Wife, Cats and TV -Marc Olmsted

Young I wanted to be famous
fame looked good –
now my wife, cats and TV
America’s secret prayers in the attic

HAIKU -  Hilary Thomaslove’s a patient orange
sleeping in its rind, waiting
for searching fingersdimpled grapefruit globe
flesh the color of salmon
sleeps, waits, gives it time.hushed winter evening
albino february
spring uncoils in greenbalancing the past
juggling knives on horseback
phone call to my mommorning in silence
scents of bread and hardwood smoke
clock hands pause for breathclock on the mantle
singing softly to herself
like a busy cook

i wait all year long
for the moment i just had:
i could see my breath.

Nostalgia – Carlye Archibeque

You remind me
of a city I've never been to
(but have been meaning to visit)
New York in winter
brittle leaves
hitting the cement
like tears
or perhaps you remind me of the reminder
a second memory twice removed like the cousin
who gave me my first kiss behind the garage
while the aunt with the soft lap and the name of a flower
called from the backdoor
that dinner was ready
You remind me of all the corsages I've dreamed of wearing
to events I was too fat to attend
You remind me
that memories fade
into faint tinglings
the scent of salt
that reminds me of skin.

HAIKU for Sally  - Matthew John Conleybeen away so long
chasing moon over highway
haven't left the bed sleeping in ashtrays
homes built on cemeteries
smoke in the chimneythe farther I go
away from her the clearer
I can see her faceold men with gray hair
raking up brown autumn leaves
watch the time go by holding on the phone
repeating I love you long
after you've hung up cold rain on train tracks
lying down like tin soldiers
with rust-covered souls

deeper & deeper,
deeper & deeper I go
down to the surface

OLD HEART   - Marc Olmsted

 The trees
  gossip
 in windy
 blue
 space
- chasing desire
    I'm almost
  45
- elegant
 day, summer's
  going
     with my
 money
- old heart in
  bones, older
than this skin

Tito Perez A few lessons:
The past is a great teacher
That many ignore.History’s lesson:
Those that repeat their mistakes
Are just poor students.

Some live in the past;
Others live in the future;
Few live in the day.

 There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.
-- Ralph H. Blum

WhaTimeTells   -- Stosh Machek
 ( http://www.stoshmachek.com )

*whaTimeTells*
...time carves its messages,
a gravestone artist w/cold chisel &
heavy mallet, carves messages, leaves clues while
a river carves a canyon, while
a wave carves a shore-line, while
summers pass thru lives
...leaves it there for the wise & foolish,
leaves it there for those who're looking
...time dosen't tell, dosen't care who gets the
message,
niether silent nor screaming,
not caring if the message gets got
...continues slow, old man stumbling gait,
hypnotized zombie aspect, pushing back long silver
hair,
brushing stone crumbs from white whiskers,
drops mallet &
chisel into a tool pack patched w/the flesh of heros,
&
moves on to the next stone,
to the next message
...water marks &
strata streaks on bleached limestone
...time moves too slow for us to see
unless we're looking backwards
...moves too quick for us to see
unless we're paused on high-ground
or lying catch-a-breath in a ditch
...time message fades before our eyes &
after;
trees fall, hills level,
structures rise, &
grow, then rumble &
crash to the earth again ...earth burps &
swallows, smiles, licking gravestone teeth
...pre-determined time;
measuring free-willed movement in imagined space
...light preceiving light,
leaning on light,
hiding under light,
mouse-in-maze time
...if 'this' is;
it could only lead to 'that' time
...it passes,
it stays behind, it comes with,
it leaves here, it goes on w/out you time
...time; the unattending master of the angel of
entropy,
winged child w/a hammer knocking holes in the walls
...time is the logic bubble burst by ancient greeks,
the ribbon cut by zeno of elea,
the river rushing under the bridge of sophists,
...time; the illusion that got made real,
then stuffed into gearboxes w/cuckoos
...slow spiral swirl down ward of chalkdust
finds time as a symbol in space shot equations,
counting down to zero &
up to ice cold nowhere
...a trapdoor already dropped,
under a noose we just now noticed

-  Stefan Sencerzthis humid night
we spin tales of the past
none of them real hot summer sunset
a leaf in my hand 
gone with the wind  smiling to the morning sun
I forgot last night
my headache's gone, too
 
new moon, strong wind
not even sound of mosquitos
breaks whisper of the night time is precious
hurry up
slowly
and with caution

the watch and the book
a measure of time
and a measure of timeless  if it is true that
nothing is worth love
then why do lovers live longerI crashed a few times
my rainbow-colored kite
breeze is too soft calm evening
quiet chant
dry leaves drop out at last clouds and calm breeze
we smoke outside
without sweating a year wiser
I celebrate my birthday
with soy latte Texas summer
even the asphalt road home
forgot last rain at dawn morning dew 
at noon few drops of rain
we wait for a  downpourthree days of rain
I've been dreaming Spring flowers

sun set and sun dawn
waves in the endless Ocean
never look back

REPLACEMENT  - Marc Olmsted"All situations are passing memory"

The petulant
crossing guard
in yellow rain
slicker has
replaced my
old friend -

-  Eirik Ott a.k.a. Big Poppa E.woman on airplane
presses nose to window.
man on bus looks up.whisper of wings
pale luna moth flies away
so soon so soon so...the difference between
a rut and a grave is how
long you spend in them. i take vitamins
every day so i’ll be
healthy when i die.we drift through each other
two lonely ghosts haunting
the same cold apartment.there’s no such thing
as complete silence
in a citythe very things that
draw you to me now will push
you away in the end.yesterday was the
happiest day of your life,
and you didn’t even notice. the thought of dying
frightens me, so i choose to
not think about it.
the distance
between us
measured in sighsscars are what happens
when life carves its initials
onto your skin.sometimes it’s greedy
to ask for more than the sun
rising like always.The days huff and sigh
while the years
blinkthe sun rises. the sun
sets. the sun rises. the sun
sets. the sun rises.

brown and yellow leaves
waving goodbye
as they fall

LEAVING HOME  - Mike Henry>
The Austin Slam Poetry website is: www.austinslam.comI don’t think things should be able to kill you if you can’t see them.  When it’s my time, give me a meteor crash, a renegade elephant charge, the subtle shift of a steering wheel towards a guard rail, towards a physics problem, creating flight.  Give me something I can look in the eye, that I can rail against in the futile and unheard seconds before dark.  Something I can relate to.Otherwise, it’s like when the wall cracks from a leak that has painted itself with an imperceptible slowness, a quiet march in yellowing shadow from the ceiling fan towards a doorframe, you know there’s a crack, and you know why, but you never saw the water.  Like the water that soaks you as sweat, makes your clothes grasp a chair back when bad news has come.In these days when I fear I have lost a certain stillness, when an attempt at the novel on my bedside announces the arrival of the myriad daydreams, fears, and math equations that live in the white spaces where letters are not, in these days I need to remember the simpler times.How me and Robert would play pool in bars and divide up all that the world might hold, our myriad futures, the scattering days fat with possibilities made into sucker bets and jousting lances towards fate, distilling it all down into seven words … now, if I make this NEXT one …How I’ll push a grocery cart for the rest of my life, so long as my wife will rest her hand on my lower back as I do, what it means to be sure of you.How my friend Pasha would sit in bed and play guitar.  With the television on really loud at the same time.I’ll remember Dad throwing me grounders in the back yard, the baseball skittering across the freshly mown grass like a small bird, how I’d scoop it off the lawn just like he taught me, just put your glove where the ball is, son, he’d say, how throwing the ball back and the anticipation that lived in the seconds as it arched towards the inevitable pop of leather became our own kind of conversation.

My grandfather used to drive me in his green Chevy Impala, a bruised and limping dragon that bore the scars of innumerable collisions that he’d never admit to, and we’d drive to the top of the hill by the cemetery, the highest point in town and watch tornadoes.  This seemed like a great idea at the time.  I remember he’d bring lawn chairs, how we’d sit together and I’d feel the rain slowly soak through the braids of yellow and green plastic, no matter how tightly I’d press my back against them, this slow invasion of dampness.  We’d watch the funnels chase each other like verses of slow hymns in the wheat fields, knowing they wouldn’t turn our way, never did.  Or even just big rainstorms, lightning cursing cracks across the darkening heavens, pointing at everything in all directions, remember, it would say.  Our moments together pass all too fast, leaving trails burned across our closed eyes, suggestions of friends now gone.  And I will remember.  Especially when my chair is wet.

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