Jealous of the sun
Will you forgive me,
she asks. The sun
was shining
and I hiked-up
my skirt and
opened my knees.
Monday, August 15, 2022
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Michelle Smith
Until the Last Minute
To be a day late
And an hour behind
Means to yourself
You are not very kind
Procrastination
Is the devil in disguise
Because indeed to yourself
You do lie.
Do you burn the midnight oil
At the last hour?
Running out of that ignited energy
that has zapped your power?
That syllabus was passed out
Three weeks ago
12 a.m. is now 2 and your paper is due by 8.
How tough is the toil?
I can do this you say to yourself!
With pen and paper in hand
Week two is like the sludge of quicksand
Tonight is the the day before
your class assignment
It should had been done
Oh procrastination you are the devil in disguise
Because indeed to yourself
You do lie
It's too late to turn back now
A deeper and wider hole
you dug up somehow
Procrastination is a stronghold
I do declare
Like a panty hose run in need of nail polish repair,
Time and nylons
wait for no one
Tick tock goes the clock
And the holes are wider
Especially at the last hour
And that is no fun.
The Have and Have Nots
Paying the landlords mortgage
My hard earned money is rent
The 1st and 15th
Outstretched and barely enough
To save and pay myself 10 %
At the last hour
I'm asked if I can work a half shift
Instead of eight,
I'm at work for 12 hours
Tiredly I stagger home
and open my
Apartment front door
The fresh smell of paint lingers
Of red, white, and red all over
The fourplex resembles newsprint
And Elizabeth Arden's perfume,
"Red Door"
The have and have nots
Are the hustle and bustle of workers
Of 6 am to 2 pm.
She's the essential worker
That stands 90 to 95 % on her feet
And provides service with a smile
At times beyond the last hour
"Good morning".
"How are you today?"
A resident's average age is 85
About 20 minutes to provide care
Whoever stated that fact told a lie.
I believe in a pristine and clean body
As if a motor chassis put together and done.
At the last hour of charting
it's required three times
per shift
on my 12-15 resident caseload
The have and have nots
I am their CNA
2 10 minute breaks
1 30 minute lunch
Uniformed in SSL gear
My ankles and feet
are swollen and inflamed
As if hit by a puglists' punch
The have and have nots
I heal with a smile
And encouraging word
A meal,
A silver plated teapot
With ♥️, patience, and drive
Their eyes are the windows of their souls
The have and have nots
Are treated
with dignity, comfort, and care
Uncertainty lingers
Will COVID 19 provide the last hour
Of sick and elderly residents
During these chaotic
and
isolating times?
Lori Wall-Holloway
Labor Journey
My granddaughter yells in pain
as she grips the couch in hopes
it will relieve her agony
She cries out for her mom who
keeps track of the contractions
Her two young sisters try to ease
her distress with loving touches
One is behind and kneads
her neck and back, while
the other kneels below
to rub her feet and legs
I watch the scene before me and ponder
if my grandmother had older Italian
ladies surround her when she was in labor
I wonder if they massaged contracting
muscles in her lower spine or gave
her sips of water to hydrate
her before the urge came to push
and she gave birth to my mother
on the kitchen table
Zoe cries out again, shouting
“I need him to come out now!”
Not sure how things will progress
I quickly clean and sanitize
my dining room table, just in case
After the last hour of Zoe dealing
with strong childbirth pains
my daughter decides it is time
She takes her to the hospital
and leave us to wait for news
It is not until the next day
the baby begins the last stretch
of his journey down the birth
canal when Zoe’s uterus pushes
a fifth generation out of his cocoon
R A Ruadh
Heat doom
I lie wakeful
in the searing heat
of night
Dry dirges drum the silence
sun cracked riverbeds
charred remnants of field and forest
images of grandchildren
footprinting endless dusty roads
For now the rains still come
too light or too lashing
too late or too early
but still water
I lie wakeful
listening as life
evaporates
Thom Garzone
A Doberman’s Elegy
The taste of death is bitter
not sweet as life
You left with darkness
the night who carried you away
barking nearly till a final hour
yet still the silence shields me,
the peace, settling
To have cared for your fur, skin, and paws
that tapped on my floor, and when you lapped up tap
water
and crunching chow
pouncing
on the minute sounds outside
But
we wrap you up like a bundle of bliss,
a bale that fits into an infinity of escape
I
ask if words are needed
but Bill only gives his goodbye
So
we drive away from the mound
at once to desert your memory
For the Passing of a Friend
Each crossroad seems the same
alike in struggle and fear
Every turn brings us closer
to climax with inner peace,
relief from the sufferance of existence
In the absence of loved ones,
we face our own mortality, its questions,
or righteous creeds, and they who have followed spirited trends
We are made complete by our brother who has passed,
or our sisters, parents, friends onto
this luminous amphitheater that is our souls
Some enter a kingdom to die clean,
and others fail to form days without using,
yet our bond fuses in the universe as we recover
and inherently are one
The Sixties: A Poem
It’s mortifying to understand I’ve been alive this long
born as Huey copters were landing in jungles,
and opening my eyes for the first time while Cuba threatens us with nuclear war
Black and white TV’s are still around
Talkative and affluent wives of attorneys, bankers, and businessmen
chain smoke in doctors’ offices to disregard the “No Smoking” signs
since ashtrays were provided
I’d say my memory is still sharp, able to tell fables to grandchildren
as a Moses-like character
But these descendants would only be hypothetical casualties of my frivolous journey,
really asking: Where am I? Who knows?
now reading them bedtime stories to the spirits I ran from
Songs I grew up listening to are called Oldies
New math isn’t new any more
My father and mother would both be over 100 this year
When I teach poetry, literature, and creative writing
I can link my own books to the prehistoric dinosaurs we study
On reentering college this fall semester I’ll be closer to retirement
The time I set my coming-of-age stories in
ought to be considered historical fiction
I don’t want to grow this old
to look and sound or appear this old
I don’t hope for the gray streak that slices back on my black head of hair
to embody the length of time I’ve been alive
Why not live as an ancient philosopher, venerable, wise, respected, and dignified?
Why not pass on tales of yesteryear to the children of tomorrow?
Let their truth in years resolve these decades I’ve endured
where a lens of ages bear the gulf of generations, free to feel
answers from such sagacious parables I could ever offer
Sutichai (Mr. Chai Tea) Savathasuk
Free Fallin’
I recall my most relaxed experience
was one where the air cradled me in suspense.
Falling wasn’t free, but it was worth the fee
to feel a minute turn from infinity to clarity.
Inside the cavity of the winged vessel,
anticipation tensing up my muscles,
pulsating through wind’s circulation
as the metal bird’s valve bursted open.
Through the gateway to sky oceans
soaring with Tom Petty motions
off the arms of a mechanical body
spurting me out of its artery.
10,000 feet above the ground,
naked airs slip, my ears sound.
120 miles per hour, my body falls
60 beats per minute, my EKG scrawls.
Soul reading at P(ea)Q R(e)ST.
Critical points of curve at lowest stress
where my body braved at the ready
with the whisked blows beating steady.
Strain release from my back drops
the nylon rainbow shoots, pops
my ears became a flat line
coming home, safely off cloud nine.
From the last I remembered peace
in my heart with tremors that ceased,
I fell through Nature’s breath to dive
as she reminded me that I am still alive.
Capturing the Moment
I used to scoff
at all those
pieces
the poets and the
songwriters wrote about.
I didn't get it
until I caught a
glimpse,
a fraction of that feeling,
and I see now.
I felt it
when you had 4
of your fingers
laced with 4
of mine,
how lucky I gotta
be
seeing you / wake
up
4 different times.
Walking away always
with that
derpy grin on my face,
following the moments
after your embrace.
I hate that I
can't explain
why I love
what you're doing to me.
There's no logical
reasoning behind it;
it's not one feeling
but a system
of explosions inside.
Your image, so
invasive.
Your smiles kill me
softly.
Thoughts of you turn
my belly to jelly.
Your name drops make
me all giggly.
It's a grand mood to
be hit by a pick-up truck
going 120 on the
freeway.
I see now how this
feeling inspires so many
people on this planet
to write
about the same stuff
repeatedly.
Even the
meaninglessness in this life
was meaningful to me
when you sat
in my car beside
me.
You discomfitingly
make me
feel comfortable in
your presence.
How someone named
light contain darkness,
but that doesn't make
you any less
than who you can be
for I'll be there when
you're surviving,
I’ll be there when
you're thriving,
and I'll be grateful for
this feeling to be undying.
And that's the beauty
of being boundless
when you were off the
restlessness.
I could write to
infinity
about that moment we
laid endlessly.
Even when I bored you
to sleep,
it bored into my
mind
how deep I didn't
mind
my mind was awake
alone;
I dared not look at my
phone
to shatter this
illusionary eternity
looking at you.
And it didn’t matter
how long I lasted.
All I know
without knowing the
time
at that moment...
was timeless.
Your smile: priceless.
In that stasis, I made
this whole thesis I've written
that has me spittin'
I'm still smitten by you.
You tell me to
extrapolate off past data,
but you assumed you
were just another point.
You tell me you don't
want a temporary,
but you're fooling with an eternal.
You fell way past the
regression line
and dropped the R-value.
Mathematicians will
tell you that's a bar,
and I know you got value.
Now you
got me
believing I ain't
dreaming no more.
For I see
the sea of words above
your head,
so vast,
it’d be forever to reel them in,
fish each one out to give to you,
but eternity's a time
I can spend
to go through all of
them
with
you.
Quarter
I hit quarter-life in January 2022,
but that’s a survivor’s saying.
They set the guideline that our hearts beat to 100.
What if I’ve already hit my mid-life
or final moments?
I think about how much time I’ve left,
but that number can’t be measured
by the metric of age
as some people died
before they even lived.
We see all around how fickle life can be
when midwives sentenced newborns to mid-lives.
You heard of the 18-year old
who spoke of conservation,
Now recall the ones
who didn’t make it past 11.
My type’s independent of the month I was born.
Can’t determine me by the category of Capricorn
with no astrology to define my personality.
I’m an MLK and Benjamin sandwich
for the day I evacuated the womb.
As I earlied to bed, I had a dream
that I’d be healthy, wealthy,
and late to the tomb.
We’re born to die,
so give meaning to death.
Live on, give it all
until your last breath.
Charles Harmon
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"Ourobouros Dream"
Who’Da Thunk?
In only the last hour the Earth has traveled 67,000 miles
in its annual pilgrimage of revolution around the Sun.
Approximately 97 million Big Macs were eaten around the world
and that doesn’t include cheeseburgers, Double Doubles,
Whoppers, veggie burgers, and in sometimes…mystery meat?
In only the last hour 42 million people around the world had sex,
and that doesn’t even count all the animals, the birds and the bees.
The Earth rotates at about 1038 miles per hour at the Equator,
but here in LA LA LAnd we are only moving about 840 miles per hour.
If you were to sit on your frozen butt on the North Pole, it would take
24 hours to spin once around, an incredible speed of one inch per hour.
Just in America in the last hour 17 million cups of coffee were drunk,
and about 37 million bottles of beer, depending on the time of day.
Just imagine all the sodas, tea. milk, juice, and energy drinks consumed!
I had hoped to write this poem in only sixty minutes as the last hour
approaches to submit before the midnight deadline, but I’m running
out of time and guessing or simply making up imaginary statistics.
Everything begins with imagination, then we can check it.
How many million donuts were eaten, how many cookies, cakes, pies?
How many women got pregnant, how many babies were born, aborted?
How many car crashes were there, how many injured, dead, survivors?
How many cows were butchered for meat, matadors gored by a bull?
How many people met their last hour being killed and eaten by animals?
T.S Eliot knew a thing or three about cats, and he and we all know
that cats have nine lives. But finally, even cats and dogs must die.
But how will we face that last final hour? Eliot also wrote that
the world would end not with a bang but with a whimper.
Robert Frost wrote that the world could end in fire or ice.
William Blake wrote that we can “see a world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour,” so there is a lot we can experience and do,
a lot that can happen in an hour, or sometimes nothing at all.
Making love can fill an hour with passion, or sometimes result in
an argument, a fight, a breakup. It can create a baby or a black eye.
As the last hour approaches think about what you will do.
Write a poem, play tennis, take a nap, get drunk, make love?
Be a villain, be a hero, save the world, save yourself. Sleep.
So many choices, so much freedom, so little time more or less.
Shih-Fang Wang
Final Ending
The last hour of life
Shall come
Like it or not
Even if one is not ready
Still the life fetcher
Will show up without delay
Who would know
How to prepare
For a journey unknown
Facing this ending so final
Fear may occupy the mind
As resistance is futile
Why not settle with peace
No more burden to the weary soul
With regrets too late to mend
Just drift with the flow
Nature will take over
To impose our return to dust
The heart will strike its last beat
The brain will slip into oblivion
All senses succumb to eternal rest
Let Go
Let go your anger
Let go your despair
Let go your hatred
Don’t know what troubles you
But your face is full of anguish
Eyes brim with tears
Clinging to things
That consume your essence
Prevents you from chasing dreams
Don’t wait until the last hour
When you have no choices
But to let go of everything
While the sun is still shining
Shift your vision to brighter scenes
To enliven your days
Allowing vengeance burning
Only amplifies pain
Deepens bitterness
Let go
Free your heart
For peace to stay
Before Parting
Their melancholy intensified
In the last hour
As if with sadness
Time would go slower
But they knew no matter
How much they wished me to stay
I still had to leave
They stuffed as many things
As they could into my suitcase
Until it almost burst with their love
When it’s time to go
Mom would tear up
Dad a quiet person
Would naggingly remind me
To take care of myself
Watching their frail figures and gray hair
I knew times left for me to visit them
Were decreasing and once again
I used up another chance
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Gina Duran
Sanctuary’s Silent Song
see the supermoon calling
the red spider spinning
Its web and dancing
in the glistening moon
light shining
over its silky home
prey wrapped and waning
over waxy aloe vera
leaves on the porch
a muted august
good night
before the dogs drift
soft slumber cats meow
tranquility created by nurturing
hands in the garden
peace below rib cage
just above the navel
once truth spoke
its name
silence
sang
Rich Ferguson
When you venture out on your own, you’ll pass graveyards where stray dogs chew lost years like old bones and swear no road is home. When you venture out on your own, lady moon will dance for you if you know the password to the secret room behind her shine. Gardens long to bear the flowers of you. Roses bloom backward to reveal to you the secrets of the underground. When you venture out on your own, certain memories will be pregnant with broken mirrors. Days may sound strange because their lips are parched from kisslessness. As you approach the crossroads, listen to the blindfolded sweethearts feeling their way back to love’s source. They say there’s a music box that waits for you to fill with all the melodies that melt you to a delicious hum.
Friday, August 12, 2022
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
Hills of Bells: 2006
His eyes were once
a brilliant blue.
His beard and hair
once shined like the sun.
In November 1867,
nearly six months
after his execution
on the Hills of Bells,
Maximilian, the tragic,
intrusive emperor of
Mexico, bore little
resemblance to himself.
His blue eyes replaced
by the dark eyes from
a mannequin of the Virgin
of a local city church.
His body blackened
due to the lack of proper
embalming materials.
His rented crown
repossessed, and parts of
his blond beard and clothes
for sale as souvenirs.
Mark A Fisher
sleepless
In moments before midnight
the madness of
a single day shatters.
Tossing and turning
bloody in a bed of broken
silvered glass.
one last hour
Ugly suppressed
memories of mistakes
hop around me like puppies.
Each and every one
clamoring for its share
of my attention.
Pulling at the sheets and wrestling
to expose my sins to the darkness.
one last hour
In the dimness
the deluded clock clicks
over another minute.
I am frantic
“to sleep perchance to dream”
mummers more foolish than I.
one last hour
Mark Lipman
The Only Choice Left
There comes a point
when words just fail
to tell the entire story
to say what we need
sifting through cliches
searching for meaning
on a billboard, t-shirt
or cereal box, when
all the great thoughts
have all been used up
all the deep meanings
spent on commercials
and we wonder is this it
is this all there is to life.
At some point, maybe today,
or many years from now,
during the coldest summer
of the rest of our lives,
we will blink and notice
what was staring at us
all along, right in front
of our faces, and think
there must be more than this
than what we’ve been told are
the limits of our existence.
Somewhere along the line
we might even remember
what it once was like
to be happy and free
to be innocent
in a world gone mad
before we just became
accomplices.
Once upon a time
not so very long ago
something changed
the course of history
and our very lives
it might have been
when she smiled and
looked into your eyes
or perhaps when
you got on that train
crossing a bridge
to nowhere
and just believed
what they told you to
because that’s the way
it has always been
and we forgot to ask
the questions.
Either way
it’s no longer the same
and there’s nothing
left to blame
except our fears
and doubts
as it always was
and always will be
the only choice left
is the one you make today.
Veronica Jauregui
There's no hiding from the moon
Mostly it likes to talk all night
Make the loins yearn for someone
Always too far away near in the dark
Of the night in the stretch the moon
Takes us I could hear you all that way
The moon serves as a paper cup with string
You hold the other cup at the end of the string
I wonder about this crazy day you wonder how
I made it out of mine a broken car twice in one day
I hear you and your voice is the chord that plays
That jitters my heart these days plays muse to my
Fingers makes me dream and fantasize into pillow
Come here you say follow the moon to me
How we become naked in this moon
It's not the loss of everything acceptance of bodies
Seeing at night knowing each other bare
Scott C Kaestner
Happy Endings
I don’t know where to begin
but the end is an old friend
one more drink
one more smoke
one more toke
then time to go
last round of memories
light the way back home
shining upon future bliss
a goodnight kiss, the end
sweet dreams and friendly ghosts.
Carl Stilwell AKA CaLokie
A Bible Belt Polonaise
I met Richard Brand while we were both juniors at
Midwest City High. He was playing a Chopin's Polonaise
on a Steinway at a church social. As his bony shoulders
pumped, his long fingers flew furiously along the length
of the keyboard with a power I wouldn't have believed
possible for someone with such a frail frame. It was
the first time I had ever liked anything classical.
The last time I saw Richard, he drove me home in his
'40 Plymouth Coupe. I had just returned from Moody
Bible Institute in Chicago and looked forward to telling him
of the white bucked college quarterbacks and high-heeled
blonde beauty queens I had seen testify at Youth for Christ
rallies about the unspeakable joy they discovered the moment
they bowed their heads, closed their eyes and asked Jesus
to come into their hearts and take total control.
I knew Richard was "madly for Adlai” when most of us
"liked Ike” and that he might've believed Evolution was true
but I still wasn!t ready for what he told me. He could no longer
bend his knees to the god of our Bible Belt fathers. . . His eyes
had been opened and could never be closed again. . . He reco-
mmended that I read J.B. Phillips' book,Your God is too Small. . ..
Before I got out of his car, he placed a hand on my left wrist
and pleaded in an anguished voice, "Please--don't pray for me.”
I'd like to visit that North Carolina oak grove
where Richard shot himself, kneel before a mound
of brown and yellow leaves piled within a circle
of ash-white stones and let him know
I never prayed for him. . .
I read J.B. Phillips. . .
I've yet to hear anyone play
a better Polonaise.
Thursday, August 11, 2022
Joe Grieco
Wound Care
Maybe you heard a familiar voice
Sounded just like one of your relatives talking
But really, it’s you talking
In Little Italy, on Mulberry Street, in old New York
Pushcarts haggling, rags for sale
Horse carts hawking olive oil, hey, get it from the barrel, bring your bottle
Zio Francesco, my Uncle Frank
Born before The Great War
On Mulberry Street, before my father and the other five kids
He sent us a big white couch when my father left for Vegas forever
I guess he thought we needed something to sit on
Our mother covered it in plastic that never came off
When he was dying
He forgot to talk American, he only talked Italian
He didn’t know who I was, or anybody come to visit
But in his last hour, we spoke
From way back on Mulberry Street
Holding my hand from a bed with a plastic sheet that never came off
Spoke about pushcarts, and olive oil
About how grandpa came home drunk
Pulled grandma out of bed by her hair, and scared awake all the kids forever
Maybe sometimes there’s a cadence in my voice
That sounds just like Uncle Frank talking
But see, I don’t understand Italian
See, maybe in my last hour
I’ll sit on a big white couch and hear what I’ve heard
Talk only in Italian, just like the kids on Mulberry Street
Robert Fleming
some things are for more than peeing
mamma won’t let me wear roller-skates outside the roller rink
daddy drives the family to the Orange Julep that
rises up from below ground like a turnip
the orange is above ground all summer until
the last autumn leaf blows the Julep below ground
the servers roll on roller-blades &
wear cut of shorts before
the Dukes of Hazzard named them Daisy Dukes
daddy glances at jean back pockets rolling our order in &
breaths in a Cuban cigar
i lick-stick orange Julep pulp through my middle years
until daddy’s bedside library opened with
Playboy take-outs &
i felt in my jeans what daddy’s eyes looked at at the Orange Julep
Petrouchka Alexieva
Last Hour
(To ingenious mind)
It was unexpected turn in my life in that night.
Three times before, I saved His life.
This time I was not close to help.
Here it is - an emergency room and dysfunctional medical team
Who tried to milk the insurance,
Pretending they all do their best.
And they were playing the game to deserve their pay checks.
But they did not know we both had medical degrees.
He graduated first in the country; I’ve got the silver in class.
The body was already gone, but wired
To artificial life-support with blinking light and beeps,
Collecting more health cover.
One of the doctors said: “I know his name.
I’ve read his articles, studied his books!
What a generous mind!” he added and left.
Then, I realized it was His last hour.
His brilliant brain was not working.
Then, silence. No more struggle. Post factum,
In the morning, still no one was there to read the X-ray.
HE discovered methods to save humans lives,
But nobody really cared for his.
In the very next morning, in the “Last Hour News”
The reporter announced the end of a brilliant mind
With his photos on the screen.
In fact, he deserved His Noble Price.
Too late for recognition, isn’t it?
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Dean Okamura
Eugene Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus (1827)
His Foolishness King Sardanapalus
The story of Sardanapalus,
last king of Nineveh,
is a tragic tale.
His life of sensual sloth
led to wickedness of luxury.
His kingdom under attack,
he orders destruction of
his prized possessions.
Soldiers burned
and massacred
his concubines,
his horses, and
his slaves.
These were his.
His alone.
Now alone,
he died.
"Sweet hour of sleep" (2022)
she takes her last breaths
she takes her last breaths
we wonder how it happened
favorite things lost
so much rejected in haste
she should've eaten more sweets
"Spiraling out of control" (2022)
Spiraling out of control
Can haiku exist
apart from actual experiences
be a genuine response?
Must nature
stir the spirits of poets to
resonate in readers?
Without explanations
context
outside established seasons.
Pundits argue
for one standard practice
tight rules of haiku.
Politicians fight partisan
battles.
They serve the whims of their gods.
Hand-picked poets
repeat the alternate verses
of their faction.
It is the last hour.
Spiraling out of control this world must end with fire.
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Thomas A Thomas
Jealous of the sun Will you forgive me, she asks. The sun was shining and I hiked-up my skirt and opened my knees.
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"Ourobouros Dream" Who’Da Thunk? In only the last hour the Earth has traveled 67,000 miles in its annual pilgrimage of revolutio... -
Last Hour (To ingenious mind) It was unexpected turn in my life in that night. Three times before, I saved His life. This time I was no...
