Sunday, October 24, 2021

Strange News from another Star

Troubled warnings shriek in the night
Unutterable things in mystical power
Blighted by a celestial nightmare
On ominous shores
The departure of the strange miracles
That shone so lovely in the sky like Orion
Retreat like raptures in the stars
Now cold in raven’s claws
The liquid mind dreams of the moon
Dancing in the night
Veiled by demoniac clouds
Speak to us, sweet Sorceress
And our mournful spirits
Will go beyond a funeral march
To the grave
The last fatal kiss in cold black days
Is like a crawling spider in the crying rain
Searching for things you dare not name
The sun and its death burst into flames
The night opens its eyes to a night palace
Where there exists a solemn hymn in the wind
Sorrow is the dying years
In our raw and bloodless hearts
In exile, the living skeletons remain
The living dead
In the cradle of despair
The piano plays in an empty room
On the canvas of our soul’s depths
Destined star, oh mirror…despair, calm
Distant like a celestial dream, so afar
Pale warriors, bittersweet is the mouth
Of memories where the shadowed
Chariot takes us
You carry fear as a savior
If one day your bed becomes a grave
Will your thoughts fade away?
Will injustice disappear?
Will the gods perish?
Who will stop the rain?
Copyright, 2021. Alexis Child. All Rites Reserved.

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Back Roads

I wish the past was                 

like the cars and trucks

I see in my rearview

calculating speed and distance

to catch up.  I look ahead, look

up, they’re gone.

 

Who has not wished for

some things to be utterly

redeemed beyond the lessons learned?

 

Usually it’s on two-lane roads

where passing is marked 

by broken lines, where double 

lines say, “Do Not Cross,” 

and speed is dictated by road

surface, curves, hills, other traffic

these feelings and thoughts appear.

 

I am coming and going – the one

thing about being on the road

that doesn’t change:  some 

place is left, some place 

awaiting my arrival.

 

It matters how I drive.

It matters what I learn.

It matters that the past

can’t be redeemed –

just so curious I keep

wishing it could be.


-Byron Hoot


hootnhowlpoetry.com

Friday, October 1, 2021

THE BITTER BARANG

The beer lubricated bitter barang
Unshaven, gap toothed
His face grooved by scars of incipient senility
Spews forth from his alcoholic mumbling mouth
Misogynistic vituperations
That fill the air
With sulfuric jeremiads
Blistering all ears
He speaks vehemently of all the vengeance he will wreak
On every Khmer girl who did him wrong
Who robbed or lied or cheated
Or asked for too much money
To lay with him awhile
To stave of the dread
Of fast approaching mortality.
His litany of grievances is long
He has enumerated and memorialized
Every affliction or betrayal
Creating an inteminable , monotonous threnody
He intones the bitter litany
Ceaselessly
Echoed astringently
By the tipsy chorus of caviling whines
From all the other barang here
The senescent chorus of superannuated vampires
Who never admit their culpability
For being bamboozled so easily
Enraptured by the golden
Much used flesh
Of the taxi girl sorority
Ah how he regrets
That he allowed such obvious duplicity!
Like an animal he writhes entrapped
In the quagmire of his lubricity
Shackled to the spiked wheel
Of never ending desires
Captive to impropriety
Ensnared by yearning for youthful flesh
That false soma of immortality
That never does reprieve him from
Becoming just another hackneyed trope
A cliched calamity
Another avoidable fatality.
-Michael Murray

Overwhelmed

Constantly Overwhelmed.
In amongst a crowd
Feeling like I am not allowed
I feel alone
Like a statue of stone
Silence abounding
Beyond your understanding
Constantly Overwhelmed.
Everyone ignoring the fact
That I am not putting on a act
Thoughts running around in circles,
Not listening to the verbals
I am staying still though
Tired of moving to and fro
Constantly Overwhelmed.
Left in the corner
Like a lone mourner
Self composed
Avoiding being exposed
Crying without tears
Hiding from unknown fears
Constantly Overwhelmed.
Peter T Murray 25 September 2021

Hello, Old Maple Tree!

Hello, old maple tree!
My apologies for staring…
But, I could admire your branches all day.
So many people, animals, insects,
microbes, et al.,
have enjoyed your beauty;
your shelter,
your strength,
your life sustaining nectar.
The sapsucker scars
around your bole
are displayed with pride.
Those yellow-bellied birds survived
in part due to your generosity.
And every year
as a new family
of birds or squirrels move in,
you hold them up—
rain or shine,
towards the sky.
—Poe Andrews

Dark Shadows

In the bloodthirsty heart
Of the night
We hear its screams
The vampire bats
Fly at dreams
Bleeding out into death
Until angels fall apart
In punishing light
Prayers of silence
Clamor in the night
In his tear-soaked name
Here, but now gone for eternity
Eyes open wide to cathedrals
As bewildered hollow bells
In the bitter ashes of Hades
I gave my life away
This crucified heaven
Maims and shames
You write my forgotten name
Like a cold black dream
Casting a spell over me
I walk with the undead
And I have never been
Loved this way before
© 2021 Alexis Child. All Rites Reserved.


THE MALLEABLE ONE

Sour days
for the ghost in
the dancing machine
Your sampled heartbeat
bought
out
by the loose
moraled influencers
who traversed the floor of commerce
to nuzzle with the counterfeiting gig
Now
for sport
they accelerate the genocide
of dignity
in self-contained charisma
It’s how they work
They construct a melody
extracted from your most egregious malady
And when the music starts anew
you are malleable
Acquisition of your heart
non-negotiable
but the beat
never to be empathized with
again
-Steven Fortune
09 25 21

Adrift in a Dream


Sometimes when I dream
I go back to you and me
And how things used to be
But now I'm like a ship lost at sea
Adrift in a Dream
I remember all the smiles we shared 
And yes we still do 
But I'm just not the same without you
I include you in my prayers
Guess I've grown used to the fact I'll always love you
Adrift in a dream
I float along
Drifting with the tide
Dreaming of when you were by my side
But I know my actions caused our divide
As for now
I am Adrift in a Dream
Hoping somehow you will come back to me
Not wanting to ever let you go
guess I'd rather be alone than find someone new
As in my dreams
I'm on my way to safety
To be there with you
And I still pray this dream comes true.
Until then I'm Adrift in a Dream 
Always thinking of you.

-Patrick Daniel Read

Life

When the end
comes and the
world crumbles
into a thousand years
of darkness...
And the embers of
life are
blown out
of the world forever,
but in that place,
a spark may yet
remain to show.
A beating heart
may be all
thats left of us,
of this thing that
we call life,
stronger than
the ties of eternity.
That spark will be
our only sign of life
And the beating heart of life
is love
Love of what
when nothings left
but the wings that carry
all thats left of humanity.
Love of the heartbeat
that lives on forever
and forever...
In the name of what?
-R. Madmen Jones
©rebeljones777

The Day The Laughter Died

We stood in stunned silence when we heard the news..
a great comedian,
a great actor,
a great comedian,
a great humanitarian,
had died,
because of a mental illness inside,
depression,
took the laughter away,
no one,,
knew quite what to say,
so few knew,
that behind all the laughs,
they were tears,
hidden inside,
the nothing could stop,
nothing could deny,
and suddenly,
August 11, 2014,
became the day the laughter died.
We knew him as Mork from mork from mork and mindy,
to Adrian Kronauer on Good Morning Viet Nam,
to Mrs. Doubtfire,
all the while, he set the comedy world on fire,,
from dead poets society..
to Bicentenial Man,
To the birdcage,
Robin Williams,
always seemed to be there,
the loss of you to a illness,
it seems so unfair,
so from now a on I will have a different view of August 11, 2014,
as not just another day,
but tragically,
the day,
The Laughter died.
(C) Patrick Read 8/12./14


Communion

I have excommunicated myself
from the bullshit of the world,
become a heretic of the edge,
an exile from the lie of existence,
a marker of the qualitative
nature of time, of the here 
and now sufficiency.
I have no hard feelings,
nothing to teach  --
I am that I am.
Nothing new about that;
it's been around a long time.

-Byron Hoot

To Life

I have now lived nearly seven years alone except for two covid years my youngest son lived with me in that milk and honey time of near solit...