PoetryAllTheWay

"Screaming at your problems won't solve them," they tell me outside, where frustration, a private matter of buried feelings, is silent. But, on the tatami of the willow dojo, where passage is marked with rei - for battle, a bow - my strikes are charged with shouts to lend me power. Faced with a challenge of technique, to batter down the wall, I scream. The mats and the outdoors are sometimes murky in the tempest of my mind. I stifle my confusion and polarise the worlds. As I suffocate my frustration, my sense of control is drowned. Voiceless, my technique is lost, I lash out.

Duck feathers poke through the pores of the pillow I lay my head upon at night, a five-o'clock shadow prickling my cheeks. I used to enjoy tugging the stubble and watching the fluff of bird-leaf emerge, like I'm pulling the feathers back inside a mallard, leaving it reverse-plucked. Some nights, so my feelings can fly loose and bother no-one, I take my feather pillow and press it to my face, the cotton casing a plug to fill my mouth and nose. A muffled expression, soaking my screams into a sponge of duck feathers.

Aristotle dropped his cannonballs from the Horologium; raindrops of stone, heavy and thunder-grey. Above, clouds drifted across a copper sky like feathers caught in a wind-river, wide and slow-moving, nearing the sea. Aristotle watched his cannonballs hurtle towards soil, and imagined Earth without airy medium. Perhaps there, a feather’s descent might be as swift. With nothing to copper the sky, or breathe, he’d suffocate under starlight in a storm of black hail and bird coat. Aristotle studied his cannonballs as they fell, under a copper sky, breathing. Hearing the huff of stone meeting soil, he reached for another, and hoped

I wonder if we cheat our dead by burning them, rid them of their right to rot and dissolve, feed another life, channel energy through soil. Scattered as ash, the dead rest on grass, mix with ocean salt, dance with summit snow. A resting garnish, like Parmesan scattered over steaming spaghetti, or a blanket of dead-skin dust in a disused bedroom. Cheese melts, but hardly mingles; ashes disperse, but feed, or fuse? The grains are small, hard to see, hard to say. Even as corpses, the dead are quarantined within wood, embalmed, secluded in their repose. We call it respect, but maybe desecration through isolation would be more honest a phras

Love is dangerous Love is mysterious Yet its intriguous But quite mischievous. An egnigma wrapped in mystery A funny feeling within me stirs As if butterflies were fluttering While my heart races like an engine. Legs begin to jiggle like jello While the mind starts to mellow Can't keep to walk a straight line Almost like I've drank a bottle of wine. Why love must you torment me Why do you play such mean tricks Plucking my heart's strings Like a guitar as you change the notes To the chaotic melody you compose. Love is a mystery Love is enchanting Love is abnormal Yet quite strange.

Out of the darkness Struck like a lightning bolt He came without warning Like a lion striking his prey. He may have my purse Took all that I had with me, But you can't take my pride You can't break my spirit. Though in a state of shock and horror I know that I'll recover For time heals all wounds The piper will pay the price. I'll keep my head high Keep looking for tomorrow Growing stronger and being wiser From the trauma that I've faced. I won't let it happen I'll be on my guard For like the strongest steel You won't break me.

Poetry is a mystery How do you take form poetry? What gives you shape? How do you express yourself? Poetry is a gift Doesn't need to be wrapped Nor placed in an envelope For your words are rich Richer than the treasures of the world. Poetry is bliss Expressing one's soul Always in a state of Nirvana Soothing the heart with joy. Poetry is healing A form of recovery That helps us get over Life's troubles and woes. Poetry is limitless For it has many forms It's born everyday From the writers That give it life.

Life is a stage We are the performers Giving it our all For some-success Others-epic fail. Mockery speaks as tomatoes fly Covering those that failed Yet instead of moaning They wipe the juice off their faces. When life gives you tomatoes You wipe it off your face And make a pizza out of it It tastes delicious each time You keep trying to perform your best.

The young man saw the beauty Kikuya in the crowd as he danced, holding a drum. He slowed to a stop and crouched low, started a tale with a grin on his face. He was wrapped in blue - She was rapt as she listened to him speak of Fukugawa and of its past, to the men who sheltered from the night. Outside, the lanterns flickered and swayed in the night, and for a year the young man saw Kikuya drift in, to watch him speak to the men of Fukugawa in a dark pleasure house. He was holding a drum as he eyed her, a young lady with a blue comb in her hair; she became a part in his tale. Her face rose up as a weave in his tale, transformed into a healer,

The moonlight shone down on their car as they drove to the wooded pond that promised anonymity from the world. After a soft Colleen, I don’t think this is a good idea, and a You worry too much, Selene, it’ll be fun, they were silent. Colleen flashed a smile, quick and fleeting like a deer on the side of the road, before reaching down and tugging up. Off came her shirt, down went her jeans and she said Come on, what are you waiting for? as she jumped into the pond, Artemis taking a bath. Selene wasn’t Actaeon, but neither was she the Orion she so desperately wanted to be. Selene felt a worm compared to Colleen’s bod