He hocked up hate
And spit it
In the direction
Of the two gay men
Pressing his point
With the authority
Of the Bible
Promised damnation
The cold lesson
Of Leviticus
Old testament righteousness
That made them less
That gave him authority
To lend judgment
To play God
And I
Was not so prepared
To be as divine
Big, puffy flakes
Drift down like feathers
The wind tossing them
In a crazy zigzag pattern
Frozen confetti
Celebrating the cold
On the ground
An accumulated drift
The pure white sheet
Tucked clumsily
Like a small boy would
Make his bed
The gentle fall
Covering the road
Pure and innocent
In appearance
Hiding future hardships
In the quiet
Of the beauty
Of a morning snow
ripe fruit
poems appear in my mind
like ripe fruit on a tree
near, but out of reach
ah, to muster the gumption
to climb the fence
and traipse through thicket
to pick them
wet words
sometimes my mind is a desert landscape
and thoughts are like bleached bones in the sand
then suddenly the words seem to fall like rain
from the sky – a trickle, then a downpour and I’m
frantically throwing out buckets to catch them,
knowing the dry spell may soon return
ball point
a poem may be like
the stubborn ball point pen that
refuses to leave a mark
I must scratch around in circles
before the ink will flow
don’t think – just write
I’m sorry we are
simply over-full, a bladder
of poems bursting.
Your poem does not suit
our needs at this time.
We regret we cannot comment
on rejections.
My poor poem just slinks away,
sips coffee, and gets up new
after a nap.
Might as well try again. And
again. And again. And…
The burning and stinging
is excruciating
just before fresh injections.
But, they’ve chiselled a new face
out of the battle-scarred
‘Picture Of Dorian Grey’
that crawled from the wreckage
and ruin
of three Armada divorces,
which would have slain a woman
with half her constitution,
twice over.
Her soul’s on autopilot
as the medication hums and purrs,
mists and fogs
and the sickness drifts and sways.
She pricks her mind awake,
momentarily,
by counting monthly bank statements
from memory.
Each step away
from that childhood dungaree farm
of hand-me-downs
and ne’er quite enough to go ‘round,
forged her spirits
by trial and error,
hard-earned success,
the thrill of the kill
and the giddying high
of outmanoeuvring defeat.
She now needs a
body to match her ambitions…
it’s practical as well as vanity.
She’s forgotten that it’s the little things
which eventually make up the big
whilst at the very same time
unwittingly augmenting
the emptiness inside
to a size and mass too great to ever deplete.
More at https://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/.
Don’t chain me
to rhyme or metrical
expectations, let
words fall
where they
may
This is not a problem
but process
statement
stacked
One of play because
if adults can’t play
with words, well then
Where can they play?
All the monsters
We ever made
Never really fade
They abide
They hide inside
Always steady
Always ready
Always stalking
Always mocking
Haunting
Taunting
They always follow
Ready to swallow
Us whole
It’s the role
They play
They stay
That way.