Mum, I miss you with all my heart.
Life isn’t fair,
Life took you, we had to part,
I look around and don’t see you through my eyes,
Now it’s just goodbyes.
Mum, why did
We have to say goodbye?
I don’t know.
What is my life now without your insight?
Inside, I begin to fight,
Mum I love you and it is true
Without you what will I do?
Tears drop to the ground,
You were the only mum I found.
I am so glad
I know you
in your arms
I feel strong
you are my hope
I feel like
I am born again
how I love you
It’s not the little memories that hurt the most,
It’s not the future memories that could have been,
It’s not the physical touch of your firm hand,
It’s not even the lust in your eyes when I strolled through the door.
It’s knowing that you have cast me aside.
It’s knowing I’ve been thrown in the laundry basket,
Like an old mismatched sock,
Forgotten about in the dryer.
Left behind on top of the washing machine.
Every once in awhile,
You look at me.
Not with disdain,
But not with the spark.
Every once in awhile,
You pick me up,
Not with the careful touch you used,
But with the roughness of a scorpio.
And the memories come rushing through,
Knowing that once upon awhile,
I was welcomed into your world,
While now, I am barely a rebuttal in your field.
Mortgage bodies,
transport children to another
area for domestic work, pimping, begging and whoring.
This is how we bring a new dimension to the
education of child slaughter.
more better different is a lifetime quest
a natural for the curious playful creative
an inevitable modus operandi not a choice
restless whimsical honest and steadfast
more better different a built-in apparatus
not merely a philosophy more of a genotype
can’t outguess a master ideas always flowing
imagining vulnerable fast download eager
more loving
better impulses
different styles
effortless humor
are you with me?
The song of migrating geese spilled from the sky.
Upward they soared under moody December skies,
Flying in a great V as if symbiotically linked by
The vast natural forces that had shaped them over
Millennia, the way that natural law molds and
Forms rock, the geese and the stone in an inconceivable
Distant time elementally birthed in the heart of a savage
Star.
The physics of life pulses through them as through me,
And I felt an ancient shudder pierce my being, timeless,
As their unity joined and patterned an experience split
Open and reformed instantly in my coursing blood, and
Those air travelers prodded on by what mysterious,
Unknown instinct touched me, bound to earth, and I
Envied their freedom while all the while realizing that
Freedom is not in the strident whish of beating wings,
Contained rather in an unencumbered heart that
Instinctively knows both sky and earth, fire and water.
All experience is linked, as the lesson of the flying
Birds taught, and once the heart is set adrift from its
Moors, no compass is sufficient enough to guide it
Back to the original port, and in that epiphany, I
Dreamed, like the geese, of flying to you.
—
Ralph Monday has had over 200 poems published in literary journals and online literary sites. A chapbook, All American Girls and Other Poems was recently published, and a book Lost Houses and American Renditions is forthcoming from Hen House Press.
When nothing is understood
And people’s ways hold out great warnings
Rule of law as rule and law only reigns
When people find out how some of these were made
To perpetually suppress them into silence and vivid action
When they are sure that people who need think of them
Instead of doing things for their health and hearth
Do things that only prove that people can’t see
People can’t say and people can’t hear
As under hand and seal for terms
Into undoable centuries of pledge
They have for reason in mad euphoria
Committed themselves to embrace the path
Of the Rule Book where the only rule is
The rulers’ wishes clothed in promises
For unborn centuries of rosy hue and gold
Only an unborn eternity dons and knows
As deeds done in ways set best only to undo
Every hope that comes ever in mighty shapes
Making life a thing of dream looking not impossible
To be achieved to wipe a tear from every eye importing
Happiness in small and great doses till those who suffer
In some very confirmed sunny times fondly find or feel
They are not hounded and wounded and ever more in fear
To be hurt and to hide lest people should expose them
In their safety exercises in one clear concealed choice
To find when times turn ripe if they are different and able
As knowing, seeing and thinking gods and can with care
Shape with conviction and credible proof structures of support
That tell people their destinies are made of stuff that knows to last
And when necessary blast from within to offer a safety net to all
The forgotten, neglected and lost for long futures that when
Combined should make eternity of happy living a robust reality.
A waterspout
rained fish.
The fish got a wild ride
in a vortex,
saw the clouds
and some returned
to the sea.
He would like to be remembered
as an empty book left open
for the wind,
as a tone-less symphony
waking the listeners
to their very lives,
as a poem never written,
never read.
As a silent presence
on a stage that has
been taken down
last year.
John Cage died a disappointed
inventor of aleatoric music for
which he invented a string instrument
that had to be played by one tall person
with four hands.
More at http://rosemaryboehm.weebly.com/.
His big sweaty palm leaves a mark.
She barely notices his touch.
She’s on her fifth Rum and Coke
Rum to get that tension down,
Coke to keep you standing.
Old-fashioned drink but who
cares and she doesn’t do stuff.
He wishes for a large ungulate
and a shiny armor.
It’s a sweet summer night and the
‘Slug and Lettuce’ is full. He gets
waylaid by shiny things.
It’s so inevitable.
She’s switches to vodka orange.
Her wings feel wooden.
Her laughter sounds shriller.
Her standing becomes erratic.
His kisses taste of brass.
Strange.
She thought he was in equities.
When she slides into fetal position
by the green container
the trombone falls from his hands.
Don’t touch
my soul.
More at http://rosemaryboehm.weebly.com/.