Six

Contributor: Sarabela Deas

- -
The first,
A wave
A bit of sea foam
Scattering sand.

The second,
She wolf
Seeking puppies
Seeking a pack.

The third
Mountain lion mistress,
Rainbow parade
Glitter in the wind.

The fourth
A lotus amidst the muck
Soft-petalled,
Already rotting away.

The fifth
Fascinating flame
An efreet all black around the edges
Burning everything away.

The sixth
Sweetest snuggle tiger
Soft as cutting claws
Ferocious as a kitten's mew.


- - -
My words come from the heart. There's nothing of the rational mind here.

Time to Spare

Contributor: Gary Thomas Hubbard

- -
Foolishly thinking we
have time to spare
Moving around slowly
as we lose our hair
saving plastic bottles,
someday to reuse
by not taking chances
we have nothing to lose
watching the timer like
we are baking bread
still angry years later
over what someone said
realizing as time passes,
we are born with all we need
everything else is acquired
through modesty and greed
rushing through breakfast
to get out ahead
no matter how fast you are
we all wind up dead
stop to smell the proverbial roses
as you walk along
living life to its fullest
how can that ever be wrong?


- - -
I was born and raised in Ohio and now I live in Florida. I'm married and we have two children. Most important, I'm a Papa. There are a dozen poems on this site and I have a poem printed in "Stormcloud Poets second anthology".

In Break Formation

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
The indications used to come
like movie fighter planes in break
formation, one by one, the perfect
plummet, down and out. This time they’re
slower. But after supper, when I hear her
in the kitchen hum again, hum higher,
higher, till my ears are numb,
I remember how it was
the last time: how she hummed
to Aramaic peaks, flung
supper plates across the kitchen
till I brought her by the shoulders
humming to the chair.
I remember how the final days
her eyelids, operating on their own,
rose and fell, how she strolled
among the children, winding tractors,
hugging dolls, how finally
I phoned and had them come again,
how I walked behind them
as they took her by the shoulders,
house dress in the breeze, slowly
down the walk and to the curbing,
how I watched them bend her
in the back seat of the squad again,
how I watched them pull away
and heard again the parliament
of neighbors talking.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Yeah, I'll Stop Drinking

Contributor: Thomas White-Kears

- -
I'll stop drinking
When my heart stops hurting
When the wounds
Only the booze can soothe
Someday close
Someday stop their weeping
And the thought of you
Smiling with some other someone
Slices no deeper
Than the slash
Of a papercut.

I'll stop drinking
When the memory of you
Is just a moment,
Irritating,
A stubborn shit
Soon passed
Nothing more.


- - -

July

Contributor: J.K. Durick

- -
These are dark days
dark summer days
with their storms so strong

they tear families apart
knock trees down
blow holes in the afternoon.


- - -
J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Eskimo Pie, Pacific Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, and Muddy River Poetry Review.

Dark Grey

Contributor: Ben Riddle

- -
Dark grey rain whips
my flooded reflection,
flaying my appearance
for my presumption.

How dare I stand
alone before the storm,
while the wind flays
and the river runs?

My smile braves
the monotonous shades;
the stream the colour
of uncried tears.

All it took for me to stand
was deciding to.


- - -
A fourth year student of Political Science and English at the University of Western Australia, Ben is a founding member of the Said Poets Society.

Just Passing Through

Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

- -
And then one day you were gone.
Your eyes gone glassy
Your touch distant, cold
Briefly, I thought I saw you smile
Thought your tears were more
Than just dust
Than just some spilled soul
Trickling through
Trickling from you
Like stars in flight
Forever blurring my eyes
Forever burning through
Forever just passing through
Just like you,
Just like you.


- - -
I am a student in Miami, Florida. Painting is my other love. My first book, Sketches of Someone, is available through Thunderune Publishing.

As If You Meant Nothing

Contributor: Desley Obman

- -
Day by day
I watch you kill yourself.
I watch you drown yourself in drink
I watch you razor your lungs
With little doses of death
With smoke and self-loathing
Burning your way toward nothing
As if there were nothing
Worth saving
In this world
In this life
As if you were nothing
As if you meant nothing
To no one


- - -
A poem of love for one who doesn't love what I love.

Marrying Everything

Contributor: Nikhil Nath

- -
Sitting in a hemisphere
of abstraction

I cut a lemon
into two sentences

filled with the aroma
of humor

that will bring
an orange of refreshment

from the daily sameness
of marrying everything to simile


- - -
Nikhil has been writing poetry for eighteen years. He has been published in various magazines in India, the USA and the UK. Nikhil Nath is his pen name. He lives and works from Kolkata, India. "Write rubbish, but write", said Virginia Woolf. This is Nikhil's maxim for writing. His poems have been accepted in Allegro, Aji, Ink sweat and tears, Ithica lit., Germ, Leaves of Ink, Ehanom among others.

Griggs' Bar and Grill

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
In two more hours I'll have to shower,
shave and coffee-prop my lids
and otherwise prepare for day. It's 4 a.m.
and now the barkeep, Griggs,

is rushing me, the first
to come, the last to leave,
the lad who just an hour before
was coaxed to quaff one more.

At work I'll cummerbund a smile,
hold my head and sit all day,
play another endless game
of solitaire or tic-tac-toe.

Griggs' apron's off. The neon's out
and now he'll set the locks in back.
The spittle, butts and half-slain beers
he'll leave for Willie who'll soon be here

to dance his broom between
the tables and the scattered chairs
as smoothly as Kelly or Astaire.
At 6 a.m., he'll climb the ladder

near the door and aim his broom
through the transom toward the sky.
Each morning Willie puts another
bullet through the eye of sunrise.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Go Lay With Your Fallen, Angel

Contributor: Hans D. Morgenlaufen

- -
Angel, you call me.
We flew together, yes.
Wing-to-wing
Until something forgotten
Caught your eye
Something fallen
Something sharp.

I tried to stop you
Tried even as you cut our wings
Scattered them to the sky
Red with bloodied feathers
White down of our innocence
Sticking to your hands.

Go lay with your fallen
Delight in his demons
His harsh dances
Drug-fueled and desirous
Of nothing more
Than the next rush
The next hate
The next low-brow high.

Go lay with your fallen
I'll splint my own wings
I'll find other skies to fly
Other hands to hold
Someone I can trust
To always stay aflight
Beside me.


- - -

Scars

Contributor: Gary Thomas Hubbard

- -
Scars that never go away
Like tattoos they are here to stay
One is art that tells a tale
One tells of the pain acquired along our trail

*

Some scars are hid deep inside
Tattoos are usually worn with pride
One comes from choices we make
One hides behind stories we fake

*

Sad and lonely as you lay around
Happiness is something rarely found
Coping with life's simple tasks
As we wear our false smiling masks

*

With patience I will climb back out
Holding my hand will help there is no doubt
The hardest part is taking you along on this ride
When we get past the bad, we can feel the pride

*

Scars that never go away
Like tattoos they are here to stay
One is art that tells a tale
One tells of pain acquired along our trail


- - -
I was born and raised in Ohio and now I live in Florida. I'm married and we have two children. Most important, I'm a Papa. There are a dozen poems on this site and I have a poem printed in "Stormcloud Poets second anthology".

Wisdom

Contributor: Richard Schnap

- -
During hard times in my life
I would find things to sell
That had lost any meaning for me

A broken guitar amplifier
That crackled and spit
Like a man in an electric chair

A collection of old pennies
That was worth even less
Then when they were first minted

An autographed baseball
With the signatures of a team
That kept losing year after year

But the one thing I regret
Letting slip from my life
Was a solid ivory Buddha

Whose miniature face
Was carved in a laugh
As if trying to teach me a lesson


- - -
Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

An Easier He

Contributor: John Ogden

- -
Work to be
Best I can be
Never enough
Never enough for she
Maybe too much
Me
Maybe too much
Maybe easier to be
With an easier he
Maybe easier
Than staying in love
With me.


- - -
John Ogden was conceived of a government form and a passing mailbox. He lives somewhere out in the woods of a rural land more akin to the fantasy realms of literature than real life, and his favorite dirt bikes will always be the broken ones.

First Rain

Contributor: Brian Baumgarn

- -
First rain of spring.
Cold.
Driven on a
harsh northern wind.
Welcome, though.
Filling the dry, gaping cracks
in annealed soil.
Restoring earth from an
unyielding, austere winter.

Essential, though coming as
a bold remnant of winter's
glacial will.
Awakening the raw,
callous earth.
Refreshing the dormant
winter air.
Mollifying the soils
for blade and seed.

Frigid and stinging,
yet still a harbinger.
Verdant spring's first birthing breath.
Warmth will come.
Skies will clear.
Today, wind driven rains signed
a new lease on life
for the broad, northern plains.


- - -
65 year old working with developmentally challenged men. I started writing again, about two years ago after many years. Writing brings serenity. I live in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Always Saying Goodbye

Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

- -
She's been so long without a home.
Always saying goodbye to everything.
Always surviving, only just barely.
Always walking on, walking on.
Always stopping just to see
All the places, the people
The moments she
knows she'll never re-see
As she walks on, walks on,
Through this dusk
Toward another dawn.


- - -
I am a student in Miami, Florida. Painting is my other love. My first book, Sketches of Someone, is available through Thunderune Publishing.

Chapel

Contributor: Susan Sweetland Garay

- -
These days my chapel
on Sunday is a dark wood,
damp and growing,

or the ocean in constant motion
with its familiar sound
calming all who
come near it.

God’s creations
not man's
are where
we worship.


- - -
Born and raised in Portland Oregon, Susan Sweetland Garay currently lives in the Willamette Valley with her husband and daughter where she works in the vineyard industry. She has had poetry and photography published in a variety of journals, on line and in print, and her first full length poetry collection was published in 2013.

Getting Older

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
He's getting older
but has a life,
checks his emails,
loves his wife,
likes to know
what she's wearing
underneath.
Might be pink,
might be white.
Nothing wrong
with either.
But if it's red
or if it's black,
he knows
he better
take a nap.
He'll be up
late tonight.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Woven Spring

Contributor: Nikhil Nath

- -
On a carpet
of emotions

they have
woven spring,

as if to color
the earth with renewal,

riding a wave
of good tidings,

bathing in the fragrance
of excitement.


- - -
Nikhil has been writing poetry for eighteen years. He has been published in various magazines in India, the USA and the UK. Nikhil Nath is his pen name. He lives and works from Kolkata, India. "Write rubbish, but write", said Virginia Woolf. This is Nikhil's maxim for writing. His poems have been accepted in Allegro, Aji, Ink sweat and tears, Ithica lit., Germ, Leaves of Ink, Ehanom among others.

Honky Tonk Sock

Contributor: Paul Tristram

- -
We each went South
in different directions.
After jiving nervously
about the drainpipe inspections.
A garden spade as a walking stick,
a scarecrow’s coat of blue.
A compass in my boot heel
and an empty bladder too.
I zigzagged the public footpath
jumped the boundary fence.
Grabbed a handful of waterfall, running,
fired a sling-shot at common-sense.
Spoke with a hooting owl
argued with a whining vixen.
Bummed a ferry ride with a mermaid
for one feel of my scars friction.
I found the caves of mystery
but I couldn’t pick the gateways lock.
So I tunnelled right on under it
into the chamber of the Honky Tonk Sock.
It lay upon a golden platform
guarded by a witch or three.
I did my thrust and parry, good
until I got the garment free.
I threw it carefully into my knapsack
and skedaddled out of Dodge.
Whip cracked away home in a frenzy
arrived safely at the Anarchy Lodge.
I was given the Princess’s hand for bravery
but had a wank and gave it back.
I had rescued the Honky Tonk Sock
I was the village hero and that’s a fact!


- - -
Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet. Buy his book ‘Poetry From The Nearest Barstool’ at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1326241036

Grit

Contributor: Suez Jacobson

- -
The world
The one I live in.
Or is it the one
I only read about
In the New Yorker?
Is foreign
Grimy
Pooled in sex
And hate
And death
And all that’s ugly
But passes as art.
Or is the art the stuff
That surrounds it
Critiques it
Make us question
Our own willingness to participate
In it
To sink into
The pool.
Become a part of the
Filth
If only to fit?
Or not.
Can we run
Or hide
Or just die?


- - -
An economist who is working to renounce to her identity in lieu of another, any other.

Knowledge

Contributor: Richard Schnap

- -
An unshaven man
In a worn army coat
Passes on the sidewalk
With a liquor store bag

While across the street
A girl without makeup
Also walks by
Carrying one herself

And each one sees
The other and for
A moment their eyes
Lock in an embrace

As if both of them feel
The same lonely burden
They try to forget
The same lonely way


- - -
Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Beautiful Sadness

Contributor: Richard J. Lamoureux

- -
Once upon a time
I gazed on the face of a beautiful sadness
She invited me into her temple
Transported me there
By crystal blue tears
Poured from her goblet
Stinging
Ripping me from the fabric of my time
I walked down her hallways
Stumbled through her darkness
Searched for hidden passages
Grasped at invisible doorknobs
"Please, please,
let me see,
a glimpse of eternity!"

Her clear voice flowed down the hall
Color from shadows transformed the walls
I followed unable to speak
Within her sanctuary
Answers
I chose to seek

There in the temple
Of her mind
Upon a broken Altar I dined
Unsure what mystery I would find
I felt my preconceptions
Slowly unwind

The sadness I felt
Had been my own
I had traveled many paths alone
The broken Altar was my heart of stone
Which had led me away from another's throne

I looked out the windows of her soul
Seen my own face drenched in blue tears
It seems her eyes were actually mirrors
In that moment the evaporation of my fears
As I gazed upon the face
Of a beautiful sadness.


- - -
Author and poet, living in Kelowna British Columbia. My book is titled DUMMY, Hurting and Healing words.

Putting The Baby To Sleep

Contributor: Susan Sweetland Garay

- -
Though I have heard it
a thousand times
I am still surprised
by the miraculous sound
of her voice.

She babbles before
she falls asleep,
telling me stories
from her day and
kicking her legs joyfully
as though running some
terrific race.

She falls asleep
suddenly and with
a fist full of my hair.


- - -
Born and raised in Portland Oregon, Susan Sweetland Garay currently lives in the Willamette Valley with her husband and daughter where she works in the vineyard industry. She has had poetry and photography published in a variety of journals, on line and in print, and her first full length poetry collection was published in 2013.

Cry Night

Contributor: Brian Baumgarn

- -
Night cries for having lost the moon.
Twilight sobs at the failing of the sky.
Dusk moans at having misplaced the stars.
Heavy tears.
Water tears,
from spawning, pewter gray clouds.
Night lost the moon, sky, and stars.
Abundant tears.
Fertile tears.
The soils swim with her grief.
Plush tears.
Falling tears.
Entreaties to the endless abyss.
Prayers to a God unseen.
Wind driven tears.
Supplication tears.
Bring back the moon, the sky, and stars
that we may cease this crying.
Healing tears.
Absolution tears.
Night sighs. Weighted clouds dissipate.
Wistful prayers are answered.
The night sees her nest in the heavens
unfolding and shining once again.
Her last tears have found
the moon, the stars, and the sky.


- - -
65 year old working with developmentally challenged men. Living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Writing again for nearly two years.

Try To Fly

Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

- -
Take a chance
Try to fly
Stretch those wings, Icarus
Try to fly

The sky is not so very big
The fall is not so very far
Come back again in another life
Try to make the same flight
With new wings
With new sight
Full of the same fight
That put you in the cold sea
That threw you against colder stones
Though you had hoped and hoped,
Flailed and flapped
So keen
To finally be
Free

How glorious the scene
When you finally fly
On wings strong enough to sail a circle
Around the blazing sun


- - -
I am a student in Miami, Florida. Painting is my other love. My first book, Sketches of Someone, is available through Thunderune Publishing.

The Old Padre and the Tarpon

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
with apologies to Hemingway

Beyond the frippery and folderol
of bishops and the like,
Father Murphy’s on vacation
with just a week to cast
for bigger fish than pike.

And so he sails the peaceful bay
casting every kind of bait,
praying that a tarpon
suddenly will strike.
Hook the big one, Father claims,

and it will thrash around
as if Satan were a submarine
cruising in its wake.
A fish that big, claims Father,
is always worth the wait

for it guarantees an aging priest,
with just a week’s vacation,
action and distraction from
the frippery and folderol
of bishops and the like.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Amidst Silence

Contributor: Jared Ninfa Kelly

- -
Give me a reason
Give me a word
Give me a sign
A snatch of lyrics
So precise
Exactly what you feel
Exactly what you want
Rendered in words
Sung by other lips
Set in music and motion
So precise
So precise
But something,
Something still.


- - -
Hi, I'm Jared. I live in New York and beatbox on the street corner for fun and profit.

Finding an Eternal Place

Contributor: Reed Venrick

- -
Go to nature's place
go where nothing's been invented
by the hand or mind of human
no power lines, no paved roads
no soda cans or plastic bags
no cars or tractors or planes or trains

go where earth was and will be
after humans have passed
and flown on to another planet
or another dimension space

go where your shadow stands
lean as the bamboo, swim naked
in the sea, or ride a horse bareback
while wearing, if you must, a pig's skin
put aside the the clothes squeezed
from sweaty shops

or just lean against a sturdy oak
and watch the show of passing clouds
the first meditation of evolving minds
before the full moon was created

feel the knotty log that Cicero sat
tasting an apricot and red wine
feel the same fire that Di Vinci
warmed his fingers before he picked
up the brush and began

hear the breeze whine in the pines
and the flutter of maple leaves
as Kant did on his daily walk

swim in the water as easily
as Jesus floated in the Dead Sea
and catch a fish as tasty as sushi is

and remember what we always knew
we are they, they are we
when the senses are perceiving
we'll find again time and space
the greatest illusions

after all, we don't have to die
to find eternity in a universal space--
there it is a natural place.


- - -
R Venrick lives in Florida,
writes and photographs
abstracted nature.

Boeing

Contributor: Nikhil Nath

- -
Can you catch
a rainbow
in the incubator
and silence
that voice screaming
on the mobile
without burning calories
biting Saturday
inside the cockpit
of a Boeing full of jealousy.


- - -
Nikhil has been writing poetry for eighteen years. He has been published in various magazines in India, the USA and the UK. Nikhil Nath is his pen name. He lives and works from Kolkata, India. "Write rubbish, but write", said Virginia Woolf. This is Nikhil's maxim for writing. His poems have been accepted in Allegro, Aji, Ink sweat and tears, Ithica lit., Germ, Leaves of Ink, Ehanom among others.

I'm Free

Contributor: D. Webb

- -
I'm free
And so is she
I've sewn my first seed
And she has another he
How can we be
Anything but happy?
How can we be
Anything but a joyous
(and separate)
We?


- - -
Two kids. Loves camping, vaping and chicken-fried steak.