Posts for June 23, 2024 (page 6)

Category
Poem

Born to Serve, Wrong Planet

When will I live for my time?

When I’m accustomed to giving it away,
or working around others.
Why do I survey the land, even when I have the upper hand?
Too conscious of others or too sensitive to be a bother.
Is it in my jeans or my sign?
Or have I been indoctronized?
To put everyone else before me, in a world that would eat me up.

Jesus, I’ve had enough,
go on and bring me up. 


Registration photo of Carrie Elam Spillman for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Obligations

I’m not sure why 
So much is expected from me
Be here
do this 
don’t you dare miss this 
so many obligations 
that I didn’t make 
or want
or refuse
i run ragged to make others 
as happy as I can 
it’s never enough
Like a greedy child
they want more
stained hands 
they grab
And grab
and demand 

I wonder if they know 
the weight of the plate I already carry 
or do they enjoy 
throwing more upon me


Registration photo of Geoff White for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

The End of Summer Work Day

Two and a half hours overtime
that gets counted up in six minute
increments.  Night shift
begrudgingly lined up, waiting
their turn.  Stop the line
and out, the half-hearted rush
to the lockers because we’re so tired.
Change out of the scrape and
sand jeans, my work goggles,
my bump cap, everything has
a place, and hit the door.
The outside heat smacking me
in the face, reminding
that it could be worse as
I head out into a day
already in progress.


Registration photo of Stefan Delipoglou for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Ugly

Reality robs your soul of purity 

rendering suchs quandaries as:
 
do you follow their speed limits? 
do you dream your dream or just keep on? 
chicken or salmon for din din? 
 
I’m not fortunate enough.
I recognize I was wrong time
and wrong place 
and
maybe I never should have been. 
 
I bet your mom loved you. 
I bet your extended family shares holidays. 
I bet you all share the same language 
and continent. 
I bet you didn’t consider railing pills to stop the hurt 
or
forget the ugliness for sparse minutes.

Category
Poem

the wait is over

New jar of mayo

Exquisite taste of summer

Tomato sandwich


Registration photo of laney for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

just one month more until i’m 24

my cat knows i wouldn’t pick her up unless i had to
at least one living thing loves me no matter what i do
it wasn’t meant to be
i tried as hard as i could try
eclipse season tried to tell me
the moon and stars never lie
i’ve got a big big shirt to wear so i can feel like i did
when i wore my dad’s clothes as a little kid
nobody cares what i have to say
still i’m waxing poetic all night and all day
i’m a big girl now
i eat tomatoes and onions
but i’m worse at relationships somehow
i trained myself to like the wine
with an ABV of 12.9
i’ve got scabs that
form points on a map
i’ve got a double crown
so my hair grows down
until it meets the cowlick in the front
i always wanted blue eyes but i like them brown
my best friend knows my debit card pin
and she knows my favorite scent
of my favorite brand of incense
i started taking my vitamins
might as well get better waiting for life to end
maybe i am a gatherer
maybe i don’t know what i’m even after


Registration photo of N. D for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

the portal

it was only a
question of when and not if
someone flashed new york 

*In reference to the portal video link between Dublin and New York having to go offline briefly due to inappropriate actions on the Irish end. Never change Dublin, never change.*


Registration photo of Goldie for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

No more demanding a griddle-cheeked maxim than Let’s

Let’s

thrum from a
shrunken knot 
some semblance of 
Mozart blown from a yodeler’s nose,
like the lemon-skinned moon gropes
over these tippling oak leaves, caught
like a gunpowder dahlia slowly exploding, like
fishscale shrapnel snagged at the bristling
chin of some slavering woodwose summons
the symphonies filigreed deeper in Overstreet
Falls than even the tongues of Niagara—Let’s
 
watch while Clay,
like a svelte Ming vase
licked back into wrinkling greenware,
tickles his cigarette cherry 
          in impish ventriloquy 
          into a filigreed titter of Devil Woman,
                     albeit as though little Marty 
                              Robbins had never
       escaped; hear the call for rain, like
       cancan dancers might milk of the guts
       of a velveteen bunny some burpling lanolin,
       glibly diminish in ticklish mist, the mist
       collecting at Clay’s shrill slits, like light
       curls into a pewter dish—Let’s
 
feel for chords in the floorboards,
take your pick now,
pick at the water-logged locks and, glumly,
discover your plumbing was 
                     bald macaroni and 
jellied gemelli seized into a 
finger 
   trap
     trachea, check out
 
                   that u-bend, there
 
no, here,
and here
and here. Now, what do you feel there?
                            what does that pulse plumb 
                         
                          deep in the gelatin back bone, 
                          deep in the horsehair vagus nerve of
 
                 everything singing as
                 clear as your sobbing
 
                              sink—
 
Let the butts accrete
in a sturgeon’s skeleton,
skin it with spittle stretched fatter than yaks, 
                                                                 and then 
crack that worm-wrought dollop of hard tack
into some worm-slim crack in the back of the
Gateway Lofts, and let the whole city shake
what gilt barnacles cudding the ash into ashes—Let’s,
now, yes, now—Let’s.
 
          
 

Registration photo of Shawn Justice for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Afternoon in Central Park

The ugliest green I have 
Ever seen,
Slopped onto this picnic table,
Covering HM + MA but not erasing
Their star crossed artifact of 
LOVE —-
Age unknown—-picnic table
And HM + MA. 

Hot-diggity-damn!
The BMOC of Central Park rambles
Across the green space on his
School bus yellow front loader,
Lifting puke green, faded red
And Go Cats! blue tables
Moving them further from
My observation perch.

He’s a 
Hopped-Up-On-Life Cowboy
Sporting Coke-Bottle-Lens glasses,
Kicking up dust as he rambles
Assuredly over on his yellow steed
Relocating another table to the
Herd’s new pasture. 
But, WHY?

Adoring throngs of admirers
Freeze in place leaving the playground
At a standstill as if they are frozen in time,
By a Mystic Power chanting their names.

With mouthes agape,
They watch and wait as he
Strides by subduing the yellow beast
As If It Weren’t Anything Whatsoever,
Not even a quiver of muscles is detectable
From the stoic cowboy. 

And on their faces, without saying a word,
Each little boy and little girl
Wistfully share their dreams
Of becoming the next generation
Cowboys of Central Park
With their very own big rigs. 


Registration photo of Linda Angelo for the LexPoMo 2024 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Escalante: The Earth is Naked Here

the earth is naked here
200 million years
revealing themselves
monolithic Navajo red cliffs                       
grey ash   white sandstone
volcanoes    floods
torrents carving and cracking
and smoothing their way
ripples   pocket marks
of water and wind  
   
the towering rock
folds   crevices  canyons          
settled for the moment
miracle of juniper and pinion pine
cactus    wildflowers 
winding roots
through blazing rock
and somehow, for now
we slight creatures
get to  walk the ancient trails
rivers and time have wrought