
with a bottle of red;
Pulled out a Luger
and shot herself dead!

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Farewell Haiku

So depressed am I.
Your displeasure cuts too deep.
You hate me. Me too.

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[LeBroz]

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Now here's one practically bursting with love's spiritual giddiness — makes so many love poems seem so mundane.


Dharma Life
by Angeline©


Bob Dylan and Middle English
reign on this love supreme.
Poetry slides down walls,
rolls in cookpots.
Words simmer, bubble
strophes, stanzas.
We harmonize in cantos.

I look at my knee,
pick up a scabbed rhyme
dropped from my stony past,
and press on another phrase.

He brings me music.
He brings me books.
Kerouac speaks in his voice,
and Dharma is lionized
twixt silly smiles,
mouthing metaphors,
understanding.

We're two wacked out intellectuals,
he laughs, then reads
from some medieval text.

I feel lazy like a sunflower,
swayed and dark eyed,
lifted out of the storm,
brightened in poetry grown live
with arms, legs, shaped
in fingers holding my hands
to the bristly texture
of his sweet face.

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