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Posts for June 6, 2024

T.C. Phillips
Category
Poem
2
6/6/24

Augmented Reality

Put on the goggles
Check out the scene
Take in all that surrounds you
And all in between
Bypass the safety notice
You’ve read it before
Click through disclaimers
Which you mostly ignore
Find a good game
Play a few minutes
Find a few others 
Who express interest

And now you’re immersed in the midst of the game
And now you’re thoroughly and highly entertained
And now you’re thrilled and totally engaged
And, somehow you’ve entered a whole different stage

Where you now get to fight for your life
Against your worst possible enemy
And now you’ve lost all your extra lives
Used up all your energy
And right in the face of 
This all-powerful entity
You muster up the courage and SWING

and

coincidentally

Accidentally shatter the screen on your LED TV
Because you didn’t pay attention to the boundaries
Clearly spelled out for you, but it’s now too late 

Here’s a reminder that you were told all of this
In this poem
In lines six 
Through eight

Rayny Palmer
Category
Poem
Registration photo of Kathleen Bauer for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Kathleen Bauer
Category
Poem
6/6/24

I Would Tell You a Poem

I would tell you a poem
swathed in velvet color
capped in holographic finish

but it would never reach enough heights to grant you 
the fullness of the first life that was ever lived,
would it? Not the ability to memorize each drop of light
we’ve lost with the advent of the camera
and find replaced with only longing when the shaken-out photograph
emerges to begin its process of fading, from the start
a layer short of true three-dimensional
masterpiece of sight.

Why would I write you a poem
when it could never see in what new colors
were introduced to the spectrum
in the moments I saw
& the ones I had but heard of,
yet the words spoken were enough
to form something perfect in the mind?

I would end it here, before it had begun.
Because nothing would leave me more heartbroken
than leaving behind anything too human to replicate the stars.

So I won’t.

Registration photo of K. Nicole Wilson for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
K. Nicole Wilson
Category
Poem
2
6/6/24

6/14 of a Sonnet

And we’re gonna write a poem somehow,
even if the neighbors are being loud,
and coffee casually drip dots the page
so that we don’t notice it right away,
and now there are tiny luke warm smudges,
but where good verse should be, it spells nothing.

Registration photo of l. jōnz for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
l. jōnz
Category
Poem
4
6/6/24

love’s heavy lift

she hoped this time
it would be
easier

trusted this go-round
would prove her
wise

found out love
offers not
wisdom-

but requires 
a shit ton more
love

Registration photo of Courtney Music for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Courtney Music-Johnson
Category
Poem
6/6/24

Old Friends

Two old friends came
To visit this evening 
One, returned with a worn hug
With tears behind a smile
The other, a familiar hitch in my chest
Named Ol’ Anxiety, that comes from dread
Because I knew I couldn’t 
Save her heart the ache
Looming in the words
“We’re getting a divorce.” 

There’s no amount of hugging 
Sarcasm, or cheesecake 
To fix any sort of brokeness 
Such as the loss 
Of life of your love 
Especially the only love 
You’ve ever known 

Instead I just offer 
A few nods and back pats
Over a cheeseburger 
Reminding her that this 
Really isn’t the end, 
While memories of my own divorce 
Flashed through my head
While picking at a blanket 
As we snuggled 
“This too shall pass….”
I say
I just don’t know when.

Registration photo of AJ Kline for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
AJ Kline
Category
Poem
4
6/6/24

6/6/2024

The farmer scatters
his packet of promises in
the furrowed dirt and
returns the next day and
the next to
forage for dreams unearthed.

Registration photo of Abelucia Ponzo for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Abelucia Ponzo
Category
Poem
3
6/6/24

Goodness

Papery, peeley, pokey, poooo
boo boo boo boo
I scare at the though of you

But your just a baby
Only thing scarier than you
Is a baby 
 

Registration photo of Jerielle for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Jerielle
Category
Poem
6/6/24

Halleys Comet

I was three when Halleys passed
1986
I walked most of the way up the deep hollow
Past meadows following the creek
Over bridges
Winding up a gravel driveway
Around over or through the red cattle fence
Past the farmhouse frozen
in another time
With peach trees, lights still on, furnished. As if someone still lived there.
Theres quilts and sheets on the clothes wires sometimes, and baskets of apples left gathered nearby apple trees, a ladder, an antiquated street light always buzzed somewhere
Dad carries me some of the way,
it grew steeper as you pressed nearer
the top of the hill, ringed with many shapely cedars protecting an iron fenced graveyard.
The tops of all the other mountains stretch away from you here, and the wind blows differently,
wilder
The starry sky presses down
And owls hoot and
The whipoorwill and frogs
Sing songs my mother knew
I know I fell asleep after finding it in the telescope, and maybe I saw Saturn’s rings

Rachel was a musician
Her ashes are on her piano.
It’s mine now
She knew everything the bobcats knew,
The forest knew her as well
I saw things with her that only happened because the mountains were all used to her
She knew the habits of the stars, the birds,
and the other things that moved from Steven’s Cemetery to Haldeman
And music echoed off those hills
Your eyes adjust to the dark and you don’t use flashlights to make the journey home.

Registration photo of Cody Evans for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Cody Evans
Category
Poem
6/6/24

Modern Times (or, a Rough Night at the Movies)

Pace yourself…
That’s what I need to do

I screamed a lot,
Ran up and down the stairs,

And thought about Nicolas Cage for some reason

I was dizzy
With spit and cracking ears

I had to lay down

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