David Norris writes



The Promise


April remained dry 
though filled with promise
seemingly infinite



The promise of rain 
dripping in the sunlight
against the windows' panes



In your living room 
the windows were telling
you "Soon," "Soon"



We will be together 
"True,"  "This must be
true," we told one another

 Image result for waiting for rain images
 Waiting For Rain -- Ric Nagualero

A FEMINOPHILE’S PLEA


If you want, get a job, it’s fine by me. 
Drive the tourist carriage, that’s all right, 
just so’s I can ride your dick box for free. 
You want to be a fighter pilot? OK with me. 
Long’s I can fly in your cockpit highspeed. 
I don’t mind even if you want employment 
with the Sanitation Dept. Just let me 
work nights in your manhole, okay?

--Duane Vorhees

JD DeHart writes

Turning on Each Other

I remember my father’s
hands reaching between snapping
snouts of fighting dogs
and spreading them apart

and I remember the thin
stream of blood spread across
the hairy thatch of his hand

I have seen the snap
and bite and growl of people
and noticed how they treat
their perceived territory

at least the creature
is more honest in its delivery. 
 
  
Dog Fight -- Phil Musen
 

Friday, April 29, 2016

Angelica Fuse writes



Blackbird Heart



there is a burning

cawing

sound clawing

at my inmost self



I perch on a wire

and watch

as you pass



knowing I will never

have the courage

to hop down

and greet you.

 

Paulette Spescha-Montibert writes

My poems

they don't look
like anything

they are

Alan Inman writes



Ice Pack



Swollen eye shut, I am
the pounded vessel, the hurt
one who wanted to defend
but instead crashed
to the ground, a satellite
with no purpose or sound.

 Painting of a woman holding an ice-pack to her head  
-- Pierre Willemin

Thursday, April 28, 2016

chester giles writes



number one hit single
 
the thin sun falls on the white washed walls
   and in the courtyards by the bins
where the people park their cars
and the elderly women stand smoking
and everyone talks about anything but what they're really thinking
 in fear of the time
which takes too long in passing
 in fear of the heavens
we can't quite believe in


                                              

Heather Jephcott writes and draws



Love's Freedom Dance

Come hold my hand and dance with me
as love declares
"You, my dear one, 
are thoroughly free."

Come gently, kindly, embrace my heart
as I do yours,
let us agree,                                                                                     
hold hands
and walk on together.

Come with your hands ready to receive
and to give,
let us exchange
gifts written
in each other's language
the spices of love
thought through carefully.

Come let us fellowship with open hearts
united in vision,
ideals and dreams
being and loving
from the very deep depths.

Come as we join in understanding
willingly positive
enabling
the sun to shine.


David Allen writes


Okinawa Morning


7 a.m.
The sun rises
lazily over Ishikawa,
blazing yellow bands of sunlight
spread apart the curtain of clouds
that enclosed the city in darkness;
suffused sunbeams cast rays
upon the warm waters of the bay,
where an oil tanker glides slowly
over the mirror-smooth surface,
winding its way
to a finger of a pier jutting
out from the rocky shore.
Up here, on a hill far above
the awakening city, a hawk
slips by on an updraft
and mourning doves coo,
silencing the tree frogs and geckos
who cloaked the night with their croaking
cacophonous clamor.
When the cooing halts, I can hear
the gentle whisper of the wind
caressing the jungle foliage of our hillside retreat.
Directly below, no one invades the
calm of the dew-covered golf course,
its luscious greens pale compared to the riot of
the hundred shades of green
of the jungle and the sugar cane
and tea fields that blanket
the land leading to the bay.
Yellow hibiscus flowers open
and bid “Ohaiyo gozaimasu,
genki desu ka?”



Ah, it’s morning at the Cabin Serendip
and all is “genki desu.”  

       

Glory Sasikala writes


SOFT WHISPERS



As I lie down on the grass,
And the scented breeze goes on its spree,
As I doze amidst these flowers,
Who is it whispers to me?



As I, on this noon day tide,
Seek the cool shade of a tree,
In this stillness far and wide,
Who is it whispers to me?



Far away in the deep blue sky
The white puffs travel all so free,
And I lie and close my eyes,
Yet who is it whispers to me?



Then on a moonlit night so bright, 
Softly lighting on the lee,
Gently mocking my daily fight,
Who is it whispers to me?



I shut my eyes and ears so tight
And then I think that I am free,
Yet He who loves me day and night,
He it is whispers to me.



When too busy to stop and think, 
When I from my tasks do shirk and shrink,
Dear God, give me that I hear your voice
Amidst this world's chaotic noise.



That I, amidst my troubles do always find 
A comforting anchor within my mind,
And always guided to eternal peace
By the soft, whispering breeze.


Two Men Contemplating the Moon -- Caspar David Friedrich
 

Jennifer Sage writes

Only the Beginning

The soft sounds become harder, exaggerated moans, 

Pleas of abandonment from the flicker of your mouth...
Movement shimmers into the still air, stretching into everything, sweat trickled from a concentrated brow,
The way we bend, loss of appetite except for one thing...covered completely in such radiated heat,
Forced heartbeat as fingertips saunter down.


Surrendered, I want to be surrendered to the breath on my flesh,
The heated, repeated marks of your teeth as they dine so succulently, on me...
Marked and marred by love’s divine detour into less Godly things..
Thick growls heavy on the breastplate as it quivers relentless into your arms.


Searing tongue, one lick, two licks, three then more...until there’s a wrenching need,
Head thrust back..forcing hardened nipples into raging peaks of pleasure...
Your fingertips failing and not gentle in attempts at holding writhing hips still,
As I slide myself unbidden, unhinged on your pronounced appreciation for the taste in your mouth.


Hands travel to your hairline, fingernails grasp and eyes no longer see...

Heat sucked into the vortex of us, releasing in form as slick, wet ecstasy on panties that are quickly torn away...
A tattoo swirls, needy for the attention that your tongue so lovingly denies...
As the lotus flower blooms with the warmth of our desire...fire found and delivered seamlessly upon the tender, trembling folds.


No time before that shattering, battering ache is eased,
Thunder roars in and out of veins thrumming with unspent need, seed that has not found a resting place between my thighs...
Down the lightning comes, from those golden, glittering eyes,
Before breaking me apart, from the inside.
And that, was only the beginning.


 

Umid Ali writes


AFTER I READ SHAVKAT RAHMON 

You can dissect colours with your eyes - 
If you attire fire to your fetterless eyes - 
The world moves to your spirit which you realized, 
It saturates your word of truth as a ray.  
Your heartbeats break the night, 
Dawning will shine from your awareness. 
The truth which combined in your soul
Gives the signal: 
“I am sick for my homeland!”

--tr. Asror Allayarov, from "The Gate Opened by angels"


oʻshlik shoir

Basho says


In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes.


-- tr. Lucien Stryk

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Felino A. Soriano writes



Of this Momentum Song (forty)

 We said what
we wanted.  To
   say then was
 to improve mood
                with
  the water of
 our fluent speaking.
    Cast away numbers
  returned in woolgathered
   tableaus.  Confiscated
                     rest,
  the caliber too good
 not to walk into.  We
   with Drum, await
 a why toward what we’re
                   doing,
  as to say a bee
 causing fear
   is only drawing
 dropped syllables
                into
  the answer the watcher
 refuses to inhale.  Rise,
    we aim to the
  upper stair of
              each
 worded phrase,
  structured.  We
stare to inject
   pause into
 what wasn’t,
what wasn’t
  as means to
            inherit
 what wasn’t hidden…
               to us—
  then, what leads
 us is prose.  Enunciation
   hears itself, ex
 -plains meaning,
  an immediate
              excavation
    curates sound as
  body.
    Myth is lonely, was
  seen shaking
               at
     the burn of no
  air, from Truth’s
   visual grip, determined
    occultation. 

     __________
       “I hear you and the becoming of what the scent will expend.”
     __________

          So what was said
      and the sound was
       symphony of



                     the earliest
 wind