Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year!!!

You Are the Song I Can't Get Out My Head

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I fell for you when we first met

You followed me to bed

Your gentle voice, the notes I heard

Were playing in my head

So kind

Thereafter on my mind

Your words

In winter are my flame

The years can pass; I won’t forget

The music in your name.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Mini Challenge

The Zen Miscreant

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He was a Zen miscreant

His perspective all wrong

His actions nonsensical

He stuffed ethereal thoughts in burlap bags

and tossed them off bridges

He trapped effervescent hopes in bottlenecked jars

and put them up for the winter

His turgid insolence

stymied the other Monks

created a demented demarcation

that even the most enlightened meditation could not erase

He was a walking koan

He was the sound of one hand clapping.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, A Word With Laurie (Review)

in which we are asked to compose a poem with a list of 12 random words (in bold)

and for dVerse Poets Pub, Meeting the Bar, Experimental Post-Modern Poetry

Keep Dancing

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Nothing new in Newtown

Just more murder

Fresher meat for the kill
Fresh new thrill

Pumped full of bullets

Pumped fists

Just more bullshit

Pump up the bass

and keep dancing

Pump up the bass

We’re base

debased

Lives erased
A waste

Expendable

Spendable

Endable
Pump up the bass
and keep dancing
 

Death of innocents

Of innocence

What’s a life worth

in dollars and cents?

 Worthless

Are their lives worth less?

Pump up the bass

and keep dancing

 Pump up the bass
Suburban basements

Guns from casements

Just in case, man

Race 

for the sound bite

NRA say it is my right

Right

Good night and sleep tight

Dubstep over the bodies

Pump up the bass

Keep dancing

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Out of Standard With Izy (Dubstep Goat Challenge)

Baby Girl

Baby girl,

the black dog is at your heels

I can see it so clearly

The more you run,

the bigger it gets

I know you want to hide

but it will find you

The cur has followed our family down

Generations

Some have heard only its growl in the distance

Others have been devoured whole,

their bones spit on the ground

as a warning

You must face the dark, baby girl

Though your pulse thumps

Thumps thumps

like a rabbit heart

and your muscles are spring loaded
for flight

I try to take your hand

You swat me away, spitting

“Don’t touch me! You’re not helping!”

The rejection stings

Memories flood me like venom

All the times I couldn’t help you

Like when you emerged from the bay 

covered with jellyfish

Their stringy tentacles stinging and burning 
your beautiful skin

You screamed

Your father and I grabbed and flung

those hurtful creatures from you

but you never trusted the water again

and I felt I had betrayed you

Betrayed you

with my defective DNA 
that makes your eyes ache

and your temples throb with the relentless pounding

Pounding  pounding

Your own brain the enemy

You grow tired of fighting your own body

Why can’t it be easy?

It’s always so damn hard

And now I see you going down

for the third time

You push away 
anyone who gets close enough

to try to help you float

You’re angry

You’re scared

I wish I could just hold you

and make the demons go away, baby girl

The pain vanish

with a band aid and a kiss

I have no magic now
This is all I can offer:

I will face the dark with you

Stare down that mad black dog

that’s barking so loudly

you can barely hear yourself think

Baby girl, I can hear you

I’ve always heard 

even your quietest cry

like a siren in the night

And even though I can’t make your tears stop

I can give you my shoulder 
to cry on.

submitted for Poetry Pantry #129 at Poets United
and Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday