new poetry

Latest page of poetry for your enjoyment.

My Memory

Come sail with me into the night
Across this black and mirrored sea
Where the silence is so loud
And watch a glorious dawn
A sky of silky shifting dreams
The clouds in changing curling shapes
Kneeling down to say their prayers
Come watch the magic of the sea
Cry out with joy that no one hears
Ride the morning heaving swells
Feel the wind and just be free
Come open up your eyes
To the days that come your way
Each and every one before you
No one has ever seen.

Andrew Shiston

 

Suicide 2

The sea and sky both thunder
White crescents drifting by
Deep dark mirrored waters
Reflecting from the sky
Dark and storming clouds
Racing like thoroughbred horses
In front of a gambling crowd
Spume filled waves
Pushed by invisible forces
Committing vengeful suicide
Against a tungsten cliff of stone
Nowhere to run or hide
Leaving flotsam and dirty scum
Left by the storm and swiftly ebbing tide.

Andrew Shiston

 

Sex In The city 

I see you leaving I watch, hear as; 
high heels on cobble stones begins 
the nightshift; splashes of amber 
highlight your unsettled features                                         

Red slacks, skin tight, erasing scars 
and cigarette burns, your lips, blood 
dripping machetes slash fixed in 
a white face. 

As shop-lights try to delight a grubby 
street, the black winged angel, that 
occupies my balcony, spreads wings 
in triumph.

Jan Oskar Hansen


Double Jeopardy

A track of clinging mud and nature’s debris
Gloomy shadows, sharp and stinging leaves
Overhead trees meet and touch their branches
Strange noises; water dripping from the trees
Beneath the trunks are old and stinking mosses
Mushrooms and toadstools grow confused
Among the tall stems and yellow grasses
A beam of sunlight breaking through
Transformation from this dark confusion
Glistening jewels dripping from the trees
Gleaming green and golden colours
A track through a wonderland of nature
For what is seen is not the truth.

Andrew Shiston

 

The American People

We are the American people
Loving Jesus, church with steeple
Voluptuous cushion of assurance
Unquestioningly righteous, our concurrence

The nation’s fear is so infectious
Redemptive bloodlust might protect us
They cannot change so what's in store
If not a never-ending war?

What can we do, who can we blame?
We know inside they're all the same
This national lynch mob cannot stop
Glorious presidential photo-op

Our body counts, so good, so low
Our working class, the ones to go
Their hope is our benign neglect
No need to think, care, or reflect

We’re strong and almost unopposed
And they'll be buried, decomposed
There is no risk, no roll of dice
We do it without sacrifice

Be resolute and do not bend 
Since they will thank us in the end
For mother, father, sister, son
Dead and buried, freedom won

Islamic, balsamic it’s all the same
Oily, murderous, money game
Forced into it, it's not our fault
They deserve our deadliest assault

Labels define us to a T
Yellow ribbons on our SUV
I'm for the cause 100%
Regretful though not penitent

We can't be wrong, I'll be explicit
It's all their fault, we're not complicit
They're ignorant of our God-like mission
As we beat them all into submission

Admit to nothing, straddle no fence
Has naught to do with competence
If we can't get the ones who dunnit
Get some others, that's how we'll run it

It's so simple, black and white
Reason fails so we must fight
While we won't give for we are strong
Unlike us they'll break before long

Techno-warfare, missiles in space
Unleashed without even a face
To know in moment of last breath
A reason for the end, ones death 

We're good at war, as you well know
Your kids don't even need to go
Forget it starting based on lies
We stay by keeping news sanitized

Oh Lord, sweet Jesus, God of war
Help us smite them we implore
Rain oil down on us from on high
Until our wells have all run dry

And please accept our stated reasons
For more death with each passing season
We'll help them learn Lord, if you're willing
See it our way or see blood-spilling

World opinion matters not
We need no friends to join our plot
When we need help they'll have forgotten
The spoils however misbegotten

Will hope arise, will it fight back
Through mindless stupor, Mac Attack?
Find one good man, a fearless leader
Sans riches, ego, vengeance meter 

Who's strong enough to turn a cheek
Holding mighty no higher than meek
Relentless in the quest for peace
No cronies, debts, or palms to grease

Pat Pattillo 


Nothing grows except the grass...

Nothing grows except the grass. 
Nothing leaps into sight except some stone 
and what the stone contains and protects. 
Here, far from the beach, 
far from the place where the water 
returns every so often 
rusted metal, mouldy wood, 
the corpse of a dolphin or a turtle. 
The wind does not blow with the force 
to propel us as far as the promised then. 
The minutes that pass become hours 
but never days, they become nights 
that never agree to be years, 
and centuries in which somebody dies 
and someone else, who does not know it, yawns. 

CARLOS BARBARITO
translation: Brian Cole

 

(Duchamp)     

With a bottlewasher, 3 hooked 
safety-pins and a wing-nut
it is possible to create a world.
And with bicycle wheels,
boxes, typewriter cases,
hall-stands, glass bubbles,
dust, bottles of perfume,
cardboard, grease, nails, iodine, golden stars.
A world no less beautiful than this one,
no less terrible.

CARLOS BARBARITO
translation: Brian Cole

 

Ashes of noon, under...

Ashes of noon, under 
a miscalculation,
an uncertain possibility.
The foundations of the only bridge give way.
Some stone remains,
a chunk of twisted metal,   
a mouldy brick
on which flies copulate.
The bridge gives way, falls
into the night,
the dense net in which we are all fish,
flat, scarcely phosphorescent.
Empty fruits of dawn,
why should it not be a possibility of the blood,
a coded impression of the light
on a thin sensitive paper?
Pity burns in its centre.
Memory blazes in a stone square.
A door opens and no-one enters.
The echo mistrusts the shadow.

CARLOS BARBARITO
translation: Brian Cole


Naked, exposed to the radiation of the day...

Naked, exposed to the radiation of the day.
The grass bends in the opposite direction to the wind,
after being trampled by clumsy gods
and an occasional animal.
It hurts. 
It is a pain of no type, no pattern. Without a blemish.
A pain that kills with another death,
an empty house in torment, motionless river
where the only thing that lasts is oblivion.

CARLOS BARBARITO
translation: Brian Cole

 

Cruel World

In an age before there was time itself
in the Achean Period of Earth's existence
was it not sulphur which filled the atmosphere?
And did being not issue forth
from deleterious surroundings?

In the days of Pompeii's splendour
Was it not the Roman law of Patria Protestas
which extolled the virtues of exposing superfluous
newborns in the wilderness to die?
But have we not passed into a time now
of Brooke's Granchester meadows?
Now do we not wonder at Wordworth's lakes?
Are we not all now both Swallows and also Amazons?

So why now do you beset us with the ravages of Katrina?
Why do you send torrents downs the streets of New Orleans?
Is it to wash away the wretchedness of our existence?
Or have we yet to learn that the sulphurous Achean
beckons a hedonistic populous with its imminent return?

Patrick Mackeown

 

Thought provoking Words

Why am i obliged to compel,
As if under a darkened spell,
Write such gibber and waffle,
Yet it goes no where
As if a blank page you stare,
But on a point one seems to shuffle.

Thomas Chaloner


Conflab

It’s about time,
I said it

There now,
It’s said

We didn’t even mention it,
It was never discussed

About time,
You might say

And many have
Said it I mean

It’s about time
Long overdue

Half-past optimal
Distinctly ripe

We should never have left it so long

So, about this thing
The one we avoided

Skirted around
Pussy-footing

We were too timid
You and i

Too frightened
Anxious at conflict avoidance

Afraid to bare souls
To reveal all

To contend and debate
We missed out

So here I go
And if I die before I wake

It will be said
That it was said

All those words
Mesmeric in their private intensity

Strong and poignant

And valid

Oh,

Too late !

Stephen West


Northern Lights
Dedicated To: Sarah Cardona

In the silence of a winter's night
Lies a stillness of lasting thought
That gives a feeling of pure delight
To one who's seen the golden orb
In the shadow of the Northern Lights

As I drift upon the sea, without a soul to comfort me
I see the stars above the waves that rock me to and fro

I wonder how I found myself, alone and far from home
Somewhere between Lands's End, and the coast of Newfoundland
Its been two weeks, since we left the harbor of St. John's Bay
In search of oil, which drives us forth, to catch the majestic whale

During the coldness of the tenth night, a gale pitched its eye on us
We rode the storm as best we could, but in the end
The storm won out, as the ship began to crack

I heard the Captain yell out loud,
"abandon ship, save yourselves"
As the lifeboats were cut away

So quick the ship began to sink, I hardly had time to think
I jumped into the sea, reaching to grab the side
Of a lifeboat floating by, with all my strength
I pushed myself, to get inside

Oh, how the waves did dance, between the cresting swells
As I looked out, from the shell, which protected me

In the coldness of the raging storm, the ship had slipped beneath the waves
Claiming the Captain and the crew, in the blackness of the night

Finding myself all alone, with only a prayer to remember them by
I lay back in exhaustion, in wait of the fate, that lies ahead of me

Two nights have passed, since I boarded this craft
The gale that blew, has gone its way, but the waves still crest with awe

I fear my time is closing in, as the cold sets in my bones
As I look towards the northerly sky, a prayer forms in my heart

To God, I ask, please preserve my soul from the swirls of this 
relentless wake
With only the brilliance of the Northern Lights, to break the silence of 
the night

I peer in search of a ship, to save my mortal soul
I ask dear God, to rescue me, from the ravages of this domain

Or take me to your golden orb, the one you call your home

Roland R. Ruiz


Butterflies

Can you see the butterflies?
Soaring immortality
Winged angels of Life or Death
come to guide my soul
to eternal rest

I can see the butterflies
Alone in the silence, i call to them
no answer
carefree flying; mockery
what i was, what i dreamt
a vision of what i became

Can't you see the butterflies?
Under a spell of Beautiful terror
hypnotic and Illusive;
an intoxicating sight of purity
just beyond my reach

Delusion of Reality,
existential vengeance 
My Sight retains its shadow
But i can see the butterflies

SDXclear516@aol.com

 

FALLING WITH GRACE

Beauty and brilliance I see from afar,
In twilight hours, an abundance of stars.
If one shall fall with elegance and grace…
What a wonderful memory I will embrace.

Tonight I see one falling from space…
So bright and surreal from an unknown place.
So simple and pure, yet falling so fast…
What a beautiful sight, how long will it last?

How I wonder upon this falling star…
The journey it’s travelled, did it come from far?
I wait for another, so eager to see…
This fragile rare gift that's given to me.

Will the next one be bright, weak, or dim?
Does it send us a message we all carry within?
The message is simple; it’s about our own soul…
Treat life with care, and stay in control.

Just like the star, one day we will fall…
Our lights will burn out, with grace above all.
Life can be short, or life may be long…
But with loving oneself, the light will burn strong.

Derani Churchill

 

Short-lived

I see now 
why you never wore your wedding ring.

On the very day of our marriage,
you lost it
in the swimming pool.

You found it again,
but its significance was lost on you.

Mine,
I held onto 
as long as I could,

but there was a moment
when it no longer fitted my hand.

I itched to take it off
and, now,
it lies alone in a box.

One day soon,
I will take it to the sea
and throw it 
far off 
into the waves 
for good.

At that moment,
there will be nothing left 
of our marriage

Except for 
memories of a bitter-sweet day
when everything was won,
and everything was lost,

at the very same moment in time.

Annette Gartland



Not so

I met this girl the other week.
I took her out, to wine and dine.
Ended up dancing in the street.
Thought that I could impress her.
Then hopefully undress her.

Oh she was mesmerising me.
Utterly surprising me.
But now I see the real her. 
And I can feel she is degrading. 
Now she don’t seem, so amazing.

She thinks that she is better, upper class.
I think her head is up her arse.
She needs a shot of reality.
Needs to know it isn’t just me,me,me.

Everyone will soon, you are there just for show.
‘cause know I see, you aren’t my cup of tea.
And past the shell, your mind isn’t well.

Edward James Trevett


I was asleep, and I dreamed

I walked under the bluest sky I had ever seen, through what seemed like the oldest and most beautiful forest, with trees so tall they seemed to go on forever. I heard small animals running across fallen leaves, and birds singing. I followed a creek with the most beautiful fish swimming around and they were so full of color. I came to a meadow where it seemed no one had ever walked before, where there was the most gentle breeze, and you could smell a hundred different scents of the most beautiful flowers. The sun was shining so bright, and it seemed like you could hear the whole world breathe. I stood like that for a long time, just listening to everything, and there was this moment, when you could feel the whole world, when you could actually hear everything  draw in its breath and hold it. and together everything, the birds, the fish, the tress and grass, the stars, and the very air itself let it out in one great sigh,,,,, and speak your name.

Joe Collins

 

A Lovely Transaction

I would trade everything I have
And everything I don’t
Everything I ever had in the past
And everything I would ever have
Everything I dream of!
For a silent peaceful moment
For a silent healthy whisper
With you in my arms
With my heart, feeling your heart
With my soul, feeling your warmth
And I wish that moment
Would break the chains of time
And exist forever
With you in my arms forever
With my hands in your hands forever

Aqsa Ahsen


You and me, me and you
We just click together at each moment
Like the colors of rainbow click
When there’s always darkness
You brighten up my day

You and me, me and you
We love each other so deeply
Our love may be so strong
That nothing could be wrong
You and me, me and you

We became like a rain in the desert
That would treasure all sadness
As you treasure my life

You and me, me and you
I should remain forever for you
In the world after and here
We may be those loved ones.
That in the world never came

Aqsa Ahsen

 

Revenge

it stalks, like a cat in the dark
coming out, from the nights stark
every so slowly it will come out
it will even make you pout
when you come face to face
dont you dare try to embrace
it is something that will hurt you
but in the end it is nothing new
try to find a way out you will get lost
the price you pay is your cost
take heed in the warning
becareful even in the morning
one by one it will come for you
two by two it will make you blue

it is the greatest and yet deadliest of games
and it is the the one that will hurt you more than any other
it is the one the sages tell about
it is the one the victim cries about
the one the poets sing about
the one the suspect rejoices about
the one the witness is quiet about

Revenge the greatest triumph, and the saddest way to pay

Megan Elizabeth

 

Ribbons Of Thunder

Out of Eden and into Limbo, a supra mundane waiting room
Just like a doctor's or dentist's I remember
With bits of discarded and polished gummy stuff in the carpets and upholstery
Piles of outdated reading matter - scrolls, tablets, parchments - on a too low table...
Hot from the presses...the Great Fire Of London...read all about it...all the news
Deformed expressions on faces, no sound.
My genetic code tapped - all dot dot dotcommed and slapdash dash dashed -
Me sitting among celestial dysfunction, chaos - Nature has married a human -
In a sky blue as Her blood pulled through a needle eye
A holocaust we have already dreamed, a silky drama,
A dance of pyretic fantasy in stella-ritual regalia
Warm, balmy and eroding to crazy...Earth a way away
And time could be anywhere or anything.
It all smells of mysticism...and I am forever mystified -
There is no sound save, maybe, a distant ice cream chime in my faint memory.

Fire and time beleaguer my skin
My aching needs spiral me, push me
Force my eyes wide and exposed in the dark lands and skyscrapes
A tomb ablaze on the clouds turns dreams into shadows infused with shimmer
Dead or done, charred and bruised the sky spills molten
As a blanket of starstruck debris covers me holy, soars high to my dreamy smile.
This last evening in enchantment, sultry and slow burned -
Where songbirds eat meat like it is luxury worm -
A saudade burns even slower - a borrowed reminder from Earth -
Licks its lips to taste confusion in its own echoism and da capo.
Billions of diffused light-years are tightening their hold, arms swallowing us whole -
We breathe what they allow...and there is no place like home...
But there is no place called home any more.

I place my fine-drawn fingers into a God-shaped hole
And sliding sounds begin to sweep across cosmic strings.
I am sent to foretell, flowing through ribbons of thunder,
Speaking like a hocussed Gabriel, delayed and waylaid,
Unmourned, sent to doodle paraphs for our quotidian DNA
And tend the roots of our photosynthetic blood -
No one will make this life again!
When it all began I was the bon homme, the uneducated sophist
Learning to be not so clever.
I was eating Eve with Lilith - women both Adam-cast,
Odalisques to that disturbing figure 
Who balloon-voted his way into families that did not want him - 
Eve and Lilith, the dum dum girls, were face to face with me
Face to face with the bombed bard in an unearthly garden
And because we did what we did...
Out of Eden we are now bid.

The shocks of my voice form the edges of a new myth
Night demons with sexual appetite, a melting malaise, and dead-leaf silks
All turning white light brown and liquidy.
Insolent, hypnotic, swirling ashes of delivered forgiveness,
Latchkey graves that open - stretching and opaque -
As gateways to setting love to make shooting trails of meteoric spark,
The endless of time exploring the boundaries of poetry song story and sky
In sweet starry-light milky ways - backlit esplanades, star kist and pouting -
And moonsweat - raining electric, shooting orgasmic into the canals of black holes - 
All praying for Jupiter to caress and bless them again.

I threw my notebooks, samizdated and pale, into some waves of emotion
And watched them start an odyssey on horrid oceans, rivers and streams.
When the books returned there was a crack of land and the sand was hopeful
But all the ink was gone from their pages
They landed face down with the letters of their law kerb-crawled
By creatures afraid of Heaven
All the words eyed only by shorebirds
When they were written for gods.
I am night now and not the day - I am apparition and scent - 
A luxurious fantasy, a Castalia of lifetimes - Lhasa in a room with Elinga -
I am radio micro infra visible ultra X gamma, 
Waves and rays reading like wet promises
Banishing from their midst all other ideas, ideals and beliefs like a sulking church
Waves and rays that have turned teddy into a book-end mummy
Waves and rays that have turned all innocent eyes to darkness.

Sun on sun on sun...
From dying stars we come - with a billion others to blame.
Our fate is the cate of so many non-gourmand gods
Who brush our worlds to splinters
And safely collect and dampen its dust
So that it cannot be mistaken for Spirit.
Our fate is a moraine for the war-tellers, the bulleteers,
The anger-sleepers in kinaesthesia, all the unsalted slugs in jussive recursion,
The cherishless epic hither-fathers - neophytes to my washy new vade-mecum -
And for those who deal in the burning of histories and future-distancing -
With the here and now deforested
With yet another moon coming to circumirritate.

If we reach toward the winds -
A misty ruin for us to renounce,
Razor-thin sheaths and billows hung low in the barrelled sky,
Beggar captives dismembered for posterity -
Will they slice into our sorrow?
Suns, damp and useless, hopelessly dissolute
No longer scorch as we tender the tempest
No longer grind light into our pungent worlds -
Planets that would keep on spilling forth 
Onto canvases made up of rusted iron and cobbled streets -
It is all Nature's law of diminishing returns
Waving through ribbons of thunder as we leave Eden for the very last time.

Darrell J Smith and Kristy A Bartholomew

 

Pain Vanquished
(Dedicated to Nursing Sister Paula Bragg - with thanks)

The blackness of chronic pain is a consistent constraint,
Upon what is laughingly referred to as normal life.
Normality descends into abnormality, your cries too faint
To be heard, as Pain wields his long-bladed knife.

You become battle weary, as your struggle to combat
The Mighty Pain goes on, your arsenal is replete
With medication and creams, he plays tit for tat,
With side effects you would never wish to meet.

Just when you have all but given up the fight,
And taken to your bed, wearily accepting defeat.
She appears, a Florence Nightingale, a bringer of light,
Promising to soon have you back on your feet!

She cajoles and nurses you week by week,
More drugs to overcome the side effects
And solutions to your problems she will always seek,
Standing beside you, being the shield that deflects,

All of Pain’s intentions to render you quite senseless.
You begin to see a faint light at the end of the tunnel.
A way out of the penetrating pain and tiring distress, 
Finally a way to scale Pain’s towering gunwale.

Escape to a welcome freedom, to be part of daily life, 
To return to work, to be a participant in the team.
Pain which, has been the bane of one’s life,
Consigned to the background, not prominent, not seen.

Oh yes, he still tries to creep under the net of morphine,
To drag down to the depths, enlivened limb and bone,
But he is vanquished at every turn, no longer supreme.
He is defeated, banished forever, he leaves me alone.

So I am out of the darkness and into the shining light,
Life no longer such an uphill struggle, joy partaken.
As my nurse promised, worthy of all the fight,
Control of my life, wrestled free and retaken!

Carolina de la Cruz


Come and See My

I have a nimbus

Would you
Like
To see it?

Come closer

NOT like THAT like a ladder
Against
A
House

All stiff come closer

Come COME
Come closer

Come
And see

Close

So SO Close 
Like a red-headed parrot nestled on pirate shoulders

Jason Knight


Of a Simple House

Afternoons, ripe with venomous
Spring, were idled away
In the too simple house; the walls 
Creating a porthole where rolling
Tides of storms

Would lumber in like tired hunters
Bewiskered and benumbed.
Underneath the slovenly scrape
Of the dark boots,

a glimmer of eyes
Like a pair of dimes

would shimmer on the shellacked 
floor, and then slide down 
into a gob of tracked-in mud
where they would become worthless,

and the graying green of the season
would slither on until a hard sharp light
ancestrally slapped the window
so that the house winced
making simplicity a matter of regret

Jason Knight

 

Farewell

About meetings and farewells
I know.
About travels and foreign lands
I saw.
Life and time.
Wind and mind.
Wave and sand.
Storm and rain.
To seek a rest
It sounds a lie.
To look for peace
It means to die.
Come along with me, look at the sky
I don't see borders in the world.
Farewell is beginning if you hold.
A good adventurer doesn't cry.
Farewells are beginnings you will see
Farewells are beginnings
Believe
Believe
Believe me!

Constantin Popov


You

Is it impossible for you to care?
What if it was your last breath would you dare?
Stare if you must at the things that are falling before you
Because they’ll keep falling no matter what you do
There is a time and a place for everything that is to come,
At that time will you love and care then or just remain numb
If it’s impossible for you to feel
Then how do you deal
For you are the one who making your own existence?
Will you love or drown in your own resistance
Do you cry when your upset, or just shrug it off and,
Keep the skeletons hidden in your closet.
You think you just can wash away all your debris
What about your family and friends, “What about me”
You are deceitful, selfish, and dishonest, and say you’re the
Devil,
Do you think its funny being that coldhearted and sinking to  
that level,
You need to let go of your obscurity and hatred
You need to concentrate on reality and not what,
You think is inside your head
Loving someone isn’t a sin,
You need to just let go and let life begin 
Follow the reality in your heart,
Right now do you honestly feel the need for us to be apart?
In my heart I know what is true
That my only intention was to love you

Karen Fahey


The Cuckoo's Nest

Am I in a courtyard
Or am I caught in a yard
Am I here through choice
Or held against my will
My mind is so confused
They say that I am ill
No matter what I say
They will keep me here still.

Deborah Bennett