Honesty

“Everyday Deception” by Agnieszka Bloch

 

unguarded moments
shibboleth fears of
vestpocketed minds
concealed from the
stars self-embarrassed
self-loathed and preferring
to please under pretense
what waste what ordeal
in denying the world
edge and contour of truth
as if judgment lacks eyes
to see through the disguise
be yourself save the
time and the pain
erecting false fronts
maintaining deception
you are worth so much more
than your fantasies

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

Imagine

 

“Language of Stone” by M F Husain

 
imagine a million
angry hurt poets
avengers with brickbats
blunt weapons of words
raining down artful blows
upon philistine brows
raising consciousness
striking again and again
against biased indifference
to stanza and verse

patience fairly exhausted
with readers consumed
by that barbarous prose
overweening and rude
semi-literate wits
disinclined to appreciate
nights-on-end struggles
to pull from the muse
just a single apt phrase
in conveyance of mood

imagine a million
angry hurt poets
a virtual army
enlisted by passion
in liege to Apollo
their salvos of song
drowning dissonance
vanquishing language
complacent and lazily
scribbled by boors

would the world then
be better for metaphors
intercourse carried by
fluent rhetorical tropes
allegorical truth in the
place of the prosaic lie
while the poem is a challenge
the poet is honest
minds better informed
by the heart than the spleen

Wishful Thinking

“Wotan” by Konstantin Vasiliev

I fight as a god
hurling powers
at breastplates
disheveling foes
shaking men
from the rot of
ignoble ideas
quaking doctrines
immoral and
dirty with greed
till they shatter
slip down into
cracks of failed
ethics regaining
a measure of
grace for the
world re-instilling
integrity honesty
values of shared
common decency
plumping the near
shriveled veins
of democracy
gasping its lungs
in extremis

 

 

From my book Pieces of Wine

Corpus

 

“Identity Crisis” by Tom Fedro

 

 

not the self image
nor the face worn in public
but the you God knows

 

 

(originally posted December 2013)

Smell of Silence

“Promise Tree” by Darcy Schneider

 

it’s not fear which sickens
nor anger which quickens
it’s more like surprise
tears stinging the eyes
cloyed vocal chords closed
no longer disposed
to utter the breeze
conversing with trees

in other words scaring
the truth out of bearing
uncomfortable judgments
retaining begrudgments
to stink in the void
life’s sweetness destroyed
in the sorrowful breach
of love’s promising speech

(originally posted December 2013)

Secrets of Stone

 

“Sea of Dreams” by Duncan George and Adrian Gray

 

search the stone

seek the soul

of the universe

feel the cool

silent wisdom

the knowledge

acquired from

aeons of witness

the birth pangs

attending the

every beginning

the traumas

ensuing the

every extinction

the stone

ever present

observer the

chronicler keeping

the stories and

stains of existence

the secrets of

cosmic creation

the seminal truths

urging mutable time

lodged inside its

hard heart where

they wait even now

as they’ve waited

so long for the

curious mind of the

first honest man

 

* * *

“A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.” – Andy Goldsworthy

Apostrophic

Abstract by Evgeny Kislitsin

 

bangin’ it
bringin’ it
crashin’ it
smashin’ this
damned LCD
verbs and blurbs
ripped and drippin’
like dismembered
body parts
wildly
chopped
in a frenzy of
verses with vengeance
no takin’
of prisoners
on digital battlefields
batterin’
shatterin’
shambles and shards
every word
broken whole
bleedin’ phonemes
all over the screen
where they live
or they die
by the honesty
clenched
in the merciless fist
punchin’
keystrokes
it’s war of a kind
in the mind
where the enemy
sanity
fights like
one poem
crudely thrown
just might
bring down the
end of the world

Trust the Poet

“Honesty III” by Deborah Babin

utters the pen
tawdry scandals
of honesty
truth as it beats
in the heart
of the poet
uncleansed by
the indigo wash
of his ink
ever real
ever raw
in the flesh
of his words
no mask-work
of metaphor
able to hide what
he really believes
every naked
conviction exposed
by the stroke of
his stanzas
his movements
of metrical feet
sketch the path
of his pain
leave the lies
to the writers
of prose where
emotional fiction
can hardly
be trusted

Cry Country

“Depression” by Farid Shirzad

lift the pain from these ill deceived bones
let this heart fly above the white mountaintops
up where whole worlds can be brought into view
let these eyes see how truth has no place it can hide
from keen yearnings for well-made intentions
this landscape too long in the rupture and bleeding
needs healing through full-throated honesty
giving its thunderous cry to the voice of republic

Honesty

“Everyday Deception” by Agnieszka Bloch

 

unguarded moments
shibboleth fears of
vestpocketed minds
concealed from the
stars self-embarrassed
self-loathed and preferring
to please under pretense
what waste what ordeal
in denying the world
edge and contour of truth
as if judgment lacks eyes
to see through the disguise
be yourself save the
time and the pain
erecting false fronts
maintaining deception
you are worth so much more
than your fantasies