Alone - Hello Poetry

Aug 2020

Francie Lynch

I lift pens.
(You can never have enough of them)
Funeral Homes leave them lying around. They're the only good thing about Visitations.
Banks tie them down, but there are others, here and there.
There are those who want to take your pens too.
People with petitions are always asking to borrow a pen.
They want my ink and blood.
Be sure you get yours back.
I have a legit fountain pen collection.
Proud of my Parker I got in Oxford years ago,
During a different life that lead to this one.
Biff Loman lifted Mr. Oliver's pen,
After his epiphany.
Just runs in and steals it.
Am I a tragic figure as well?
Are we all playing our parts in
The Death of a Nation.

#tragedy #democracy #americanpolitics #election2020 #politics

Aug 2020

Justin S Wampler

Windows to the soul

Eyes like two high-beams,
Felt them sweep over me,
And focus to a point
Like a dangerous laser beam.

Then when I turned my head
And peered back into them,
If I looked closely enough
I could hear moaning in my head,
I could see her in my bed,

Or her bed, or on the floor,
Or right here against this door,
Or inside my car, or behind those trees,
Or down in the dirt, down on her knees.

Her eyes told me stories,
That I wouldn't believe.
Those intense high-beam eyes
That washed over me,
And flooded me with light
Shining from radiant memories
Of everyone else that she's looked at
The same way she was looking
At me.

Did they all see her as I did?
Wet in the dirt?
In a light floral skirt?
Or is it different for everyone
That peeks back at her?

I still feel them
Looking at me
Across all these miles
Stretched in-between.

Maybe that's wishful thinking.
Maybe, indeed.

It's hard to describe.

Aug 2020

Mel Little

Next Time

Hear me out,
5 years will pass quickly and slowly.
A jumble of seconds, slow and steady to create another 525,600 minutes to close out this last chapter.

Growth comes and goes in waves, realization its steady companion. We are still so ******* young.

Perhaps Peter Pan had it right. I do not want to be grown yet, stuck between birth and death; I watch time tumble treacherously through my fingers like quicksand, no where to go but down.

Yet I can pick you up like a favorite book. I've seen all the creases and fades and lines and letters before, but it's been 5 long years and there's something exciting about you still.

If this steady crawl to the end is it for all of us, perhaps I'll meet you in the next life. Maybe next time, we can get it right.

Jul 2020

Madeysin

Copper

Living on the edge with so many stipulations, suffocating

Jul 2020

Dark n Beautiful

Child Watches Your Manners

Child watches yours manners,

speak only when you are spoken too
Never be sassy; never look into the eyes of evil:
Else the whip will be on your cocoa backs
Its 2020 the whips snaps louder than ever,

Have any of you ever read the
“The Merchant of Venice

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket.
Let him borrow, and so borrow as
to repay by the very act of borrowing.

Big banks are more dangerous than standing armies,
and the practice of borrowing and spending money
to be paid back by the next generation is stealing from their future
The U.S. debt to China was $1.07 trillion in April 2020

Someone forget to paid the Pied Pipers,
Was it the poor man, or was it the rich man?
They troubles became our trouble,
Now we all are suffering in the land.

They debt or the worldly infectious disease
Now we all are suffering in the land.
Child watches your manners, speak when only spoken too

A poet can silence, a poet can be vanish from the world
And Robert Frost said anybody can start a poem,
but it takes a real poet to end one.
And that’s such a beautiful ending, gawking at clouds. Quote

Let us poets tell the real stories,
No let us convey the truth about the merchants!

Jul 2020

Madeysin

To go box

Your face fell between my thighs, cradled, rock-a-bye, never eat more than you can handle. Always use your forks and knives.

Jul 2020

Madeysin

Absent

You put your head on my leg, weighing it down. But weight doesn’t make you stay. Weight doesn’t anchor you to the bay. Weight can keep you afloat, lighter than the water. Heavier than the waves. It can keep you warm during a winters storm. Safe from frigid contrasts. You put your head on my leg, weighing it down.

I cut it off and crawled away

Jul 2020

Mel Little

Midnight Revelry

It's only with this ache between my thighs
I think,
"Maybe I've tried to **** away my
feelings
one too many times."
And every kiss feels like a last goodbye.
Sweat pools like old fights and old memories and old wounds and old scars and old heartbreaks;
I'm left wondering if this will heal
or break me.
You have more power than you know.
To unravel me in more ways than
quivering beneath you with my
hands in your hair and your name
on repeat tumbling from my mouth
like a prayer,
or a curse.
Is it a prayer or a curse?
******* away the pain, or allowing someone to come back in and break
every wall back down again...
Pull me back to you again and let me know if I am what you want
or if this is just insulation for
another cold winter alone.

#*** #relationship #feelings #confusion #thoughts #long #freeform

Jul 2020

Justin S Wampler

The face on the water

A leaf fell slowly,
Wafting in the autumn breeze.
I saw it mirrored
In the water's reflection.
I met my eyes again
Before it touched down,
And watched myself scatter
Into the ripples.

The water never calmed down,
The wind was pushing steadily
Into the sleepy boughs and limbs.

The trees all stretched
And sighed,
And shook themselves free
Of the summer growth.

They showed me how
Not to focus too much
On myself,
But to see the scattered refractions
Of everything else.

And I breathed in, raising my head.
With a hand on my cheek and
Feeling the stubble there,
I wondered how long
I'd been just staring
Into the eyes
Of the face on the water.

Jul 2020

Justin S Wampler

Bowl movements

Mouse in the toilet,
drowned in the night.
I ponder, how long
It managed to keep swimming?

I ponder how long
I could've kept swimming.

Maybe three...
Four hours?
The porcelain walls
Slick as ice.

I ponder the precarious
Balance between
Exhaustion,
And death.

Cramping legs and arms,
Needing a quick break,
Breathing water,
A black tunnel.

Was I an hour too late,
Or just a few minutes?
Had I not hit snooze,
Would the mouse still
Have been swimming?

Treading the balance?

Would it have feared me?

Would I have even saved it,

Or ****** on it?

Would it have saved me?

I need to ****.

Jul 2020

Dark n Beautiful

I cry in my shower

I kept seeing Derek Chauvin posture,
so casual, so photogenic

Nine Minutes Of agony, as he squeeze the light out of George Floyd
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man,
was killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota
during an arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill
.
I just cannot get the image of George Floyd
Out of my mind, while others might see the knees of death

I saw a history of abuse, I saw a revolution,
Apartheid, Doctor King, speeches’
I saw a poet pen, fumbles for words,
I saw emotions of my words turning to why?
A another movie in the making,
I saw an unknown man and his family
About to make history in the making;

I saw a rainbow, with the rain,
I saw blood in the streets of America,
I saw the scar on my ancestors backs fading
Somehow at this moment
I can see the Promised Land emerging as
I Stand in my showers or is it tears?