Electing Gospel For Bedtime Music
By Brian Hardie - Contributing Poet

Parked myself in my abode, through chambers locked
Away in a balmy brothels faith.
Followed by touch, by stroke,
By a fond call to mind,
A family without sorrow in material confides
In pin-point ends of stars that hide.

A great assault shaking the mind.
The shape of shift in placement dejects
What is not more than another triple spiced up nip.
Anxiety dispirits a harmless gesture.
Submerging to cast my language,
invoking more rage in your teller, so young.

Dresses and false sheets awake and mince, destroying
The worst of what beauty went spreading.
Curved into the grace of a smile, light is lit from a chance
I dreamed.
Rational areas are fondly leisured, between stages of my attic-visit
relay.

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Nutcracker Christmas
By Darryn John Murphy - Contributing Poet

Holly slung accompanied by an old noel
The meal smells as good as the scent,
"Leapt from the table"
Where reindeer rest in yonder stable

An able caroler, sang to the first archangel
"Holly eves" with fresh green leaves
Cable watched as crawly played
Beneath the evergreen on Christmas day

Unpaid but not unaided "carolers sang"
Jingle bells, beside the old church bell,
Then they ran, with the written word "held in their hand"

Santa had left presents, beneath the old oak tree
With a tap of his feet and a "touch of his nose"
Brightly "colored" buttons and bows

As smoke from the chimney reached ever higher
Roasting chestnuts, over an open fire
Nutcracker treats too sweet to eat
Beside old stockings "laden with treats"

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2504
By Sergio Pereira - Contributing Poet

Stare at the photograph,
I see your eyes, I feel the pain;

The smile still haunts me,
But I am not afraid;

Envisioning a life, so different from today . . . 

I'm you and you are me,
But what I was, I cannot be,
These shadows can't ever lie;

The demons die and never wake,
The angels refused to dig your grave,
So wipe the tears from your eyes;

The memory burns,
The chapters erased;

Your life on the floor,
But the wounds have healed;

Through the field of ashes, a flower finally grows . . . 

I'm you and you are me,
But what I was, I cannot be,
These shadows can't ever lie;

The demons die and never wake,
The angels refused to dig your grave,
So wipe the tears from your eyes;

The storm of fear,
Took you twice,
But the sun washes
All the tears and blood away;

I'm you and you are me,
But what I was, I cannot be,
These shadows can't ever lie;

The demons die and never wake,
The angels refused to dig your grave,
So wipe the tears from your eyes

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Signs
By Steve Vinson - Contributing Poet

I.

You knew my heart.

From the time we first began
You would catch the red thistle's floating star

Hold it in the roundness of your hand
Gently blow and laugh it into air

Once we watched the loon diving for fish
Spoke importunely and made a wish

I recall my stopped breath
The swoon in your kiss

The signs of love were all in this.

II.

It happened then without reason

The cattle plodding after the descendant sun
Their stolid heads distended day into night

The ground shadows of kestrel and kite
Proved all the wild voles' dreamed oblivion.

I am left now to speak of silence
The reeds nodding in slow cadence
Called in with the settling of the wind

Like an implacable mind.

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Allied Against my Dreams
By Matt Roberts - Contributing Poet

It's late now and I must sleep.
The air con as my only company
Keeps the heat and sweat outside.
Pollutes the atmosphere but keeps
the temperature at which I am accustomed.

The alarm clock, locked and ready to rock
To destroy any dream I may have,
7 muddled hours of sleep from now.
Sleek black phone is thinking the same.
Enter and destroy from the inside

any thoughts of flying, or fornication
that my brain sneaked in during sleep.
Allied together against my sweet dreams,
my phone and clock -- assassins in the dark
wait for daylight to attack.

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Life
By Michael Keshigian - Contributing Poet

It's like fishing
on a starless night
when the moon sinks
into midnight's ocean,
our dreams are the hooks
upon which we bait
our raw hearts
and cast
on a monofilament thread,
pass reality
into the splash of the universe,
holding the line tightly
for a nibble
though it's lost to sight.
Its long descent
tightens our stomachs,
dries our tongues,
yet with a sigh of hope
we anticipate
the subtle tug of fulfillment.

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My Child
By Connie Guihan-Ayres - Contributing Poet

You are so exuberant
I watch you watching life,
and marvel at the wonder
in your eyes.

Your world is beautiful.
You look with wide-eyed amazement
at airplanes, and cars, and puppies,
and kittens, and trees,
and kitchen lights and rain.

Life is one long adventure,
and you, the adventurer
are on a day by day
Exploration of its miracles.

I would be a child again,
and see things as you do.

You've brought a new dimension to my world.
I see life through your eyes,
and realize that god made the fire,
But you make it glow.

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Conjuring
By Louie Crew - Contributing Poet

I wish that I could tell you something
about silver moonlight spooned down
the walls of a water fall on a cold spring night,
but can you be here? Can you hear?

The red flame burns cold on my wrists,
and some sweet sound twists out of my ear,
here to await the silence that will tell us
we were there.
It is lonely now
that the piano tinkles over fire crackling,
and glasses echo melting ice. Nice,
but lonely, with only a corpse of you,
since the you of your living now
cannot sprout the you of then whom I address.
Beautiful is our necromancy.

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American Tragedy
By David Richardson - Contributing Poet

Another week of not
Knowing
What day it is,

Facing another dawn
On a couch,
Disheveled from occasional anguished visits.

As Aristotle's dictum
Runs through my mind
About all things in moderation

Other thoughts
crash
against the inside of my skull

Like seething waves upon
The rocks
Of addiction.

And I drop to my knees
Screaming
To the Almighty

To save me

Archangels too
Raphiel, maybe,
Desperately.

And I cannot remember
When I was
Happy.

Just broken now
With a million names
In my head

Losing energy tic by tic.

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