Searching

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Contributor: Gary Thomas Hubbard

- -
Moon that hangs up in the sky
Disappears as clouds drift by
Staring down from his lofty perch
Making a lonely and solemn search
What can he be so intently looking for
He scans the ocean along every shore
Up the side of the mountains to the top
I don’t think he will ever stop
Shining brightly in the midnight sky
Watching for something with his watchful eye
He keeps searching through the night
For distant illusions just out of sight
Just as we are about to discover his quarry
The sunrise blinds the moon with a flurry
Whatever it was hidden just out of sight
We will have to wait for it on another night
So if you see the moon shining in the sky
Don’t just sit there and wonder why
Walk with him and help with the search
Because he is probably lonely on his lonely perch
Maybe you both can find what you are looking for
As you discover all the things life has in store


- - -
He was born and raised in Ohio, and now lives in Florida. He is married and has two children. Most important he is a Papa. He has over a dozen poems on this site and one printed in "Stormcloud Poets: Second Anthology"

Expelled Love

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Contributor: Daipayan Nair

- -
Love breathes its last
when life
breathes its first air
in an air full of 'my love'
and continues
to be loved for love
and not because of love
as it grows up
to be a 'his love'
that repeats its life
and ultimately dies
or a 'her love'
that continues after a death,
extending the death
or a 'our love'
that keeps ignoring a death
all in a nostril
whose love is just the
attraction of an
expelled commodity.


- - -
Born on 1988 in a small town of Silchar, Assam, India, Daipayan Nair is a freelance writer/columnist, poet, fiction writer and essayist. His works have been published in a lot of anthologies and poetry journals like The Poetry Breakfast, The Galway Review, Tuck Magazine, 1947 Literary Journal, Duane's PoeTree Blog etc. He was recently awarded The Reuel International Poetry Prize 2016.

Negative Approach

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Contributor: Michael Marrotti

- -
I keep
searching
for words
that'll
out live me

Doing the
right thing
even though
it's not
reciprocated

Obsessing
over my health
most of the
time mentally

I've done more
bad than good
nobility is
overlooked
through my
transgressions
I'm remembered

Names like Hitler
or Dahmer still
ring an alarming bell
to millions of citizens
bring up Jonas Salk
and most of the time
people are dumbfounded

I'll be deleted
like outdated porn
taking up space
on a hard drive
if I keep up
this positive
approach

I better change
my ways
before I lose
my ticket to
immortality

I'm denigrating
my poems
since bad
is so alluring


- - -
Michael Marrotti is an author from Pittsburgh, using words instead of violence to mitigate the suffering of life in a callous world of redundancy. His new book, F.D.A. Approved Poetry is available at Amazon.

Immunization

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Contributor: Scott Thomas Outlar

- -
I learned how to bathe
in the light of God’s love
while tragedy
tried to torture me
with temptations
toward annihilation.

I learned how to forgive
even the most cruel attacks
because the thought
of holding on
to the knife in my heart
was far too bloody even for my imagination.

I learned how to dance
while the moon cycled red
with my head to the sky
and my mouth open wide
to taste the slow drip
of poison as it poured.

I learned how to laugh
both first and last
so that the inevitable crash
would never cut
too close
to my protected core.


- - -
Scott Thomas Outlar hosts the site 17Numa.wordpress.com where links to his published poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, and books can be found.

TOMORROW

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Contributor: Bruce Levine

- -
Tomorrow.
What if we may love?
Tomorrow.

Today.
Our love burns with a fire
That the fires of Hell
Never equal.

Yesterday.
We met.
Innocently we found
Each other.

The day before.
Our loves apart
And alone.

Tomorrow.
We love.


- - -
Bruce Levine, a native Manhattanite, has spent his life as a writer of fiction and poetry and as a music and theatre professional. His literary catalogue includes four novels, short stories, humorous sketches, flash fiction, poetry, essays, magazine articles and a screenplay His works are published in over twenty-five on-line journals, over twenty books, his shows have been produced in New York and around the country and he’s the author of the novellas Reinvented and An Accidental Journey. He lives with his rescued Australian Shepherd, Daisy.
His work is dedicated to the loving memory of his wife, dancer/actress, Lydia Franklin. Visit him at www.brucelevine.com.

Funeral for the Last Parent

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Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
They were never one
always two
yet they had five,
adults themselves now,
bowling pins today
upright in the front pew,
wondering still
after all these years
why the two
were never one.

It's not a story
the two would tell
even if they could.
They were galaxies apart.
They had no answer
yet they still had five,
adults themselves now
who can celebrate
they're here at all,
bowling pins today
upright in the front pew.

No need to wonder why
the two who loved them
were never one.
It's not a story
the two would tell
even if they could.
They're galaxies away.


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

Song of Storms

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Contributor: BL Blackwood

- -
Naiad and dryad peer from copse and cove
To see, the west-blown sigh lifted on a breeze,
To greet a flow of ships with down-furled sail,
Blown in from distant foreign lands, across

Amber waves carried, cargo to unload.
Sheets of music spill forth on parchment;
Ebony and ivory hulls expend themselves.
They pour from their holds onto the dry docks.

Admiral Beethoven commands on high
The quiet rumble of an armada spread
Groaning on the waves, a marching army
With boots striking the grey stones of their path.

Covert overture to be overheard,
Unattended as arranged by him to be.
Strings build up on one another, raising,
Rising in anticipation of a third movement,

Climbing, coming, surely rising like a tide.
They bear their sonic burden up the steps
Standing to his innovations, to clash,
To crash down like the roar of ovation.

Ludwig poses with pride atop a mountain.
His limbs flail to mirror his hair unruly;
He casts them off in cardinal directions,
Tossed, arcing across the summer sky.

The composer stops. He breaks in repose.
He pauses to rest, arrests, resting his arms.
They quiver as he quivers, a moment
But a moment, the beat of a wing—


He broods. He gathers composure like static
To himself, tension building, growing, rising
The air thick enough to pour, to drink,
To hold like a bird, a breath in his hand.

The composer rests; he pauses but a moment,
A moment but a breath, and then to resume.
Silence stretches like a hush on a crowd—
Then bolts the knife! It strikes, harsh and hard.

His heart spills its contents like a shattered wineglass.
As Ludwig reels, falling back from his post,
His very breath exhales, in sputters, in fits,
A toccata of spiccato notes shredding the bow.

He folds. His creases increase in measure.
He drops sail, a white flag at half mast,
A tree struck and split down the charred middle,
Severed in two, no direction no form

On the splintered chamber plays in tumult
As sirens sing discord through jagged teeth
And rush up to meet the fallen musicmen,
A jazz-deaf crew in drunken stagger.


- - -
I'm a 23-year old artist, poet, and Science Fiction author. When I'm not writing, reading, or painting, I can be found driving for Uber and Lyft.

Paleontology

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Contributor: Sarah Henry

- -
I remind him of a fossil.
I follow him around.
I follow him down the path
in the park which leads
to a playground.
I am imprinted like a baby
duck following its mother
in a straight line.

What has he done to
bring this on himself?
Every man knows
what he’s worth.

Leaves drop all around us.
They are thick with squirrels
and rotting hazelnuts.

A stone monument stands
at the entrance to the park.
It holds a time capsule
designed to be opened
in fifty years. I wonder
about the contents,
possibly sour, petrified,
or congealed.


- - -
Sarah Henry lives near Pittsburgh, where she is retired from a newspaper. Her poetry has been published locally and farther afield.

Seven Haiku

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Contributor: Jennifer Y. Montgomery

- -
Shame

India ink on
the white rug. So many towels.
Still damp, grey after.


Sign

That morning the damp
on pavement is bleeding round.
Fleeting crop circle.


Fragments

An unripe apple.
Cold, chapped hands. Draft beneath the
Piano room door.


After

After the fire,
Smoke caught in her hair, ensnared.
Tears poured forth at will.


Anachronism

She felt out of time.
She left the wash on the line
And now this downpour.


Truth

The indent from too
tight gloves. Manifest as skin
goes pink. Ache then hum.


Preparation

Rust bleeds through the paint
with every coat. She must strip
it down to the bone.


- - -
Jennifer Y. Montgomery is a poet, visual artist, pie baker, and attorney who lives in Connecticut with her daughter. She considers writing poetry to be a meditation. Her poetry has appeared in Red Weather and Haiku Journal.

When a Debutante Marries a Troll

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Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
The problem is, Priscilla grew up
in a penthouse having parties while
Biff came of age under a bridge

fighting other trolls, he remembers.
When Pris calls his office and says
we're having guests tonight

the chasm in their marriage grows.
The guests go home sauced and smiling
but the chasm stays behind, snarling.

Biff can't make the leap to kiss Pris
and some day have 10 kids.
The next time she invites guests

he wants to be told at dawn.
Biff plans to skip feeding the pit bulls
and introduce them to her guests.


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

Time Is Surely Of The Essence

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Contributor: Prince A. McNally

- -
Mountains
upon
mountains
of wasted time

Lay silently at rest
upon trillions of
micro increments

Littered with the stark
procrastination
of uncherished
moments

Where the hands of time
were indiscriminately ignored

As if...
time itself
were an
unresticted
commodity

A
fertile resource
entitled at birth

readily harnessed
like a horse to a carriage
or so the ego's disillusioned
sense of self
would have us believe

For man seeks to defy
the mathematical
principles of logic
and natural progression.

His God complex
often compels him
to challenge the
universal law
of gravity,

And yet,
he has always managed to fail.

Contrary to popular belief...

time cannot be
controlled
manipulated
nor even managed.

We can only hope
to manage ourselves
within the space
time allows us,
before we, ourselves
must return to the stars

And thus,
time is most precious
and surely of the essence

For we,
are surely
running out
of....

time.


- - -

Chaotic Beauty

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Contributor: E.S. Wynn

- -
A pair of planets
sluicing through stardust
to catch, to grind into orbits
to catch, to become
to spin into fiery,
rotating binary
lives
where we turn,
turn at last
turn only to orbit
each other
as one.

I was a ruin when we met
At war with myself and weeping toxic
I saw your battles, your scars
echoes of mine, echoes of pain
of the kinds of exchanges
that could lay waste
to whole continents
to planet-spanning nations
excise entire cultures
from the chaotic beauty
of your shining surface.

I saw your wars,
you saw mine
and in the echoes,
the exchanges,
we saw reasons for truce
for embracing soothing solace
reasons to cool the guns
we'd been aiming at ourselves
and others
reasons to dance arm in arm
in sun, in rain
rotate on
as a pair of planets
finally ready
to live together
to share an orbit
to share an orbit
with each other.


- - -
E.S. Wynn is the author of over sixty books in print and is the chief editor of Thunderune Publishing. This poem is one of many featured in the book titled "Trans Physical Dynamics"

Canticle For Desmond

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Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

- -
How sweet the sunrise
when I kiss her
when I caress the soft light
that plays golden
through her hair
when I whisper her name
and the taste of it
is sweet and smooth
and flows

I remember when your name
was that easy to say.

I remember
and I marvel
at the way
the sweet has turned to sour
the softness turned to rocks
rocks and glass.


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

Holy Holy Holy

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Contributor: M Spear

- -
What happened to the angel
mouth verses
my childhood sense of believing
a cloud like vision

It was replaced
by the warnings of television
seedy conversations
dot matrix real world living

What happened to the holy
one inside me
with wisdom and kindness
he spoke

All I have is the scooped out
place where peace used to be
waking with the taste
of mortality in my mouth.


- - -

The Janus Face of Happiness

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Contributor: James Rudolph

- -
Phantom idyll, a nether realm,
time enchanted uses a
different metric so I drift
in dimensions, fugitive and opiated,
my flanks bare of plate.

But the counter’s tick
can be heard through bright water
coral sky and air creamy
with joy swirl, a hard ledger.

Blur beauty gives ground
to focus, angled, certain,
Account! Account! I am commanded,
salt your dreams, screw your memories
to dystrophic coils.


- - -
James Robert Rudolph is a retired healthcare worker and teacher having returned to old haunts in northern New Mexico after a busy career in Minneapolis. He believes in old-style magical realism, that inspired by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the high desert, and the deep, broad sky of the American mountain west. His poems have appeared in The Artistic Muse, Mad Swirl, and Poetry Super Highway, among others.

A Timeless Arrival

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Contributor: Stacy Maddox

- -
Standing alone on the edge
Of a thousand wakeless oceans
Secret messages from past deities
Voices guiding to sound harbor

Grasping for the smooth melody
Dancing freely through grazing wind
A vessel of truth and hope, stretched
To glittering sky and beyond

Legs entangled helplessly, winding
Gently insistent, in satin garment
Swirling with a grace, easing
Through body, mind, spirit

In honor of a timeless arrival
The air is heavy and charged
A night for shining blessings
Offerings of peace and harmony

Fervent expressions glide caressingly
From whispering lips, ruby red
Enchanted memories riding effortlessly
Invisibly woven currents, finality

Ancient magic transcends on threads
Constantly pure in its amorphous form
Beautiful visions illuminate obscurity
A bond has entwined earth with soul.


- - -
Stacy Maddox is a varied hobbyist and artist, living in the fast-paced city of Lawrence, KS USA. She loves to soak up the sun by the river and feel the water rush over her feet while spending time with her family and friends. Stacy has been published in over 20 books, print magazines and websites.

Produce and People

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Contributor: Heath Brougher

- -
You actor your way through the day
only to come home every night
and sit down realizing
that you really don’t know
who you are anymore,

that your Individuality has seemed
to slowly vanish from your Consciousness
due to all those years of superimposed smiles
and the mountains of little white lies
you have built your life upon.

Your brain is Void of True Character and Identity.
You are officially lost in a world of Man-made Realities.


- - -
Heath Brougher is the poetry editor of Five 2 One Magazine, a Best of the Net Nominee, and has been published in over 350 journals in the past 2 years.

Armadillo Home

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Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Rush Hour, Chicago


Early evening traffic's
rather heavy.
Autos armadillo home

along the Outer Drive
as out of mouths of buildings
people enter mouths

of anything that moves
wherever every evening
they are going. Tonight

they interrupt the passion
of another person’s day,
the crone astride the hydrant

who once again this evening
bows and swoops and curses
as she burlaps broken glass

gives the finger to nice people
propped in autos staring
as she lets the traffic pass.


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

Loss

| Filed under

Contributor: Debarshi Mitra

- -
It was always this way,
was always a metaphor
built on fragments and
a physical space stretched
by light streaming in
from one side of this endless
corridor. It is here that
I preserve the image
of my mother bending
to pluck tulsi leaves
from a yellowing tulsi plant,
and suddenly remember that
for all these years now
after her passing,
I have forgotten even
to part the curtains.


- - -
Debarshi Mitra is a 21 year old poet from New Delhi , India. His debut book of poems ' Eternal Migrant' was published in May 2016 by Writers Workshop. He has previously contributed to anthologies like 'Kaafiyana' and to literary magazines like 'Typewrite'. He is currently enrolled in an 'Integrated PhD' program in Physics.

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