Thursday, June 30, 2016

June Calender writes

Things Only Old Folks Know

The lost word or name is not a disaster,

It doesn’t mean Alzheimer’s or dementia,
It happens to everyone quite often.

That blank look, unresponsiveness is okay,

It isn’t snobbishness, anger or ignorance,
Our hearing isn’t what it used to be.

Sitting quietly as others leave the room

Isn’t disinterest or disagreement,
It’s just so damned hard to get out of the chair.

The lavish sprinkling of salt, pepper or hot sauce

Doesn’t mean the cooking’s lousy,
Our taste buds have been dying one by one.

The shrug and sigh at news of scandal

Isn’t indifference, it’s boredom with the stupidity
And arrogance of celebrities, politicians and stars.

The shaking head with the downturned mouth

Isn’t sudden onset of Parkinson’s disease,
We’re truly sad the world’s going to hell.

What those young folks, whippersnappers,

Don’t know has to be forgiven. They’ll learn
If they’re lucky enough to become one of the old folks.

amazing oil paintings of people

-- Grace Pickford

Jeff Norris shoots


Keith Francese writes


sea, sonoran


I as if desert bracken sewn
upon the dark Atlantic

with the stars’
wavy reflections for eyelets

lay damascene

god is it quiet out here on a Saturday night

the mermaids swum
the sirens sung

only the faint hum of blithering hearts all young and verveful
the glittering scraw of fireflies

adive
on the roiling streets of a faraway Atlantis



Atlantis- -- Thomas C. Fedro

Umid Ali writes

IT IS LOVE

This love is cruel, merciless, ruthless,
It doesn’t know to stop at anything.
This love is black and white, or full white.
This love doesn’t know how to say Goodbye.

This love collects a message from souls,
This love warms naughty looks.
This love worships hearts,
This love forgives sinners and the guilty.

This love is not a legend or a tale,
This love is lucky and the happiest aid.
This love is a dream, a hope, a sign –
This love is nearly the sky and the land.

This love…
This love is a rebellion for life,
It never gives a chance to live without a soul.
This love – as if it could become unknown --

Is consciousness, a ray for the soul, a home for the spirit. 

--tr. Asror Allayarov, from "The Gate Opened by Angels"



The Dao of Sexual Love : Chinese Medicine Living

Kissing -- Alex Grey


                 

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Ken Allan Dronsfield writes and shoots



Lesser Temptation



Streams of ethereal dreams 

while lost in the crimson bayou
 
a weeping willow serenades
 
an ominous decrepit mansion.



Cartwheeled off through Hell,
 
left cowering under the lamp
 
in the old voodoo swamps
 
of misty heartless sanction.



Quaking within the freeze
 
or perhaps a new disease,
 
left shirtless and bereft
 
in the cold without ration.



Stuck within the embrace
 
of a shadowy woman's arms;
 
ghostly visions singing of
 
shattered pious abdication.



Waking within the fantasy,
 
still reeling from the reality
 
whispers from fractured doors
 
and deeds of lesser temptation.



Casting glances are bestowed
 
ringing down the singing hallway.
 
Marie Laveau dances peacefully to
 
a sonnet of high righteous inflection.



Mandalay shoots



Kevin Patrick Hodgkiss writes



The Purple Loosestrife



Pristine pretty 
Virgin apotheosis 
Precise in it’s symbiosis 
To flourish as one. 
Any weed an unfortunate flower 
Only to the outsider 
And those who judge.



There,  
Time is just revolving 
All, 
Already has been resolved. 
Resplendent by 
Shared dependency 
Evolved.



Until



Fragility is poked 
By the conquerors with curious and dirty hands 
Swollen 
Emboldened
And billowing 
With unblinking demands

Innocence unsuspecting 
A disturbance at life 
Man, the coveted stranger 
And the menace of 
Purple loosestrife.
 Purple Loosestrife Painting - Purple Loosestrife by Jane Oriel

Purple Loosestrife -- Jane Oriel

Rik George writes

A Caveat to New Converts

Beware the Tiger hidden in the Lamb,
his wool-sheathed claws and sheep’s eyes veiling fire.
Hosea married Gomer, a common whore,
and got three children in her well-worn womb
under the Tiger. Jeremiah came
to Jerusalem a poet, and wore
away his poetry and died a bore
in Egypt. Lamb-beguiled, the saintly dream
of fleece and limpid eyes. The Tiger waits,
crouching in the wool, to strip and break their bones.
Dream on, oh would-be saints, of God, of sweets
in Paradise, rewards for repented sins.
Sleep with the Lamb between the silken sheets.
You’ll wake to find the Tiger always wins.

 

Kushal Poddar writes


Riding The Rain Train
 
A glib paper cup 
refills itself in rain. 
Train's pane jellies.
 
Your side face 
is the part of a town 
we just crossed. 
 
And its market, station, 
man riding his sleep, 
crows on a garbage heap, 
 
trees longing for 
the tiredness of 
twelve o'clock birds.
 
You remain tipsy
on rain tea infusion,
eyes shut, metals
unthreaded in your dream.
A field opens.

 
 Rain Train -- Rich Booth

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Nana Mark shoots


Mark Antony Rossi writes



The Upside of Freedom (Sort Of)


I live in a free society
Where nothing is free
Not even freedom
But the feeling
No one cares
Is far far better
Than the watchful eye
Of a police state
With a strongman
Caring about too much.

 matthewquick-george_washington
 George Washington -- Matthew Quick

Dorin Popa writes



AFTER MUCH CHASING
 
sometimes I can’t hide myself anymore

and I have to face my deeds
with brutality


cigarettes don’t help anymore
daydreaming doesn’t help anymore
only the autumn’s leaves
seem determined
not to leave me


sometimes, after much chasing
I’m caught, unmasked, humiliated
nothing can ever save me now
nothing will ever come close to me
– everywhere I go I run up against
pitiless walls
everywhere I go I suddenly run up against
myself.


 Self Portrait: Depression by Songwind

Self Portrait: Depression -- Songwind

Mary Annie A. V. writes



Friendships:) 

Across the distances 
we are the different
needles knitting us 
to perfection.

In our writes we find 
patterns that are woven 
to be laid aside 
for  solace,
now and then.

Our  differences 
do not separate.  
Across  the distances 
we write symphonies 
that,  played 
over black and white ,
will lead  us 
to restful slumber.  
For all  friendships are eternal
though 
not always  spelt out  when living.
 p1DSCF5839
 Knitty -- Melissa Fannin


Monday, June 27, 2016

Robert J. Fouser shoots


Matt Borczon writes

Military town

the air
smells of
diesel and
coal dust
just off
the highway
and even
at rush hour
this town
feels empty
as I
cross the
road looking
for a meal
and anyplace
less lonely
on a military
weekend
away from home

some days
I hate
this uniform
it reminds me
of how
far away
my family
and I
are from
who I
used to
be back

before the
war stole
my optimism
my energy
my faith
most of
my kindness
all of myself

and left me
full of
nightmares
and the smell
of blood I
still can’t
wash off

left me
here or
home or
anywhere
alone or
in formation

standing  like
a ghost in
service dress

blues.
Tall SoldiersTall Soldiers -- Kazuya Akimoto



Peter Magliocco writes



Paris Hilton in Drag



The ambience articulates metric verses of hair
for the undead, marking time
quietly until dawn when
my spore-infested hands
reached for this space-creature
craning her alabaster throat 
in the reveries of a mystery writer's psychosis,
where self-delusion is everywhere
simply a multifarious space
of darting ions
daring us.



"For all the ladies of Lima are
famed for their beauty and coquetry,"
Gaston Leroux once wrote for old tongues
(or parchment yet prescient
with his gothic, viral-spun visions)



Behind the veil of blackness I violated,
his decree blossomed into a breached glimpse
of many Vegas escort girls penetrating
my hackneyed porn epics & eons
a frazzled pen once thrummed to



Here in the gilded town of cheap desire
all changed under the legal influence
as women became men (& vice versa),
until the certainty of sexual identity
lost itself in some hip ambiguity



Beyond the ken of once private parts
all must vanish someday into microchips
masquerading as fig leaves no longer.



Spare me the genome's devolution
from once beautiful old world matters,
my severed crimson fingers still lunge
into a complicated nether-space
to plunder the alien female's body



with imagistic wordplay
bred by depravity
the neon moon
explodes.



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The Simple Life Goes to Camp --"14"

Michael Drummond writes



Bangkok 7pm





The day is done
The prince’s palace
Is alight



All are going home
On the 32 line



It goes so straight
Usually need to wait
In the street
For it



And its air con is well working



All shops neon glow
I go for tom yam
And fried rice



Know a restaurant where
They do it well
Price not high
No hard sell



Waitress is my friend
She wants to marry
Me



Her English is ok too
Waitresses like her
Are scarcely few


Image result for bangkok waitress painting