Mark Antony Rossi shoots

Dolphin X

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

 
 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

 

Mandalay shoots

Sala Keoku

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.

   
-- Pierre Willemin

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.”  

       

Robert J. Fouser shoots

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"

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

Robert Lee Haycock shoots

Weather Report
 

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