Photo Challenge #50 -Twister– March 3, 2015

Keiko McCartney

Death may be inevitable

But it is not invariable.

In this moment

Irrespective of what precedes

I choose peace.

I choose reflection

And though imperfect

I venture that I am not alone

That there are others

Facing the very same tragedy.

 

I could panic,

Panic, however, useless

Is occasionally justified

And a man has a right to paranoia

When he is on the verge of exile.

I’ve always had a taste for apples

For the knowledge of forbidden things.

Death is the ultimate taboo.

When my father died

He became invisible, unspeakable

A curse whose very mention

Invoked the sign of the cross.

If the dead are too ill to speak of

You must forever hold your tongue.

 

Armor cannot guard

Against the weather

When the imposition exists

Within one’s very soul.

I will face today with dignity.

I will face today with curiosity

For that which I cannot control.

I am no longer a child

But every man whatever his preference

Whatever his intellect

Is without question a student.

 

Today I learn how to die

I imagine it is a lot like riding a bike

And I suspect that I have done it

Many times before

Though I cannot recall the specific dates.

*

For

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/photo-challenge-50-twister-march-3-2015/

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Photo Prompt #39 “Scream by the Pier”

Arno Rafael Minkkinen

I swallow each plank

Mouth oblong, exacting

A splinter-filled well.

The distance

Between us is arbitrary,

An illusion generated

By our inability

To dismiss labels.

If truth does not conform

Then what will?

But truth does not

Always favor the majority

Sometimes only one

Rises to the cause.

 

If a fantasy the moral

Would breathe its very last

In the very first kiss

Living does not imply

Perfection, it is an art

Fueled with whatever madness

Ignites but does not wholly consume

The soul it confesses.

 

Steady hands struggle

To contain the pulse

And when the water rises

One cannot but scream.

To be human is to hunt

In the wreckage

For a weapon capable

Of defrocking these myriad veils

To be human is to drown

Whether above or below

Whether within or without

Sensation is not optional.

*

For

MLMM 

Wordle #18 and Prompt #64

Wordle #18
Lace-adorned cadavers crowd
The mausoleum of my heart
Of all the lives interred
I regret most
Those who were never born
Not every dream has an echo
Some arise with sandstone markers
Declaring at once their intent

Velleity is a curse
That the despondent bare
Momentum is not the sibyl
I supposed as I quit before
I can impart a difference

The only habits
I posses disfigure
Each day another scar
Another wrinkle
Another cross overturned

I sit with my head tilted
Contemplating a more
Expedient suicide
When one views death
As practical
There is very little
Else to expect

My soul is a gaslight
On every face
A nemesis stalks
No one is ever satisfied
Through comparisons
And yet each day
We seek the tragedies
Of others
(Pity is a poor substitute
For gratitude)

I wouldn’t trade
Your smile for a smirk
I wouldn’t change anything
Other than to gift you
Unconditionally with love
To be and know myself
As deserving of reception

The media feeds us
Inadequacy
And we consume that
And little else
If you know it depletes you
Why subscribe?

Prompt #64
Without you, life is purgatory
And my heart in comparison hell
I shall not draw another breath
Unless you first inhale

Wordle 15 “Oil and Blood”

She slathers nimbus over her chatoyant eyes

That no mortal in afghan should seduce her aims

She is volatile, promethean,and in her wildness serene

She postures herself in books assuming

Both confidant and thief, both villain and ally

 

Society weighs upon her as pollution, as oil in blood

Nailing down her crisp white feathers as so many crosses

Such is the onus of the radical and she does not care

To linger among them, invalids with their shrill eyes

Nesting in deep black pits pulled taunt as a corset

 

They pass glitter as salt to season but taste nothing

And know nothing of genuine artistry for everything

Consisting of heart is too deep for their convenience

She steadies herself on a divan drinking deeply the air

The skeptics inducing her tears as fireflies

To illumine in captivity and she unapologetically

Easing the lid for fear that her dreams will starve

 

Drip

Sylvia Cloud

She gathers the stars

And draws them flaming

Into the palatial chasm

Buried beneath her breasts

I summon her as a hearth

Filling her sulfurous belly

With bitter fruit and straw

She fancies herself a poetess

Cries in myths, torrents

Of sparkling constellations

Drip from marcescent eyes

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

 

 

Prompt 60 The Rolling Stones

midrevv@DeviantArt

Rose

Such lovely canines,

These roses which tug

So earnestly at my flesh

As I stoop to enslave them.

There is nothing quite

So demonizing

As the will to survive

It supersedes all reason

And accompanies so poorly

Any notions of heaven.

Here I am a woman

Who possesses far more

Than can be expended

(Love being of course infinite)

And even amongst flowers

I observe malice, albeit

A malice more reasonable

Than my own

*

I was inspired by The Rolling Stones “Mother’s Little Helper” obviously my poem doesn’t have at all the same vibe but it is about perpetual discontent something I have been thinking about a lot lately.

Photo Challenge #9 “Lotus Song”

Andrey Bobir

I never gave my heart

The benefit of expression

Compromised every note

With a bedeviled chorus

Under the premise of logic

I outwitted instinct

But was none the wiser

 

Of the faces worn

None are so enduring

As the Godhead

I fashion labyrinths

Of human hair and insulation

Chasing monosyllabic stars

Under the council of sheep

Still bodhichitta remains

Unblemished

 

I left my hands in cement

To harden as if they were

A personalized monument

For a depersonalized farce

I ceased all intrinsic endeavor

Heel toe…heel toe..heel toe

Boots greased by a mercurial skyline

The end was of my own making

Still the beginning follows

 

What have I learned

In the passage of time

In the snarl of sand

As it plummets from

One hemisphere into the next?

To accept yourself

For no other truth fits

*

I am never satisfied with my philosophical poems something I need to work on

Rogue

Photo by: Oloriel

My heart is a spider’s purse

She overstates reality

For the sake of luxury

She hungers even in content

Each eye a satellite

Milking flowered tendrils

Their potency

I want to live wild

In the recesses

Of your wooly head

Like a rogue shoe

I want to pass brazenly

Pirouetting from star to star

Transparent even in sin

Photo Challenge #5 “Paper Train”

Dheny Patungka

A glass cephalic muse

Yields to disclosure

She knows as I know not

She speaks as I cannot

Of a life so curiously quarried

I am wealthy she tells me

Red as a pagan heart

 

Volumes of unwritten poems

Fill my carts, at least in theory,

Though having never seen them

I cannot attest a life-giving labor

Too oft stillborn I am not convinced

That I possess a reasonable womb

Death I fear you, as my only companion

That I should speak forever as I was