Category Archives: New Poetry

‘Our Ghosts On The Causeway’ by Robert L. Franklin

New Poetry

To explore this realm is to step through a tunnel

defying space-time, to deviate from the unknown

into an era rich in familiarity

and framed in nostalgia.

It’s easy to plant battered sneakers on

the haggard cement, but difficult to tread

from the sentimental causeway down to the

knives of summertime protruding

from their earthen sheaths.

This place is a graveyard haunted by people

and events long-since gone,

whose afterimages continue to exist

among the overgrowth and the barren gulch

that once served as a hindrance.

It was in this place that boys began their journey

to manhood, transitioned from mischievous to criminal,

entered as virgins and exited baptized.

Their footprints still

give them away in the soft sands.

Their art still colors the concrete

jettisoning from the damp underpass.

Their stained mattresses still rest

dilapidated among the symphony of insects.

Once upon a time,

I helped write the history of this place.

While warm rain fell from the sky,

I ran through the weeds with her

in the jovial preciousness

and pleasurable innocence

that exists only in youth,

before retreating underneath the causeway

and feeling her lips on mine for the first time.

Within the bitter winter,

he and I produced colorful aerosols

and imprinted our imaginations

on the mutilated cement

jetting from the waterlogged soil that anchored it.

They experimented with delinquency

in the early evening hours

while we experimented with honor using our fists.

But now I’m here,

a slow repetition of ethereal notes

sequestering me from the ambient bustle

of the surrounding world,

watching these ghosts play under the causeway

like they were antiquated home movies.

I see us as clearly as I did before,

engaging each other and our mercurial environment

with adolescent recklessness and moxie.

For as long as the causeway stands

and artifacts are left behind,

our ghosts will still

haunt the weeds, the swamp, and the starved ravine

forever attuned to burgeoning juvenescence.

Copyright 2016 by Robert L. Franklin. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

‘The Way And The Truth’ by Andrew Bradford

New Poetry

For too long now we’ve all been trying to find

One proof that clarifies the sludge of a world in flux

Do you really believe what you carry inside your frozen heart?

Few more attempts at being human and call it a long day

Correct you are, they told me, and I wanted to believe!

Point to counterpoint, another lost moment of drivel

Best they just capitulate and surrender their souls

So we stare harder, search deeper, wind up at the place we began

Just as helpless as the day before;

just as dead as a man entombed in amber

Change is gonna come, some say

Light at end of tunnel

is just another fading fire

wasted

Copyright 2016 by Andrew Bradford. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

‘Reminiscing’ by Andrew Bradford

New Poetry

Yeah, we were all so stupid back then

that it seems a shame

to watch as grown men cry over the pain of another lost day

Seen a lotta bad shit, the man said as he handed back the bottle

none of it makes much sense when you look at it in the clear

light of day

Maybe we can buy ourselves another shot at redemption and then

all will be good, all will be right for another night

of shakes and howls

Got to the last lesson and found myself stumped

by the physics of how we’re ever meant to be

the tiniest bit human or humane

Sitting here about half asleep

another half about stoned

but it won’t matter one iota

when the daylight breaks and exposes us all

as the frauds we always knew we were

Copyright 2016 by Andrew Bradford. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

‘Just Waiting’ by Andrew Bradford

New Poetry

Thinking back now, seems like all those late evenings spent wasting my life in some kind of self-induced revelry

Only really served to amuse me for a second or two, then it was back to norm

When I hit forty I started to see things in a way I never had before

Guess that’s what they mean by a mid-life crisis, but it felt more like an awakening

So I found my calling at long last, and it just so happened it had nothing to do with career

It was all built on a foundation of straw, and when it nearly tumbled down it left me shaken

Picked myself up, looked around, and learned to care unconditionally for another born from a slice of my soul

The good is always lighter than the ill, the perfect is never as sweet as the slightly imperfect

Sitting alone one night not long ago, I heard a distant voice I could almost translate

It came up slowly, wrapped its arms around me in a soft embrace

Told me not to worry, not to fret, not to pace

But to only trust that the wait is worth the effort of the reward

Copyright 2016 by Andrew Bradford. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

‘Bastard City’ by Robert L. Franklin

New Poetry

Pale streetlights cast eerie halos over the blackened cement stained by the blood of the victimized,
the tears of the homeless, the cum volleyed by johns,
and the wine of the white-collar overseers.

Its denizens are in avoidance of the dark pathways
to nowhere consumed by the labors of existing
within decrepit, cockroach-infested walls
and under compromised, weeping gables,
all the while dwarfed by oppressive lords of human ingenuity, whose bones are fortified steel and whose skin
is tempered glass and whose eyes are
the judgmental porcelain orbs of a married old-money
beneficiary with a Cuban cigar in his left hand,
a scotch in his right, and a fifteen-dollar per hour
set of rouge lips rhythmically slurping between his legs.

He doesn’t concern himself with the serfs,
whose prosperity stands next to him
no more competitive than a struggling toddler,
vassals whose “American Dream” yields
barely more than nothing, whose skin automatically
designates them an enemy combatant
to state-funded figures of authority,
automatically retards full ascent
up every corporate ladder,
and whose world — composed primarily of black markets, institutional poverty, and senseless loss of life –-
is nothing more than a pipeline
from kindergarten to death row.

Their plights are largely ignored
by the courts gathered in greenback towers,
whose pen is mightier than the gun,
whose lapel is more revered than the flag,
and whose tongue is sharper than any blade used
to twist in freedom’s back while
darkness aids pale streetlights
casting eerie halos
on the blackened cement pathways to nowhere
that separate the lords from the peasants
in a sanctuary of brutality known as Bastard City.

Copyright 2016 by Robert L. Franklin. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

‘Found Along The Windcrest’ by Andrew Bradford

New Poetry

Startled and smitten by the sheer beauty of the moment,

I completely missed the true import of what was taking place.

Seems my whole life has been spent in some vain attempt,

To curry favor with my own soul.

Given a gift from birth, told to take up my pen and write,

But it only raises more questions I cannot hope to answer.

One day, they have told us,

All will be made clear.

But the same ones who make such claims,

Wear lenses painted ebony and red.

Someday we will all be transformed into purest light,

And reabsorbed into the final shards of fading sunset.

For now we wait

For now we sit quietly

And we make our plans.

Copyright 2016 by Andrew Bradford. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

‘The Falls’ by Nathan Corredo

New Poetry

We wander around the days and

lose our souls at night.

Suppose it doesn’t amount to much

but damned if I still am not so proud.

Frantic discoveries of what lies deep within

so we claw along the contours of our flesh to be remade.

Somehow all life must find the moment of repose

until then we can playact around the scenery.

Now ends the lesson of one moment

taken hostage to a crushing end.

Copyright 2016 by Nathan Corredo. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

‘Manufactured Assent’ by Andrew Bradford

New Poetry

So you heard the delicate melody and wondered if it could be real

Better than the love of a false and cruel one who leaves at first light

I was once in the shadow of a faded cloudy day that never relented

They set a watchman upon the distant hill, and he often would cry out

If we might pursue more surely, might believe in the confidence of the false

They may one day write a book of your life, so what would you want it to read?

Fragments, scattered gibberish, smiles, tears, delusions, aching

Had it been truer, it might have been lilies on the outside, a rose deep within

Sits the king on his highest throne, silent in his judgments

We were all much happier before we gave our approval to being subjected

All in the name of safety, security, another sunrise or two

Standing here all those years later, do you feel more secure

Or merely more entombed?

Copyright 2016 by Andrew Bradford. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

 

‘Fond Farewell’ by Brad Thaxton

New Poetry

I have only this to say and tell before I bid you a fond farewell.

Soon free from the pain that was my past, eternal peace from my life at last!

I make no mention of beyond today, for now it’s time to pass away

While the chosen carry on, keeping the memories which in time will be gone.

So little love on all the earth, I cannot reason what it’s worth

To live a long resourceless life, without assurance or a wife.

Encircled by fears which strive at night, even through the fire of light

No longer shall I endlessly fight the demons that pursue me.

Empty hours that fill a space, marks feelings of mixed disgrace

Allowing destiny to walk in, so that the end can soon begin.

Another gone in early spring, when he accepted he never meant a thing.

Sorrow lost to know no more, only soft, cool silence beneath the floor

Do not question, for now I am free, from all the torment that was me.

Copyright 2016 by Brad Thaxton. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

‘Lines Written Upon The Discovery Of A Rhyming Dictionary’ by Art Metzger

New Poetry

Play the flute and pluck the lyre
Create music for the choir
While all around great lords conspire,
Cloth’ed all in black attire,
Talking of their base desire,
As the time grows ever nigher
For the lighting of the pyre,
Lighting of the funeral pyre.
“Whose funeral this?” you may inquire,
As you watch the flaming fire,
Watch the smole rise higher, higher.
“Is it Lord or is it squire,
Or perhaps our noble sire?
Courageous soldier, bold defier,
Whose mighty deeds we all admire.
To reach such fame we all aspire.
Could it be he whose suit’s afire?”
People come from town and shire,
through the bog and through the mire,
Pushing through the pressing gyre
To watch the Lord of All transpire
Below his castle’s tallest spire.
Soon the crowd begins to tire.
Men and women all perspire
From the heat of the great fire.
The situation now is dire,
In vain the crowd tries to respire.
Every throat is getting drier.
People falling soon inspire
Other people to expire.
Some even fall into the fire
Causing flames to reach still higher.
It doesn’t take a prophesier
To see that the whole town’s afire
All started from a funeral pyre.
Could flames be nature’s beautifier?

Copyright 2016 by Art Metzger. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.