Poem no.15: Relay
October races towards November, still like a child at play.
November reaches slowly down and takes its toy away.
© Anne McMaster 2016
Hour 15: Beaten
First fluttering fast
Now it’s still
This heart’s beat its last
Keychain Memories
I have a keychain from every place I’ve been.
I collect them to hang on my wall,
Like pictures, they represent snippets of memory.
Forever bigger my collection grows
To hang ever heavier on my wall.
I wonder if it will collapse.
Someday when I am older
With more memories,
More keychains.
Will my wall be able to hold all of them?
Or will they come tumbling down
Like an avalanche, crushing everything in their path?
Heart
Heart
A pulse center of a human body
Determined routes to and fro
And ventilation for oxygen and carbon dioxide
Interlocking exchanges
Network gateway
Pulsating in every route
Heart center of endeavors
Agile yet nonstop unto death of itself
11:07 am PST 14/08/2016
© ROY MARK AZANZA CORRALES
The group
Panickk
Desperation
Inspiration.
Mania,
all formed in the same crucible womb
collided in one room, fighting over control of the typewriter.
nobody could tell them apart,
Especially Themselves.
WHEEL HORSE
on our place on Old 31 in Franklin,
we had a three compartment garage –
the left side is where Grandpa kept the
old red riding lawn mower that he kept
sharp to keep a beautiful lawn;
it was a Wheel Horse and it’s dank home
smelled of petrol and cold dirt;
He was good with all our equipment,
a smart man who was so quiet you would
never guess he harbored so much knowledge;
He bought the lawnmower very used, but
in his vast brain he just knew inherently how
to fix it. He was smart like that.
Michellia D. Wilson 8/13/2016
15 Storm A-Brewing
Like a thundering clap of water-laden cumulu-nimbus
Like an angry howl of the raging wind
Slowly, very slowly
Gaining speed but real slow
Gathering dust and debris of horrendous proportion
Slowly, so slowly
Like a raging bull
Like a procrastinating raging bull.
Can you delay the inevitable? Or would you?
Do you have the strength to? The will to?
And the mind to hinder the dreaded storm?
Or do you have the guts to let the storm take its course?
The outcome, the result, the devastation,
do you have the heart to accept the aftermath?
The ruins, the shattered dreams, times spent and wasted, topsy-turvyness,
Do you?
How about the hurt, the sadness and the loneliness?
Ahhh…yes you could ignore the storm, the course it would take,
then the afterlife.
Yes, you could with resoluteness, with the strength of 30 ninjas,
with the charm of young geishas and the fear of hara kiri
Yes, only you could, of course you could
Yes you probably would…because it’s personal
…your Personal Storm A-Brewing.
Poem 11
God spoke,
but I did not hear Him,
not then.
Instead, I held you,
propped in my arms
while you slept deeply,
slipping away.
I watched the grey,
heavy sky loom over
the ocean.
My heart felt heavier
than the snow-laden clouds
as my memories
filled me…
your childhood laugh,
nighttime prayers,
sledding down the back hill,
splashing in the ocean,
playing school in the kitchen
(you, the student, I, the teacher).
I held you
and prayed our
childhood prayers
for you,
sang songs,
whispered now-forgotten words
into your ear,
rocking you gently,
getting ready to
give you back
to God.
Only after you left
did I understand
the gift I had been given:
my moment of Grace.
Eve Remillard
10/13/2016
FIFTEEN
The alley has gone to hell, garages belching
robot grunge and failed steampunk rust.
In between, a green sprawl of pumpkins
and watermelons lines the fence
and spills over the tops of compost bins.
An Airstream that has seen too many rivers,
aluminum foil peeling from yellowed windows,
is raised on cinderblocks to shade hunkering cats.
Over there, they’ve given up on the bamboo,
or maybe given over, letting it claim the steps,
the deck, the front door and back, the automatic
light switch a feeble gesture of occupancy.
And Jim’s fence, well, he probably isn’t
going to replace it this year, just prop it
again and let it lean and sink deeper into the grass.
Chickens mutter in their wire pens, narrating
the afternoon as a single crow monitors
my progress up the alley, swooping low and loud
just above my head. On these hot weekends,
with the buzz of lawnmowers and the tock
of baseballs from the park, I like to remember
winter, to recall the tree-cracking winds of November
and how the light shines upward from the ground
on those rare and welcome days of snow.
smother that reckless urge to write write write
Smother That Reckless Urge,
Control that expression that is kicking at the walls of the womb,
Shouting to be cut free, to be allowed to emerge and strut and swagger alive and lively.
Ration that energy,
Throw Gunny Sacks ovry it, sit on it, control it,
it is inconvenient for it to emerge right now.
Wait a quarter hour.
Do not finish this now…………
I am back from boarding school, and I still have a randy raging impulse to let go and put words one after the other.
The cooldown was relatively cool.