Posts for June 5, 2025 (page 12)

Registration photo of L. Coyne for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Hello Stranger

He appeared there across the street,
Exiting the corner store.
Looked left, then right, then
Left again, before he crossed
Over to my side.

Stood beside me at the bus stop
Talking on his cell the whole time—
Random streams of conversations,
Asking someone about evening plans.
Nodded to acknowledge I exist and
Got on the bus, cell still in hand,
Ear glued tightly to whoever’s words,
Riding alongside strangers.


Registration photo of Linda Angelo for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Not quite ennui, but close

Is it from the breathing exercises
that quieted my heart to a dull blip?
Caused by departure from the sea
that had kept my body humming? 
Perhaps my passion is huddled
underground with the seeds
of love-in-the-mist, gearing up.  


Registration photo of Carol for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

It’s a Good Thing I’m Retired

Wake up sleepyhead! Get out of bed!
It’s Saturday morning, and there’s a long day ahead.
From last week’s flooding, there’s to be more sweeping and mopping,
plus the chicken’s wings to clip, so they’ll quit their fence-hopping…
though I should’ve done it last night while they were asleep on their roost,
but I couldn’t make myself do it, even with a coffee boost.
Then, there are the boxes of things to put with my neighbor’s yard sale.
Yikes! That’s TODAY!

No, wait, isn’t that not until tomorrow, because today is only Friday?
Ha! If my alarm clock goes off again, I’ll lock it up and throw away the key.
Or I maybe I’ll stuff it into one of those yard sale boxes and sell it off for cheap.
Yeah, let someone buy it for a mere ten cents; a dime for their time, ha, ha.
Maybe I’m gonna like being retired after all.


Registration photo of B. Elizabeth Beck for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Solace in Purgatory Season

March still brown, not yet
green, relief of the in between.
I relish lack of expectations,

heralding holidays, demarcation
of calendar year like commas
in sentences and stanza breaks
in poems. That pause, breath

I inhale. Moment before affords
space for reflection and energy
to gather for tasks like rocks
stacked, each balanced, support
for the next, toppling over
haphazardly, as it is supposed to be.


Registration photo of A. Virelai for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

“I confess I do not believe in time”

I wrote for June 5,
thinking of butterflies,
but they were a week behind,
like everything else I love. 

The archive says June 12.
The magazine,
tucked in some library’s hush,
must wait until next Thursday
to spill its colored plates,
its ghosts, its nets.

But I had already started walking,
mistaking
the mimic for the original,
the shade for the leaf,
the Mourning Cloak
for a memory.

So let this be
my false anniversary,
my misdated page-glade,
my premature wingbeat.

Nabokov showed
how to fold the carpet
so the pattern overlaps—
a butterfly pinned to nothing
but breath.


Registration photo of John W. McCauley for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Grandad’s Orchard

I remember Grandad’s orchard
with apples, pears, and plums
and near his hillside orchard
Gran’s pretty multi-colored mums.

Autumn would bring many colors
after a season of picking fruit
and hiking into the mountains
to dig sassafras and yellow root.

These simple mountain pleasures
were a blessing here on earth
like reading the classic poets
who crafted the written verse.

Grandad’s orchard was a special place
with many memories and good times
on a hill above the blackberry patch
and below the Virginia pines.


Registration photo of Greg Friedman for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Unmute

In all the squares people’s lips are moving.
They make no sound.
I shout at them,
announce the deaths of children,
tally the starving millions,
document the fool’s postures,
chat about those imprisoned without cause.
bemoan the dismissal of excellence,
list the lost futures—
raise the hand icon over and over.  

Do they only see my lips moving?


Category
Poem

The Process

Every time I get better, I get worse

Every time you’re gone, you come back

Dragging yourself out of the muck

A discarded nightmare come back to haunt me

Eager to wrap your hands around my throat

And hear the melody I scream, your name

Ripped out of my body, my dignity

A masochistic wheel spins in my brain

It replays only you

Like a hot iron to skin

I hear it crack and screech

Feeling the pain

Watching it shrivel

I’m so scared of so much

You coming back

You leaving again

You staying away

But more than anything

I’m scared you’ll never leave me


Registration photo of Tabitha Dial for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

Pro-cures for Poets: Writer’s Block

If your muses aren’t stopping in
and left you grasping for ideas,
grab a sharpie and try this exercise:

Draw the doorway to your childhood room
on one arm, and list three things
you loved behind its hinges.

Now draw the front entrance to inspiration
and the exit to boredom on your other arm.
Write the address above it.

If the block is still there under your follicles,
walk to the park or shop for groceries
in a short-sleeve shirt
and soak in everyone’s reaction.

Look for the faces
of your lost muses
as they blink back to attention.


Registration photo of J.E. Barr for the LexPoMo 2025 Writing Challenge.
Category
Poem

black flies & baby deer

The heat of June reminds me
of the year I spent in the log cabin,
prompting me to buzz my head,
no climate control and hoards of black flies
banging their heads against the windows
begging for release, not unlike myself.

There’s one bathroom, the size of me
with my knees to my chest and 
my feet caressing the damp shower floor,
which never dries because a cold shower,
the only relief from the dried salt on my skin

But the cabin has two spring fawn
who don’t know they should fear me
and when it’s too hot to sleep,
I bring a pillow to the porch and sleep 
under the stained glass sky with
the call of coyotes 
and the company of turkeys.