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Leaning toward an
outside line
outside time
a place where
wheels roll not
and white hair
stays fresh from
being done
and visitations
come as Alzheimer’s
disconnections
grace her
memories shuffled
as she used to
down the corridor
Photo by Greg Laychak
Submitted for One Shoot Sunday
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hold on tight
to aire is human
a cliche’ dropping
like a lead balloon
no sense in riding the
fence or being fenced in
can’t step on the crack when
you rise above circumstance
you didn’t click your heels thrice
shall I cut you loose to watch you
fly the friendly skies to infinity and
beyond what dreams may come in
different shapes and sizes you up
as head in the clouds oblivious
walking on air you step down
the stairway to heaven and
catch your breath waiting
to exhale a collapsed
iron lung contraction
if you only had a
heart of stone &
ruby slippers
Photo by Lauren Randolph
for One Shoot Sunday
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Beauty is fleeting
a lens winks and
sucks in an image
and lays it down
like oil on canvas
and there you were
holding, leaning into
the future days where
your beauty is sucked
into your soul where
it is destined to rest
So the hours like
lens’ opening and
blinking shut
do their time as
a heart’s ventricular
cadence shutters
Photo by India Hobson, interviewed for One Shoot Sunday
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I like your sleeves,
they’re puffy.
Your hat has the
Wright idea.
I am not looking
down on you.
Are bee hives
a pain in the neck?
If only times were
different, the sparrows
would build a nest
in your beard.
Don’t worry,
I just came to
stretch a bit and
leave you a little
something.
My friends told
me about you
how you were
a watershed of
religious history.
You are like the
peak of the church
we usually perch
on,
and now you
stand here and preach
on.
What’s your name again?
This is submitted for One Stop Poetry’s One Shoot Sunday.
Photoghraphy of James Rainsford.
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trifecta of blue smoke
gets in her blue eyes
“if only” borne blue skies
the sugeon general
commands her attention
but she has no retention
her daughters inhaled
into the social system
match lit by father him
love is a joke now
a juggling of death sticks
her prayers of lives quits
i lied when i laughed
i wanted to yank them out
“it’s not over” is what it’s about
you can still freedom choose
gray face and gray sky
a warm front comes on by
bruises aren’t to add color
we both know a beaten wife
is swollen from a cheated life
the sticks bobble and
gravity shakes em down
hope “wraps you like a gown”
let’s get you inside
do you see that it’s never over
pain comes when you’re sober
nerve endings of the soul
they are friends enough
to guide you through the rough
i’ll walk with you too
out of pulses of the gray
love will have a place to stay
This is for One Shoot Sunday highlighting the photography of Fee Easton.
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Stop staring, stop acting
and get out there and make it real!
Don’t you see the curtain’s up on your life!
“All men die, few men truly live.”
“What we do today will echo in eternity.”
“To thine own self be true.”
Go on, sell yourself, it won’t cause death.
We both know we ran this place into the ground
and lost our souls…now all were left with is
identity confusion.
Go wait tables some where and remember
your roots. Find the someone you were before
all the make-up and masks. I will too.
In the mean time Shakespeare
will blow some wind
through here and reset the place.
I’ll see you back here in five years.
Maybe then we won’t have to use
this place like a controlled substance.
Maybe then when we take off the makeup
and the masks there will be an actor
that looks like he took five.
Photo by Jacob F. Lucas. It’s One Shoot Sunday at One Stop. Picture this.
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I sidled up to the space bar
and asked for a cold one.
Something fresh,
and letters slid down,
full of froth,
flipped and painted
my nails.
Good company.
We spoke of
Robert Burns
as if he sat here
with us after a long
day of white space.
Why is it we are
compelled to push
down so hard.
So far a distance
for fingertips to ride
our ABC’s.
I remember the night
we laughed at a
fingertip push up
challenge.
We were young
and strong and pushed
the keys effortlessly
like machine gun fire.
And what was with
the pencil in the mouth
like we were dogs
slobbering on bones?
We were so hard on
the return handle
like a cold slap
on our royal face.
Those were the days
when it was so physical
and our metacarpals
flexed their mini
biceps, and 40 wpms
would impress the
chicks.
Now we raise our mouses
and click them like
wine glasses and
our fingertips are
as soft as a baby’s
bottom.
We rarely crumple
paper anymore.
We delete with
a stern pointed finger.
How ’bout one more
cold one fellas, eh?
One Stop Poetry invites you to stir the tanks with a picture prompt over at One Shoot Sunday…give it a go…
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no retirement
traded in the light saber
the force suspended
Submitted for One Shoot Sunday. Photo by JackAZ photography.
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What were we thinking
when we gathered the stones
from our freshly plowed hearts?
Our high ideals fooled us
into manipulating mortar.
Fluid emotions filled in
to block and brace the
hard places of our past.
Oh, what a wall we built.
We filled in each other
with tears and laughter
and significant pauses.
We were lovers in a
dangerous time, as Coburn said.
We built
US
as a protection from without.
The winds deflected.
The rains diverted
from the watershed above.
Our pale shadows etched
in the dust dirt floor
and we sWept and sWept.
Only in the evening
when light broke over
the window sill did our
charcoal selves sway
on the walls of our extensions.
What were we thinking when
the place we built would
protect us from without?
It only walled us in.
Our only saving grace
were the seeds we
let fall as we stirred them
with straw brooms of angst.
Now look how much brighter.
Our freedom now let in the light,
and look how far it came.
The stones stacked like
broken Berlin,
just high enough
to appreciate where
we have been.
Gerald the Writer 