Poetry Submissions

Body Language
Copyright©2000 Eve Hall

I see you across the room,
Your eyes are fixed right on me.
They start at my head,
And go down to my red, high-heeled shoes.
I try to concentrate on something else,
But my eyes continue to return back to you.
I become uncomfortable, uneasy,
As you begin to approach me.
You ask me for a dance, I hesitate,
Then I slowly enter into your embrace.
Bodies attracting like a magnet,
Sticking together like glue.
Your body speaks fluently, mine…
Listens.

CREATIVE IN FLIGHT
Copyright© 2008 Mike Casey

Lemon.
That little five letter word, singular and big and smashing in bold type,
Keeps driving into my brain like a repetitive dagger.
These talented young guns with their cheek and their swagger.
Lemon.
Volkswagen

You don’t call a car a lemon,
It goes up against every rule.
The author will reap the whirlwind when the novelty expires,
Crushed and ridiculed beneath the Manhattan spires.
I cheer myself momentarily with thoughts of his burial.
But the lemon is still there,
Still bright yellow and bold,
Spitting defiance with the solidity of a rock.
Lemon.

A stupid word to hail a stupid car,
Yet I can’t stop the dagger or prevent the scar.
A dagger out of nowhere to shatter my day,
Erode my confidence and send my taxed brain into overdrive.
They have nothing on me,
Those men across the street.
Look at me up here in my ivory tower and look at them down there.
How dare they rock my foundations!
Lemon.

I invented this advertising game,
I am its king,
I wrote the copy that made my clients sing and salivate,
I widened their eyes with concepts that made the money roll in.
Not with lemons or oranges or funny cars,
Not with abstract nonsense,
Not with slick and meaningless words that have no rhyme or reason.
Even here in my own castle they talk about the lemon.
They mock it and dismiss it but keep discussing it,
Fuelling its momentum,
Increasing its mileage,
Giving it undeserved life and prosperity.
I am being killed by a lemon.

It has gridlocked my brain,
Crippled my fingers,
Turned my blank sheet of paper into a vast and blinding expanse of brilliant
white.
My car is better than that lemon, that Volkswagen.
My car is a home run, a touchdown, a knockout.
All I have to do is make my pen work and write the words.
Why can’t I stain this brilliant white with the black ink that once flowed
like a sparkling stream?
All I have to do is pick it up the pen and dislodge the lemon from my wounded
brain.
I have heard the whispers in the office and the rest rooms and the bars and the
restaurants.
The maestro in the big office in the sky can no longer answer the bell.
Lemon.

And so I take flight from my suffocating nest,
Calculating that it’s probably for the best.
The ideas flow freely as I make my descent,
Freefalling through the concrete canyons that can squeeze and tease me no
more.
Me, a man of the utmost discretion,
About to make my greatest impression.

Passing
Copyright© Rethabile Masilo

There isnâ€™t any beating of the drums
After the long subsiding ray
When like a cruel master darkness comes.

Let the town-criers hasten to convey
Outright this message to kingdoms.
Invite well-wishing folks to go away.

Let the menace rise as the heart succumbs
Deeper still, and let silence slay
You with meaning beyond the sound of psalms.

But if no-one will listen or obey,
Wind the clocks, swing the pendulums,
And let that message seal the stillborn day.

A Scratch of Paper
Submitted by Gregory W. Golden

A scratch of paper is what I need
Pen and paper performs the deed
Imagine these words to bring us hope
A scratch of paper on a slippery slope
A stroke of genius and the moment caught
A scratch of paper to share my thought

Submitted by Victoria Garcia:

Since the day I met Tess
My entire world crumbled.
With hair as black as night,
Swaying like the raging seas.
Her eyes like a pair of roasting
Chestnuts on an open flame

People took a gaze
And immediately said we were twins
I could not see the similarities,
When that person is a
Back stabbing friend

Your fake smiles and cheerful ways
Fooled the crowd
But your sly and mischievous ways
Didn’t trick me

I heard the silent rumors
That slipped from your mouth
About your most caring friends

You’re under cover flirtation
That stole the hearts of your friend
Boyfriends

You lie in the face of everyone
Not caring who you hurt in the end,

But the perfect Teen Queen
Was soon going to be exposed
Of the type of person she really is

Who spilled the truth and told
Everyone what she was doing?
Why it was me of course her
Best friend, but no can stay friends
Forever when you have a
Friend like Tessa

The following poems were to submitted by my friend Frits who told me they are from

‘De liefste; onsterfelijke
liefdesverzen’ (The sweetest; immortal love poems) by Paul Claes, publisher: Meulenhoff Amsterdam (1990). It contains love poems from many different languages.

Below are the English transalations:

My God, what a night
and how soft the bed
on which we melted down

and our strayed souls
poured between our lips:
at last no more humans.

Petronius

Again casts Eroos
under his blueish lashes
melting glances at me

and drifts me
with temptations of many kinds
in the ununraveble nets of Love.

I, I shiver with his arrival
as a trotter that old and jaded
has to enter the arena again.

Ibycus

Happy as the gods seems
me the man who just
before you sits and listens
to your beautiful voice

and lovely laugh so that sudden
my heart pounds in my chest
as soon as I watch you
chokes my voice

my tongue is broken
a light fire runs through
my skin I see no more
my ears sizzle

sweat pours down from me
a trembling seizes me
I am yellower then grass
it seems like I am dying

but everything is bearable
if …

Sappho

Water Moon
by dhyxixi

Water and the moon meet in night total
Millennium everlasting years roaming
Who knows
Why is the moon in the water
Who knows
The moon total sentimentally attached to water tender embrace
Ah…
Water moon water moon
Water no moon
Where the rippling night
Water moon water moon
You are the water I is the moon
If the ground without water
The moon hangs alone in heaven

Keep Love’s Candle Burning
by Tim Kitchen

Someone has left you there all alone
doesn’t even bother to pick up the phone.
No more cosy evenings in any more
and no one to welcome you at your door.
But you can find a way to get through
so don’t let love’s candle burn out on you.

It’s hard to face the future with a broken heart
but you’ll move on when you’re ready to start.
Life will slowly get better, as time goes by
and you can get through this, you just have to try
You can find love again, you know that it’s true
so don’t let love’s candle burn out on you.

I know sometimes you just want to sit down and cry
thinking no one understands how you feel and why.
We all know you have a lot of love to share
and there will be someone for you out there.
So we’ll all just keep on loving you like we do
but don’t let love’s candle burn out on you.

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