my fate by Charles Bukowski

like the fox
I run with the hunted
and if I'm not
the happiest man
on earth
I'm surely the
luckiest man
alive.

Spectrum Disorder

Look at life
through a twisted prism
and the colours come out wrong.
Red's violet
and the orange is yellow;
while the green's completely gone.

There's only one,
a single shade -
that still rings faintly true.
It's the tone you'll find
at the bottom of the ocean;
a deepest, darkest blue.

Fond by Joletta Thorburn

Arms reach toward you like branches
Surrounding the expanse of the mass
That lies beside me on soft furnishings
Searching for breath, for a resting place
Intertwined in your embrace.
Can’t even call you a lover

Or even a brother for that would cause concern.
Dear friend would be more fitting
For there be a clear, deep fondness
So gentle, uncomplicated and pure that I would like to share with you
4 giant words: I REALLY ( really ) LIKE YOU.
Could fall asleep beside you and forget to mow the lawn.

From: Abracadabra Boombastic

Fuck by Kim Addonizio

There are people who will tell you
that using the word fuck in a poem
indicates a serious lapse
of taste, or imagination,

or both. It’s vulgar,
indecorous, an obscenity
that crashes down like an anvil
falling through a skylight

to land on a restaurant table,
on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.
But if you were sitting
over coffee when the metal

hit your saucer like a missile,
wouldn’t that be the first thing
you’d say? Wouldn’t you leap back
shouting, or at least thinking it,

over and over, bell-note riotously clanging
in the church of your brain
while the solicitous waiter
led you away, wouldn’t you prop

your shaking elbows on the bar
and order your first drink in months,
telling yourself you were lucky
to be alive? And if you wouldn’t

say anything but Mercy or Oh my
or Land sakes, well then
I don’t want to know you anyway
and I don’t give a fuck what you think

of my poem. The world is divided
into those whose opinions matter
and those who will never have
a clue, and if you knew

which one you were I could talk
to you, and tell you that sometimes
there’s only one word that means
what you need it to mean, the way

there’s only one person
when you first fall in love,
or one infant’s cry that calls forth
the burning milk, one name

that you pray to when prayer
is what’s left to you. I’m saying
in the beginning was the word
and it was good, it meant one human

entering another and it’s still
what I love, the word made
flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one
whose lovely body I want close,

and as we fuck I know it’s holy,
a psalm, a hymn, a hammer
ringing down on an anvil,
forging a whole new world.

Absence by Elizabeth Jennings

I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: Fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

Leaving Home by Jackie Kay

On the night that I was leaving
the old waves were high;
I lay small inside the dark
as the waves tore me apart.

On the night that I was leaving
I was strewn around the cabin
my body belonged to the boat
as the waves tore me apart.

On the night that I was leaving
to try and make a new start
I felt sick to my stomach
as the waves tore me apart.

On the night that I was leaving
the wind battered at the boat;
I tried to still my broken heart
as the waves tore me apart.

Toilet by Hugo Williams

I wonder will I speak to the girl
sitting opposite me on this train.
I wonder will my mouth open and say,
'Are you going all the way
to Newcastle?' or 'Can I get you a coffee?'
Or will it simply go 'aaaaah'
as if it had a mind of its own?

Half closing eggshell blue eyes,
she runs her hand through her hair
so that it clings to the carriage cloth,
then slowly frees itself.
She finds a brush and her long fair hair
flies back and forth like an African fly-whisk,
making me feel dizzy.

Suddenly, without warning,
she packs it all away in a rubber band
because I have forgotten to look out
the window for a moment.
A coffee is granted permission
to pass between her lips
and does so eagerly, without fuss.

A tunnel finds us looking out the window
into one another's eyes. She leaves her seat,
but I know that she likes me
because the light saying 'TOILET'
has come on, a sign that she is lifting
her skirt, taking down her pants
and peeing all over my face.

Nulla Dies Sine Linea by V. Penelope Pelizzon

On my birthday

A crow guffaws, dirty man throwing the punch of his

one joke. And now, nearer, a murder

answers, chortling from the pale hill’s brow.

From under my lashes’ wings they stretch

clawed feet. There the unflappable years

perch and stare. When I squint, when I

grin, my new old face nearly hops

off my old new face. Considering what’s flown,

what might yet fly, I lean my chin

on the palm where my half-cashed fortune lies.