Best Of The Best - Hello Poetry

Apr 2020

Whit Howland

A look
to the future

while reflecting
on where we've been

how it all started
and why we started it

I got my start with
crude meaning simple
nursery rhymes

in order to salve
some deep cuts

either self-inflicted
or made by others

and then I built from
the ground up

the structure
substance developing
overtime

Whit Howland © 2020

#blackmountainpoet

Apr 2020

Caroline Shank

Triage

Would you choose to deny
me?  I can't breathe.  I am
filled with love for my family,
for God.  I am only old.
You will be too, you who
would triage my life out.

I contribute to my family.
I dig with both of the
hands God gave me in
the soil and grow beautiful
things.  I am flower fresh.

I am not broken.  No one
is broken.  You who think
you can save the life of
a younger person.

Save Me.

I could be your mother.
Save her.  When you
make a choice remember
I was here first.  The Universe
is Random.  Tilt your
thought to  philosophy.

I have miles to go before
I sleep.  If you choose
the old ones, the infirm,
the besotted the young

Will remember you also

In

Time.

Caroline Shank

Prompt: the ethics of
triaging ventilators.

Apr 2020

Donall Dempsey

THE SNAKES AND LADDERS OF TIME

THE SNAKES AND LADDERS OF TIME

She gasps
at the faded photograph.

A crease
hides my smile

"What...you. . . you
were four?"

She's never considered
this before.

I smile at her
disbelief

that this fat old man
could ever have been

surely not
her age.

She acts as if she is
the first four ever to be.

Ahhhhh the snakes
and ladders of time.

"Oh it's a long time since
I was four...but four...I was for sure!"

I laugh at her
incredulity.

"So where did your four go!"
she asks like a defence lawyer

turning to the judge and jury
of her lined up dolls.

"And how did you get so old?"
she clinches the conversation convincingly.

Yes...where did I go
I question myself.

Four year olds never die
I tell my self.

They play hide and seek in
the minds of fat old men.

Popping mischievously up
with a now and then yell.

"Here I
be!"

"But if you were four
once upon a time ago..."

I feel her argument
close about me.

"Then you should know why
I don't want to go to bed!"

I check with my former four year old self
and sure enough he says: "Yup!"

I have to admit she
has got me...there.

Trapped by my child's
impeccable logic...******!

And so we have 4
extra Snakes and Ladders

played with all her
extreme hysteria.

Stops only
when I fall asleep.

She covers me with a towel
from the bathroom.

Puts her self
to bed thank you very much.

Tells Mummy
"Shhhhhhhh...

Daddy's
sleeping!

Apr 2020

Scorpius

Remission

I watch him
Emerge,
Over days,
With cracks
And tears,
His new skin
Cranky
And thin.
And I recognize
An old fear
Shimmer through
One iris
Then the next.
And I see him
See me
Watching and waiting,
And I wonder
How many chances
We’ll get.

#hearthurts #addiction #redo

Apr 2020

Tanisha Jackland

Jewish Penicillin

I make mine jewish style
with plenty of root veggies
leeks carrots parsnips turnips
garlic and matza *****
made from scratch
fresh dill for luck
goes a long way

I pray over my ***
It's good for the soul
checks them bones
then the body follows

I become humble again
much aware of the sacrifice
that we may all become
warm soup for something
to heal what is deep inside.

Apr 2020

Camden Michael Jones

The Mail Plane

I.
We ***** our tents on the hardpack
of the town’s airport,
rows of stakes and guidelines
like a fishing wharf in the tundra;
the mail plane comes at one,
an overfull vulture circling above
before looping North towards
the Gates of the Arctic for the approach run.
The landing is
        a front row rock concert
        where the bassist only knows one chord
        and the drummer is still setting up:
        the tone resonates in the ooze of our marrow;
that is to say, the landing is simple,
drifting over alpine fir and spruce tops
with ballet grace
before cutting power
and slamming wheels to gravel.

II.
Yesterday’s rain feeds the Yukon today.
Its hands reach for a hard cloud ceiling
and its lows, its troughs call my name,
call my name, call my name,
endless waves in the river’s center,
arcing with storm energy
and grip strength.

III.
Other planes come, and leave,
and helicopters set down near us.
We play cards in their wind,
drink camp coffee that strains
through the teeth and plugs the gaps;
we watch and we wait
for seats that never come,
waiting to leave this airport runway,
waiting to fight the big fires.

IV.
We hear the boats before we see them,
curving around the clay banks
and we line our packs along
their aluminum walls.
We sit in plastic bags
to keep dry of river spray,
I hear my name again,
and another mail plane
takes off. The hardpack vibrates
under the wheels, the engines scream
their one note show,
and the DC-3 sinks off the runway towards
the Yukon – and us – before catching itself,
then slowly, so slowly we can almost touch
the silver belly, it growls to the North
and loops South towards Fairbanks.

Mar 2020

anthony Brady

AUTUMN IDYLL

Bathed in moonlight
are my love and me.
Under the trees,
rays spreading,
through woodland:
a sylvan canopy of
boughs lighter each day.
Autumnal - not dying,
retiring, destined to return.

Plants and creatures,
taking refuge in
mother earth,
mother nature.
such delight,
each night,
sitting outside,
my Love and me.
together - yet solitary.

No other humans
distracting us.
Silent and still
only nocturnal
creatures stir.
What magic,
what sanctity,
mystical delight.
together with THE ONE.

Our senses feeling our nature,
always here - never apart.
Not fearing death, loving life,
relaxing, laughing, pure and free,
forever more, just being,
revealing the truth of what
we have become,
that which we are
who we always were.

Such sweet life:
my love and me,
sitting here in
this place - this Autumn.

Tobias

Inspired by his poem - The Burning of the Leaves - by Lawrence Binyon

Jan 2020

Sally A Bayan

Late Evening Echoes

* * *
* *
*

Faces of friends, of people i met earlier
are  glittering stars on this late evening's
dark blue sky...their smiles are tattooed
in my mind...they're  hunched, going
lower by the days...slowed down by years.
it must be hard and painful...the arching,
the drooping of the neck, the curving spine,
they endure all, 'til each day's end...they rise
each new dawn...do what they still can do,
lest they stagnate in their aging ponds,
diminish to a state, where food, pills, or
forgotten information are forced on them,
......like drugs, injected into the veins

........................
these wee hours bring back the years...
they  have been good...never mind the
hard times...there were, there are good ones
life is a long, wide stream of changing hues,
flowing on and on....my water bears the
colors each new day brings...gray, at times
with sadness and gloom....other days,
blacked by despair...some summers, red,
roseate with glee, or green with life and
hope...blue, when trust is spilling, and
the tranquil sea and sky overwhelm,
with a promise of stability..........white,
when accepting......the unacceptable...
........................
the amber grains and i, are alike
ripened enough to be plucked
be pulled out from an existence...the
signs are known...shown...yet, i wait
for when it is due to happen...and while
waiting, the stalks sway, play and dance
and enjoy the sun and wind...and i,
while i still can...walk, jump, climb hills
and valleys in this mammoth space
of land and water.............called life
...................
the sounds of my days, i still hear,
i am a lute, a harp, a cello...playing
off-key.....out of tune at times,
my strings are my graying hair,
i still can't stop dying the gray
i still want to highlight the dark,
but, one day, all these will cease...
............
one night, my face will be in one of those
many stars...glittering on a dark blue sky
sending a smile, to my loved ones.

...................
(there is no other way,
but forward
all are headed
towards an end.)

Sally

© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
      June 26, 2018

...ahhh, the rains...do make us reflect longer on life...

#facesglitteringstars #agingponds #stream #ambergrains #grayhair #darkbluesky

Dec 2019

r

A wrinkle in time and me

I know you know
this universe is old
and life is but a wrinkle
in time and me, I’m
not yet a twinkle
in my long gone father’s eyes
compared to those blinking night
skies, but let me tell you
friends, when the fog
rolls in off of Dead Woman Shoals
all damp and **** cold
as the nose on my black dog
when it calls out to the moon
its mouth a deep hole, dark
as doom, a howling for
a galaxy, a dying star born
to be swallowed
bones all ribbed and rowed
a wind chime clacking
on the back porch alone
when nary a breeze blows.