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 Dec 2024 touka
Dylan
The flash reveals a ghost.
She stands in the present,
a figure from the past.
You can feel the future inside of her
yearning to be the now.
But it is not his time just yet.
 Dec 2024 touka
mikey
bike shed
 Dec 2024 touka
mikey
useless knowledge
reflective ceiling
guys who park their bikes here  
never feel anything
i wish that were me
and i wish that were on me
the bike shed stares back
he’s not looking at me
do i wanna be him or do i wanna **** him? who knows
 Sep 2024 touka
Donall Dempsey
"AHHHHH...IS IT...YER SELF THAT'S...IN IT?

here I am
thin now fat then
thin again

here the hair
short now long then long
in the long long ago

the same features
scattered across time
sticky-out ears...bulgy eyes...

curly hair
only the eyes change
( and remain the same ).


still the sad shy smile
flickers across
the ages

here I am
almost
handsome

her I am
my usual not
always the same laugh

the photographs
play with me
change and amend me

shuffle me through years
tears...different me's
me's I never knew I'd be

I smile my
by now
characteristic smile

laugh my laugh
that is my own
and no others

I've a feeling that
the photographs
haven't yet

finished with me
that there will be
lots more me to come

I close the album
put myself back
on the shelf

get on with the
business of being
my self


*

Being punctuated is a fierce painful business altogher...I remembered being full stopped and clare ta God but wasn't I in a coma for weeks on end. I was then locked up in brackets for another week and all my quotation marks taken away from me so I could hardly speak at all. Then I was given a life sentence to be my self for the rest of my life.

Too many Dónalls spoil the broth of a boy...joining the dots of me...painting by numbers the me of I.
 Aug 2024 touka
Loreley
Lover
 Aug 2024 touka
Loreley
My little lover,
Honed steel wielded to my flesh
As your hands restrict
Mar my skin,
I implore

My little lover,
I beseech my lifes water
To know the folds of your tongue
To ******* lineage
After it has bred with your saliva

Oh my little lover,
Not all is of sword unto sheath
Though your seed could flood my gardens;
Not all is of drowning
Or of blooming

Oh God,
My little lover
I beg for that which is wielded
To whiten my flesh
In the silhouette of your name
 Aug 2024 touka
Loreley
Obsessed
 Aug 2024 touka
Loreley
To your skin,
I write a thousand sonnets;
She recalls the rain.

To your smell,
I sigh a hundred ancient songs;
She sticks to me like toffee.

And oh,
To your eyes ...
To drown in silt stardust,
To smother in her hues.

To your hands,
I bow in thorns and roses;
She's grasped flesh and bone.

To your lips,
I grow ten dozen lilacs;
She carries the taste of your breath.

And oh,
To your voice ...
To asphyxiate in words,
To choke in her cadence.

And just as your veins will be empty of blood seven decades from now,
The tender love is fleeting.

But the rain still falls,
And the bones remain.
 Jul 2024 touka
Julie Butler
Where is my window ?
I need the
wind to blow &
take me with it

flip me over like a
Beetle

where to end or
when to begin

I’m begging in poetry
to let me in on it

another
heedless nightcap
Send me to my dreams soon

Or
give me to the girl at the bookstore
Like a scented letter

but, send me to my dreams soon
I can’t have anything
else tonight
 Jul 2024 touka
Julie Butler
I’m waiting
Wanting to swim in the mouth of Summer
I’m waiting

**** out the roots too
pull everything out like you mean it
Return me to space
or wherever I was before this
Return me to my body

I’m ready for sweat
I’m ready for barely

I can’t feel it
but I feel it
Like Deja vu
smells like afternoon & salt
butter it up
stay awake tonight

I’ve been reading this book
the entire time
I’ll underline it for you

Tell me everything you haven’t yet
and I’ll kiss it quietly
be my weekend & my Wednesday

shut me up with another one
still & stuck
do me a favor and
don’t do me any

keep me like a charm
it’s going to taste so much better
warm
 Jul 2024 touka
Julie Butler
wake me up
snoozed another good-morning
tried my own head
like purple
crashed every inch of skin -
how I want it
it’s Wednesday babe
what’s for lunch
what’s for good &
everyone else
How did I move
?
Take me anywhere and I’ll come
take me home & let me melt

It’s another day
a perfect one if you want it

everyone’s waiting on it
I’ve got
Lemonade
I’ve got
All day
 Jun 2024 touka
Still Crazy
it’s just me…funny like that…

~for touka, just because…~

my foibles are little pretty doilies,
all dressed up in preparation for
getting stained, as is their due,
their birthright, for they wait in
service for the slippage and the
crumbly stains of strange lyrics

wait! this poem has. gone astray,
my intention to make confession
about my quirks which are more
than numerous, repetitious, and
a little crazy, which is why my very
few friends delight in homaging me
”still crazy after all these years…”

‘tis truth, for better or worse, I’m
not superstitious but don’t step
on cracks or any lines between
the in between, always retrieve
pennies on the street, cause the
Benny Franklin about a penny
earned makes smile because
he stole it from someone prior,
and it goes with friends in the
tip jar at my corner bodega,
where they save me
a raisin scone,
knowing full well, i may not appear
till quite late, or never on bad days
when the poem urges kick me out
of bed, and inspiration is a 3am
pastry…

make me repetitive cups of java all
de day long, wander around from
zoom
to room doing odd-jobs, thisnthats,
never recalling where my muggle is
sojourning till I hear the call of the
microwave “here,  here ye old man…
where else would I be so lovingly
reheated?”

put my wallet, watch, spectacles &
testicles (an old rhyming) on the nite
stand in prep for the next day, but oh,
the keys have their little own ceramic
cup lest they scratch the ochre stain,
and I catch holy hell, so ipso-facto, I
am more often than not locked out…

we won’t talk about the too many times,
my phone has gone astray (1j many
countries where recovery was hardly
assured, but have never suffered its
loss, or consequential identity theft,
but then again, no one seems to
want to steal my name, till Paul Simon
up and done it, after sitting next to me
on a Redeye flight from LA to NYC.(1j

it drives me nuts when pompous men
pontificate on the obvious but forget
to pull their tie up to mind the gap tween
knot and the top button, making their
words look..how shall I say it…sloppy,
and my shouting out at the television
at the sartorial stupidity of news “anchors”
for naughty

Making to do lists is my artistical métier,
which only grow longer with age and the
wisdom that their purpose is to taunt me,
my failures to face the difficulties that
reverberate in my guilty conscience, so
that when I remember something to do
and actually do it because the deadline
has passed and I fear her wrath of and
disappointment
which is worse than
disapproval
which I can often
dismiss
with a historical, practiced, “easy peasy”

and if said item even doesn’t appear on my
lists (plural), I add it and derive copious pleasure,
when I cross it out with great
red inked celebratory deliberateness…

ok, okay, (you choose) I’ll wrap and rap it
up, as I go on too long as children oft tell
me when I’m being regaling with my stories,
(is there a point to this story?)
well because…it’s

just me…funnily like that


(1) somewhere on HP is the poem/story
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