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 Jones of Lothlorien Poetry Journal  for publishing my two poems today.

https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2021/11/two-poems-by-linda-imbler.html

The Bone Shop

 

Collectors lurch up a set of narrow, dark stairs.

Within their chests they feel a hot wave of desire,

to procure one or more of these vendibles.

 

There’s stark sensations skeletons feel without their former cover,

the body’s framework on display, 

now deposed from the seats of the wealthy only by death.

 

These were not the fallen,

nor the ignored.

 

These were those who walked grand halls

in affluent mansions,

ones once dressed in satin,

who strode carrying sapphire handbags,

and pearl handled walking sticks.

 

Enthusiasts can spend one whole evening sifting through skulls,

upon which sits the sweetness of vanity.

 

Shoppers can spend one whole evening

scrutinizing the singular beauty of various limbs,

to find the best rarities.

 

Some hobbyists prefer scrounging through 

the grouped league of broken parts in a bin,

considering the detailing of fatigue for the older bones.

 

All evaluating the incontestable beauty of the eggshell and alabaster surfaces,

hoping the ownership of at least one item

may bring a bit of luck toward accruing their own prosperity.

Andromeda

For me, my fate was always to get eaten,

A princess born in Ethiopia,

But Perseus and I were never beaten,

Despite the brag of Cassiopeia.

 

I, Greek, long ago set up to be victimized,

By the sea monster Cetus, whale-like beast,

My once chained maiden’s myth now crystalized,

My body, mind, and soul unleashed. 

 TO ALL VETERANS TODAY OF ANY BRANCH:  THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE

Toy Soldiers

My father made them when he was a boy.

Made them from liquid lead poured into molds.

My brother and I played with them frequently

for years as we planned our war strategies and our futures.

They were as much a part of our childhood

as any other toys we had.

How brave they were!

We used to imagine the lives that they led,

their names, where they had come from.

We gave them personalities

based on the people we'd met or observed.

So much that we knew about life

was assigned to those toy soldiers.

Like all good soldiers,

they sacrificed themselves for our sake,

as they melted in the house fire of 1979.

They took our place

to burn while the rest of us were away.

I'm glad we saluted them

and thanked them for their service

while we had the chance.

© Imbler, 2017

The Value of Shadows by Linda Imbler

June 2018

The remains of the night’s rain lay soggy upon

the waterlogged branches of limp, bowed trees,

appearing as the hunched, angled, stooped

backs of many old men walking here.

I caught a shape in the mist that

reminded me of you, or

perhaps I was just imagining

you and your soldiers returning

to the spot you had fought so hard to hold.

As the sun peeked through,

I remembered these were only trees,

although I gratefully recall it was here,

sixty years ago,

that your battalion won the day.

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

Vivian In Her Dressing Gown

  She weaves across the room,

wearing the shade of lilac, silk,

after a night of flamboyant festivity.

 

Her larynx chilled and stilled

until she has drunk her coffee before the mirror.

There’s a massive punch of hangover still in her head.

She’s one of the fermentationally advantaged,

with some of the squirmiest kidneys on the block.

 

She’s feeling faintly ashamed;

as faint as shame can feel without being nonexistent,

while she slogs through a sloppy compaction of memory.

 

There’s faint images through that brain fog,

of a good time had by all, 

as they behaved like a rambunctious platoon on leave,

and she with her hair swinging,

like a windblown colt as she danced into the dawn,

while her company tried to pull down the house.

 

But this morning, she’s still unsold on sobriety,

and she makes no other answer to the challenge 

that perhaps enough is enough,

than to pick up her jolly dust pan,

and sweep up every clue that last night was overdone.

The Tears That Flew Me Home

  

While I was across the ocean, 

a golden bird I saw.

To that one bird’s voice were added many.

The cacophony caused within me such little effect.

 

Yet, when I heard the Nightingale’s lamentable tone,

so powerful, so beautiful,

so sudden a change came.

 

No flaxen wings sit upon the body of this bird,

brown and hidden in the night.

His melody, the only evidence he exists.

He gets a frozen bill after finding his mate,

but his song continues to speak to me,

and the feeling of what I missed most

sits upon my lashes.

 

There is no such bird in my country,

only the memory of the tears that flew me back home.