When you go I become
the sea gull begging salt from
from briny air,
My heart a deep blue sea.
I channel you in the nightingale’s
perpetual call that awakens my
unrelenting desire.
Come the buttery dawn your faded coat
hangs from my bed post and I
become so small I could slip
inside the lining of your chest,
sheltered by the warmth of your
skin where I belong.
by HOUSE OF HEART
© All rights reserved 2024
When the last grain of sand finally falls,
through the cracks of the hourglass,
I hope it finds me grateful, content,
having lived a life that’s truly been mine.
With no regrets, I’ll cherish memories:
breaking rules, stealing smiles, and free.
I jumped the gun, fell deeply in love,
and watched sunrise, euphoric and above.
On rooftops, I danced with morning dew,
felt life’s pulse, and let my spirit renew.
My time’s been filled with laughter, tears,
and moments that dispel all fears.
When my hour’s up, I’ll greet death’s gentle keeper,
with cheer, and finally, eternal sleep’s whisper.
I’ll ask to haunt old libraries’ hallowed halls,
play with the clouds, and hear their gentle calls.
Till then, I live. I laugh, cry, smile,
at life’s beauty, and it’s worthwhile.
by TESSIE
© All rights reserved 2024
When nuclear potentiality
Turns into global actuality
There’s no return from our stupidity,
Nor our love affair with cupidity.
Celebrities suddenly discover
How to abuse religiosity,
Embrace prophecies as they recover
From modern fortune driven pomposity.
Priesthoods depicted gods as supermen,
Reversed by uber riche upstart godheads.
World stage creaks with their animosity,
We suffer arrogant hypocrisy.
Gooners gurn in private directors box,
War factory chimneys belch monkey pox,
Pensioners told we must be practical,
Putin threatens nuclear, tactical.
Fuck all their flags and their fucking borders,
Fuck all neo-liberal marauders,
I pull my duvet up over my head,
Today I think, perhaps, I’ll stay in bed.
by HARRY ROGERS
© All rights reserved 2024
Do trees cry when you chop them?
Do trees cry when you cut them down?
Do they feel the pain when the axe falls?
Do they bleed when you put a blade through their bark?
I wonder what happens to their roots?
I wonder how they feel when uprooted?
Do they weep when they are gutted?
Are their screams and cries for help lost in the burning pain
when fires light up their unheard screams
Like an unseen bloodstain
by YASSY
© All rights reserved 2024
I who have known pain: You say, not this pain —
Your pain runs wider and deeper than mine.
Your pain thoroughly over-canyons mine
out-oceans mine, thrusting a fiery head
up from the mountaining deeps, your pain heaps
a new island stone by stone, bare and black,
licked by flame — your pain and mine are not the same —
to which I offer a palm and say: look.
That open sky swallows our smaller lives,
spits them out in some mightier place — or shits
them, it’s good to be humble. Look: a bird
leaf-beaked alights upon that lonely shore.
Not my bird or your bird, but its own bird,
other-bird, leading the way to fresh cliffs.
A bird brings seeds, drops seeds, shits seeds, a bird
drawn there to the heaped ruin you call yourself.
You cannot know this bird, you have always known
this bird, this holy spirit, white as the salt
in your tears. This bird nests in your pain, builds
paradise. Hope floats its coconut in,
unbidden, under that embracing sky.
by WHITECATGROVE
© All rights reserved 2024
unbolt me 