Poetry – Modern Creative Life

November 27, 2018

Memento Mori by Dona Murphy

Voices speaking, I can barely hear them;
clouds shrouding the moon muffle and baffle.
But I heard and once I heard I had to listen
and once I listened I had to go. Go
out into the stone-dark night and the moon-white
there in the dark was a light in the dark
from the ground, all around
up rose the bones ash grey and dull silver.
Theirs were the voices that called
begging to be pulled from the dark, to be…
My hands dirt-smeared and damp, I draw them
out: long and slim, short and round
Thigh and shin, knee and skull-crown.
Gleaming clean, freed of flesh
they bear no scars.
They shine in the light of the stars.
They whisper thanks, they murmur their stories
they call softly to the ghosts who miss them
the spirits who seek them, who want only to be with them –
together, together again.
When? They ask, when?

About the Author: Dona Murphy

Dona Murphy is the owner of Destiny Tarot. She lives and works in Lake Bluff Illinois as a Tarot reader, Intuitive Counselor and Life Coach. Dona combines her metaphysical and spiritual studies, natural gifts and real-world experience to help her clients solve problems and live their best lives. As she says, “The cards don’t predict your future, they help you create it”.

November 24, 2018

Jukebox by Pat West

I spent my early years at Scotty’s Place,
in a rural area sixty miles outside Chicago.
Out in corn and dairy farm country
and I still recall the warm brush of angora wool
against my glass, as you leaned over
to read what I had to give, to discover
everything inside me. In 1968, things changed.

You kids left for college or to fight a war
you didn’t believe in.
The new owner packed me off
to storage. For years I stood disconnected
beside my old pal the pinball machine,
next to a refrigerator without a door,
a steering wheel leaning against my back.
Dust motes haze the air, windows thick with grime.

It’s true my needle is dull
and my tone arm sometimes slips
across the music, but my gut’s filled
with all your favorites. Remember
night after Friday night,
how you’d punch that red and white button
F6: It’s Now or Never
and my arm would reach up,
pick the 45, place it on the turntable
in that smoky room. You danced eyes closed,
head tilted back, swaying slow and easy.
When Elvis sang, It’s now or never, be mine tonight,
every girl thought that lanky Southern boy with gyrating hips
meant those words just for her.

Today you’ve hauled me to the cemetery
and placed me over Scotty’s grave
instead of a headstone.
Rather than flowers, you bring rolls of quarters.
I notice lines bracketing your mouth.
You insert ten dollars in even change.
Light-headed, feet pounding the grass, you dance
back those days of rock-and-crazy-roll. I watch
your hips sway and I’m back in that magical spot
once again, I put on my light show,
after all I’m a Wurlitzer peacock,
pulsing green, gold and yellow.

About the Author: Pat West

Pat Phillips West lives in Olympia, WA. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared in Haunted Waters Press, Persimmon Tree, VoiceCatcher, San Pedro River Review, Slipstream, Gold Man Review and elsewhere.

November 21, 2018

Seasons by Katherine Van Eddy

Blue is the color of the coat
I wore the last time
the only time.

Shimmering turquoise polyester
my husband wanted to buy it
while we wandered Macy’s in January
without a thought to time, money
or anyone else.

Notched collar, pleated in back,
it fit tight on my narrow frame
still unstretched by children.
I wore it end of February
buttoned over a small black dress,
high heels, excess of time
spent on styling hair, make-up
for our date to an Oscar viewing party
at Capitol Theater downtown.
It would be the last time I watched
the awards show all the way through

but not the last time that I hung the coat
as it’s moved with us between apartments,
houses, always hung with reverence.

For awhile beside my dresses, waiting
for another date, then over time
in other rooms, out of sight.

It’s summer now, and as we fit
our belongings into boxes yet again,
this time doesn’t feel right to bring
with us. I know the time I could still
wear it, try it on, feel beautiful,
feel that we fit each other
is past.

Gone is the time
that I would reach for it
pull it towards me
slip it around to warm me
sure beyond certainty
it was all I needed
in this moment,
the perfect piece
to complete me.

I’ve already pulled down the winter coats,
our daughter’s dresses from around it,
left the brilliant like-new blue
surrounded by empty hangers.

About the Author: Katherine Van Eddy

Katherine Van Eddy is a California-born poet living in Tacoma, Washington. She earned a BA in Creative Writing and MAT in Elementary Education from the University of Puget Sound. Her poems have appeared in Crosscurrents, Creative Colloquy Volume 4, Gold Man Review, and HoosierLit. She currently teaches 3rd/4th grade at a Catholic school while moonlighting as a writer and runner.

November 13, 2018

After the Game by Patricia Wellingham-Jones

My best friend Peri
was a little twerp,
I was a young giant.
We both played on the Woodbury

High School basketball team,
she through fervor
and sheer determination,
me solely because of my height.

In the girls bathroom
after our game of the season
with arch-rival Haddonfield
the over-heated, over-excited

losing team – ours –
leaned and towered over Peri.
Like chickens pecking
at a perceived weak one

they criticized, shouted,
blamed her for our loss. Defiant,
tears running down her cheeks,
Peri denied and pointed fingers.

A person of peace,
I couldn’t abide the row,
the unfair charges,
bruised nerve ends, raised hackles.

Astonishing all in the room,
including myself, I flung
my big frame on top
of a washbasin.

I out-yelled the yellers,
waved long arms in the air,
told them they should be ashamed,
pipe down, SHUT UP.

They did. They fumbled for shoes
and towels, left without looking at me.
Peri stood, stunned to silence.
I wondered how to get down.

About the Author: Patricia Wellingham-Jones

Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a widely published former psychology researcher and writer/editor. She has a special interest in healing writing, with poems recently in The Widow’s Handbook (Kent State University Press). Chapbooks include Don’t Turn Away: poems about breast cancer, End-Cycle: poems about caregiving, Apple Blossoms at Eye Level, Voices on the Land and Hormone Stew.

November 12, 2018

Within by Trenton Ladler

As I gaze in the mirror I wish only to flee

from the somber melancholy that swells about me.

Dark, each thought that surrounds

of lost potential, lost hopes and dreams that now confound.

On each awakening , I want to scream

and conceal my heart in indolent Morpheus’s nocturnal streams.

I try my best to mend that tattered seam.

I hold tight the golden ticket I wish to redeem.

I reach out from the haze hoping for that elusive guarantee.

To have finally found that long forgotten refugee.

To finally cast off the shackles of the ground,

Spreading wings becoming unbound.

All this will finally be when I can answer,

“Are You Happy?”

About the author, Trenton Ladler

Trenton Lamar Ladler is a 29 year old Navy veteran. Currently he is attending school to get his Bachelor’s in Education with a minor in Sociology/Psychology. He is an avid gamer and dreams of one day getting his poems and roleplaying adventures published to share them with the world. Follow Trenton on Twitter.

November 5, 2018

The Cure by Patricia Wellingham-Jones

In despair at her daughter’s
hunched over, crab-like stance
Mother hauled me out of my seventh
grade class straight to the doctor.

Doc Weems, who delivered me
and my sister and was a family friend,
glared at the gawky giant
before his eyes. His voice
a thunderclap of doom
threatened me with a back brace
if I didn’t stand straight,
keep those shoulders back.

“You don’t want to look like Marcia,
do you?” he roared.

I pictured the girl my height,
shoulders pinched together,
head thrust like a turtle,
her shuffling gait, drooping everything
and drab ugly clothes.

“Yes, you’re tall,” Doc toned down
his voice one notch below the roar.
“And you’re pretty and well-formed,
and you’ll always see at parades.
Now straighten up, young lady,
and be the beautiful woman
you will become.”

So I did. And am, men tell me,
and I really love parades.

About the Author: Patricia Wellingham-Jones

November 2, 2018

The Geography of Longing by Pat West

I depart Seattle and spend three and a half hours
tracing cornfields and mountains from my window.
The plane tilts in to O’Hare, last leg of a last-minute

decision to attend my thirtieth-class reunion.
I park the rental car and head for the gymnasium.
It’s not my imagination or the Washington wine,

I know it’s you next to me when I climb to the top
of the bleachers, sit in the same spot
where you gave me your letterman’s jacket.

Moments jiggle loose, like senior year
you were voted most likely to be first to the moon
and you said this little bitty town wasn’t enough.

Later when Buzz and I dance to It’s My Party,
I keep thinking any minute you might show up
and cut in. Certain when you arrive we’ll act

like explorers searching for a lost city, and uncover
buried artifacts proving first love never dies.
There are two stoplights now.

One’s at the end of Main Street, the Y
where all you guys would hang U-turns
dragging Main Street over and over Saturday nights.

The scent of longing trails me.
I navigate the room asking classmate after classmate
if anyone kept in touch or found you on Facebook.

About the Author: Pat West

October 29, 2018

Nostalgia by Æverett

just the fingertips
and the lips in a kiss
cold wind on chimes
and the argument is dead.

forget the other times
the boy is mine.
the boy is mine.

under covers cotton blooming
dark across the picture frame
a needle in the form of my name
we never saw it in the corner, looming.

just a twitch
and the whisper of a wish
forgotten on the shine of a star
and toted down into the dark place.

the distance is long too far
the boy is gone.
the boy is gone.

love on the tip of a tongue
barbed and numb
prone to breaking – others.

it’s not fair, so maybe we should just stay in bed.

About the Author: Æverett

Æverett lives in the northern hemisphere and enjoys Rammstein and Star Trek. He writes both poetry and fiction and dabbles in gardening and soap making. She has two wonderfully old cats, and a dearly beloved dog. He also plays in linguistics, studying German, Norwegian, Russian, Arabic, a bit of Elvish, and developing Cardassian. Language is fascinating, enlightening, and inspirational. She’s happily married to her work with which she shares delusions of demon hunters, detectives, starships, androids, and a home on the outskirts of a small northern town. He’s enjoyed writing since childhood and the process can be downright therapeutic when it’s not making him pull his hair out. It’s really about the work and words and seeing without preconceptions.

October 21, 2018

Make-Up by Patricia Wellingham-Jones

I stopped with the serious cosmetics –
foundation, blush, powder, all the eye stuff –
as a young nurse working back east
in an old brick hospital,
long wards cooled only by ceiling fans.

When the mask melted
and goo ran down my face,
dripped from nose and chin
to patients’ sheets and bandages
I’d had enough. Hustled to the bathroom
mid-shift to scrub my face.

That’s when I reverted to original skin.
I did keep lipstick, which I still wear
mostly to keep my lips from cracking.
For a long time the eyes
still got their gloss.

After neck surgery and nerve-damaged hands,
mascara, liner and shadow left my eyes peering
as if from a sad raccoon’s face.
I’ve grown comfortable in my own skin,
glad to put the masks away.

About the Author: Patricia Wellingham-Jones

October 11, 2018

Fertilization by Lisa Zaran

Counting the years of his absence,
the child’s repetition, I stand at the
door smoking a cigarette.

Ashes land like snowflakes on the
step of a bright Spring day.

My father sits inside a small box
with his eyes closed.

I paid cash for his ashes. Carried
them home on the floorboard of my
pickup.

Guru in seclusion, flesh and action
trapped. My father breathes motes,

flecks of dust, particles preserved
in a bed of pleura.

Deep inside a barefoot lung I empathize

About the Author: Lisa Zaran

Lisa Zaran is the author of eight collections of poetry including Dear Bob Dylan, If It We, The Blondes Lay Content and the sometimes girl. She is the founder and editor of Contemporary American Voices. When not writing, Zaran spends her days in Maricopa county jails assisting women with remembering their lost selves.