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Wanderer May 2012
Day breaks over a sleepy village
Morning absolutions completed
An excited buzz is in the air
Everyone is a buzz with cleaning
Hundreds gather wild flowers in the fertile fields
Many were in charge of raising the fires
Soon the whole town had bright blooms weaved from one end to the next
The horizon alight with smoke and power
Goddess and God rights invoked within circles round
Pulsating, rhythmic energy racing through each dancing body
Gyrating to the cosmic beat of life
Couples jump merrily together over cauldrons ablaze
High hopes rise and give way for dreams of children
Lovers round and round they twine
Maypole ribbons rainbow hued passing through hand to hand
As dusk falls the Queen is crowned
Mead flows freely through the jubilant worshippers
The moon hangs round with fullness above their heads
Lighting the way for love into the night
Arjun Chopra May 2017
​Your body

Is my pilgrimage

Of worship



A place

Where my hands reach to

Offer absolutions



I use my silvery tongue

To get you around the bend

And tell you that your flesh



Blesses mine, with a stain

That’s more than just skin deep



So I press my heart against yours

Waiting for the two drums

To beat as one



I press my mouth against yours

And eat the words

That died upon your lips



My mouth traces

Every inch of your skin and bones

Until my hunger is satiated



A sliver of the midnight moon

Bathes us while we

Tangle ourselves deeper into one another



Every heavy breath, a sonnet

Every bite, an ode

Every moan, those three tired words



The air is heavy

With the scent of old perfume

While our two bodies talk



The burden on my hands, absolves

The stars in the sky, dissolves

And the argument our bodies have, resolves

As we bloom synchronously
LJ Jun 2016
They call me bohemian,*
a lost intellectual
hidden with no ambition

A happy go lucky,
who hops and hits
like a river flowing downhill

A philosophical dreamer
with subjective absolutions
unrealistic surreal expectations

They see my eccentric fashion
the chic grease of mismatch
A happenstance of my day's mood

My mind is indigenous
My soul is gender fluid
A vessel of masculinity and femininity

One day, it's a skirt and blouse
The next is a bow tie and shirt
The other is a blend of two

A maverick in a world alone
I felt it all my life, the lack of connection
No motions with the convectional

Their whispers cannot be heard
I am done with biting my nails
Let them pull their hair with their noise

Their chitter and chatter complaints
As I gaze and talk to the floor
*weary of their mediocre complaints
Geno Cattouse Nov 2013
Freddy krueger?
Kreuger?. Kept a leuger as backup. Sharp edged steel ?
Made him feel the essence of perdition.
But high speed projectiles made him smile just like burning cordite did.

So freddy hid. His piece in his back pocket. Wrapped around it was a chain and locket ,wrapped around a crucificx. For absolutions sake.

What made freddy tick.?
A temporal trick.
Wrong place right time.
Tick..... tick.... tick.
There’s a drum set in my room. Just beside my bed.
I have 4 pairs of sticks; one has a broken head.
The cat is roaming around, finding a place to sleep.
He plays around with my blanket. Needling it with his feet.
A bottle of beer, half empty, half full.
Another half drank bottle of wine, a commodity of a fool.
A ***** ashtray in the table and a cigarette between my fingers.
Just right between my pinky and the ring, where it putridly lingers.

No one’s playing the drums, yet the silence is deafening
The broken stick head is still on the ground, where it fell from breaking.
The cat now quietly resting, just licked his nose after yawning.
His name is Sae, the syllable I say in a high pitch when I call him.
The beer is now quarter full, around hundred fifty milliliters
It’s 750 if full, but empty when touched by drinkers
The ashtray, dozen of butts, ***** of ashes
The loneliness, the silence, an evidence, a witness.

It’s just another night of my life, my joy, my agony
They said young life was fun, not for me.
I have no job, I have no partner, I have no money.
And just to make it worse, my father was taken away from me.
Now, I’m alone, though I still have family.
One from my father, another from my mother and a brother younger than me.

I’m not complaining about anything, I love my life and I live it too.
A philosophy of mine, ‘if you love love, love has got to love you.’
Even if love loves me, fate has other plan planned for me.
An invisible web of thread hidden from me.
Though it would be easier if I knew where I should go.
And not think of excuses and impromptu responses once the troubles grow.

I see the Sae staring at me, his eyes mildly close, but looking at me.
He wants to sleep but still waiting for me.
If only it was that easy, that one can sleep and forget everything.
A beer and a cigarette and every problem would be nothing.

A potion, a smoke couldn’t change anything, nothing at all.
But helps you forget the times fate made you crawl.
It would only give music for a silent night but noise for the trouble.
Lets you sleep, but wake up in the morning with the trouble doubled.

Fate, oh fate. If beer, smoke, music and Sae could only convince you.
That I’m young and senseless, would you make it easier for a fool.

If only the silence bear music, the beer give solutions,
the smoke give predictions, and Sae tell me that in fate, there’s no absolutions.
Mishka Jul 2014
I don't know where to begin with this

All I can say is that I am tired

I was given dreams
dreams like fresh fruit
Ripening in my palms
My world was blue skies and
orange slices
litchi juice on hands
climbing the jungle gym

My youth was flora
sprouting out the earth
branches picked clean

we were absolutions

I don't know when that all disappeared

Grown-ups are supposed to know everything
When did I start seeing adults crying more often than I did

We are grey specks in the sea
tumultuous
overwhelming
absolute

We are droplets
whirled into the horror of bloodstains on the road

I am lonely
Endless
Mattress on the sea
Floating
Sinking
Drowning

This is carnage
terror
silent genocide running through our veins

The hours are passing

The air is smog

the trees are dying

the fruit is gone
Where Shelter Aug 2020
~for me~

no food in this house, badly bruised fruit,
leftover congealing overdue-past pasta with ketchup and cheese,
moldy bread testing the outer boundary of edibility,
jeez, even gotta drink water direct from the tap!

the worn out endemic pandemic comatose wakes up next to me,
“even this fickle friend is thinking its time for them to go, who knows,
cause we no longer count the time, where time goes, it just goes”(1),
don’t want it to go, because the ideation of life totally alone terrifies

looking out at the water, waves relinquish their sooth-me-ability,
now, they looking like masses of commuters and tourists weaving,
pushing, on Fifth Avenue, everybody trys gain a step in this old get-
ahead life we used to liv, believing that the way to, the right place

a poet here has cancer, doesn’t answer me when I’m checking on him,
another has memory sickness, cannot ever let go of her life’s losses,
as well she shouldn’t, some losses are wars by definition un-winnable,
and me, drifting in and out of this poem in the early morning thinking

if I could get back to sleep, that’ll be a couple more hours used up,
don’t want to mislead, no answers any to the perennial flowering
question of where shelter can be found, this wretch like me, can’t see,
grace has fled (2), see it, rowing away, can’t blame it, I would too

so many come to me with pain, wasted opportunities, looking for
guidance, or worse, absolutions, the dishes in the sink, last weeks,
saying they deserve a second chance at a useful life and the coffee
machine flashes “Empty Grounds or Leaving Town,” a decent rhyme

don’t give a **** if you’re thinking this writ, gotta quit, too long,
take your tiring eyes and scram, skedaddle, mine until I get a decent
answer to questions that never let go, they’ll keep coming back and
somehow that prospect, is crazy way is comforting, for all parties

can’t let go, only thing that gets me outta bed, the need  reheat, reheat
old, cold coffee that someone stuck in fridge just in case, the electric
gets hurricaned, stormed, another tree comes down this time that doesn’t just miss the house, like last week, that a stupid way to die

answer to where shelter ain’t, gonna start a collection of awnings, keep one handy, no matter time and luck take me, a stopgap answer to the quest-ion at hand, I’m liking that word,  it’s emotive, aaawww-ing, comes ready, handy guttural name, & to the beat, flapping wind

thought I’d get answer by writing this all down, none come along, meaning I’ll write some more some day soon, when the eyes open, should they open once more-row, the questioning, the pandemonium blues, wake up beside me asking where I’ve been, they’ve been

waiting all night for some bad company.




notes
__

(1) “Who knows where the time goes” Fairport Convention
(2) “Amazing Grace” Judy Collins
M G Hsieh Dec 2018
Blue and somber white, I ask that
you ponder in your waking dreams and solid songs to bare the fruits with these eyes
like children and horses and such.

Naked and trembling. You frighten me.
Words of a thousand suns are witness.
They cross out the years of servitude and grace.

Absolutions. They yearn
to survive until they crave mortality.

I am about to give way. To see you with fresh sight,
hear the voice of another betrayal. Thus far,
there is only One

I have never seen
I have never heard
I have never known.

Cruelty abates
itself, shuns itself.

We wait in silence and petulance,
longing for a day to last
a thousand days
and more.
emily Apr 2014
i can’t believe i’d forgotten how
you would talk to me until two, sometimes three
in the morning, nonstop messages
fingers taking flight over the keys,
telling me stories, sometimes just
listening, incessantly
exposing yourself in
uncompromised open wounds.

now, it’s not quite the way it was
now, i tell myself
this doesn’t mean anything.
that we shift & settle
like dust
upon past incarnations
of us, but i miss what you gave me
early in the morning,
filling the space within my chest
that is often
empty, giving me truths &
performing absolutions
for all my past sins.

the truth is, i am no longer
the shiny new toy you are
desperate to play with
every second
of every day
i am the book at your bedside,
measuring my days by
when you turn my pages
& when you don’t
wanting you to devour me
whole
once again.
Ken Pepiton Mar 6
----------------------
As living pillow lava
illuminating
marginal
empty
space on

Silk paper,
in rolls one screen wide,
indefinitely longer than possible
imagine images graven and
impressed
into living ingots,
rolled steel messaging service
-- whose image and superscription

Duty to caste and creed, exist,
trust true rest once, just wait,

wonder if what ever ift began rifts
in concentrated will, chaos spun,
to its gravitational balance point,

seventh grade science reseen using
Casini visions made plain as day,

there's the whole truth we,
there's where Earthian

mind hats are woven from reeds
and banded with old aluminum cans

to perceive crop circles apophenetically

like it don't mean nothin'

upon the tablets as such were
when rocks were used
to witness, what our father's agreed,

to maintain holy order,
by all means

the stela whereby we esteem Israel
and shoe respect for adaptability
is ra' el o heem da'ath
ramify as above so below,
fundamental first mind form

adverse, ra' el and cursyerdialect ics
integrated circuit sets still feel disconnected

can people enjoy paying this much attention?

Alienating Israeli wrestling fans
rallying energetically sympatico

behind DOGE city indexed chaos
making peace using law and order

without Marshall Dillon
without any guns,
without eggs… is ra' aggression legal,

has the law no sword, is the public mind,
the military mind, or the career mind,
or the discombobulated phucit list

let's cruise and act as if we are all so rich,
that many good jobs in the service supply

industry of leisure, on credit, ceartainly,

who cares has not cast all chares on Christ,
the character, from Sunday school

felt board good news, made from first news,

my momma told me, where Christmas came from,

because I knew already between holidays
in 1954 what Arbor Day was for,
and Thanksgiving was because of, 11/11

my Uncle Malcom's army won the war
to end all wars, just

a while before my daddy's friends won the one
that ended many hopes for peace,

as Daddy Warbucks was a role model hero,
as solid as Clark Kent and Snuffy Smith,

time's a wastin' wrestle or tap, Daysman call

as three phonemes long universal is ra' towbd
being now default present and aware

peace
in mind guarded lightly
with a will

not my own, but better
at proving worths
of mumblings most pythia slur or stutter…
prophets ambiguosity
a knack honed,
to glistering
tip on TOE
always
the guild
of interpreters are sorted out,
by age five, first accurate shape
on a plain,

I drew a boot, the sorters saw,
I did not trace it,
I drew it, so then,

at that memory, work was proven,
a mind hat wearer, same radiation,

that killed two sisters and drove mom mad,

made me and my demented sister telepaths,
imagine that.

flat as a skipping stone,
rerippling the vision

you, there,
tell us where we've got to…

we been demented… do. Oh, dear

those hosts attending our absolutions,
none think themselves involved, voluntary

sacrifice attention
to the news fed them, yes,
chosing
to pay attention
to what a few million, must believe

slightly like mindedly smiling,
thinking Jesus winked, and Uncle Mike laughed,

folks who were born citizens, exceptionally lucky,

to be so born,
in the land
of the armed and the free

whose hearts and minds believe, in weform,

as commonly we all think the we
with me in it,
init
runs my inclusion, this weform
with us as plural I.
W
El yes we see him, who is spirit,
gott to be good looking cause he so hard to see

right now,
time and times and half a time

and then, when your side faced mine, eye to eye,

first one slightly smiles and kindly winks, oaths

expression, secret nods to a standard, allied

pledged,
in innocent order
in rank and file drill,

as the flag is raised, each child stands,

and the solemnity
of the picture show rises,

all stand
at attention,
paying all wonder as we
all say
at once,
aloud,

I, we all, I
pledge, which is same as an oath or a vow,

how would you know that,
at age six, well, think it,

I tell it like I lived
to be old,
before I learned how verbs work,

confirming affirmations leads
to solid state, unforgetable instants
too costly
to condemn
to the heaps, so

we made up new pages
to find things, so
set right dexterously
indexing so

simple a five year old child can wonder if it
could be pretend make believe, what ifery,
just
so not heresy or hypocrisy, but true bare
not full of nasty wanna fight or bet words,

no, here we go
to re al ize able levels, cognate

worldwidewebian cut and paste or ask an AI,
what does this say
in Hausa, hey,
how about in Spanish, no se
same thing it says in English, war and greed,

are both diseases, and experience proves
war has never been used
to make things better,

at runny nose cold reality
in a roaring March,
2025,
and we are all still…

breathing and feeling Earthian,
on the living planet gravity bound

to the expanding universe… bubbling by
while growing knowing uses thought
how, I just became old one day,
and have continued being so, ever sense.

Timing,
from the audience
at stage edge,

a bardic bubble stage, Earth, seen from Saturn,

all the wars that ever were, have been excused,

all the wars that are now in use, have no excuse.

We can agree,
we need not compete,
we occupy the only living planet

Peace at the personal no shame
true mind we make up as this we
realized by all involved, experienced,
seeded
wisdom
without patience, really experienced,

well,
as one past that point,
some long while,
passed through in a minute
half a century plus half a decade,
and about five hours from today, once.\

Mark a trader's traditional promise,
for your attention
at second thought

if the sign says buyer beware,
if we seem
to be seen as buying

or vieing
for other's attention, feeling
fi, delphic attention strange nous
seen, thinking all the world's a stage,

your line.
Accepting the whole earth as stage lit and un, none perceive an audience,

we each have lines... some we cross, some we stand behind... some we make.
Nat Lipstadt Jan 22
Disclaimer:
an unintended very long poem
from a very long walk,
hoping it might come
to rest within your
heart
but feel free to go your own,
another direction

<•>

“Another writer told me a few weeks ago of his New England Yankee mother,
who believed there are no problems
that aren’t made at least slightly better
by a long walk, and
none that are made worse.“
<•>

a moderate walker am I,
on the Promenade,
hard by the wide & narrow strait,
a tidal estuary, that divides our urban island
from its suburban Longer cousin,

this my path, most oft traversed,
a time spent usually creating,
reciprocating verses from a
copulating mind

every walking expedition is
an-in-transit composition,
an enchantment by a song
anointed, appointed and a
derivation
of a song about
going home

the last of my family
to be buried, l,
to be interred,
finally grounded,
in a park of cedar trees,
next to my immediates,
for can’t think of any other place
that might, would willingly,
not resist mightily, taking me in

it will thy will that they bury me
there if they can get permission
from the heavenly authorities,
but told the betting odds
are 3 to 1
against,
the Lords of song not so happily
with the quantity and the quality
of my unseeded spilled,
of my un-indeeded actions,
they were not entirely
rainbow colored,
some very berry blackened,
urgently misdelivered
with no justifiable delicacy
warranting memorizing or
further discussion

most likely will continue
to remain a pedestrian,
though unlikely I’ll have to
look both waysides before
crossing over

I’ll carry copies of  my scriptures,
psalms and even my one and only
flawless poem in hand,
wrote here so long ago,
s small proof that my theorems
were not
always entirely wrong,
but my replica action figurines,
were posed and struck,
were sufficient evidences
that my overall demeanor
of demeaned marks,
were negative numbered,
irony, they were unlettered
and ungraded,
mostly average, only worthy
of a place in the sadeyed lowlands

So walk I shall,
hoping they give me decent
walking & wailing shoes,
a warm suit,
a fedora or a watch cap,
cause it is more than chilly
down by the uninhabited riversides

this thinning vision is not
tinged with
any tingling regret,
nor sorrow,
what I did, what I wrote,
every word mine alone,
the way I lived,
walking solitaire is
something grown quite accustomed,
and a pretty fair pre~text of a
judgement coming
down

on the morrow,
will walk with no
measurements needed,
not speed, nor distance,
not counting crows or any other
unenumerated birds of a feather,
those on a wire or a river railing
spying observers watching,
who will go unnumbered,
as will all my
steps of no value

so this poem’s title absolute right,
no needs for solving
for absolutions,
was never ever sorry for
taking a walk,
and there are no more vocabulary
modifiers,
unneeded words left, like,

but nonetheless

only
just don’t know how
this river poem got
so long
thelonious May 2023
Mornings are a time of brand
recognition, are the affirmations
of our silicone dreams, are the
insipid anchor of our biological
imperative, are an invention of
themselves.

Much like the poem writes
itself, the morning spreads
as part of its self-invention,
how particles of light are self￾fulfilling prophecies similar
to a spontaneous stream of words
filling a vessel in no particular
order.

The morning appears flat, but
at its edges it bends seamlessly,
is a disc of unfettered
centrifugal absolutions,
posits unanswerable
equations until night
overtakes it and makes it mine
again.

We keep morning hidden
under the sink like a
disinfectant, like spools
unwound and repurposed,
faded spectrums of
observable patterns, fixed
in the sense of observation
as industrial strength glue,
inviting God to see if It can
undo what consciousness has
borne.
Nemusa Jan 9
The sky folds itself into a bruise,
spilling red streaks like arteries unzipped.
A comet breaks,
its ribs dragging fire through the dark,
and she swallows her wish,
a coin sinking in the throat of a well.

Her hands—
sharp vowels of bone,
cracked knuckles learning
the grammar of pain—
pounded earth
like it owed her a name.
She made fists out of her loneliness
because no one ever taught her
to bloom.

Mistakes:
the geometry of hurt,
a language she spoke fluently.
Once, she carved shame
from a girl smaller than herself.
But wasn’t that just a mirror,
a lesson she couldn’t unlearn?

**** forgiveness,
**** the easy absolutions.
Her body was a script no one read.
Her name was a slur
the world muttered in passing.
She carried choices
like glass splinters in her lungs,
each one cutting
when she tried to breathe.

Whiskey breath,
a kiss smeared on the lip of a bottle—
she called it love.
They called it sin.
Disposable girls
folded like paper swans
in the flood of a system
too tired to save them.

When they found her,
her body curled into itself,
a fist unmade—
the river murmured her elegy,
pulled its fingers through her hair
as if apologizing for the weight
it couldn’t carry.
KorbydAngyle Aug 2020
Though the real cleaver marks
the rashes on pastoral lands
In the dark the fascinations with **** fields
an assailing cut
With no remorse in you
never closed or can renounce this levity
These dreams in the realms waxen never hives
no you didn't see
Learning Laws for the Day and the Night
There are no free souls set upon your passage of rights
Take now the severity the flay of bodies and limbs
No place for fury purity and attacks of the worlds within
Perception never ceases
under all slithers..
plagues and illusions
Torn of no elations fleeing a cause for revelations...
now only ice and fire
sinners disquisitions
We're mere lambs lead to that forthright poison
the constitution of Heaven
Maybe the soul needs to endure meanings
other docile plays for rights, strength dies a contrition

Placing a foal for an Antichrist within the morning light
So as did your prayers can God and Satan answer a fight!

Take now the severity the flay of bodies and limbs
No place for fury purity and attacks of the worlds within
Go now with your mind all suffered people
their derivations
Never know what of the darks halls
into peoples absolutions!
The real you running with more.. all the breezes
Life with erratic lows can be live to avow surety turning seasons
Once and right now the dreams were remorse and empathy
Revealed now demagoguery arrested oscillating of light
Nether worlds there's no way through when the attack begins allright
Searching for sunshine a flight liquid spirit of waves cries out
Do not of my sins as the sinners will do to you for the rest of eternity the mark of torture veils the sun as a new day dawns

Take now the severity the flay of bodies and limbs
No place for fury purity and attacks of the worlds within

— The End —