Marissa Leigh Dalton - One Poem

Memory

 I still feel your touch,
I still hear your voice,
But all you are is a memory,
A memory from long ago,
A time when I was happy,
A time when I was whole.

Now I am dead,
A rotting corpse in the ground,
But my soul lives on,
Hearing and feeling everything from before,
My heart lives on,
Sitting in my rotting chest

Sarah Hamadeh - One Poem

Imagine we lived in a castle
 
So far into the meadows
Where the sun sets into a nearby lake.
Where you only hear the softest melodies
springing from the upper streams.

Imagine we lived in a castle
So huge and so far from our real world
Where the doves hover above the water fountains.
Their purity enriches our castle with pride.

Imagine we lived in a castle
So tremendous and marvelous.
Where the mother swan
swims with her children around the lake.

Imagine we lived in a castle
Where the birds wake us up
with their soft pleasant voices
Fulfilling our eyes with their prismatic colors.

Imagine we lived in a castle
So different from our real world.
Where the imaginary creatures welcome us
to their own wonderland...
Imagine we lived in a castle...

Michael Lee Johnson - Three Poems

Bowl of Petunias

 

If you must leave me please

leave me for something special,

like a beautiful bowl of petunias-

for when the memories leak

and cracks appear

and old memories fade,

flowers rebuff bloom,

sidewalks fester weeds

and we both lie down

separately from each other

for the very last time.

Inside This World Zipped

 

I‘m inside this world of silent creative space

within a zipped up tube of  words

within the darkness I crawl

from my vocabulary.

I look on the walls of night

looking for an exit.

I look through the crow in the darkness,

the gray on the bark of the willow tree,

serve as my lantern out of here.

Wayward are the gray clouds

I can’t see I toss my faith upon.

Wild horses of creativity form

lines, stanzas, poems with

and without form.

It’s here I beach the darkness

and the conclusion in the end

and the final lines that allow

you to envelope me between

my screams and creativity.

The Seasons and the Slants 

 

I live my life inside my patio window.

It’s here, at my business desk I slip

into my own warm pajamas and slippers-

seek Jesus, come to terms

with my own cross and brittle conditions.

Outside, winter night turns to winter storm,

the blue jay, cardinal, sparrows and doves

go into hiding, away from the razor whipping winds,

behind willow tree bare limb branches-

they lose their faces in somber hue.

Their voices at night abbreviate

and are still, short like Hemingway sentences.

With this poetic mind, no one cares

about the seasons and the slants

the wind or its echoes.

I live my life inside my patio window.

Jason E. Hodges - One Poem

Love

Like a whirl wind a whirling
Love gently turns your world upside down

Shakes you a bit

Yourself is a shaking in the kindest of ways
Tossed about by the hormones a tossing
Love
In the darkness two heartbeats are beating
Pounding with speed from their embrace in the night
So lightly a drag from fingernails a dragging
Makes shivers shiver ever so softly
Gently right down my spine
Like a tattoo on the skin of stinging hot flesh
The endorphins rush is almost too much to bear
Love
Like a thousand love lines of a thousand love letters
As much passion drips from the last word of the last line
As the first word of the first line
For the power of love is as blind as the blinded
For it sees no boundaries
No marks scratched in sand
Love
It follows no rules made by the making
For the making seldom feel love at all
So if love sneaks up with tiptoes of quiet
Take it for all that it is
For it might not come back for a long, long time
So hold it tight
Never let it go

Devlin De La Chapa - Two Poems

Unloved

If you were my heart
then your spirit was my doom.
If you were my soul
then your body was my end.
 
If earth was our birthing place
then fire were the emotions we bore.
If air is what we swallowed
then water is what we breathed.
 
If history is what we achieved
then the past never existed.
If the present is all that we have left
then the future must be erased-
 
unloved
 
Unaltered 
the beating
of a heart
is very
inspirational
after it’s been
broken

Laurence W. Thomas - One Poem

Highways

I choose between several routes

to take me to the north woods

for a vacation on a river.

One highway is not better

than another, just different,

the cottage in the pines,

the same -- whichever road I take.

Returning home

after a time rafting down the river

or sitting in front of the fireplace

alone or in good company,

I take a different highway,

no less crowded and noisy.

Only the last few miles

remain the same.

Gordon Purkis - Three Poems

Heremeadow

Heremeadow –

underneath Mount Sadness

is where I lay

while the wheels keep rolling by

Heremeadow –

where the hush and sway of

limitless life bends a knee to the swell of

afternoon’s countless hours

Heremeadow –

fields of fire where my soul cries,

cries over all the days of yesterday,

days that never were and always are

Heremeadow –

a thread spun of sunlight

and life is a tender thread

woven by miracle

Heremeadow –

where everything lasts forever

but nothing is permanent,

a time when regret is palpable,

how the years seem to have been

wasted on nothing of importance

Heremeadow –

where we put a value on everything

done or said

undone or unsaid

where we learned to judge our gifts

as too cold, too soft, too hard

Heremeadow –

countenance of disappointment

where dreams are a dark and hazy

sojourn into the subconscious

Lady Poverty

To realize I am without means

is the doorway I walk through

to wealth

holding water in my hand

dancing without rhythm

to no music

shrugging my shoulders but not sighing

*

Not that I don’t love her

but her constant complaints

about her temperature

makes me think of Goldilocks,

vacillating between porridges and beds,

except she never comments

when things are just right

*

And if you ask me if I’m sometimes troubled

I’ll say I either am or was

and maybe it’s not being a saint that sucks,

not realizing that to be a saint you must

be troubled, poor, starved,

with a constant hunger for the nonmaterial,

playing an empty-handed game that windmills play

and twirl

It will be told

It will be told

like all of the stories that have been told of

how X became Z,

either suddenly or slowly,

how the creature was brought to earth

and how we ended up having to kill it

and what it told us about ourselves.

But that’s fiction and I only want to know the truth –

even though I wasn’t there.

I just want to know one thing

and move on to the next thing

do one thing, know it, and have it be true.

Then there’s destiny

and there’s God’s plan.

Somehow life began once upon a time when I opened my eyes

and it carried on

and it’s brought me here to today.

           

If there’s something I’m not doing

                                      that I should be

  I need to / want to know what it is

If there’s something I’m doing

                                      that I shouldn't be

  I need to / want to know what it is

Once there was nothing but time

but now there’s never enough.

But it will be told, the story, and it will be true.

It will be told so let it unfold.

Diane Webster - One Poem

Welcome Mat Inside

The rubber knobs on the welcome mat
disappeared from use each day
as I unlocked the door
and stepped inside greeted
by the mat like a dog
expecting supper and so glad
I was home again.

Emma Ambos - One Poem

Where I've Been

 

Shutterfly

flutterby

as I click my eye

subtly

across the plains

and mains

that you fly by

and we cannot

forget the ports

that would be catty

and prudish.

Sarah Gamutan - One Poem

A Pensive Lady

 

They say I am a loner - a

Loser. I agree with them. Yet,

I am not. They seek my oblivion but

I believe them-senses; hence, I am not.

 

They say writers are weepers in

The sky and the pens and the papers

Are their friends. I understand them;

Yet, I am not a sad soul. I bet not. Life

 

Is like a roller coaster. You dump me

But you chase for money; but, I am not

Sad. I won't cry if the root of melancholy is

The heartbreak! I am not moved. I am not!

 

Then I go back to the room, grab a

Coffee and spill it on my sheets. I drown

Myself with tears for I cannot write because

The COFFEE quickens the beat of my hand- to

 

Hold the pen so I can start this poem to

End. But, I deny my mirror. A hideous countenance.

A soul can not be a poet just to deny melancholy.

Hence, I write the poem with my hand still holding

The pen. But my mind is still on the coffee. Then my

 

Temple started to ask, " Why isn' t a simple coffee

Good enough to dilute the sadness?"

 

The poem started to end. Then, it started

To answer the question itself. I'm not perplexed.