POETRY: Poetry by Reggie Drake

The Ultimate Art.

Twists and integrates parallel components into a single, breathing entity.

Like the painter who uses pencils and pastels to form his masterpiece,

black and white transforms into blues and yellows and,

2-d transmutes to 3-d creating images so dynamic they appear to pop off the page.

Capable of speaking without an utterance, this art form betokens unspoken expression.

An outlet for artistic impulses the pulsate rhythmically throughout the body and onto paper.

Powerful presumptions of times gone by, of emotions that have been secluded and confined behind human frame of mind.

Words weaving and ducking and twisting and turning into something unimaginable....

Life after Death:

The unspoken spoken word

POETRY: Forgotten by Reggie Drake

Leave me now.

You rainy, downtrodden days where,

My head used to lay in silent agony upon the withering perch.

I fade.

And Lose myself in melancholy beats and drown in the perpetual river of my own self-inflicted despair.

Laying back on granddad's rocking chair and drifting off into a seemingly everlasting slumber.

A distortion of colors and images formulate into nightmares and frightening memories of

Those rainy, downtrodden days where I lay.

Hoping and praying upon the self-luminous cosmos that decorate the monotonous night for peace of mind and a reprieve;

From yesteryears mistakes and missteps that I have repeated so incessantly that they have become habitual.

I cant stop,

but I want to,

or do I?

My mind and my body becoming the antithesis of one another; paradoxes like a hedonistic malcontent.

Negative pictures and images have been re-modified into positive ones with a little cropping here and editing there;

And a lot of self-reflection that brings the panorama of my inner essence together

Forget me,

Just as i have forgotten you,

You dismal memories of how I used to be.

How I used to think,

how i used to breathe,

how i used to live.

All i discard from the garb that now covers and conceals a silent rebirth.

Ancestors used to roll but now they smile in idyllic graves at the sight of me in my newest form.

Some memories you cherish forever within the picture frame in your mind,

But others you forget.

Just as i have finally forgotten.

POETRY: Untitled by Reggie Drake

It was a placid day in Fall;

And a monotonous one.

The world seemed to slow down and revolve counterclockwise as today started looking more and more like yesterday.

The vivid color of the world would dissipate as the black and white of night crept through the celestial sphere that surrounds the repetitive cycle that has come to embody my everyday life.

Its like deja vu over and over again.

Seeing similar faces in familiar places starts to put a toll on my soul as a yearning for something more; something different, begins to take over.

I start searching,

And wandering.

Hoping for a break in the familiar and the emergence of an unpredictable phenomena to stem the incessant tide.

I find nothing.

Nothing but the colorless, insipid society I have come to loathe.

The prosaic structure of secular education drags on for seemingly forever,

As i silently wait for the ensuing bell to toll its dreary toll.

Walking waywardly home, I remember.

Time began to stop; or it seemed to.

It all happened so fast, like a blur, the expeditious arrival of a deadly jet black convertible collides and pulverizes my left side.

I lay motionless.

My heartbeat suddenly stops and i experience a shortness of breath.

..... The world seems so different now.

I see the color of the sirens and the cries from animated faces shrieking in horror.

My eyes close into slits as the newness of this environment fades into a blur.

The subsequent blackness enshrouds me;

And I have never felt more alive.

POETRY: Doppleganger by Reggie Drake

I hear silence... and then a creak.

Moonlight glistens through the window of my chamber and my ear picks up the door,

Closing ever so softly and slowly,

Foreboding the ominous entry of an anomaly that has anonymously breached the sanctity of a shelter, that has existed or rather co-existed with the timeless, shadowy night.

I tiptoe across the slippery floor.

I hug the walls of my abode and the sharp, repetitious thud of my heartbeat becomes a stark contrast to the deadly silence that has come to personify these dark hours.

I feel a draft.

A chill envelopes the air as i approach my unsuspecting invader.

He turns and I stare, his frightening persona terrifying yet familiar.

I see myself in his eyes, a mirror-like reflection of my inner most evil.

Inwardly I shutter at the sudden realization that we are two halves of the same whole,

juxtaposed together for the first time like black and white; light and dark.

My mind goes in a hundred different directions as I struggle to put together the pieces of my peculiar predicament.

This stranger,

This doppleganger,

An image generated by my psyche,

A personification of that inner self I had locked away long ago.

I shutter at the thought as a sudden loss of mental awareness sends me spiraling to the floor gracefully and eloquently like the white swan; with the dramatic theatrics of one clad in black.

...........

Three days.

Four.

I lose count, as i awake to white walls and dozens of doses and medications.

POETRY: 'BURN' by Janae LaGayle Byrd

let us burn
let us sizzle in the cracks , but then i think back
back to what we were
back to the good times
back to the bad times
back to the love that kept us inseparable
but then i fast forward to the us i know now
to the person i once upon a time couldn't live without
you
see faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
now you're a faded picture , and I'm just a subtle day dream
see now you're my bestfriend , and although we'll love each other to the end
i sometimes think of the us back then , the us that burned a indefinite place in my heart
sometimes i can't get over that we are apart
see, i didn't die physically but emotionally i was buried
and its funny now because I'm back on top , and better than you will ever be

CopyRight 2011 | Janae LaGayle Byrd

POETRY: 'PEOPLE' by Robert Drake

It was all over the news,
another reason why
society deplored my People.
Frenzied images of a horde
that ravaged the television
screen advised children to shield
their eyes and
the smell of blood fumigated the
room so that it became our
oxygen.
This symphony of
death and revolution was
contrite, yet intricately beautiful
like
*the shattering of glass against something unforgiving.*
Unforgiving like the
callous nature of the government
believed to protect us
but instead deject us
and reject us
like aborted babies and
youth that refused to grow old.
Fear of the future
haunt our present
and catapults our eternal spirits
into a vortex of spiraling insecurity
and mass panic.
The tenor of the bard of death
signals the knell of the Reaper
who even weeps
at the blood that seeps
from the cheek
of my People,
who battle and scourge each other
until they couldn't
breathe happiness nor love.
My People, who are People,
not a race, but a brilliance
that stands for its own light
and not by
the darkness that
festers and
takes its own
blood.

CopyRight 2011 | Robert Drake
*inspired by "Shattered" by Benache Dore*

POETRY: 'PEOPLE' by Robert Drake

It was all over the news,
another reason why
society deplored my People.
Frenzied images of a horde
that ravaged the television
screen advised children to shield
their eyes and
the smell of blood fumigated the
room so that it became our
oxygen.
This symphony of
death and revolution was
contrite, yet intricately beautiful
like
*the shattering of glass against something unforgiving.*
Unforgiving like the
callous nature of the government
believed to protect us
but instead deject us
and reject us
like aborted babies and
youth that refused to grow old.
Fear of the future
haunt our present
and catapults our eternal spirits
into a vortex of spiraling insecurity
and mass panic.
The tenor of the bard of death
signals the knell of the Reaper
who even weeps
at the blood that seeps
from the cheek
of my People,
who battle and scourge each other
until they couldn't
breathe happiness nor love.
My People, who are People,
not a race, but a brilliance
that stands for its own light
and not by
the darkness that
festers and
takes its own
blood.
*inspired by "Shattered" by Benache Dore*
CopyRight 2011 | Robert Drake