Poems, page 2

Category
Poem

compassion

how can your world mean so much to me when my world doesn’t mean anything to me? 

i give & 

            give & 

                    give 

until there is nothing left of me 

look here. at me begging 

on my knees 

for you not to leave me 

i care so deeply for your feelings 

yet so little for my own 

i am willing to burry myself 

for your comfort 

make myself smaller        

                                until i am dust     

                                                       particles 

you breathe me in 

and i kiss your lungs

being thankful i have landed somewhere

                                                                safe

until you exhale me out 

    once more 


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

Full Moon June

the curtians left open
for the light is full
to bath my self as an ally
Of a Strawberry Moon
Smooth and full and ready to be pulled
in the dark of the light
open and never left hoping


Category
Poem

NO BONES, REALLY

Walk dog no my.
Not really.
Lazy today lazy day lazy.
Shining overhead,
I finally
am sun.
Dog cupboard
empty is
no bones.
Sunglasses broken. 


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

they say when it rains it pours

and i watch from helpless floods

as my patriarchs fade into the hallways

of humid hospitals as their organs

leak into the yellowing smoke

crusted into the walls; Abuelito’s

brain is bleeding, and my father’s

heart is weak, and he says it is just

one thing after the other ever since

his mother’s cancer came to rock

the saltwater shores of our comfort,

all the ignored calls and days spent

rotting in front of screens. And all

of the sudden I am helpless again

like a child again yelling again

where did they go

where did he go


Category
Poem

Sometimes, A Tree

is a brain wave
in a woman’s remembered
understory
an electrical pulsing
of bark and bloom
whimsical sunset companion
vivid ripples waiting
wanting only
to be acknowledged
as a keepsake
the glory
how light baptizes leaves                                 

                                                               For Stella     


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

Frozen Instead

Is it the ADHD?
Or is there more wrong with me?
The longer the damn list gets,
The more on my ass I sit

Fucking loser,” I mutter…
Insurmountable clutter
Mocks and snickers as it grows,
The Undone aims to overthrow

Frozen
 by the need of me
None of the things let me be,
The piles nor the people,
Worn hands can’t thread a needle!

Instead of doing “the things,”
To this page I plunge and cling
And now, as I near the end,
Checklist ready, but… NO PEN?!


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

getting a bad exam score

this single number
is enough to shatter my
whole self confidence


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

Inheritance

Having moved to the south
with our own predilections,
my daughter was doomed. 
By two, responded fettucini alfredo
when asked her favorite food.  

As peers discussed beloved chips,
she was lost.  Same, during the bible story
game introduced at a birthday party.
When they said grace at preschool
she insisted the first three syllables
were not God is Great, but Honest Gray,
which we felt was a sweet interpretation.  

At home, it was with affection
she renamed nightly dishes  –
warm mush, soggy lettuce salad,
and following a kitchen mishap,
upside-down-oven-lid-surprise.   

Now in her forties, she is organized
and wise. Surely more sophisticated
than I, cooking from directions
on her laptop dictated by culinary artists
foreign to me.  Sometimes, as the years
go by, I can’t help but wonder:
Will any of the stained and marked-up
recipes amassed from my lifetime
in the kitchen find a place in  hers?                                                      


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

Verify You are Human

We tossed our watches out because our phones
told us the time and so much more, like when
to go to bed, how many steps our hearts
required us to take. We had an app
to order food, another app to flag
a ride. So when the grid went down, we had
no watches, and we left our sense of time
somewhere back in the ancient past, and now
a cyber bully with no social media
must find his prey in person. Tell me now:
who’s got the time to tell you to your face
that they don’t like your face? What did you call
me? How’d you call me with no phone? Face it:
the algorithm’s gone. The sun, the shadows, and
thr trees are calling. Now’s the time. Pick up.


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

The Old Dog

Her once black muzzle is all white.
Her short legs can no longer propel
her long body up to her spot
on the sofa. 

She can still bark.
Lift me up. Put me down.
Mostly she sleeps, on any lap,
or wrapped in a blanket. 

Around her swirls the chaos
of a household of three adults,
two small kids, four other dogs.