Bad Poetry Monday Again

Care Line
by [REDACTED]

In an instant
In the twinkling of an eye
A blossom forms

A flower grows in cracks
Don't step on them
Don't hurt your mother
The mother of us all
The ground from which we leap
That terrible, terrible dirt that calls us
Back back back
The dirt that screams
"Come home"
We have no choice after all
But I cannot come home just yet
I have more to do
I have more to go
Miles to go before I sleep
Trials to weather and time to keep
I cannot stop here
Not now
There is so much to do.
There is so much left to do.

Bad Poetry Monday

Sorority
by [REDACTED]

The sister is a thing that has no equivalent
She is a stone
The firmament
Sprung from the same Mother
Blood on blood on blood
We sing together in tunes I couldn't place
My love before everything
The friend in all times
She sits with me
And knows.

Bad Poetry Thursday

Subliminal
by [REDACTED]

The ocean has no metaphor
No referent save the sky, perhaps
The ocean Is
It sits and sways
The basic cradle of earth, of life
It teems
Deep as the sea
Tossed upon the waves of life
Fresh off the boat
I am pulled to it
My North is the sea
Drive oceanward
Makai

Good Poetry Wednesday

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
by e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Bad Poetry Wednesday

Cairn
by [REDACTED]

One or two stones
Lying there among the rest
Have that certain shape
That specific quality of stacks
They balance
Three more on top of the one or two
No cement, no glue
Only gravity to get things done
And finally
A rough and tiny pebble sits sixth atop this pile
This precarious house of cards.

An autumn breeze
Tumbling down the hills and through the valleys
Is enough to ruin equilibrium
And topple the rocks
Meteors plummeting back again to earth
To be ground to grains of sand
By time and water
Those principalities and powers to whom all debts must be paid.

Bad Poetry Tuesday

A Green Wave
by [REDACTED]

It starts way out
Past where the eye can see
And it arrives in whispers
One tree, one branch at a time
The fronds reach heliocentric
The earth strains outward from its core
New birth arises from old death
Each year a phoenix.

Bad Poetry Thursday

The Remembrance of Things Past
by [REDACTED] 

Tragedy never strikes once
It repeats and repeats
Once
Twice
A week
A month
A year
Two years
Ten years
It has tenure in your heart
It keeps coming back until
Doddering and old, dulled by time
In a puff of smoke,
In an unceremonious way
It disappears
A last comfort as you drift away.

Bad Poetry Friday

Carlsbad Caverns
by [REDACTED]

Around back, by the barren lands
A pair of star-crossed caverns take a bow
It looks as though they hold each other's hands
Upon their turgid covers walks a cow
Carlsbad and Carlsworse they're called
A tour of one serves as a tour of both.
I visited both and now I am appalled.
"I can't believe you've done this," I quoth
To myself and the folks that I was with
What money have I wasted was my thought.
I should have watched Revenge of the Sith
Rather than go here. Lesson learned. Lesson taught.

Bad Poetry Thursday

A Creed You Can Truly Believe
by [REDACTED]

It begins at home
In the comfort of your own bed
By the light of the hallway sconce that shines through your door.
The monsters have no power here.
Darkness cannot penetrate the light.
And then later
In the comfort of your own house
While the blue glow soaks into your eyes
While your mother and your father shout at each other
At no one
At GOD herself.
Only melodies and sound effects can reach your ears
Through your active noise cancelling headphones
And even later
In the comfort of your own family
The children sleep soundly in beds of their own
You sit alone at the dining room table
In a chair you bought on credit last year
And you know that you are safe.
And now it is sunset
As you walk together down the path
And hear the call of the lonesome train
This is where the secret lies
This is the root of the root and the bud of the bud.
The darkness always penetrates the light
But still the monsters have no power here.

Tales of Ricky #6

Ricky pulled into his driveway and parked his truck under the carport. It rained so infrequently here in California that the carport was mainly used to keep the sun off and the temperature down during the day. It was dark now after a late dinner at Carson's Roadhouse, and it would still be dark when he left for work the next morning.

He shut the truck's driver side door and walked slowly along the stone-paved walkway toward his front door. Usually, he went in the side door, but he hadn't grabbed his mail in three or four days and so went to the front. The mailbox was nearly empty still. It only held a few adds for lawn care services, or dentists, or roofers all looking to get a bit of business from someone new in town. It had been almost a year, but in a community like this, five years might still be "new." Ricky held the junk mail in his left hand and pulled open the screen door with his right. It creaked as he opened it. "That'll need replacing before too long, too," he thought with an audible sigh. And then he stopped dead, his right hand now on the doorknob of his red front door.

There was a note attached to his front door. It sat between the two panes of frosted glass just above eye level held on by a single piece of transparent tape. It read "HI RICKY!" He stared at it, transfixed. His mind whirred but no distinct thoughts reached consciousness. Fighting his intuition, he grabbed the note from the door and entered his house. He never locked the doors. He'd never needed to.

He set the mail and the note down on the little entryway table he'd found at a yard sale a few months ago. When he turned on the living room light, he saw that the furniture had barely been moved from where it was, but it had been moved. The couch was an inch or two too far away from the wall, the coffee table was slightly askew. Someone had been in here.

His first thought was that it was some nut with a shotgun that knocked on his door. "And if I were at home, they'd find me there," he said aloud. House unlocked, they could just walk right in, bang bang bang. But that made no sense. Those kinds of random crimes didn't happen here on the Santa Barbara coast. Ever. And it wasn't a robbery as far as Ricky could tell. Nothing of value appeared to be missing.

Then he remembered the note, and the truth hit him in the gut like a prizefighters right hook. The note had called him "RICKY," but all the mail he received was addressed to Carl P. Shillins. No one here knew him as Ricky. His neighbors, his boss, his few new acquaintances, they all called him Carl. The only people who knew him as Ricky were far, far away, he hoped. Or gone, too many of them gone.

"Oh my god," he said. "They found me. I don't know how, but they found me."

Bad Poetry Wednesday

Puck
by [REDACTED]

A flashing of teeth and fur
Terminal velocity
A froth
And now a sleep
Awakened by the step
Of that one
The one that leaves
Sometimes
But then comes back.

Bad Poetry Tuesday

The Regiment
by [REDACTED]

A million feet, more or less
Stomp through the grass.
A thousand millipedes, more or less
move in formation.
The ants cower before the regiment
And the gnats flee.
The rain falls on the good an evil alike
Water does not judge
Tomorrow the war begins again
A battle of life and death
Beneath a cloudless sky.