Ebon_Lupus wrote: 
How very honest...

Honesty
by Ebon Lupus
October 24, 2010

Honesty — people wish it, or so it seems
just one, among many, of humanities dreams
alas, when we know it, or so it would seem
it's oft wished we'd kept the mere dream

The reason I write this may not be so clear
for honesty finds itself amongst many a tear
for day after day, week, month, and year
revelation quite oft summons anger and jeer

This, especially, must be the dire case
once conventional label is put in one's place
and many a mind's eyes are blinded by haste
of unfair indictment and iniquitous distaste

Thus to be safe, it is truer to lie
dishonesty is truer than hate's battle cry
for anger oft kills the truths it despise
history hath shown this upon many reprise

An excerpt from Henry W. Longfellow's "The Building of the Ship."

Long ago,
In the deer-haunted forests of Maine,
When upon mountain and plain
Lay the snow,
They fell,—those lordly pines!
Those grand, majestic pines!
'Mid shouts and cheers
The jaded steers,
Panting beneath the goad,
Dragged down the weary, winding road
Those captive kings so straight and tall,
To be shorn of their streaming hair,
And, naked and bare,
To feel the stress and the strain
Of the wind and the reeling main,
Whose roar
Would remind them forevermore
Of their native forests they should not see again.

Night Bicycle

Black mamba of the front tire
over wet streets, the wet streets,
after-rain falling from the neighborhood leaves,
luminescence of lampposts' lamps up
through the trees.

Sink into someone's porch chair
and look at all these leaves
then ride on into the smell of sawdust.
That sweet smell of wood.
Someone is renovating.

May he do it right!
May he be careful.
May he do it right.
May the work of hands satisfy.
Sleep on, Amigos!

The girl who left years ago
loved you behind that window.
She is now some person
Living a state away.
Which only makes her more.

You and me, little poem.
Mi amigo. Compadre.
Inside each dark house
the streetlights keep
doing their thing on the far wall.

Tonight though. Tonight's
streetlight makes me need you.
It's writing indifference,
little poem, indifference
to us on that far wall.

Black mamba of the front tire
over wet streets, the wet streets,
after-rain falling from the neighborhood leaves,
luminescence of lampposts' lamp up
through the trees.

 ~ Jonathan Johnson ~

Hermes Trismegistus
by Henry W. Longfellow

Still through Egypt's desert places
Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
Solemn, stony eyes.

But where are the old Egyptian
Demi-gods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helios and Hephaestus,
Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
Who their secrets held?

Where are now the many hundred
Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk forever,
As when o'er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
Sinks the scattered sand.

Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal
To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
In a land of dreams.

Was he one, or many, merging
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging
Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
From unnumbered lakes.

By the Nile I see him wandering,
Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
Between gods and men;
Half believing, wholly feeling,
With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
Lift men to their height.

Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
Of Olympian song.

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine?

Trismegistus! three times greatest!
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
Still their name survives!

Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered sombre, stately,
Grave-yard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o'er me
Breathed, and was no more.

 oldviolin wrote: 
 

 oldviolin wrote: 

Knot A Trace

dawn is to morning
as dusk is to mourning
all filled with empty night
moonlit fleeting nocturne delight
timid reed once swayed in flow
precious child once played in tow
bringing treasure fragrant mirth
taking measure stewards earth
least of all the pangs of birth
litmus tree line stands for crow 
wing away from silent snow...

paradise the shimmered peak
listing aural fissions creak
guiding paths once paved in tones
sneering haves with burdened stones
winter sails with wails of men
shorelines hail from now 'til then
wave and foam and breaking backs
filling holes with what time lacks
listening from the bloodied cracks
changing winds ever building
layers of sand ever gilding...

b

Obituary
by Ronald Wallace

Just once, you say,
you'd like to see
an obituary in which
the deceased didn't succumb
after "a heroic struggle" with cancer,
or heart disease, or Alzheimer's, or
whatever it was
that finally took him down.
Just once, you say,
couldn't the obit read:
He got sick and quit.
He gave up the ghost.
He put up no fight at all.
Rolled over. Bailed out.
Got out while the getting was good.
Excused himself from life's feast.
You're making a joke and
I laugh, though you can't know
I'm considering exactly that:
no radical prostatectomy for me,
no matter what General Practitioner
and Major Oncologist may say.
I think, let that walnut-sized
pipsqueak have its way with me,
that pebble in cancer's slingshot
that brings dim Goliath down.
So, old friend, before I go
and take all the wide world with me,
I want you to know
I picked up the tip.
I skipped the main course,
I'm here in the punch line.
Old friend, the joke's on me.

 

The setting sun makes
bright exes on the pavement
could they... mark the spot? 

On Punctuation

not for me the dogma of the period
preaching order and a sure conclusion
and no not for me the prissy
formality or tight-lipped fence
of the colon and as for the semi-
colon call it what it is
a period slumming
with the commas
a poser at the bar
feigning liberation with one hand
tightening the leash with the other
oh give me the headlong run-on
fragment dangling its feet
over the edge give me the sly
comma with its come-hither
wave teasing all the characters
on either side give me ellipses
not just a gang of periods
a trail of possibilities
or give me the sweet interrupting dash
the running leaping joining dash all the voices
gleeing out over one another
oh if I must
punctuate
give me the YIPPEE
of the exclamation point
give me give me the curling
cupping curve mounting the period
with voluptuous uncertainty

  ~ Elizabeth Austen ~

 

 oldslabsides wrote: 
i could sit through "smoke signals" again if you want to netflix it

 Sean-E-Sean wrote: 

*gulp*

How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?

Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.

Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?

And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?

Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?

If we forgive our Fathers what is left?

-Dick Lourie

I Leave Her Weeping

I leave her weeping in her barred little bed,
her warm hand clutching at my hand,
but she doesn't want a kiss, or to hug the dog goodnight-
she keeps crying mommy, uhhh, mommy,
with her lovely crumpled face
like a golden piece of paper I am throwing away.
We have been playing for hours,
and now we need to stop, and she does not want
to. She is counting on me to lower the boom
that is her heavy body, and settle her down.
I rub her ribcage, I arrange the blankets around her hips.
Downstairs are lethal phonecalls I have to answer.
Friends
dying, I need to call.
My daughter may be weeping all my tears,
I only know
that even this young
and lying on her side,
her head uplifted like a cupped tulip,
sometimes she needs to cry.

  ~~ Liz Rosenberg ~~

 

The Very Old
by Ted Kooser

The very old are forever
hurting themselves,

burning their fingers
on skillets, falling

loosely as trees
and breaking their hips

with muffled explosions of bone.
Down the block

they are wheeled in
out of our sight

for years at a time.
To make conversation,

the neighbors ask
if they are still alive.

Then, early one morning,
through our kitchen windows

we see them again,
first one and then another,

out in their gardens
on crutches and canes,

perennial,
checking their gauges for rain.

 

Nocturne

A man can give up so much,
can limit himself to handwritten correspondence,
to foods made of whole grains,
to heat from a woodstove, logs
hewn by his own hand and stacked neatly
like corpses by the backdoor.

He can play nocturnes by heart.
They will not make the beloved appear.
He can learn the names of all the birds
in the valley. Not one
will be enticed to learn his.

  ~ Michelle Y. Burke ~

 

Through a Glass

On the crown of his head
where the fontanelle pulsed
between spongy bones,
a bald spot is forming, globed and sleek
as a monk's tonsure.

I was the earliest pinch of civilization,
the one who laced him
into shoe leather
when he stumbled into walking upright.
"Shoes are unfair to children," he'd grouse.

Through a pane of glass
that shivers when the wind kicks up
I watch my son walk away.

He's out the door, up the street, around
a couple of corners by now.
I'm in for life.
He trips; my hand flies out;

I yank it back.

   ~ Chana Bloch ~

 

Without Rings

Someone's hiding out
Who can't forget about
The things that people do when they're free.
Like visitors from space
It's hard to find a place
To blend in and go unrecognized.
I'm waiting for a sign
I'm standing on the road
With my mind outstretched to you.
I'm picking something up
I'm letting something go
Like a dog I'm fetching this to you.

Pictures in my mind
Row of poppy fields
Harmony entwined
A changing gear that grinds
Pictures in my mind.

Pictures in my brain
Electrical energy
Fighting drugs with pain
There's a war inside
Pictures in my brain.

I'm looking for a job
I don't know what I'm doing
My software's not compatible with you.
But this I can't deny
I know that you can fly
Cause I'm here on the ground without you.
Angel without wings
Owner without things
Sharpshooter without rings ...around you.
The road we used to ride
Together side by side
Has flowers pushing through the dotted line.
 
Shakey

Film Noir
by Nicholas Christopher

The girl on the rooftop stares out
over the city and grips a cold revolver.
Laundry flaps around her in the hot night.
Each streetlight haloes a sinister act.
People are trapped in their beds, dreaming of
the A-bomb and hatching get-rich-quick schemes.
Pickpockets and grifters prowl the streets.
Hit-men stalk informers and crooked cops hide in churches.
Are there no more picket fences and tea parties
in America? Does no one have a birthday anymore?
Even the ballgames are fixed, and the quiz shows.
Airplanes full of widows circle the skyline.
Young couples elope in stolen cars.
All the prostitutes were wronged terribly in childhood.
They wear polka dot skirts, black gloves, and trenchcoats.
Men strut around in boxy suits, fedoras, and palm-tree ties.
They jam into nightclubs or brawl in hotel rooms
while saxophone music drowns out their cries.
The girl in the shadows drops the revolver
and pushes through the laundry to the edge of the roof.
Her eyes are glassy, her hair blows wild.
She looks down at her lover sprawled on the sidewalk
and she screams.
A crowd gathers in a pool of neon.
It starts to rain.