poem, writing, poetry, drabble
By B.
Hell-bent on repentance
I dug up my past
– a stack of confessions
in black ink and metaphors –
my religion,
true and false,
unstructured and incomplete.
Forgotten in the pages was
a decade-old whispered poem
to a future lover,
the writer of words and dreamer of dreams
who could make me believe
his theories of history and heaven
and me.
I wanted to write him poetry while the world burned
through its tribulation.
But you only like poems that rhyme.
By Johnlmalone
The bus shelter at the end of our street grinds its teeth at night.
Sometimes I sit with it, hold its hand, listen to its tale
of drunks and suicides,
of lycanthropes baying at the full moon,
of lost Lotharios weeping in their fists
I talk to it too about my problems
Of the jig-saw days when pieces don’t fit
Of the times when your heart races
Like a wildebeest on the veldt
But latches onto nothing.
After a while we both settle
and I head off home
beneath a lopsided moon.
By Deb Whittam
Pirates
retreat, retreat
through there
down the slide
around the bend
Oh look,
the empty swing
I’m a princess
you’re my serf
find me riches –
fill my royal purse
what? that’s not fun?
I know a circus
that’s fun for everyone
clowns … no acrobats
on the monkey bars we fly
spinning, turning
flying high but now
i’m falling
from an airplane
Oh no … it’s beginning to rain
a flood, the waters rise
quick, the boat
I’m sure we’ll survive
look ahead, whales
all the creatures there be
no …. its pirates
We’re on the high seas
He stands still,
Nervously
Elegantly
Holding branches of hopes
And dreams and sun-kissed leaves.
They wrestle,
There’s music, There’s wind.
They play. And he laughs
For above is the sky
But the joy shaded his lonely soul
They spoke to him in ways but words.
And he was in his prime.
Until the magic left his bones,
And the leaves left his side.
Death took toll inevitably,
Painfully, one at a time.
They fell before his rooted trunk,
And now he only could bow down.
Wounded soul, he arched with grasping hands.
Sky, give me back what was once mine.
he came home to an
empty space.
his condo, a quiet, chaotic hole
that gripped him tightly.
the memories of Claudia
pained him throughout each day.
he could see her swollen eyes,
clogged with tears, then
her mouth drawing in from pain.
the chemo had dulled her
insides—crushed her soul.
her voice, now an echoing
ghostly ghast
followed him
everywhere he went.
festering…
festering…
It occurred to me
eventually, we all wake up
outside the Garden of Eden.
So many promises
unfulfilled and broken:
illness and death,
earthquakes and heartaches,
a myriad of misery
accompanies this human form.
It is our daily choice
to rise from the ashes
and accept our truth.
Go forth and be fruitful –
multiply our happiness
as best we can.
Friends are key –
ones you can text
a single swear word
in the dead of night
and your phone pings back
with emojis of love.
It is then we realize:
maybe a tiny piece of Eden
has followed us home.
It’s all those little things you know,
that you tend to let fester so,
and now they seem to just grow and grow.
Beware, because you’ll find yourself in a raging fit,
where everything around seems a deep dark pit.
Choose what you let touch your soul,
and soon you’ll see that you’ve a new goal,
this is to accept, move forward
and to let all those little things go.
