Don't I feel like a loser when I learn you're through with me.
It was news to everyone, especially to me.
Don't I feel pathetic, like there's something wrong with me.
She is far more beautiful than I could ever be.
I stand here null and solemn, though it must be written on my face,
that I've found before the world what you couldn't say to my face.
You blow right on by me with your new love, hand in hand.
So smug, haughty, and thoughtless.  You are not much of a man.
Filled with anger, through and through, I feel like I could drown.
I lift my glass and drink fast to chase the feeling down.
I close my eyes.  I still see your face.  Somehow I should have known.
You kill me inside with a passing glance, and now my heart grows cold.
So much time spent in a one sided love was wasted all on you.
Don't I feel like a loser for ever caring about you.

By Anne Rasico (Joyce)

One Day we will understand this question known as why.
Like all that we must wait for, it will come to us in time.
Then, we can tell our children why a stranger bombed our home.
But, now all that we can say is "Dad's not coming home."
We fall down to our knees and anxiously we pray
that they will find another trapped beneath the stones today.
Frantically we searched for friends who aren't accounted for.
And now, we must accept that we won't see them anymore.
When all the dust had settled, we searched for what we couldn't find,
the answer we all needed to the question known as why.
This question still rings in my ears as I stare up at the sky.
How could this have happened?  I never got to say goodbye.
There's nothing I know now to ease the pain inside.
So, full of hope, I wait for the answer as to why.

dedicated to all lost in the September 11th tragedies

By Anne Rasico (Joyce)

You sit there proud and mighty, judging me from your throne.

Telling all my secrets while forgetting all of your own.

You twirl around and wear that crown.  It shines so beautifully.

Polished by a veil of righteous purity.

You no longer need my loyalty

When you view yourself as royalty.

Your star glows brightest of us all, a phony painting of morality.

Illuminating everything I'm not and never hope to be.

But I'll sit here like a silent jester. I won't let the truth be known.

I won't tarnish your snow white reputation. One day you'll do that on your own.

By Anne Rasico (Joyce)

Education

By D.M. McGowan 2018

They taught us many things in school and some of us where fine

At following the words and rules along a designated line

A few were branded trouble when they left the proven trail

And popped the system bubble when they just refused to fail

“If you do exactly what we say you’re sure to get an “A”

Though you may not learn very much to help you through the day

But you’ll get the all important grade and be every politician’s dupe

For if you follow where you’re lead you’ll think they speak the truth”

What many didn’t see both students and the staff

It isn’t learning simple facts but how to love and laugh

Edison, Curie, Gates and Einstein they all had imagination

They didn’t follow another’s path or stay locked within their station.

Sure there is knowledge we all need in writing, science and math

Some we need more than others depending on our chosen path

And if you intend to just get along to do only as you’re told

What need for any new idea? What need to be so bold?

But if you intend to make a mark to be a Gates, or Jobs or Woz

You’ll need some imagination to be anywhere near the top

How do you exercise imagination, build its strength and survival?

Understand poetry, fiction and music to rise above any rival.

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” Marie Curie.

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” ― Jane Austen

“Study the past and you’ll know your mistakes aren’t unique.” Dave McGowan

Inclusion

By D.M. McGowan 2018

We spend a lot of time now

And the effort is immense,

Ensuring everyone’s included

And not left outside the fence

But this feeling of exclusion

It isn’t something real

It’s part of hearts and minds

What some people simply feel

But they were not really walled off

Or blocked by some social shield

The door was always open

Not locked, barred or sealed

If you want inside the herd

Say hello now and then

Start a conversation

With those inside the pen

Learn what the herd does

How they live their lives

What they think is moral

Their view of wrong or right

You don’t have to do things

The way that they all do

But remember if you’re different

Majority still set the rules

Nothin’ wrong with being different

Even if some think you strange

But don’t expect to see big smiles

When you demand others change.

I watch the glow of my joint burn out

As I find a new way of dreaming

Beneath the stairs.

I keep the jester’s hand on the end of a chain

Around my neck

And strangle the promises made by the heavens

And I the buffoon bought.

Now I just stare outside the window

Through the eyes of a cold

as ghosts

Drift down river

Then are gone.

Maybe it was the Nyquil

Somewhere down the avenue of memories

Where SROs still stand

 one can hear

Fuck!

Fuck!

Fuck!

Shouted from a window.

Just goes to show that love is a speckled egg

That doesn’t hatch angels or devils

But ordinary voices

Of unordinary men

Or women.

It’s the voice of the

Naked heart.

DARK PIT

by Larry Yoakum III

(Currently published in 'Yoakum's Collection of Poems and Blurbs'

Up the escalator I went as any other time

Up and up, simple with no reason or rhyme.

Up the escalator I went and very much enjoyed

Until it vanished from under me and sent me into a black void.

I fell and I fell into a big black pit

Falling and falling, surprised me a bit

I fell and I fell into nothingness below

Faster and faster refusing to slow.

I screamed and I screamed as I fell into dark

Screaming and screaming sounding a bit like a bark

I screamed and I screamed as I ever fell in   

This dark nothingness of an endless black bin.

I woke in a start covered in sweat

Pillows and sheets soaked and coldly wet

What sort of a nightmare had just forced me to wake?

I better calm myself for my own bloody sake.

To go back to sleep again would now be my goal

If I could only calm my shuddering soul.

My eyes closed and my breath I forced to control

And I dreaded again falling into that black hole.

Where are your bones, I wonder?

Your dust, your last breath?

I see you queued with your mates

In your final military assembly:

            Bates next to Beasley

            Gillum next to Green

            And so on.

It is a moment captured forever in brass letters,

The year scuffed and barely legible.

How does a hero sleep?  Do you dream of past valor?

Or soft shoulders and tender kisses lost forever?

This once hallowed ground is swathed in weeds,

Cannons and missiles rusted and impotent,

The fence sagging with age.

People pass by, but nobody sees.

Even the names have become ghosts.

John W. Bebout  2018

Our untold story waits for its explosion

As our love ages more than we know.

The first time I saw you under a peepal tree

With your hair flowing in the air like

It has escaped all the aches and your lips

Weaving stories of a fairytale, I knew

It was you who warmed all my particles of heart

And now they are restless for an explosion;

An explosion of vigorous love, care and bond.

Everytime I sublime myself in the sweet essence of you,

I can feel the explosion of eternity occuring in my skin.

~ ©storytellersuchismita

Water buffalo, cows, dogs, goats, roosters, and chickens wander across and sleep in the streets.

Masses of people – women in beautiful flowing saris with dabs of paint on their foreheads and men wearing clothes of every conceivable style from leather biker-jackets to loin cloths – walk, run, push carts loaded with lumber, bricks, or raw meat.

Street vendors point at their goods and shout as we pass by.

Shop owners gesture enthusiastically or doze, and beggars hold up withered limbs or a malnourished child.

We pass men shaving and women washing their long black-hair in buckets of water right beside the street.

Cars, busses, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, and animal-drawn carts flow chaotically by.

Road surfaces vary from stone, brick, pock-marked pavement, or rutted dirt.

Odors of incense, spicy foods, diesel and auto exhaust, sewage, and body odor assault us. Horn blasts, shouts, conversations and arguments in a polyglot of languages, bleats, barks, bellows and clucks of animals, and the grinding gears and strain of rickety vehicles on the verge of collapse create a surround sound you’d never hear in Indiana.

Our car pauses beside a bright red rickshaw. Its driver stares at us with dark perplexed eyes, then opens his almost toothless mouth and laughs as we pull away.

Jeff Rasley

He rode an old McClellan that had seen better days

But he sat up there like a king who controlled all he surveyed

His mount a buckskin mare as pretty as you’ve seen

With legs meant for working and eyes bright and clean

Behind him trailed a mule, a fine example of the breed

A pack piled high with goods but no halter or a lead

I asked him where he’s headed and where he might have been

The reason for his travel and what he might have seen

“I’ve seen the greatest country that God ever made

Sometimes mountain vistas, sometimes a grassy plain.

I’ve seen family members who make me feel ashamed

And many fellow workers who lie their way to fame

I’ve seen herds of caribou clicking cross the plain

Massive Mountain Grizzlies, great horses wild and tame.

I’ve seen massive progress ended by greedy fools

Or by those who need control and impose silly rules

And others stopping growth by thinking with their heart

When simple logic tells ‘em the horse is behind the cart.

We all get our little chance but others need a turn

The younger need some room to grow to build to learn

When I’ve done my time, my life here is thru

I don’t want my final vision to be only gloom and fools.

I’ll be free of all that as will the mule and mare

We’ve trod the greatest land, together scenery shared

It all makes my former life shallow and pale

And now where I travel nothing is ever stale

I’ve had my days of wealth measured in dollars and cents

With days, weeks and years surrounded by wall and fence

But now I have much more, a far greater treasure

Surrounded by natures wonders, beauty that can’t be measured

Any measure of success may not be right for all

The test that has some rise up will make others fall

I hope the path I travel and the message that I preach

Will be heard and understood by people that I meet

No one has the right to say that my view is wrong

Nor do I have the right to condemn another’s song

But enjoy the journey and help your fellow man

Have a laugh and learn, and make a proper stand

For something you believe, give it a proper fight

And if you should lose and you know you might

Within your heart you’ll know you did your very best

And did what you thought right when put to the test.

The ranch is lonely this time of year

Now that my sweetheart‘s gone

We hadn’t planned for either one

To leave for the great beyond

Hitched in harness, a team we where

Going the same direction

Pulling together we made a pair

But now it’s all reflection

Daughter found herself a man

And they’re off chasing the dollar

The boys the same, all working lives

But their kids pleasing grandfather

They don’t listen much to me

That life ain’t about the buck

I think you need beauty and humor

Or you’re just plain out of luck

That no one listens to me

Well I’ve got used to that

Horses usually take instruction

But cows no more than a cat

Always have to repeat myself

And some folks have to be led

Just like a pig I once had

Didn’t hear a word I said.

But the daughter called today

She’d been talking to her brothers

Said them and her husband agreed

And they’d talked some to others

They want to come back to the ranch

Her call gave me quite a lift

As the year rolls up to Christmas                

I couldn’t get a better gift.

The Mermaid (Part One)

The evening was cool

and the sky was so clear

while ripples of waves

were all I could hear

The moon shone bright

and stars twinkled on high

when from out of nowhere

came so seductive a sigh

I looked out to sea

to whence the sound came

and my eyes did believe

they were playing a game

For as waves lapped around

a rock out at sea

a beautiful vision

was sat staring at me

Naked as love

she sat all alone

on that rising edifice

of black granite stone

Her body so wondrous

that I shook with such lust

but a smile so pure

that my thoughts were unjust

Her hair was entangled

with kelp luscious green 

that protected her modesty

oh what a scene

It hung down over breasts

so excitingly full

covering the parts

that are made to enthral

My mind quickly taken

by this girl of my dreams

though as I looked closer

all was not as it seems

For legs this beauty

was completely bereft

and a long fishy tail

was all she had left

Then with a smile

that made my heart still

she slipped into the water

and I saw she was real

For she dived like a dolphin

under azure sea

and all that was left

were the ripples and me

The End........or is it?

The Mermaid (Part Two)

The man with the tear soaked eyes walked along the beach for the thousandth time. 

His hands were shaking and his lips quivering in the cold as he constantly looked out to sea, where was she, would she ever return, would she mend his broken heart.

He had but caught a fleeting glimpse of this beauty as she preened herself on that ancient granite rock, and a glimpse was all it had taken as he was now completely besotted by this angel from the deep.

Even now, weeks after the event he could still see every tiny detail of his wondrous vision. 

The sparkling blue eyes that outshone the sun, and the kelp entangled hair that glistened with the reflection from the moon. Her heaving breasts that had caused the man in him to want her body for his own sexual pleasures, and that oh so innocent smile that had replaced the pure animal lust within him with a more protective desire to take her in his arms and cherish her.

He had not kept her appearance a secret, he had told everyone he had met, and he had talked and talked and talked. 

He wanted to tell everyone about his dream girl, his mermaid from the deep, his beautiful fish tailed siren. 

But would they listen to him? The answer was no, a resounding no! 

He was laughed at, ridiculed, pointed at and made out to be the village idiot, and all just because he wanted to share what he had seen. 

But he didn't care, he would see her again, he knew he would see her again, he had to see her again. Otherwise, well otherwise he would go crazy.

Another tear ran down his face as he once again looked at the vacant rock where his angel had once sat. 

He realised that maybe they were right, maybe he was mad, just a demented old fool, someone that had let his dreams overtake reality. 

His heart wrenched tear fell to the sand and along with his hopes and dreams soaked into nothingness.

He turned away and looked no more. 

He must preserve his sanity at all costs. 

So he walked away and returned to the boredom of his sad uneventful life.

This meant that he was not there an hour later when a ripple formed in the water, as a dream like beauty pulled herself from the sea and perched on her favourite granite rock. 

She looked around, but he was not there. 

Maybe it was her imagination but she was sure she had seen love in his eyes.

Maybe if she waited he would return.

But no she thought to herself, she was being foolish. 

She slipped off the rock once more and plunged deep into the dark forbidding sea, back to reality she told herself, back in the water where nobody could see her tears.



The End