Tag Archives: Life and death

fade to black

pooch, go away now
i know you crave attention
(cannot feel my arms…)
i’m open to your absence
happy to be anywhere

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2022

the fall

a lustrous apple falls off the market stall
tumbles and rolls down the messy road
the ground is all bespattered and footworn
a tired stallkeeper takes the apple, puts it back

unsold produce is covered with a grey tarp at night
gets ripe then rots according to nature’s plan
a dirty apple with a battered side cannot sleep
nor stop thinking of that road and the meaning of life

by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2022

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // Solitude. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all;
There are none to decline your nectar’d wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

by ELLA WHEELER WILCOX (1855-1919)
Public Domain Poetry

hedgehogs in the fog

blue sky, yellow grain
winter’s leaving ukraine again
a ploughman’s cycle without end
i say life for all & death to kings

god’s got his tombstones all in a row
dominoes waiting for the drop
it’s all i can do not to cry a river

here in the dark breath is adjourned
i’m checking notifications again
you were last seen five hours ago
does god really think no one’s looking

so i’m trying to remember instead
the shape of hope & all that’s to come
& the hedgehogs we saw in kyiv

the warm hearth of your mother’s kitchen
your father’s childhood in chechelovka
our river walks & your brother’s games
the shadow cat i left behind in dnipro

so i’m trying to remember instead
shared sun salutes in an upstairs room
it’s all i can do not to cry a river

do you remember the hedgehogs of kyiv
i wish them well in forever sleep
& stand with ukraine in the fog of war
i’m thinking of you & the shape of hope to come

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2022

the fallout

when finally the winter’s regime
hugged with a gentle vise
once the hectic mainstream
got locked in a stasis of ice

a roar swelled from slander
antheming to sacred shit
both turned into frozen meander
adorned with a bilious split

prickly slush wrapped up tighter
rhetoric and gagged criticism
like a pearl torn from the peak of a mitre
the globe rolled down a glaring schism

by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2022