Thank you to Michael Grover of Museum of Poetry for publishing my poem today.

https://museumofpoetry.org/imbler1

Dreadful Dreams

Dear Loser,

From Anonymous.

Some are born to hate.

Some are bred

within the plastic box.

Technology-based concealment 

reveals quarrels

with those they’ve never seen.

Manifested as wild wrath,

to harsh anger,

to burdening rage.

IP addresses camouflaged,

a deep plague immersing

a frightful army 

of copper wires, fingers,

facelessness.

An audience of watchers,

set mute,

a great bargain of entertainment

with no good sights.

The anguished apprehension

of targeted prey,

really worthy of charity.

Target’s bewilderment dreamed 

in the nightmare

of tears wrung.

Thank you to Red Focks and his time at Alien Buddha Press for
publishing my poem today.

Stranger in a Strange Land

My box of photos,

inherited,

spread over the floor.

Within this collection

sits one lone photo

standing apart from the rest.

He has cornflower hair,

and a petulant lower lip,

but the eyes express

his stature.

Someone whose fate was pure or not.

Whose posture is this or that.

Who was he?

He who has no pulse.

He who has no want.

This picture taken,

in a fixed place

with a shadowed name.

Where was this?

His uniform tells

of his state of grace,

even when peace

was lost and terror

stormed the land.

It speaks to his now idled valor,

displays the past virtue.

It tells of his ancient sacrifice,

and the dust of the valiant.

If you listen, you will hear

the trill and thrill of tears

that sounded as explosions

were hitting the ground,

and the heavy anvil of fame

he and his fellows carried,

though now anonymous.

A memory, 

a nations’s backward look.

Within their photos,

they, motionless

now in time and space.

Here is the Norwegian translation of 

my poem from the talented poet

Svanhild Løvli.

Fog

Fog

rolls back

to reveal

all the colors,

gauze-like mist dropping from in front of eyes.

Original title: Fog

 TÅKE

 Tåka driver vekk

 for å avsløre 

 alle fargene

 drypper fra

 gasbind-aktig dis

 foran øyne.

translated by svanhild.løvli

Gjøvik, Norway 

Celaine Charles, who manages Steps In Between, asked for uplifting Spring poetry for National Poetry Month.  She published this piece of mine.

Clear Window ~By Linda Imbler

My early admiration

of dawn’s neon vibrancy,

through cold window panes,

on a crystalline morning.

The normal thick traffic

of feathered creatures

which passed across the yard-

absent.

What lay on the ground,

a small bird,

clearly in need of rescue,

its tiny wings semaphoring at me-

someone’s abandoned child.

In time, I healed it without naming it,

and on the day of its release

wondered to where it might now fly.

And although present time is unique,

thus, it is so for later days

my hope, that some echo of kindness

will fly into my future.

This is paid back yearly,

when my plumaged friend

returns each Spring,

and peeks through

my clear window,

and waves at me.

Thank you to Storm and her team at The Writers & Readers Magazine for publishing 4 of my poems today.  Here is one 
that I hope will inspire all of us to make lemonade while 
lemons are flying past our heads.

At the Very Edge of Courage

Develop the daring of a lion

and the intrepidity of an adventurer.

Create a reservoir of mettle and pluck.

Increase fortitude as you persevere

through the murkiest dark along 

any highway of people.

For who else should you depend on when things collapse?

How will you record your own history,

even as you walk into the present,

still unknown at that moment?

Run or be run over?  

We must speak of the third option:

stand strong and carry as much as you can

and lay out your energies for others’ sake.

Do all this while attaining your own ideal,

for the worst of humanity does not understand

that one must make a difference in a good way,

and the best are too busy loving others to judge.

Thank you very much to Editor Jim Lewis of Verse-Virtual 
for publishing my poem.

http://www.verse-virtual.org

The Novel Woman Until Her End of Days

She sits bolt upright,

throws back sheets,

steals out for a look at the dawn.

The new her,

reinvented in the dead of night.

Novel perceptions of the world,

and what her brain constructed,

ready to greet the universe.

Change is inevitable.

Sidewalks are not the same from moment to moment.

And train cars repopulate frequently.

Her memories being unreliable,

made up or altered in the intervening hours.

Her time for that peaceful valley is not yet at hand,

and although there is some fault in every road,

some are bleaker, some less so.

So she’ll walk those roads and climb those mountains,

for to do anything less would be a grand waste.

She’ll decide today was made for her,

and be glad.

And tonight,

it will be written anew.

Thank you very much to NilavroNill Shoovro and 

his team for publishing my three poems in the April 

issue of Our Poetry Archive (OPA).

https://ourpoetryarchive.blogspot.com/2020/04/linda-imbler.html

Placeholders

There are people with whom you do not stay

romantically involved.

Their presence and bond quite fleeting,

the connection dissolves.

The ones who occupy your attention for a time,

those you’ll forever dub

as placeholders, who remain

until your true love does show up.

The De-Evolution Of Bandaids

Remember when bandaids came in a tin box

instead of flimsy cardboard?

It’s as if the hurts

don’t need to be protected as much as they once were.

The glamour and illusion of safety

in childhood is today dispelled

whiskered chins

and palsied hands

offer no safekeeping

and the mitigation of unhappiness

is no longer a hope

the illusion of size to security,

shattered

falling is still an option,

but now it’s so much harder to get back up.

The Fruits Of Their Gluttony

Like grapes plucked

and placed in a huge bowl of fruit,

perched upon a buffet

for folks to find,

anxieties,

deep within

their whirling, swirling minds.

Life complicated

by dreams unfulfilled,

and the rapacity,

the bottomless pit

of wasted desires.

No contentment,

just resentment,

and bitter remnants

of now useless peels of hate as produce,

strewn across chaotic sideboards,

where live

people with greedy intentions.