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 Aug 2015 Dan
Tyler King
Bohemia
 Aug 2015 Dan
Tyler King
Bohemia
When will you be angelic?
When will you empty your graveyards and let your cities fill with the music of the ******?
When will you sing for me, for you, for us?
For your children looking for God in the halo of a street lit drug deal gone bad?
For your forlorn lovers shooting up with sub-par sadness off the street?
For your crying, bleeding masses that scrape their knees ****** at rock bottom?

Bohemia
I'm addressing you, directly
Devourer of culture, ******* of pretense
Let they among you without sin be the first to burn
Hold you nothing sacred?
Have you not the decency to scatter your ashes somewhere clean?
Somewhere beautiful?
Somewhere perfect?

Bohemia
When will you learn?
Is there no context to your suffering?
Is there no reason for your guilt?
Is there no honor among street rats?
Where are you going with this, anyway?

Bohemia
I am not your prophet
Not your God or your king
I am your vessel
Speak your will through me

Bohemia
I need to feel it
I need to see it
I need to HEAR IT
For the mind destroyed by madness
For the heart shattered by shame
For the spirit, for the blessed ******* spirit
I need to HEAR IT

Bohemia,
Let me hear you
If you are outcast drawing the curtains on your insecurity
Let me hear you
If you are restless heart itching for the next sunset
Let me hear you
If you are just barely scraping by
If you are waiting for God to explain himself
If you are sick of sacrificing your mind to television screens
If you are just trying to make it in America without selling your soul
If you are broken, beaten, or damaged irreparably
Let me hear you
Let them hear you in the streets
Let them hear you in the grave

Bohemia
You are angelic enough
For me
 Aug 2015 Dan
Tyler King
Ginsberg
 Aug 2015 Dan
Tyler King
Sing me to sleep, Allen Ginsberg
The entire fluorescent universe pulses and breathes in your chest
Or mine, or his, or Hers, particularly Hers
And I wish nothing more than to be nothing
Or everything
Tell me, were our souls cut from the same stars?
If I trace the hieroglyphics of our scars will I reach some understanding?
Will I ever look upon your papier-mache mountains or caress your Mohammedan angels?
Will the blood red sun burn my bitter heart out before the Benzedrine kicks in?
Tell me, will I touch the face of God or grasp at phantoms forever?
If this is the apocalypse why do I feel such discontent?
I wish nothing more than to be the center of gravity
At which all things meet, and break, and fall away
To drift in to emptiness like crumpled up phases of the lonely moon
Tell me, are my veins pumping gasoline?
Was I born to die on the road, and what manner of Valkyrie will lift me to my rest once I do?
And who will I thank, once I am there
For the opportunity to sleep?
 Aug 2015 Dan
Kelley A Vinal
Well-tempered
As Bach's staccato joy takes hold
Of Book 1: Prelude No. 3
A clavier so mild, calm
Lagavulin-scented air
Peat moss, weather fair
The happy harpsichord
And the placid piano
Join in my glass
Mingling, giving the whisky
A nuance
Of elegance
Balancing the burn
Excellently
 Aug 2015 Dan
Queenie Florentino
Death knocks Life
and asks,
"Can I too live?"

Life responds,
*"You can't, I am afraid.
For I too dread myself,
And envy you instead."
- - -
quick!
change your costume
before they discover
what you really are
 Aug 2015 Dan
Darkling
Portent
 Aug 2015 Dan
Darkling
The tittering leaves chutter
    softly to me - embracing
    the clouded sky, portent
    to a coming
    storm.  We could not care
    any less - embrace the heavy
    clouds, a molten mood.

My thoughts are wild, omnipotent
     unhinged.  Lapping water
    tempers the coming
    rain - whispers to me with
    those newly born saplings

Coaxing me to
    freedom, release from
    pain and present

A hope in deluge

A silent thunder ignites.
While writing has always been at the center of who I am, sometimes the challenge of putting thoughts to paper so honestly is too much for me.  Because of this, I've gone through several periods of silence, often lasting years and years.  

Last summer, a very dear friend of mine challenged me to write a poem a week, and he would do the same - he wasn't able to keep his end of the bargain, but in retrospect, I think the sole purpose was to get me to write again,

I am so glad he did.
 Aug 2015 Dan
Dylan Thomas
(for Llewelyn)

This side of the truth,
You may not see, my son,
King of your blue eyes
In the blinding country of youth,
That all is undone,
Under the unminding skies,
Of innocence and guilt
Before you move to make
One gesture of the heart or head,
Is gathered and spilt
Into the winding dark
Like the dust of the dead.

Good and bad, two ways
Of moving about your death
By the grinding sea,
King of your heart in the blind days,
Blow away like breath,
Go crying through you and me
And the souls of all men
Into the innocent
Dark, and the guilty dark, and good
Death, and bad death, and then
In the last element
Fly like the stars' blood

Like the sun's tears,
Like the moon's seed, *******
And fire, the flying rant
Of the sky, king of your six years.
And the wicked wish,
Down the beginning of plants
And animals and birds,
Water and Light, the earth and sky,
Is cast before you move,
And all your deeds and words,
Each truth, each lie,
Die in unjudging love.
 Aug 2015 Dan
Carl Sandburg
Pals
 Aug 2015 Dan
Carl Sandburg
Take a hold now
On the silver handles here,
Six silver handles,
One for each of his old pals.

Take hold
And lift him down the stairs,
Put him on the rollers
Over the floor of the hearse.

Take him on the last haul,
To the cold straight house,
The level even house,
To the last house of all.

     The dead say nothing
     And the dead know much
     And the dead hold under their tongues
     A locked-up story.
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