Mother's Hands | Anna Banasiak
You baked for me the world
smelling of bread
of childhood
still warm
from words and emotions
your hands full of memories
stopped time for me
run out from my poems
I will hide you in dreams.
Poetry Website
The Melting Void | Paul Tristram
Caught between dreams and nightmares,
somewhere along the hazy, swirly bridge
across from consciousness to sleep,
dwells The Melting Void.
Repeating past cinematic images,
distorted by reality and nonsense
adorn the moving walls within.
That long corridor from your old school
opens to a shopping centre miles away.
Dead people still walk the limbo lands
interacting with you slightly, once more.
Mothers long gone still scowl aloud
as babies with butterfly wings fly on by.
There’s a distant drumming inside your heart
whilst an adrenalin train choo-choos
through your inside falling parachute veins.
A snippet of the movie ‘Cold Mountain’
a sentence from Rimbaud’s ‘A Season In Hell’
That seashell glistening in your eight year old hand
Feeling the notes from John Martyn’s guitar
curl around you like a fern in the spring.
Treacle, bacon, yin yang moon’s, beer-slops,
the smell of wood carvings and the taste
of dirty old pennies and shillings.
And fluffy forgetfulness… gently now…
forgetfulness… rest… and… sleep… deep.
More at http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/.
What I Do and Don't Remember | Wanda Morrow Clevenger
the intubation
the IV
the central line
the catheter
the protracted
protocols
all placed
in fiendish
anticipation
call her sons
they warned
her family
her friends
get them here,
sooner
than later
I’m told I
un-intubated myself
quelled their precious
protocol
so they put
a morphine pump
in my left palm
I remember you
stayed awake
all night
to wake me
when it was time
to squeeze
More at http://about.me/wandamorrowclevenger.
End of a Road | Ananya S. Guha
This evening should never
have happened, the die had
been cast, the road ended
and things let loose
in mayhem of sadness
which overcame the reticent
looseness, the mind pondered, the road ended
swashbuckling traffic mended, all in hush,
all in spate of rush
the mind’s strange phenomena, no acid test
noumena, I wondered at this lacklustre road which
could end so suddenly
so strangely leaving me
in a forest I never saw.
Frog and Daffodils | Rebecca Cowgill
spring sunset
a yawn from a frog
catches the silence
spring sunshine
daffodils tangle
in a spider’s web
Being Right, a Poem about My Mom | G. S. Katz
My Mom had the most common sense of anyone I’ve ever known
She was right about everything, so much so, it was infuriating at
times
I bucked her many times thinking I knew better
Which of course I didn’t, I was no match for her
The only thing she wasn’t right about
Was her need to always be right
She didn’t go looking for problems to solve
Situations presented themselves and she always had the answers
Somewhere in my 50s I discovered the joy of not being right all the
time
Like her, I possess great common sense
There is a burden however for always trying to be right
If you are never wrong, how do you learn from your mistakes I asked
I’m not sure she saw my logic
Being the matriarch, being right was burned in
It’s been 15 months since her passing
I miss her greatly and could use a few answers, right or wrong but
probably right…
Like a Prison, Like a Theater | Unnr Kopec
In the psych ward we sit around the television
Little seeing or hearing the shows,
We think about the fistful of pills
About the man who jumped under a train
Wondering if it was worth it.
If we’re worth it.
Another enters the room
He’s been to see the doctor,
We know the doctor hadn’t said anything,
We know the nurse had spent the entire time thinking
She’d forgotten the can of milk on the kitchen table.
The middle aged man just arrived goes to the corner
From the table he finds a plastic cup and a water can.
It’s empty — it’s always empty.
“How was it?” an old lady asks him.
The man laughs, “Over and done with.
I’m going home tomorrow.”
We nod, some smiling faintly, others frowning deeply.
There’s no place as full of hope as the psych ward.
And no place as noteworthy by its importance
In being the place for lost souls just before they dissipate
To become once again part of the public society.