December evening crisply cold

solitary stroll in falling snow

with soft breath starflakes cloud dispersed

soundless feet through lamplight of old globes

like full moons lifted in Atlas arms

along the muffled avenue

mellow yellow puddles gleaming at their feet

and I remember Lux flakes as they drifted

glistening

from the gaping box into the steaming was...

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At her bedside is a photograph

herself at eighteen

a portrait of ripe youthfulness

her lovely face cast sideways

with a sophomorphic smile lips half parted.

slanted eyes enthralled by first love

charmed charming

ardently sincere

a birthday gift to someone long ago

with a private message in flowing script on the back.

She stares long at the ph...

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up

           there

                         chatted

                                                      the wee bird

                                           high viewing frosty blue

                                               its blushing breast

                                                  in filigree twigs

                                      ...

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Consider:

Energy of thought is a palpable force

And must be expressed.

So Language evolves - a living thing.

We honour the first storytellers and the bards.

But - symbols scratched from stone to paper

Power more influence

Than a person can effect in a lifetime.

Communication across Death

Is a privilege we barely notice.

A book rend...

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Of one clay is Man

While rises renascent Sun

One Light - One Love - Life

                                            Cynthia Buell Thomas

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clinging tenaciously by its needle toe

the dry golden leaf

trembles and twists

a tortured dance in the chill wind

and refuses to let go -

afraid to die

the breeze reconnoiters

draws back and whips again

wheezing up the trunk

rifling the raggedy branches

into a twitching frenzy

but the little leaf holds on

the shifty ...

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slim flower head

red pollen bold

erect on scarlet stalk

whispering scented smoke

green breath absinthe moist

wormwood curled

the perfumed whiff of rosy cunt

pressed at bay

damp

between satin thighs

more sleek than silken stockings garter strapped

tantalizing roads to mossy fields

ungated

arm like a swan’s neck

imperious

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What do I want? What do I value?

                    What do you reject?

What matters to me? Whose opinions do I heed?

                   Whose do you ignore?

I no longer care what anyone thinks of me,

or my actions.

                   You realize, of course, that you have fixed

                   the anomaly of your state.

                   You are trying very...

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Nice woman

urgently requires

car transport to

WOLer's Big Weekend

in Hebden Bridge

pleasant companion

seeks no longstanding commitment

likes to laugh

not much luggage

any tram terminal or local station

in Greater Manchester preferred

respects time

and, oh yes, will share petrol costs

please respond below
...

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After a double martini

the very air is more intense.

The distant shore sinks into the deep lake

darkly stained by heavy pines

and cumbrous clouds low-slung.

Silence is a symphony heart-heard,

the sough of needles, sighing reeds.

Chill wavelets lip the pebbled beach,

stir mossy shadows, smell green.

In the cool twilight pale daisies

light a path...

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Lucretius said:

All life is given to us

Just in usufruct.

                        Cynthia Buell Thomas

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                 The Parting

My heartbeats measure the night.

How many weeks now has sleep mocked me?

How many months?

Late in the breathing hours when

My blood’s rhythm drowns my mind,

When I softly touch oblivion

My hands betray me.

Through my fingertips pulses

The feel of you.

My treacherous hands throb down your body

Until their a...

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Dave has reminded us to TAG our entries with BULLET  to make a grouping which we can access easily if we wish to 'vote' at the end of the month, or even just to enjoy them as a  theme unit.  Please check to make sure you are included in the special list.  For new WOLers,  join right in. The theme is Bite the Bullet and it is wide open to personal interpretation, using any poetical style. The TA...

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Bite the Bullet!

Hey, little boy-man,

Run for your life!

There is pleasure and pain

In the arms of a wife.

Possession you hate -

Obsession is fate -

Reality late -

And

          nobody

                             cares.

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Clever People

Clever people can be cruel.

They see vulnerable feelings

In others

And manipulate those emotions

To control

Continually.

Clever people can be witty.

They see the weaknesses

Of others

And lampoon those failings

To cut

Condescendingly.

Clever people can be blind.

They never see

In themselves

Cri...

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Ocean Thoughts 1

North Shore

The purple shoals brood

Like surly monsters

Crouching hunching

Tensed to heave their giant hides

Out of the azure sea

Dimpled droplets erupting

With a roar

Flinging fish

And flashing razor teeth

Cynthia Buell Thomas

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MidnightGardens

"Well? How did you get out of it?

I knew you would; but how did you do it?

The car’s headlamps

Spotlighted you centre stage

All thighs and torso with fine rich legs.

I thought you looked magnificent."

She was halfway down the road

Almost past the point of suspicion

When the car swung boldly around the bend.

The piercing gla...

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To Hell in a Hand Basket

Who

has not been to Hell

in a hand basket?

The Game is

Surviving

with Self-worth

and the Capacity to Love

still intact.

Cynthia Buell Thomas

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the little leaf

clinging tenaciously to its twig

the dry yellow leaf

trembles and twists

a cruel St Vitus’ dance in the teasing wind

and refuses to let go -

afraid to fly

the shifty breeze reconnoiters

and strikes again

wheezing up the trunk

rifling the raggedy branches

into a twitching frenzy

but the little leaf holds on

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Clichés

Naked

She lay on the ivory carpet,

Stretched out,

Her head propped on one arm.

Deliberately

She circled the crystal rim

With her finger tip,

And dipped her tongue

Into the ruby wine,

Smiling mischievously

At the man seated on the sofa.

The red liquid glowed

In the single lamplight;

Her thighs gleamed golden

On the cr...

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Grandma at the Window

Grandma sat at the window

For hours,

With her laced brogues planted

Her hands gripped in her lap

And her pale lips prim,

Staring into the street below.

When I was seventeen I thought:

What does she see down there?

What goes on – to interest her

So intently – for hours?

I wanted to push in front of her

And block the wi...

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As children they grew up together,

Bonded by friendship so deep

The passage to love was marked

By effortless consummation.

Their love was godly.

Fate  forged shackles with no key.

But  families fractured;

Communities convulsed;

Countries disintegrated.

Upon great tables in small rooms

Politics scissored  flags – land – people -

 And st...

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Hear the faint chimes

Sapphic stanza: 4 lines - consisting of 3 lines of 11 syllables each  (hendecasyllabics)  each measured in the same  strictly prescribed feet - /,///,,/,/,  and the final prescribed line using 5 syllables - /,,//

Hear the faint chimes, music of nodding bluebells,

Tinkling-glass tones trembling on restless breezes,

Soundless ...

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Spenserian Stanza:  9 lines, 3 rhymes in strict sequence - ababbcbcc, iambic pentameter - ,/,/,/,/,/,  line 9 Alexandrine - ,/,/,/,/,/,/

Upon the Winds of Change

Upon the winds of change our courses flew

And us across the heaving seas did send.

It mattered not what dreams each would pursue

For Fate decreed what we could not portend:

That once again our r...

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               Pandora’s Box

inconceivable

untenable

unbelievable

inhumane

         nonsense words -  

         ideas already

conceived

held

believed

executed

         spineless words that fret the tapestry of Truth’s

         complexity

         multiplicity

         duplicity

         all woven into what?

     ...

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Morning On The Mall                                                                            

Fresh morning gold floods cement meadows.

Early cars swing into a seven A.M.  huddle,

Close to the concrete caves that swallow

Sunshine down their shadowy throats.

“Good-night”  “Good-night” the guards clock out,

With that chronic bounce of light lunacy,

Squinting...

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Bedroom Games

                                      I

stinging whip

                heel in the back         

                                smarting slap

                                twist of bonds

                linked collar 

paddle smacking

                  II

                        ...

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flashback

for six days

the sky breathed

naturally

serenely blue

washed with dimpled sunshine

dappled clouds of long ago

whimsy on lazy wind

eye comfortable

content to be weather vanes

too soon

giant jets

score the atmosphere with carbon plumes

criss-crossing tic-tac-toe

skewed by schedules

and altitudes

...

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I am trying the 'objective style' (I think). Does this version  have any merit?

                Old Woman Waiting for a Bus  

                                      II

in the gusty dusk

old woman at the corner

perilous geometry pitched on compass toes

defying phantom wheels

like a still life - tightly ...

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Old Woman Waiting for a Bus

Half a block away

I spotted the old woman at the bus stop.

She was leaning into the road

At a clear forty-five degree angle,

As though frozen midway

In the act of flinging herself

Under the wheels of a phantom coach.

Her anxious face was pressed towards me,

Unblinking,  her mouth taut,

Oblivious to sharp wind gusts that...

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Coffee and Critics

Five essays on poetry!

Tone – voice – intent – paradox – politics –

Innocence – character – neurosis – truth –

TRUTH!

Coffee break!

Said a friend last week, ‘They grow coffee beans

Vanilla-flavoured now, you know.’

‘Sure,’ I chuckled, really flip,

‘And almond and orange and hazelnut, too.’

‘That’s right,’ she sa...

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Poverty Is

Poverty is a

Flood of public tears when cheap

Mince goes up 5 p

Poverty is to

Hunt by busy roadways for

Berries and wild greens

Poverty is the

Dock where kind fishermen toss

Squealing heads to you

Poverty is the

Necessity to sew plain

Smocks for little girls

Poverty  is to

Hold the old fridge...

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To plumb the depth of soul we all must go,

And on our journey never swerve nor tire.

The final truth we all must naked show.

Despite reluctant steps which painful grow

While plodding past prescribed doctrinal mire,

To plumb the depth of soul we all must go.

Beware the mocking friends now laughing low,

Resisting dusty earth or ashy pyre:

The final truth we all must...

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                                                            October Road

The morning highway crisps

Through the late fall fields,

Rich red flickering boldly

At the edge of the rimy woods.

Dappled cows, flanks close

And steamy, breathily pull hay

From the leaning ricks stacked

High in a frosted field.

Bundled on a rocky hillside

Fat s...

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                                                  The Argument

You could not.

Yes, I could.

You would not.

But, yes, I would.

You should not.

Why?

You will not!

*************

Cynthia Buell Thomas

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The Colour of Death is Gold

I

Mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September.

I returned to live with her.

She received the bulbs for her eighty-fifth birthday,

In November, from one of my sisters.

‘Happy Birthday, Mum!  Look, we brought you flowers,

Or the promise of flowers,’ she laughed.

‘They’ll come out in bunches, like our families.

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Communion

Grayly, unfocused,

I left the highway for the graveyard

Of the summer corn;

Away from bizarre headlights dissecting

The wet twilight,

Into the sharp stubble where

A dank wind rattled the bones

Of harvest.

From the invisible grass

A mottled rabbit with drooping ears

Padded around the puddles

And disappeared again

Into...

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Vanilla Sex

Come

Dine on me

Dip your tongue

Delicately

Into my cunt

I offer fine cream

Warm and fragrant

Rich and smooth

A dish for kings

Or slaves

Come

Swirl your tongue

Over and around

And into my swollen lips

Come

Lick with lingering delight

My luscious perfume

Cynthia Buell Thomas

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Children of Despair

Children of despair

Conceived in heat and nakedness

Mosquito mental mad

Children of despair

Thrown out in agony

Bloody blinding black

Child of my heart

Slimy solid passing

Waxen withered wail

Child of my dreams

Ripped from me in breech

Crumpled caved condemned

Children of my l...

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                                  To Fellow Poets

if my mind worked

like your mind

where is the joy in that

because your ideas

broaden my ideas

you thrill me

perhaps I would not say it

exactly so

but enough so

to understand your thrust and pull

to glory in your view of things

all things

...

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Summer Storm

At seventy miles an hour

They sped down the highway

Wind whipping back desultory talk.

Green slid by – trees and farms and meadows,

With odd punctuation of a one-light town.

He fixed the centre line.

She sighed, and stared across the fields

To count dilapidated barns.

Smoky blue chicory veiled the ditches

Fed by tongues of fire lily s...

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            DIRECTIONS

‘Am I at a CROSSROADS?’ she wailed,

Dropping her face into her hands, despairing.

‘Well,’ a little voice spoke up, from somewhere,

‘You didn’t say T JUNCTION.’

‘Whaaat!  What’s the difference?’ she moaned,

(not quite altogether but alert enough to question).

‘Choice,’ said  the wispy voice.

‘Three instead of tw...

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Sometimes,

I hide in Nana’s front yard,

Watching for Mummy’s car.

I can hardly wait to see her.

My Nana is wonderful,

But I love my mummy.

Sometimes,

When Mummy parks

She just sits there,

With her nose on the wheel

And her shoulders  funny.

Then she pulls her stuff  out

And walks slowly around the car,

Looking for ants, I think.

Nana’s gravel goes c...

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Force Seven

In the lusty wind the cables whine

From pole to pole bending the matchwood

Wands by the throat fiercely.

Riding at high mast the grim-eyed beetles

Clamp their spiked boots deeper and check

The safety lock on their leather girdles.

With unnatural fingers they fumble for the

Lurching wires that clash spitting sparks

And lunge apart merrily hissing.

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