Two for One

Tonight, beware,

I'm just a night hag;

loosely held together by blood clots and rage.

I have a curse for you if you have pennies to spare.

Sell them by the pair:

Come browse if you dare.

one for you and one for the apple of your ire.

It's a two for one deal, take it for leave it.

-o0o-

Oranges (Video)

I miss you today dear lover,

How you’ve out-aged me in death.

Immortally young. Ancient in memory.

Ageless Apollo.

Are there still oranges where you are?

Do the copper leaves still fall about your feet?

And is death kind in your defeat?

I miss you today dear lover,

Your apple-grin smile that ensnares me,

Your brassy laugh that knocks air into the soul,

and makes the windows rattle.

I miss you today dear lover,

On a far-away coast,

So far from your grave,

I don’t know these winds,

The sky isn’t vital with that screaming thunder,

And your voice is still,

Even in memory.

I miss you wry humour,

Your simple kindness.

I miss your singular determination,

Your childlike ability to get lost in wonder.

I am sad to say that today was a good day:

Anniversaries being what they are.

And I have no desire to join you,

So I beg you to be patient.

Time will have us all in the end,

And there are oranges enough for now.

-o0o-

Lines

Too much of my life,
                is full,
of attempted lines others drew,
                                         in my sands.           
Their battle lines, scratched across,
my body, my sex, my mind, my life...
...their permissions, prohibitions,
petitions, and protestations.

And how they rage and weep,
when my tides turn,
and wash their little lines away,
as if they were never even there.
Respect the ground you stand on, chaps.
It is deep, and hungry, and you are very...
                  ...very...
                               ...small.

~Charl Landsberg
2019

Storm

When the storm gets bad I return to my art.

It is good to remind the wind that I am the ocean

and no matter how hard it blows

I will return to the deep.

-o0o-

When you're feeling self conscious...

If the moon wanted the work to be done like someone else
she would ask someone else to do the work
but she asked you.
So she knows.
Your heart.
Your hands.

-o0o-

Phoenix

Kiss me, hitherto forgotten anger,

that sits like a pike in the heart,

waiting to bloom.

Come to the furnace, little ones.

Let me show you how to bathe,

let me show you how fire consumes.

Will you be reborn with me?

...or crumble beneath my fury?

I would wait for you,

but the sun rises,

and the day won't wait for you.

The shadows are long,

and I have other pyres to build.

-o0o-

Ricky Man

Please go have a look at my poem "Ricky Man". It's up at Poetry Potion HERE.

Write

Write more!
Write more!
Write more!
Write!
Does it still count as poetry,
if it's written out of spite?

Bark

People will strip you,
so unhesitatingly,
of your scars,
for the sake of their own comfort.
As though trees could survive,
without bark.

Late January

I haven't written here this year.

But today I saw the wind in the grass.

I saw the sun shining through the grey clouds.

I read poetry I didn't quite agree with.

A strange hot day.

The air smelled of sweat.

I held the seeds of a plant I grew in my hand.

And I can genuinely tell you,

I don't know anything.

Bukowski said some lose their mind,

others lose their soul,

I've been split down the middle,

mind and soul,

human and animal,

water and fire,

for so long.

I haven't lost anything,

it's just that we're,

not in one place at the same time.

That when we sit together and drink coffee,

looking at the world around us,

it seems so alien.

People calling me weird,

but then they refuse to see the sky,

they refuse to hear the music,

they refuse to see the wind dancing.

I don't know anything.

But I know the seeds in my hand.

I know wind in my hair.

I know the whispering heat,

that simmers on my chest.

-o0o-