Emily B: Favorites

Jun 2017 Emily B

Willy Shakysphere

I see you sitting beside the road under a tall Elm tree
Near a thicket with a stream running by at your feet.
Your head held up by the one hand
With your elbow resting against the tree.
Your body turned away from me on one side.
Dressed in a velveteen camisole top with a white skirt – all alone.
As I approach you - you turn your eyes toward me
And say, “Shall you not leave me too, my love?”
Looking into your eyes I see somehow that I must be invisible
Because your question was not meant for me.
It was for the very thing in the essence of love.
Tears trickle down your cheeks
As my heart and soul sits down beside you.
You allow me to wipe the tears away
And I watch as they reappear one by one -
Falling ever so slowly into my offered handkerchief.
Then I set my handkerchief into my own tears and
Then back into yours once again.
All the while feeling the most
Indescribable emotions – ones for which
I have no way to dispose of or account for.

Taking you into my arms I say to you:
“Yes, I am positive that I have a soul within me and
All the scientists, nor all the learned professors
Or all of their books combined could ever convince me otherwise.
I know it must be true, dear one –
Because you could not be so lucky as to have the only one.
If ever love does leave you –
It will be to go to heaven to make sure that
Your place is properly prepared for you.”

You lean into me, holding me
Like a lost child in a never ending maze.

And then I awaken…
Another night passes into the morning of the never was.
Are things the way they seem
Or are they simply unfinished lines - just because?

Sometimes I sit with the pain of so many others. Each one blending their tears with my own. Sometimes just blurbs or dots on a page. Sharing so many unfinished lines.

#love #fear #lost #found

Jun 2017 Emily B

Another Highway 61, Cautiously Revisited

Jun 2017 Emily B

Wk kortas

Another Highway 61, Cautiously Revisited

It is decommissioned, off-limits, outright verboten,
Yet is traversed nonetheless,
Its patrons a mix of the pruriently curious,
The thrill-seeker, the merely woebegone.
As they have time on their side,
The hub-bub of school buses and suburban commuters
No concern as they navigate the buckled and broken asphalt
(The conflagration underneath changing the topography
Daily, sometimes even hourly)
They will stop to paint some phrase, some bon mot
On this roadway-***-canvas:
Mostly the narcissistic monologue we bray at the universe,
The assertion that we were here, are here,
And (though it is plaintive yet unspoken) that we always may be,
Augmented with light hearted double entendres
And grim, hectoring Biblical quotations,
While not far away, the re-directed two lanes of blacktop
Carry onward, indifferently proceeding on its way
Through these stolidly scruffy old anthracite towns,
Their landscapes and the ground beneath them
Quiet as the sepulcher, the vagaries of their fates above the sod,
Stalking them impassively yet implacably.

Pennsylvania State HIghway 61 once ran through Centralia, Pennsylvania, a burgh with a checkered (and mostly unhappy) past. The road don't go there no more.

#iheardsomebodysayburnbabyburn

Jun 2017 Emily B

The punch bowl

Jun 2017 Emily B

John Edward Smallshaw

The punch bowl

Do you ever dream that you're flying?
or wading in water that keeps getting deeper?
I do,
and I dream of floating in space
holding the hands of the clock
that turn on its face
and I race,
hard through the timber yard
and out to the wood.

You hear the beanstalk
I say the beans talk
Jack
hears his Mother.

I dream another dream and in that dream another one
each dream dreams on and when I wake
which I do to find
dreams can come true
I dream that I'm flying.

Jun 2017 Emily B

Truth beyond the approximation of meaning

Jun 2017 Emily B

K Balachandran

Truth beyond the approximation of meaning

I would trust a word,
only when I could
go beyond it's
crusty outer shell,
fleshy girth, as well
and feel the heart
pulsating, making
red blood coursing
through the veins
speaking earnest truth
as heart beats,
what makes all words
other than this one
redundant, for that
moment in time,
stops my heart
with wonder,happiness
grief or ebullience
or many a other shades
when I intimately
knows that word.

#word #essence #meaning #pulsate #beat

Jun 2017 Emily B

Camera Obscura

Jun 2017 Emily B

Jonathan Witte

Camera Obscura

Our house is a black box.
We drape every window

but one, a pinhole
to capture the sun.

At night our eyes go dark as ink.
Our memories marbleize at
the edge of the bedroom.

Come morning,
we are nothing

but inverted images
fed by shared light.

You tell me to smile
and I braid your hair.

Upstairs, the children
develop like ghosts.

I put on another record
and the dark disc spins,

its needle lulled
into grooves the way
you are lulled into me.

We could almost dance together,
but the couple at the window

will not move until
we come into focus.

Jun 2017 Emily B

Revolutions

Jun 2017 Emily B

Jonathan Witte

Revolutions

Tonight the ceiling fan
clicks with every turn.

The bedside clock ticks
and tocks in moonglow.

I close my eyes
and one by one
the light bulbs in
the house explode.

The darkness
becomes me,
I think.

I wear it silky black,
a spider-tailored suit
imponderous as ether.

I focus on the anesthetic sound
of a future breathing inside me.

Memory folds like
an obsolete map—

a distant archipelago
of diminishing stars.

Years ago, I’m sure,
we married in a copse
blue with wild hyacinth.

Tonight the satellites
cut like diamond tips,

lugubrious orbits etching
across a bedroom window.

Dawn always blooms with
the sound of breaking glass.

May 2017 Emily B

we head shrinks

May 2017 Emily B

spysgrandson

we head shrinks

we* try to guide *you through some you's

(how you are, who you are, why you are)

we are there with you
hunting for an epiphany

(which rarely comes)

if we fail with reflective notions
we have some magic potions

(though)

you won't be painting like Picasso
once our chemistry does its trick

(perhaps)

a line from a classic flick,
or a paragraph from your favorite book,
would be better feeding for the soul, than
talking time spent on our couch, with us
unraveling your psychic ouch

May 2017 Emily B

The Penitent

May 2017 Emily B

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Penitent

I had a little Sorrow,
  Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
  And shut us all within;
And, “Little Sorrow, weep,” said I,
“And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
  And think how bad I’ve been!”

Alas for pious planning—
  It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
  The lamp might have been lit!
My little Sorrow would not weep,
My little Sin would go to sleep—
To save my soul I could not keep
  My graceless mind on it!

So up I got in anger,
  And took a book I had,

And put a ribbon on my hair
  To please a passing lad.

And, “One thing there’s no getting by—
I’ve been a wicked girl,” said I;
“But if I can’t be sorry, why,
  I might as well be glad!”