Poetry Prompt 14 – Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

Clouds drape my faculties,

In my heart, the thunder wails,

A specter of my beloved.

The muse exists

Irrespective of conditionals

But at times I do not comply.

Sorrow pulls apart

My intricate skeins.

All that I have sought,

Caught and digested

Washes out with the deluge.

–

My poems are but the scraps

Of a brutal sentry, whatever

I write is true within

The merits of my imagination

But who am I to choose

And by what means

Shall I delegate?

–

My pockets are empty

But my mouth is full.

Fools are always willing

Occupants in conversation.

I am wise only when I sleep

For only then have I

The silence to contemplate

My self-treasonous reforms.

–

I am not inclined to judge

For what can I understand

Of you when I am solidly

Bound to the perimeters

Of my own ego. You have

Your reasons and so it always is

But do I really cease

In your existential beginnings?

We are all clues in the same

Impenetrable riddle.

I am neither truncheon nor mollusk.

I am the memory of all your

Former and future afflictions.

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Photo Challenge #56- Sunset & Doll and B&P’s Shadorma & Beyond – The Baker Street

Photo Credits: The Snow Phantom

Crouching

Halo

Brines

–

Ocean

Cauldron

Brew

–

Ragdoll

Dangles

Bait

–

Scapegoat

Unspooled

Bursts

*

I knew this form would be a challenge given my polysyllabic tendencies and my tendency toward run-on sentences. This is good for me and it was fun =)

For

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/bjs-shadorma-beyond-the-baker-street-april-11-2015/

and

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/photo-challenge-56-sunset-doll-april-14-2015/

Prompt #80 “Unforgiven”

I hollow from within

A child, a wheel, a flame

Fed on the ash of a love

That could never burn.

No one giveth to me

Least of all you

A family that birth

Could not conceive

Breeds in me, an enemy.

 

If you need an alibi

I will absolve your vice.

A burden, a grave unsung

A dream that cannot

Be forged from blood alone.

I watch you walk away

You will never know

The torment in which

I have grown, a terror

Never know the shadows

Fingering, as a corset

To silence my breath

To silence my truth

Which is contrary

To your entitlement.

 

This hirsute womb

Is all that I am

Too empty to atone

Too empty to consolidate

The conditionals

Of this reality.

Of each of my lives

You have taken

The better part.

Within each of my 9 hearts

Another tower, another hell

To be undertaken without

The aid of hammer or spade

I bury my roots deep

In the filth of everything

I have let decay

I bury my roots deep

In the filth of my fleshless bones

This nothing that I am

Will never taste the salt of mercy.

*

I have forgotten how to write, I feel like a newly hatched chick or something

Gone

Anton Semenov

Neither adieu nor surrogate

Just an absence

Like the breath

Between beatings

Without you

There is no cause

To remain and surely

I will not live to see

Your return if I wait

 

Somewhere behind

The white cross

I attach my wings

Hoping to find

Either retribution

Or resilience

But there is no proxy

That could soften

A mother’s despair

And I the source

At least in theory

 

There’s no deterring

Such thoughts

Once they’ve arisen

They grow voraciously

Between all the gaps

In my architecture

Once they have the heart

They’ll sprout thorns

Heavy as thumb prints

 

I am weak

And everyone

Treats me thus

Which is as infuriating

As the conditions

That beseech them

I do not like my selves

Eager as fireflies

Wanting to abhor

The crutch

The shoulder

The upright palm

But immobile

Without them

 

Loneliness is a sadist

She constructs doors

But keeps the keys hidden

Windows with black glass

And bricks behind them

I have tried to live

Without love

As necessity determined

That I should forever be

In estrangement

With relatives flickering

In the dark like specters

Never close enough

To exorcise or claim

*

I know I have told this story before but some of my reader’s might be new

When I was a child around 3 my mother left me with my Schizophrenic/alcoholic/abusive father. I do not know how long she was away only that she left the state. I managed to phone my grandmother (she lived somewhere behind the white cross aka a church). When my grandmother arrived she found me locked outside with no clothes on. I had tried to walk to her house but when I got to the church I didn’t know which way to go. Being both naked and alone I was afraid of someone catching me though I did have to cross a busy highway no one stopped.

 

 

No Avail

 

Pier Toffoletti

1

Your tongue fits me like a muzzle

Navel to the stars I wait for your hands

To dismiss me as if I were sterile

And incapable of transmission

I don’t think you’ve ever loved anyone

And I wonder if I ever could again

I may well have given everything

And you’ve crushed each piece

Fed it into your heart as if a hearse

And buried it miles down

That I should never rise again

2

Your wooden smile, a silent sentry,

Admits so little and favors no one

I circle your head as a vulture

Tracking your dead sinister eyes

Thinking how much better

You’d look without them

How much kinder

For they stand between us now

A barbed-wire fence

I tuck my shredded soul

Into a diary that reeks

Violently of human flesh

Ashamed of the madness

That summons you

Again and again to no avail

 

 

PHOTO CHALLENGE #13 “THREE”

Tom Bagshaw

When I was a child

My eyes saw only

That which my heart

Could freely replicate

A truth tenaciously insular

In each wound divinity

Every soul amendable

Salt fell freely

In the excavation

Of pearls

Even when downtrodden

Hope gathered unseen

 

When I was an adolescent

I thought myself an expert

On human nature

I knew the misgivings of saints

The black mask of the hero

Who craves blood and nepenthe

In equivalent measure

I paraded myself as a sage

Eyes a platform

For causes unknown

 

As a woman I lose at times

My confidence in humanity

I find conspiracies burgeoning

From the most inane protests

There’s too much death within

A stars ejaculate for my dreams

To ignite on wishes alone

And I resent most of all

My profound cowardice

*

Today I found it very challenging to write

 

 

Past Tense

Marcela Bolivar

I haven’t the strength

To answer your request

Though I find your words

Requisite, proximate, sufficient

I would eat them if I could,

Like cherries or cancer

 

What color is freedom?

Every face I see is unsociably clear

I wouldn’t recognize a smile

If I held it between my teeth

Against my breasts or even if it fell

Posthumously from the ceiling light

Like a hirsute bother

 

What good is a smile anyways?

Can I hang my coat on it?

Will it make me beautiful?

Rich? Thin? Less formidable?

If I walk on my hands

Will I appear happier?

More sane? Less avid?

 

If I draw my lips, harlot red

In the shape of a bow

Will you love me as I am?

What if I cannot write

Ink being the substance

Of my selfdom

Will you declare me past tense?

And wash your face

Of my ill-advised spleen?

 

 

Legacy

Andrew Ferez

The great amnesia, merciful amnesia will you steal too my heart?

The love I dared, the love I held for a time in my crooked womb

Purer than any other love, a curious species of Narcissism

The better self, the self that is always forgiven and held up

When I am gone and you still me, still viable, will we be one again?

Will you remember me as on a pedestal or as I was skipping

From grave to grave hoping not for life but for a sudden death

Seemingly innocuous, so as not to spoil too much, your legacy

*

I read recently that Sylvia Plath’s son committed suicide and I got to thinking about how Depression runs in families and so on

Echo

Thomas Bak

Your smile remains pinned behind

My sternum like a shamanic headdress

Even in desertion I cannot exclude

The possibility of your presence

Infesting a surrogate flame

Limbo

The thread that defends

Against an immutable collapse

Is the same one embracing

My wind pipe

*

I cannot afford my weakness

Not even in disclosure

To believe my madness

Is to become that which I fear

*

Idleness is prognostic of death

Indeed are they not synonymous?

There is no remedy forthcoming

No hand or heart to cushion

Only a Tiffany blue sky

Painted clandestinely

Over an omnivorous maw

*

We are alone

In a universe that consumes

Alone in limbo

Hell is envious

And heaven chained

*

There is no greater vulgarity

Than a dying man

Who can neither fight nor fall