Lyrical Passion Poetry E-Zine

Free Verse & Prose Poetry

Page 4.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
William Butler Yeats - (1865- 1939)

UNWANTED by Madelynn Wipperman

Brown sharp scars lining the growth of the structure

Maturing shades of red and orange

Arms reaching for a warm embrace

The ending of the limbs pulls a thoughtful solute to the newly disregarded

Pulled by secret forces silently dragging away pieces of the heart

The rough armor subject to many battles

Hold a small crease and a few scrapes mark the surface,

Finally meeting its fate

Torn away from the grasp yanked into different directions

The fatality of leaves, falling to my feet

The shade seems, to just slide away

Like rain drowning, into the depths of the gutter

The last chance of survival is over the hope has vanished.

Helplessly forced from the ground dumped like trash

A grave yard for the unwanted is home

To the gaudy friends and disregarded years of sisterhood

The latest victim degraded like so many others

A perfect shade of red and orange no longer held dear to the heart.

Shrovetide by Alison Lock

The day is a cowl, all colours muted; mud, stone, water, even the grass is grey.

We do not speak, our breath barely flickers, our words are almost extinguished but for small exchanges over stiles, murmurings through brambles.

Walking side on side to the mud, inch by inch we make our way home.

Luminous moss

intensifies

The Griffin's Garden by Carla P. Vazquez

I have 101 flowers growing on my apple tree, hidden in my garden of secrecy, where no

one can see. I grew it there on a hill, and there it will be forever still. From a tiny seed it spread

its roots, watered by my tears. One for each flower, one for each year.

It is my garden, it is my tree. None may see it, save for me. So I guard it from all who

come, not wanting the tale to be over and done.

But then he came with his tongue of flame, and soft and fiercely he spoke my name.

Panicked I ran to my tree, fearful of the fire that followed me. I growled and hissed angrily, I

clawed and spit hatefully. But he did not run, did not flee, only shook his head sorrowfully.

'It's time to stop your ceaseless fears, and seizes the best time of your years, he

whispered softly. And I watched in dismay, as he released a flame, and my precious tree was set

Desperately, I tried to put it out, but he held me back saying, This is not what life's

about. Scream and shout. Run and be free. You've been on the ground so long, you've forgotten

Then I realized what he said was true. My wings were weak from disuse.Tentatively I

stretched them out, gave them a flap and left the ground. I have no flowers, I have no tree. I only,

have ever had, me. And so the Griffin and Dragon left the garden for Eternity...

the weight of bones - by ayaz daryl nielsen

unknown bones

solitary murders, mass

executions, forgotten graves,

homicides, human sacrifices

abandoned, unknown,

the never known -

when we are of

body and spirit

they carry us

as we carry them

and when they are gone,

we linger and yearn

an earth-bound yearning

of the forgotten, the hidden

and somebody, somebody

should tell us good-bye

Late February by Don Thompson

In the fiefdom of the almond grove,

no flags. Winter

has been too long, too cold, too dry,

and the buds remain furled.

The bees keep sending out patrols

to reconnoiter the bare branches.

You can almost hear their panic.

Or maybe it's not that,

but a hum of insurrection,

the troops complaining

that it's all the queen's fault.

My Father by Asher Blake

America scanned him if he was out,

rode him like a Panther if he went into the suburb.

In the summer he might have lain unsympathatic

in the beery night, meditating unjain

on the back patio deaths of insects,

the crying seed crisp of creatures bent to the zap.

None saw the silver crown in your mouth.

As a furtive hunter you took your son shooting

through the melancholy game in winter,

from a fire you made instant coffee

and it sat between us in an oversize thermos.

And the silence became young.

The game birds filled my mouth for months.

Plenty of times mom seared it until

covered in sugars, nested it in fluffy rice

by brown sugar yams that almost

filled me with regret.

One for Sorrow by Alison Lock

Black, white,

crossing our path,

a swatch against the grey-green

of leaves, branches, sky.

I worry

searching for another

a pairing, a joy.

But today, is a sad day.

PAVLOVA WITH WORDS by Martin Lochner

The heart flattens out into words,
and it dies instantly on the page,
the tea is good but I resent the art
of bite sized Pavlova, apricot tarts.

Words
that should have lingered
a small while longer
are now bloated corpses.

The heart-
it's found no shore,
no safety
and no place to save itself from
drowning

idol  by Shimon Palmer

a huge, un-
cut and weathered stone
right in the middle of
my house-

i chiseled
down, straight down
into the solid heart of that
stout monolith, revealing

a tiny, defiant
iron image of my own angry
self hidden
there.

Harmonious   by Jenean McBrearty

A woman in a peacock blue kimono
Stands in a cherry orchard
Watching pink blossoms
Leave their delicate brown branches
Weighted down with ripe red fruit.
She does not see the colors
Clothe the world around her.
Her eyes see nothing but remembering
The delicate pink skin and ripe red lips of youth.
Who is she?
We do not name our tears,
Transparent,
Though they're our children too.
Must every woman have a name?
One is like another
As one cherry tree is like another.
Her husband would agree.

DEPLETION    by Lana Bella

You hoard your tears,
to keep your eyes safe from dryness.
But the day is cold and parched,
the weeping beads are wrought in ice,
cracked in flakes upon the blue-veins of your face.
Laying pressed against the frozen air,
your cold grey eyes pore through the crowd,
closing on a dazzle of red.
You hoist and part the moving throng,
splintering it in two.
The halved seas are stitched
of kaleidoscopic threads and glows.
Leaving bare the woman in blood and dream,
with her fine-boned head,
sweet turned back and gold liquid curls.
The whirling skull at the hair's breadth waits,
and you, the drunkard, wait longer.
While the aspen air sweeps through
the dual questioning bones, spanning in fever.
Making home on her red skirt,
It showers an orchestra of captured sounds,
twinged thoughts, and lost memories,
inside every pleat and inseam,
hunting for the naked skin.
She fractionally turns then,
drawing into the entry of your form.
The choir gushes free of harmony,
grated voice churns in liquid snow.
All the time sensing when her reach for you slackens,
tearing off the splinters of released air.
Your fingers,
shrug out from the fog
closing fast upon the dashed flesh on her weightless bone.
Intimate. Yet distantly empty.
As if time is a stilted photograph,
with you skirting at the sepia shadows
and her always,
waiting under a crimson light.

Maybe by Helen Ditouras

Blue-grey heartstrings
Thin enough to snap
But I still feel a murmur when you walk into a room
Makes me realize
I don't want your coat
Just touch me with the remnants of your pink cashmere

Faithless soul
Reckless in abandon
But I'm thinking of conversion when you flash that smile at me
Makes me realize
I don't need your coat
Just drape me in the remnants of your pink cashmere

Weighted sadness
Sinking in abysmal clouds
But I think of maybe surfacing when you gently brush my hand
Makes me realize
I don't want your coat
Just kiss me with the remnants of your pink cashmere

The Silence of the Lake   by Patrick Doerksen

The stars tug strong tonight
above the lake,
an excess of real,
pulling eyes out of air,
thin air, to see and know beauty,
everywhere a-blinking
in the ripples.
And the bold blackness up high
hushes into strength
a raging wonder beneath.

The heart knows the same:
how beauty elicits being,
life livens the here;
how down on earth
my solitude sobs
into existence an ear;
…how things unreal
are proved by density of desire,
and, ah, how
you are alone as you feel.

Things so badly want to be,
they are, and cast themselves
into the lake like the stars.
Trees, moss, acorns, stones,
everything argues for itself
in the most peculiar ways,
especially me.
And the lake, infinitely aloof,
reflects on what to say
to those who do not know
their own proof.

It is the only silence tonight.

Poppies by Don Thompson

When lightning incites these drab hills

to color, an orange and gold

conflagration spreads like wildflowers

or like wildflowers used to

(how many decades ago?)

when poppies burned without smoke

as far as you could see.

Now when the smoke drifts away,

in no hurry, and scorched earth

has to reach deep

to come up with something green,

a few poppies still smolder,

though only a faint memory,

almost extinguished.

Eco Preserve by Don Thompson

Sullen land, its brush brittle

and stickery:

Walking across (trespassing)

hundreds of bitter little thorns

take a stab at you.

This land is perfectly useless

and kept that way (by law)

by keeping water from it.

Nearby, an onion field

that's kept soaking wet:

You can hear

the hard-working rainbirds

click their tongues, tisk-tisking

such a perfect waste.

Two Mornings by Asher Blake

Your turn. Your turn. Your turn.

No time for me to tell my story.

In my silence you close

every door. You slam

the door so silently.

You had left me with an explanation

that held nothing

of your thighs or your humid breath.

I went out and sat all morning

on the volcanic rock

speckled with my tears.

Now 20 years later I visit

the mountainside house.

Despite the wear of all that rain,

the rock is just as rough

to touch. Each hole

has only deepened

like the palm

of a hand to catch me.

Dreadful Moment by Vanessa Ngam

A dreadful moment like a pistol in a cave

With wrinkled hands and feet and bras fail to support

When voices lost their tone audibility and one gets murmurs

And strained ears to hear and wide eyes to see.

A moment when the cane guides us to homes

Markets, hospitals even to make the toilet pot visible

Ears get blocked with aids and teeth with claws for mastication.

When one passes gas unconsciously and voids regularly

When young ones point fingers and

Gazes in dismay at wrinkled hands and face

The time the clock is still

Seems like forever will be the same

And tomorrow dreadful

And yesterday as a genius and fresh

And when beat skips

When mouth fails to move

The calling bird fails to respond

When the sky looks white

And the brain like a vast room

Then the time is near.

the lost things by Shimon Palmer

the lost
things and missing
pieces were never really
all that far behind-

the lost
things, moon
and whispering treetops in
the night breeze calling, stars
splattered like broken glass across
the undulating landscapes of my dilating
soul, the yearning and misplaced

answers i can
hear and pluck tonight like
flowers in the sky, weeds seeping
through cracks in the pavement of my
life and the path i walk, the lost things are

the path i
walk, the path
i walk calling out, leading
me back to the dreams and esoteric
ruins of the distant home i never
had, and i
know-

the lost
things were never
really lost, they were
here, right here all along
waiting, open and
waiting to be
touched.

THE FLAUTIST by John Grey

We're all agreed there could be nothing finer
Than a solitary flautist on a concert stage,
Playing Prokofiev in F # minor,
No shrill vibrato, just twenty years of age,
A life of melody stretched out before her
And we praise the gods that fortune does allow
Us audience, for we'd be much the poorer
For not having been here, listening to her now.

FLOATING LOTUS by Lana Bella

Sky beyond me is sparse of stars.
Leaving the moon a shabby grey.
Mutely lit of pink upon the bed of
horsetail fern,
I am a floating lotus, waking from sleep.
With rooted, green leaves buffeting me
from beneath.
Navigates by the black water.
Warm air tucks its whispered body.
Murmuring, crawling inside.
Dark sky to petals.
Mouth to blossoms.
I lift a sepal from my folding robe.
Peeling away the foretaste of soft discard,
risking the strangled silence.
My leaflet corpse:
wild-eyed and cleansed of breaths,
a plumed figure on the water.
It sails away as one who dreams and sleeps.
Quietly on the breeze.
Where it is neither ground nor sea.

Rose at Her Grave by Aleksandra Djordjevic

A graveyard,
clear and promising,
glitters with snow.
I have spent early evenings
imagining myself here.
The snow sparkles
eyes
throats
mouths
legs
are buried here,
but have somehow vanished,
an undergrowth of past suffering
tarnished with memories and present pains.
I study one grave—
Amanda
born: 1897,
died: 1910,
with a single rose etched in the stone.
13
was when I got my first period—
she might have never known what one was like
nor the pressure to conform
or the worship a girl could get
from being herself.
I stand at this grave,
sure of myself,
with the sun beating on my back,
knowing my future is ahead of me,
clear and sparkling,
remembering those early evenings no longer.

Romance by Robert L. Martin

When language turned to liquid
When the skies changed their color
When life began its transformation
When moderation became intoxicated
I reeled into the bosom of love

She smiled as I stood perplexed
My heart raced with the tempest
My loins awoke from their slumber
I trembled before love's embodiment

I cast my nets to her ocean eyes
In them I saw my lonely life crumble
My spirit spiraling up to paradise
Up to kiss her lips soaked in honey

So fair is thy soft porcelain body, my love
Close to me but yet so far away
If romance is what it takes to touch
I shall be your eternal troubadour
Play you love songs on my eager violin
And turn your hours into sweet music, m'lady

Swept Away by Robert L. Martin

To the power of love
I fall from thy highest cliff
Where rapture is a blinding sea
And land is a misty port

I offer my heart and soul
Unto your mysterious depths
Thy sweet and perilous waters
That swirl with the tempest
And grind upon the shore

My will, my fortitude, my identity
Lie upon thy threshing floor
To await their careful kneading
For I am thy sacred feast

Yet now upon my glorious ascension
I rise to see the embodiment of love
With its majestic lines and poetic shapes
Its velvet portals to the realm of the Gods

My home in the skies, my spirit transformed
My self gone astray, my abandoned possession
An ode to the
Overwhelming power of love
It came to my door
And swept me away

Dormition by Helen Ditouras

I heard the other day you disappeared
In a deep earthen sleep with little trace
Of all things that made you beautiful
And once adorned you visible

How I sigh a shallow breath of tears
And grasp the air that slips through my fingers
I can't find you or follow this trail you've left
That leads forever to simply nowhere

And I can't help but wonder if you lie below each step I take
Where weeds have grown in an unkept garden
And the silence of sinners loudly prevails

Or maybe your goodbye is hidden inside
A small cheap urn by your father's karaoke machine
Where every so often you're tenderly stroked by his thin withered hands And his old broken heart

If you are sleeping like the Virgin Mother
Let me sit by your side in a candle lit vigil
To guard you with vigor from all of the demons
Who plagued you in stillness for too many years

But I cannot find you
In every dark corner above and below the sewage or streams
Plotless and scattered but even far worse
Bitterly frozen, without a blanket
No freshly cut flowers to cover your name