Posts for June 17, 2025 (page 10)

Arwen

Category

Poem

6/17/25

How to End Up on Dateline

1. Get along with everyone
2. Light up a room
3. Be a natural beauty
4. Be the family’s glue

5. Never meet a stranger
6. Give the shirt off of your back
7. Do anything for anybody
8. Keep everyone on track

9. Be a force of nature
10. Be devoted, laugh a lot
11. Smile contagious, be magnetic
12. Be everybody’s rock

13. Make everyone feel special
14. Be the party’s life
15. Be going places, have potential
16. Be a bad man’s wife

Linda Meg Frith

Category

Poem

6/17/25

On the Pier at Sunrise

What will be performed here?

A wedding, of course.

Who doesn’t dream of a wedding

on the water, a miracle walking

on the pier with a bouquet of roses

trailing behind the flower girl.

But wait, I remember Billy Joe

McAlister jumping off the bridge

and think of other gruesome things

that happen in secret.

All the tragedies of life disrupting

the flow of morning ‘s joy.

Maybe a boy caught a minnow

on a fishing pole, handmade

from twigs and string, bacon as bait.

Now he wants to return it to its home,

A carefree way to enjoy a Sunday morning.

Father behind him warning him

don’t fall in, it’s Father’s Day, after all,

and we are headed to Sunday breakfast

celebrating all the ways you
will remember me when I’m gone.

Death is the special guest
at this occasion. (As always,
at every event, death lurks

behind each heartbeat, every breath,

never knowing exactly how or when

it will occur.). Will it be the father’s turn,

an aneurysm in the brain, or perhaps
the boy will stumble, fall into the water,
drown, still clutching the minnow
who struggles to wriggle free,
return to his rightful habitat.

The ersatz marriage has already ended

in divorce, a kind of death.

Destroyed by the constant barrage

of criticisms and arguments
over bathroom things, open toilet lids,
socks on the floor, and using
the wrong toothbrush, things,

always things that get in the way,

unanswered texts, or the girl
you sat with at the ball game.
The smallest items

get in the way of the vow
taken at the pier — till death do us part.

Tom Hunley

Category

Poem

6/17/25

Liberty from Moms

We don’t want to censor anything,

says the Moms for Liberty spokeswoman.

We just want to keep our kids from reading

books that aren’t age appropriate.

I understand this, but it never would have

worked on me. My mom knew I would read

anything I could get my hands on, and I guess

my dad was squeamish about giving me The Talk,

so when I was nine years old, she left a copy

of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about

Sex but Were Afraid to Ask on the coffee table

in the living room. I read it cover-to-cover,

and it contained a lot that a nine-year-old

wasn’t ready for, a lot that disturbed me.

Girls can lose their hymens climbing trees.

That guy standing in the ER waiting room

probably has a lightbulb lodged in his ass.

The Catholic church put nuns on the pill

in the Belgian Congo for fear of rapacious terrorists.

The earliest dildos, made of clay, were found

in Egyptian tombs. I knew more than everything

I wanted to know, but I didn’t know that

a few blocks away, my best friend,

who would later introduce me to my wife,

was getting raped by his mom. I didn’t learn that

until decades later, after my friend had bouts

of homelessness, addiction, and jail time.

I learned it from his little brother, who had hid

under the bed while it happened, six-years-old.

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Tabitha Dial

Category

Poem

6/17/25

Plainspeak to Poetry

In poetry we don’t say: what do you believe in?

We say: have you forgotten that the sun travels far, not just to touch you and blush as it leaves, but so that when you close your eyes, you see a color deep as plums?

In poetry we don’t say: you are beautiful

We say: I follow you into the dark because you are my candle, and it’s understandable if sometimes you collapse or flare up or have a meltdown.

In poetry we don’t say: I need you

We say: when the deserts lie about an oasis, long after lips have gone dry and water tastes like an eager melody, it is only the tip of the iceberg of my need.

N. D

Category

Poem

6/17/25

Promise

one day i’ll look back on these words,
a time capsule of healing and heartache,
confessions of another years flavour of hurt;

from a place where sunlit forests of tranquility are mine to roam
and the gloom of old is nothing
but a distant memory over the horizon

Louise Tallen

Category

Poem

6/17/25

When is a Poem a Poem

Is a poem a poem
If it’s made by AI

Can it reason and rhyme
Can it ponder the time

Is an algorithm taught
What is thought and what’s not

Is it even creative
Or merely translative

Does it bleed, does it sigh
Can sad stories make it cry

I fear from what I hear
Creativity’s end must be near

Linda Freudenberger

Category

Poem

6/17/25

Taffy

Seashore taffy is
the bomb tightly wrapped like
a bow, twisted pastels
whiffs of salt on the boardwalk
marks the beginning of us.

LittleBird

Category

Poem

6/17/25

A break from the muse

My muse works through bruises.

Bloody remnants of heartbreak lying just beneath the surface, the

Heart ache makes for beauty.

Tears salt the edges with attitude.

Fueled by hot, hurting anger.

Poking tender trigger points

Tipped past a point of reason,

Words SCREAM

And drip molten indignation.

I plead for peace

But then

How would I write?

S.L.Bradley

Category

Poem

6/17/25

on this rainy summer day
I find myself baffled and confused
I like to think I am a good person wih a kind heart
Honestly I don’t know where to start
I am feeling sad, lonely and blue
This was my choice this move
840 miles away
I couldn’t stay too much heartache too much pain
I knew the emotions and troubles in my soul
would find me here

What to say

you’ve got this girl , you will adjust to here
you can flip the script, restart your day
find the good and love that remains
you can do this focus on just one day
The rain is gentle now
it cleanses my soul and hides my tears

What to say

Charles William

Category

Poem

6/17/25

They Say I’m Dying

Coming from Grampa, I closed the door.
Said: “He likes his privacy too;
I asked him what he thought about it
And he told me:

‘I’m going to live right on. Dying
Is none of my business. Dying
Will have to take care of its own self
After I’m dead.

I’ve had a life as good as I know
Don’t want to be a carcass for
Some white coated carrion crows
(Even before I’m dead)

Each one taking his peice, playing tag.
Don’t want to be all worn out like string clothes
No good
Even for rags

Don’t want some hopeless hope. Dying
Is what I will do, it’s my thing. Dying
Is not some technological process.’
Well.”

Help us keep on giving.

Posts for June 17, 2025 (page 10)

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