Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
.

You !

Long time ago . . .

Indigo . . . ha !

What a name


There on 22nd street south

. . . Midnight's Voice . . .


Remember ?

We were young . . .

real , mean and lean . . .

invincible !

or so it seemed


Those nighthawks in the night sky . . .

diving in the lights

And those inside the bar
looking for a light

It was "Us" and "Them"
and anyone else foolish enough to join

Money was short
but we always made do



Red Mountain . . .

Vulcan . . . before the cage

Jones Valley . . . down below

Everything was up
turn around
and come down


God I loved that Mountaim

. . . it vibrated in magic

Long live the magic . . .

that I've lost


Living within but without

. . . how I wish you were here


________

Tribute to the early 1970's
Birmingham , Alabama

Vulcan - the largest cast iron statue in the world . Made in the image of the God Vulcan sitting on top of Red Mountain . At the time open free to the public 24 hours a day with stairs going up to the top of the head where a 360° balcony overlooked Jones Valley down below . Later so called improvements imposed a hefty entrance fee , an elevator replacing the stairs , and a cage built around the balcony and only open from 8 a.m.to 5 p.m. seven days a week . All of which ruined the magic of seeing uninterrupted views , sunrises and sunsets , stars and lights of the valley below .

Midnight's Voice - a bar downtown Southside where bands played

Nighthawks - a band from Washington D.C. that played often at Midnight's Voice

Indigo - Vietnam vet . I don't know if he was crazy
before 'Nam' but he sure was after . Real name was Ray . Could play one hell of a guitar especially when he got together with Mike McEachern .

It will always be . . . (us , us , us , us , us and them , them , them , them , them . . . after all we were only ordinary men) Pink Floyd
 Aug 28
Zahra
Sometimes our
emotions behave
like nomads,
camping in unknown
  places for days,
  trying to
   understand life.

They fall with a
heavy slump,
reluctant to rise
like a hippo,
half-submerged,
reclining in mud
with a slow,
  muddy squelch.
a poem about how feelings camp and sink into mud
 Aug 24
zozek
The tulip has wilted in a hopelessly unfair...despair,
in a pink powder like weak fragility of partially disappeared shiny lipstick
dry, draggy and clumpy.
Many have been consumed and most have been lived through.
Kissed and drained.
Ornamented crowds have fleeted
and many have been lost
vanished and gone.
Wealth, health and glamour all expired with fleeing memories.
Shiny carnival glasses just hold worn out and deceased bodies leaving spirits aloof
skulls shall now smile inadvertently, not minding the sand running through the neck one hour after another
all the tulips, even the purple ones, have withered
oh that.
that's just my habitat.
some women
take up counted cross stitch,
others
--with scorched souls--
even like golf
as if the order and pointlessness
were balm
for their frightening wounds.

me,
I have my habitat.
it's filled with
a green growy tangle
and those cries
like animated bells
that made you open the door
in the first place.

every night
I go in there.
most mornings
I come out again
either elevated
or barely alive.
either way, it keeps me fresh
like tennis
except
my medical bills are enormous
and my poetry
keeps getting sharper and more feral.

now that you've seen it
I know you won't be back anymore
or else you'll want a piece of all of this
mistakenly thinking that I,
like it,
will be exciting.
people want
to spend time in my habitat
like wanting to space walk
without gear
or training
or
a Houston to rely on.

my habitat
is my own private
supermax
funhouse
and I am just Bluebeard's wife
glad he's gone off to sea
while I
merrily
open the door
to my habitat
and disappear into it
flying solo
like Girl Lindbergh.
 Aug 20
irinia
your eyes incite such an echo on my lips
it reverberates every time I hear the trees, it engulfs my hands
I  feel how your gaze caresses my hair
sometimes only poems keep me whole
the hidden parts play hide and seek with daylight
all the me that cannot be create holes between words
I wait for time to confess its indifference
the solitude of skin is inborn but
poetry is this incessant birth of an imaginary me
 Aug 19
Ken Pepiton
{three brief acts on thinking and doing at once}

Sunday, August 17, 2025
9:31 AM

An exercise in the art of word smithing

proud prodding from a know it all to another,
persuading one the other of the best and greatest
people can pertain to, aspire to artifice goodness,
per se
this way
simple
plain step by step, processionally, professing
experience
in living many ways,
in working, functioning usefully to those paid in

bread and drink and circuses to think about, clowns
slap plays to allow the lowliest to laugh at pain,
pie in the face, shock and awe, to laugh at payback,

and gasp at the daring Wallendas, did you see that,
the fall at Detroit,
in 1962,

Did it stick with you, the awe at the folly, asking
why do performers perfect their act, and do it

and do it
and do it
until some one dies trying, first time or last, falls

and dies to emphasize the possibility, imagine
the mirror neuron rush at the crushing fall,

the vicarious oh no
the unforgettable day at the circus

bubbles up in therapy prep for dementia,
we all recall the fall…

------------------------------------------
Words alone, in context,
in your head said as read,

by whomever you imaging saying,
look,
listen, can you hear birds singing?

If you can, do you know what kind
of song, is it signaling safety, certainly,

birds of so tiny a song fret not, clearly,

I can imagine a world so quiet, nearly
any day, I can remember winter quiet,
and think of where others are preparing
cord wood to feed stoves, chain saws,

dangerous as any ax, imaginably worse,
gameland killings projected on silvered screen,

daring immersion in the projects, home alone,
adapted to the syndrome, latch key kid,
in a small desert town
on any main cartage route, welcoming
passers through to spend the night
indoors, at the Loma Vista Motel
or the White Rock Motor Court,
as listed in the Green Book, in 1954

------------------------------
Suffering Socrates
requires trusting Plato

One must, you know
suffer so, to say you know,
quid pro quo, all you know,

bet against all you call unknown,
as if for the sake of innocense,
shunned, to maintain purity,

burn the heresy, defined
blasphemous and disrespectful…

think again, mimic the ritual reenactment,

let this mind be in you, you were there,

you saw Cassavetes suffer in agony, the shame,

the shame that rightly is yours, and yours alone,
the price Christ paid, if that story were ever true,

that suffering is your just dessert, persuasion
insists, you must accept the premis, Christmas,

the whole message, Peace on Earth, Greetings,

lowly mortal sufferers under lying leader rules,
Goodwill, and final judgement, last prayer,
fear not, fret for nothing,
forgive all who have no clue what they do,
living and breathing and having being on Earth,

so far from the nearest life supporting star system,
fitted anthropomorphically perfectly as patient
in the active agency of truth freed life on Earth.

This is life. We can imagine it ending suddenly,
and we can bet it only does that at the me level,

the we I was in lives on in all the good seed my fruit has in it.
I know why Francis preached to birds and Billy Graham preached to frogs, is likely why I preach to the ocean a wave at a tune... because I have nothing more enjoyable calling me to be the doer of that
 Aug 18
Mike Adam
Lake view from
Beech canopy.

Legs, arms, enwrap
Broad trunk and
Ascend unlike any bird since
Dodo.

Sun through beaten
Coppered leaf-set.

Fair Day
With tall grass,
Bedded moss beneath

My seat of rooted
Contemplation
Next page