June Calender writes

Things Only Old Folks Know

The lost word or name is not a disaster,
It doesn’t mean Alzheimer’s or dementia,
It happens to everyone quite often.

That blank look, unresponsiveness is okay,
It isn’t snobbishness, anger or ignorance,
Our hearing isn’t what it used to be.

Sitting quietly as others leave the room
Isn’t disinterest or disagreement,
It’s just so damned hard to get out of the chair.

The lavish sprinkling of salt, pepper or hot sauce
Doesn’t mean the cooking’s lousy,
Our taste buds have been dying one by one.

The shrug and sigh at news of scandal
Isn’t indifference, it’s boredom with the stupidity
And arrogance of celebrities, politicians and stars.

The shaking head with the downturned mouth
Isn’t sudden onset of Parkinson’s disease,
We’re truly sad the world’s going to hell.

What those young folks, whippersnappers,
Don’t know has to be forgiven. They’ll learn
If they’re lucky enough to become one of the old folks.



-- Grace Pickford

Jeff Norris shoots

Keith Francese writes

sea, sonoran

I as if desert bracken sewn

upon the dark Atlantic

with the stars’

wavy reflections for eyelets

lay damascene

god is it quiet out here on a Saturday night

the mermaids swum

the sirens sung

only the faint hum of blithering hearts all young and verveful

the glittering scraw of fireflies

adive

on the roiling streets of a faraway Atlantis



Atlantis- -- Thomas C. Fedro

Umid Ali writes

IT IS LOVE

This love is cruel, merciless, ruthless,

It doesn’t know to stop at anything.

This love is black and white, or full white.

This love doesn’t know how to say Goodbye.

This love collects a message from souls,

This love warms naughty looks.

This love worships hearts,

This love forgives sinners and the guilty.

This love is not a legend or a tale,

This love is lucky and the happiest aid.

This love is a dream, a hope, a sign –

This love is nearly the sky and the land.

This love…

This love is a rebellion for life,

It never gives a chance to live without a soul.

This love – as if it could become unknown --

Is consciousness, a ray for the soul, a home for the spirit. 

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





Kissing -- Alex Grey

                 

Ken Allan Dronsfield writes and shoots

Lesser Temptation

Streams of ethereal dreams 

while lost in the crimson bayou
 

a weeping willow serenades
 

an ominous decrepit mansion.

Cartwheeled off through Hell,
 

left cowering under the lamp
 

in the old voodoo swamps
 

of misty heartless sanction.

Quaking within the freeze
 

or perhaps a new disease,
 

left shirtless and bereft
 

in the cold without ration.

Stuck within the embrace
 

of a shadowy woman's arms;
 

ghostly visions singing of
 

shattered pious abdication.

Waking within the fantasy,
 

still reeling from the reality
 

whispers from fractured doors
 

and deeds of lesser temptation.

Casting glances are bestowed
 

ringing down the singing hallway.
 

Marie Laveau dances peacefully to
 

a sonnet of high righteous inflection.

Mandalay shoots

Sala Keoku

Kevin Patrick Hodgkiss writes

The Purple Loosestrife

Pristine pretty 

Virgin apotheosis 

Precise in it’s symbiosis 

To flourish as one. 

Any weed an unfortunate flower 

Only to the outsider 

And those who judge.

There,  

Time is just revolving 

All, 

Already has been resolved. 

Resplendent by 

Shared dependency 

Evolved.

Until

Fragility is poked 

By the conquerors with curious and dirty hands 

Swollen 

Emboldened

And billowing 

With unblinking demands

Innocence unsuspecting 

A disturbance at life 

Man, the coveted stranger 

And the menace of 

Purple loosestrife.
 

Purple Loosestrife -- Jane Oriel

Rik George writes

A Caveat to New Converts

Beware the Tiger hidden in the Lamb,
his wool-sheathed claws and sheep’s eyes veiling fire.
Hosea married Gomer, a common whore,
and got three children in her well-worn womb
under the Tiger. Jeremiah came
to Jerusalem a poet, and wore
away his poetry and died a bore
in Egypt. Lamb-beguiled, the saintly dream
of fleece and limpid eyes. The Tiger waits,
crouching in the wool, to strip and break their bones.
Dream on, oh would-be saints, of God, of sweets
in Paradise, rewards for repented sins.
Sleep with the Lamb between the silken sheets.
You’ll wake to find the Tiger always wins.
 

Kushal Poddar writes

Riding The Rain Train
 
A glib paper cup 
refills itself in rain. 
Train's pane jellies.
 
Your side face 
is the part of a town 
we just crossed. 
 
And its market, station, 
man riding his sleep, 
crows on a garbage heap, 
 
trees longing for 
the tiredness of 
twelve o'clock birds.
 
You remain tipsy
on rain tea infusion,
eyes shut, metals
unthreaded in your dream.
A field opens.
 
 Rain Train -- Rich Booth

Nana Mark shoots

Mark Antony Rossi writes

The Upside of Freedom (Sort Of)

I live in a free society

Where nothing is free

Not even freedom

But the feeling
No one cares
Is far far better
Than the watchful eye
Of a police state
With a strongman
Caring about too much.

 

 George Washington -- Matthew Quick

Dorin Popa writes

AFTER MUCH CHASING
 
sometimes I can’t hide myself anymore
and I have to face my deeds
with brutality

cigarettes don’t help anymore
daydreaming doesn’t help anymore
only the autumn’s leaves
seem determined
not to leave me

sometimes, after much chasing
I’m caught, unmasked, humiliated
nothing can ever save me now
nothing will ever come close to me
– everywhere I go I run up against
pitiless walls
everywhere I go I suddenly run up against
myself.

 

Self Portrait: Depression -- Songwind

Mary Annie A. V. writes

Friendships:) 

Across the distances 

we are the different

needles knitting us 

to perfection.

In our writes we find 

patterns that are woven 

to be laid aside 

for  solace,

now and then.

Our  differences 

do not separate.  

Across  the distances 

we write symphonies 

that,  played 

over black and white ,

will lead  us 

to restful slumber.  

For all  friendships are eternal

though 

not always  spelt out  when living.

 

 Knitty -- Melissa Fannin

Robert J. Fouser shoots

Matt Borczon writes

Military town

the air
smells of
diesel and

coal dust

just off

the highway

and even

at rush hour

this town

feels empty

as I

cross the

road looking

for a meal

and anyplace

less lonely

on a military

weekend

away from home

some days

I hate

this uniform

it reminds me

of how

far away

my family

and I

are from

who I

used to

be back

before the

war stole

my optimism

my energy

my faith

most of

my kindness

all of myself

and left me

full of

nightmares

and the smell

of blood I

still can’t

wash off

left me

here or

home or

anywhere

alone or

in formation

standing  like

a ghost in

service dress

blues.

Tall Soldiers -- Kazuya Akimoto

Peter Magliocco writes

Paris Hilton in Drag

The ambience articulates metric verses of hair
for the undead, marking time
quietly until dawn when
my spore-infested hands
reached for this space-creature
craning her alabaster throat 
in the reveries of a mystery writer's psychosis,
where self-delusion is everywhere
simply a multifarious space
of darting ions
daring us.

"For all the ladies of Lima are
famed for their beauty and coquetry,"
Gaston Leroux once wrote for old tongues
(or parchment yet prescient
with his gothic, viral-spun visions)

Behind the veil of blackness I violated,
his decree blossomed into a breached glimpse
of many Vegas escort girls penetrating
my hackneyed porn epics & eons
a frazzled pen once thrummed to

Here in the gilded town of cheap desire
all changed under the legal influence
as women became men (& vice versa),
until the certainty of sexual identity
lost itself in some hip ambiguity

Beyond the ken of once private parts
all must vanish someday into microchips
masquerading as fig leaves no longer.

Spare me the genome's devolution
from once beautiful old world matters,
my severed crimson fingers still lunge
into a complicated nether-space
to plunder the alien female's body

with imagistic wordplay
bred by depravity
the neon moon
explodes.

The Simple Life Goes to Camp --"14"

Michael Drummond writes

Bangkok 7pm

The day is done
The prince’s palace
Is alight

All are going home
On the 32 line

It goes so straight
Usually need to wait
In the street
For it

And its air con is well working

All shops neon glow
I go for tom yam
And fried rice

Know a restaurant where
They do it well
Price not high
No hard sell

Waitress is my friend
She wants to marry
Me

Her English is ok too
Waitresses like her
Are scarcely few