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Poetry contest entries are shared here…Enjoy

Holocaust
© 2009 – Hannah Ruth Steadman

The bluebird chirps of love tonight
As two form one in close embrace.
Love’s power strains beyond all might
To ease the ache of life’s hard race.
Vain words of hope he breathes this hour;
She sobs the more as daybreak comes.
A tyrant grasps them in his power,
And death will make them all succumb.
Hadassah wept, so Haman dies—
A consequence of God-heard prayer.
Yet no redeemer will arise
To save the sons of Isaac’s heir.
The couple clings for one last time.
Cold Auschwitz’s darkness lurks in sight
As now approach death’s gas and lime.
The bird’s song dies with dawn’s first light.

Dour Girl
© 2009 – Lianna Albrizio

Every morning she arises to a routine feeling of despair. She picks up a pen to begin to write, attempting to cleanse her mind of self-deprecating thoughts that bite. She puts on a black t-shirt to match her mood, and applies mascara called “blackout” to accent her mysterious eyes through which she regularly broods. She goes to drink a cup of black coffee to experience a euphoric high, but crashes to a hampering low, as the day goes by.

She gets a cigarette to add to the blackening of her lungs.

When she arrives at school and talks to someone new, her hazel eyes become eclipsed by dilation, comparable to her first drug experimentation. After inevitable rejection, she resigns to a dark place when she feels like nobody cares. She always feels in the dark when confused about her affairs– mostly because she refuses to see the bigger picture, or perhaps is just hindered by daunting bouts of depression that cloud up her mind like a pre-storm sky in winter.

When she steps outside to view a magnificent sky, the earth is splendidly bright, but she can’t seem to relish and take flight. The sunset is breathtakingly beautiful, yet all her somber mind allows her to sight is the subsidence of light, and an array of fading colors against a horizon that she will never reach. This sense of emptiness runs deep– day-in and day-out through which she stares down the abyss in her yearning heart that pleads, “let me out!”

When night falls into a starry evening and she falls back asleep, she closes her eyes and still can’t see. Black is dismal like me.

Who Are You?
© 2009 – Damien Livingston

Sometimes I question myself
When I begin to do things, I never done before
Is this maturity, am I bettering myself
Or is this post teen peer pressure where I following a flock
Who are you?
Sometimes you have to ask
Because people have motives
What are yours?
Is it to close every door left open by our ancestors?
Or, is it to break the frame
So that more people can have the opportunity to break free
From self arresting chains
Don’t confuse it, if you don’t use it you definitely lose it
So when will you change
From using words for gossip to creating beautiful stories
Filled with your soul and provide it
To other people as a real life object or testament
Of fall down, get back up, keep trying
Now tell me, who are you?
Are you the pen that continue to poison our history
With ignorance, disloyalty and murder
Or were you just the instrument of crime to put us down further
Well, now is the your time to stand for something
Other then your own selfish needs of fulfillment
You can become the pen that will one day write our future
Therefore, today I ask who are you?

My Lover, My Friend
© 2009 Crystal Robin Rose

Butterflies, goose bumps, even chills,
When I’m with you that’s how I feel.
Holding you tight oh so close,
Being a part of your life is what I love the most.
My eyes sparkle, my face glows,
How much you mean to me you’ll never know.
I love being a part of your world,
Everyday I feel like the luckiest girl.
You’re my man, my best friend,
The bond we have is impossible to end.
Deep thoughts, secrets told,
Sharing these feelings will never get old.
Being apart for a day feels like years,
You have helped me overcome my fears.
I love you like there’s no tomorrow,
Where ever you go I’ll follow.
You’re my soul mate, my better half,
You always know how to make me laugh.
Each fight made us who we are today,
The bond is stronger now nothing can stand in our way.
Thank you for loving me and everything you do,
But mostly thank you for being you.

The Machine: Time Driven
© 2009 Cathy P. Staley

Metal pieces,
The ocean breeze,
An open door,
As if to say, “Hello.”
The blood of man.
Stood up there,
And through his lips spoke to the world,
But throught the world is where his words now lay scatered.
Time passes by,
An old man died,
But not soon to be forgotten.
For in this man,
There was no fear,
To take a stand and to be heard.

Sickness
© 2009 Jamie Lynn Waters

Sickness is a sad thing,
Watching the color fade from your face,
Wondering how your yesterdays are,
Did you live it to the fullest,
Or was it just a mistake, regret, or nothing at all,
It could be today,
It could be tomorrow,
I’m not looking for the sorrow,
But if there never comes a tomorrow,
I want you to be satisfied with the life you lived,
Even though you still hold so much life,
It’s slowly slipping from you,
Somewhere out there, there is more to life for you,
Even though I prepare myself,
I’ll never be ready,
I got one brother and preparation will never be enough for that day,
Although words go unspoken amongst us,
I hope you know that there is a plan for you,
And if it be that you go before you want to,
You’ll forever hold a place in my heart,
The memories left will keep us connected,
And the life you left here will know your legacy.

Waver
© 2009 Heather Jo Besley

To move without effort
Elegance, ease
Wind tossed and light
Sweet spray of the sea
Perfect or poor
To wait? To leave?
Decide; abide
With a quivering lip
As the blue ocean sighs

Thoughts
© 2009 – Jamie Lynn Waters

Sitting here glancing out the window,
I see a cow in the field.
I watch the lonely cow grazing in the meadow,
Chomping away at the freshly grown grass.
It is not quite a gloomy day, yet not sunny either.
I wonder what that cow’s thinking and what her life story would be like.
Would it be a story of sorrow, survival of the fittest, bliss, a memory, or nothing at all?
As the cow wanders off, my mind drifts again.
All these thoughts keep running through my mind endlessly, unexplainable.
What is out there in this world for me?
I’ve seen so much wrong that I don’t know what’s right.
Unanswered questions.
Does life have no purpose, or is there a meaning to all these thoughts?
There is now an empty grazing field, no more lonely cows.
Just trees and no sunlight, now a gloomy day.
Does this mean something?
The thoughts are slipping away like the clouds and now I see a light.
I shall follow the road untaken and make my life my memories.
It won’t pass me by.

Watch
© 2009 Suzanne Grenoble

My girl asks Mommy what’s the time? and I say
Time to sled into a snowpile, play
Make believe or cookie cop or
End the day leisurely bathing with
Unimaginable legions of friends

What time is it Mommy when the Big Hand touches twelve?
Time to stand up tall, to bat,
Stretch out long
Like a cat:

Mommy, the Big Hand is on the nine,
And the little hand is on the twelve, Mommy
Can I call someone? anyone, to tell them the time
And I say it’s late but I wonder

Can I teach you
Do I reach you
Can I wish for you
Trying to rush you from bath to bed but then
Stories drag out the decision
And the light stays on

And what time will it be
When I stop asking and forget that I ever did ask, and then
Ask while you write this, why are you writing this? And
The mother raises her eyes to her beloved to
Tell her how she looked
Asleep, oval face and long brown hair
Like a fallen angel, streaming dark across the white pillow

Selected Poems
© 2009 Timothy Russell

They whirled and flurried from the sky.
They came to me in the middle of the night,
some silently, some clumsily bumping into things.
They stuck their tongues in my mouth.
Some slunk along the edge of the river bank
like feral cats. Some ran ahead of me
like those bumpkins in Pamplona.
They flicked their beautiful tail feathers.
They took things personally and sulked or pouted.
They undressed and they got dressed.
They spoke to strangers and took up with them.
Some recovered from one trauma or another.
Some did not. One saved somebody’s life.
They fed me. They traveled with me.
They ventured out of the woods
and nibbled dead meat beside the highway.
They whispered in my good ear.
They scuttled down the street
behind cars and muscular pickups.
They got taken in by shysters.
Some went off somewhere to find themselves.
They danced around in skimpy outfits.
Some slowly became themselves
as if they had no idea what else to do.

The Fifty Things Wrong With This Picture
© 2009 Timothy Russell

None of this will hasten
or delay that dazzling flash
astonishingly brief on the horizon.
Some of these children have never seen
a river or an orchard or a pea pod
before today. Poppies and impatiens
that make you think “cinnamon”
instead of “cinnabar” perhaps
are in simultaneous bloom
with tiger lilies and chicory
along the road and bachelor buttons
and clematis near the porch.
The children are without dread.
They investigate every crevice
for the golden apples they’ve heard
about. Only this morning
a man in khaki drove a green tractor
through “that protected section
yonder” beyond which coal is being stripped.
Two starlings chase a sparrow
veering crazily but not dropping
the bread crust from its beak.
Not one detail here depends
on any other, not even the boy
in the chocolate and lemon polo shirt
about to discover a handful of bees.

The Night Was Made For Romance
© 2009 Lamar Cole

The night was made for romance.
In the night our two hearts dance.
Under the stars our lips touch.
In the garden your embrace means so much.

The night was made for love.
Our hearts cooing like a white dove.
Your eyes sparkling like diamonds so white.
I love you darling with all my might.

The night was made for caring and trust.
And darling, God made this night for us.

autobiographical limerick
© 2009 delor e. ferral

The jobs that I’ve held have been various,
My character, sometimes nefarious,
Not normally funny,
Enough to make money,
When nude, women think I’m hilarious.

Lemon
© 2009 Suzanne Grenoble

Sea surge sluicing
Salt Citrus
Over the tongue
Pale seeds
Like transparent pebbles,
Slipslide longways,
Settling in sea algae–
Cool dark underworld green down.
Upsideways,
Yellow-bright sun pinwheels on high,
Over our celadon haven for nests.

Core
© 2009 Suzanne Grenoble