Thank you to NilavroNill Shoovro and the editorial team at Our Poetry Archive (OPA) for publishing my three poems in the December issue.

https://ourpoetryarchive.blogspot.com/2020/12/linda-imbler.html

People In Planes

 

To where are they going, the flying masses?

 

What is each member of this rank and file leaving behind?

 

To which dream are they headed,

the ordinary and the uncommon both?

 

People in planes; their physical luggage stored in the cargo hold.

 

Within themselves, they carry:

 

Hopes always waiting just beyond the horizon.

Memories of love and hate, who made them cry or laugh.

Habits laid into those brain folds created by their routine practice.

Understandings sharpened by having empathy for others.

Biases born of fear or familiarity, either for or against any idea.

Knowledge they have now that they didn’t have last week, month, year.

Mistakes they haven’t learned how to stop repeating.

Pain or joy too soon forgotten.

 

Expanding their perspectives

if they will only look out the window,

and past the wings.

The Best Qualities Of Man

 

Give love to the sorrowful.

Faith to the dead.

Peace to the distressed

crying their tears out.

Hard times leave our truths exposed.

And as the honest bare,

the liars cloak.

Highest regard and respect

to our gentlest hearts.

December Ways

 

This is not the month of hope,

But only one of want,

That the highest will happen,

At this time always sought.

 

Other days may fill the bill,

And provide glad promise.

For today, supply the bent,

Future grants what hope gives.

 

 Thank you to Glory Sasikala of GloMag for publishing my poem in the November issue.

https://glomaglib.blogspot.com/…/…/glomag-november-2020.html

Kite’s Eye

The dimming of those strange stars brings the day,

as our own familiar orb slowly advances upwards like a kite,

her string let out gently by an unknown hand,

her periphery disturbed only by fire’s touch.

Yet one day she’ll be old and lame,

getting up will be harder,

the dimensions of that kite having shrunk,

her morning’s eye turned cloudy,

that same eye turning back toward our sphere

without ever again looking at us.

 Thank you to Herojit Philem of Literary Garland for publishing my two poems in the November issue.

https://literary-garland.blogspot.com/2020/11/poems-by-linda-imbler.html

Moving Mountains
 
 
Now there will be new and quite different stages to conquer,
fear, guilt, and useless bargains offered.
Guitars and ukes she puts aside to make room
for his failing body’s needs.
 
A perfectly mapped out trail becomes an ancient pathway.
One trod by many, over centuries of time.
In spite of others’ lack of success,
she will still fight the good fight,
although numb and wretched.
 
Backpacking up the mountain searching cures for his health’s sake,
scrambling among the hard scrubbed brush,
moving weeds out of the way by herself,
hewing aside all sharp-edged blockades,
hoping, blood from hands mingling with tears.
 
That sky of God seen from so clear above
as she sings to him. Sweet Father, surely from here
my music suggests what dear peace we need to make us whole again.
We have always together been on our way up.
My strong clear entreaty for closure is not meant
 
to suggest he has become inconvenient.
We need your healing melodic hymn to serenade us.
Today, He has answered with a refrain
intoned sweetly, sung from Heaven,
 
and let him enter the world of eternal music.
Now she’s at the place where pitons do not matter.
One of them has fallen in the end.
She listens no longer for the ballad from the top,
taking this last descent alone.

Too Many Stars

Saving a life, breaking the law,
choosing, which to do.
Outlaws require chutzpah,
and courage imbued.
 
Planetary jurisprudence,
humanity unpolluted,
little ones not willed away;
adopting children offers grace.
 
Somewhere siblings are forbidden,
if there’s a slip up, must they kill one?
If there are too many kids,
do we oversee how many live?
 
If the world’s too overcrowded,
then,
perhaps upon the night sky

also hangs too many stars? 

Thankfulness

T-shirts and scarves,

genuine friends and relevant music,

words that make the heart sing

as well as the throat.

Nostalgic, warm memories of times gone by,

being truly alive in the moment,

magnetic hopes for the future.

The canon that a world filled with peaceful intentions

toward all, by all, will exist;

The canon that a world filled with peaceful intentions

toward all, by all, will exist;

The canon that a world filled with peaceful intentions

toward all, by all, will exist.

 Thank you to Mark Antony Rossi of Ariel Chart for publishing my poem today.

https://www.arielchart.com/2020/11/waiting-for-friday.html

Waiting For Friday 

 

Workaday energies, used Monday-Friday, draining day by day.

The regimen seldom varying from job to job to job,

and within a wishful scenario,

the spurious expectation that another new workplace will be better,

only to find status quo:

The paper design struggle of contracts,

the onerous discomfort of office chairs or 12 hours on your feet,

excessive shouting on the streets on the way to,

and in the lobbies, once arrived,

an unkind prohibition against hiding in the break-room,

that speculative pest of a clock against which you race.

 

We cannot fly above the joke,

and we suspect the employment script is rigged.

Bosses, regulation artists of 

every circular imperative, 8-5, 9-5. 9-6

or, horribly, many more minutes than that,

controlling an adherent corps of laborers.

 

Now tell yourself in the still of the night

you will escape the group sentencing,

and not be shouldering the same consequences

as given for others’ flimsy misbehaviors. 

 

And dream of the generally accepted idea that in the near future, 

you will ride some token bus for the express purpose

of guiding you to a fat bank account.

 

In the meantime, just wait for Friday.

 Thank you to Mark Antony Rossi of Ariel Chart for publishing my poem.

https://www.arielchart.com/2020/11/another-two-fingers-of-whiskey-please.html

Another Two Fingers of Whiskey Please 



There’s more folks tonight at the bar 

than on the dance floor, 

even with that majestic music playing, 

so achingly familiar. 

People wandering like half-dazed cattle, 

once thinking the music would be immutable, 

but it plays now with a silence 

so muted it’s crushing. 



The noise in those frequenters’ heads, 

grown so loud it births each a new perception, 

not sought, but still found 

like a street they falsely remember curving one way, 

when in fact, it’s curved toward the other direction. 



Time and bars are great snaking archways 

that twist all five senses, 

while stunned habitués stay focused 

on what never really mattered.

 Thank you to Mark Antony Rossi for publishing my poem in Ariel Chart.

https://www.arielchart.com/2020/11/roll-of-dice.html

Roll Of The Dice

 

In a universe full of randomness

can any roll of the dice, 

or anything rolling off of a civil tongue be profitable?

 

The shaken get tossed,

creating a jumble and tumble

of silver voices or red and black boxcars 

(those 6’s look really cool as neighbors.)

 

We, plenty armed with facts and points of view.

A straight line thrown from a grasp by supple fingers.

The strategy of an exercised wrist and tongue

as each bounces into an unknown.

 

Show your pips and your verbs,

for your success in either case

entitles you to a percent of the house,

and lets you sandwich the cash.

 

A certain energy spits,

as the second die adds to the efforts of the first.

And clarifying your spoken words

adds to the effort of the original statement.

 

We celebrate the uniqueness of each facet on the rolling bones,

and what positive phrases register in the mind.

 

Three rolls and third time spoken’s sometimes the charm.

This trilogy crushes the guilt

of any benefit you might acquire.

 

To realistically find what was sought or desired;

a great reward for keeping one’s eye on the prize.

 Big thanks to James Dennis Casey IV for publishing my work today in Cajun Mutt Press.

https://cajunmuttpress.wordpress.com

An Addict’s Notes

Every music lover has the habit.  

It’s a deep-seated desire, an addiction, but it doesn’t require rehab.  

Besides, there's no cure anyway. All that's required to feed it is a repeat button.  

It's that need, that urge, to listen to a great song over and over again 

upon first discovery and thereafter.  

At some point, you may tire of it, but not to the point that it's forgotten.  

The greatest songs require you to revisit them over a period of years, even decades.  

These songs continue to grab you, they redefine what we consider to be the five senses:  intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual.  

The song pervades any combination of these five senses to one degree or another, 

and once it has, it becomes a part of you, captures you, they call it a hook.

A hook could be all or any part of the song including, but not limited to:

Lyrics:  Dylan-Mitchell-Walker-Cohen

Riffs:  Page-Guy-Seltzer-Nelson

Technique:  Hendrix-Emmannuel-Shimabukuro-Pham Duc Thanh

Enthusiastic love of the craft:  Quiett-Howard-White-Young

Voice:  Groban- Mathis- Gibb- Zander

Genre:  Segovia- Howlin’-Paisley- Seeger

No recovery needed.

Rhythm and Blues

Rock and Roll

Folk-Country

Infinity

Listen