About Poetry - Kathy Figueroa

These days, pretty much anything goes
From measured meter to free-form prose
From haiku, odes, or tossed “word salads”
To precisely presented ballads
 
Like crickets chirp, wolves howl, and birds sing
To express one’s self is the main thing
So share your thoughts, let the words ring true
We learn from each other’s points of view
 
Kathy Figueroa


Image : GuernseyPoets

Where I Belong - Tony Gardner

There  is  much  excitement
So  much  vibrance  and  delight
In  the  heart  of  the  big  City
With  the  garish  City Lights
And  if  that's  what  excites  you
If  that's  what  turns  you  on,
Well  go  off  and  enjoy  it
But  just  leave  me  alone
For  here  on  my  little  Island
I  have  all  that  I  dream  of
My  family,  childhood  mem'ries
And  the  people  that  I  love.

Tony Gardner


Image : Pixabay - cegoh

Shooting Pains - Richard Fleming

Another day, another mall,
another shooting to appall
the world, astonished, that looks on
and, once again, the ghastly spawn
of frontier days produces nerds
who shoot, as though at bison herds,
and random bullets rip apart
some stranger’s brain, her lung, his heart.
For seconds, time’s arrested, then
restarts: the screaming starts again
in this red space, Hell’s ghastly twin,
as mall-security kicks in
too late, of course: the murdered child,
eviscerated and defiled,
the adults’ bodies, gutted, thrown
aside like debris, entrails, bone
exposed. These people won’t resume
their lively shopping in this tomb.
The shooter’s down: restrained, he screams
about his foul, frustrated dreams.
As sirens shriek, survivors cling,
to one another, anything
that has a heart that’s beating yet.
Blood spreads like a grotesque rosette.
 
Richard Fleming


Image : conversationprints.com

Nice Out - Joan Etoile

Do you remember ‘76?
When we were told to save all our drips
The reservoir was cracked and dry
And it was too hot for potato peel pie

I don’t remember too much fuss
The boiling sunshine didn’t worry us
All we had to do was bath with a friend
To save ourselves from a gruesome end

Cooking oil was our sunscreen
While we cooled off with Mr Whippy ice cream
No one had a hat or UV brolly
And Zoom was just another ice lolly

The weather warnings are so much tripe
How else will all my tomatoes get ripe?
Why all this panic, why all this blether?
It’s just a spot of bloney nice weather!

Then today in the Co-op I’m taken to task
By a group of children who all ask
“How can you be a climate change denier
When, like, most of France is on fire?”

Joan Etoile


Image : Pixabay - geralt

O Captain! My Captain! - Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
       But O heart! heart! heart!
         O the bleeding drops of red,
           Where on the deck my Captain lies,
             Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up- for you the flag is flung- for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths- for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
       Here Captain! dear father!
         This arm beneath your head!
           It is some dream that on the deck,
             You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
       Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
         But I with mournful tread,
           Walk the deck my Captain lies,
             Fallen cold and dead.

Walt Whitman

Image : Pixabay - AlexSky