Thank you to Michael Clay, Johnny R. Olson, and the mad editors at the swirliest site around for publishing my poem today.  Mad Swirl

http://madswirl.com/author/limbler/

The Waiting Man Paints His Mind

featured in the poetry forum October 12, 2020  :: 0 comments

No one stops to listen
while the holy painter
describes his technique,
and why he chose his colors thus.

Even with his pitiful disassociation,
dreams of this portrait will haunt him.

None suspect his stuffed background of experiences.
This unimportant man,
this waiting man who asks the day
if anyone feels love.

A torture battles his thousand spirits,
as the sanity thief lurks,
unwilling to offer a reasoned viewpoint.

Inside this consequence,
his spooky abilities still let him manage his brush-
fresh paint thrown upon the canvas.
He shifts his emphasis
to the form of the subject,
until he completes his binding task.

And no one stops to listen, nor answer,
as this waiting man asks
if anyone feels love.

 

Thank you to Angie Tibbs and the other editors at Dissident Voice for publishing my poem today.

https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/10/in-the-days-of-lennon/

In The Days Of Lennon

by Linda Imbler / October 11th, 2020

All satisfaction afforded
in that final frontier.
But here,
we square our shoulders,
while somewhere
in our vicinity,
someone closes weary eyes
for the last time.

Those having passed,
their ghost faces rising,
their spots recently vacated,
as new folks
repeat their gestures,
and God,
with an allegorical flick,
waves them through.

They continue living
with practiced eyes,
and only at the end
do they diminish,
turning into mysterious shadows.

Nothing so dire
as falling through a crack
by virtue of
their extraordinary activities,
having been performed
throughout their lives,
within the framework
of such a revolutionary thing
as love.

 A huge thank you to Mark Antony Rossi for publishing three of my poems today on Ariel Chart.

https://www.arielchart.com

 

A Hearse Parked Under A Leafy Tree

 

I never wonder who is in a limo,

but I do reflect on who is the star passenger

in that other long, black conveyance.

 

Like that one over there,

parked under a leafy tree.

 

Having carried:

 

Cowboys who kicked up the dust with their spurred boots.

Teachers with hearts full of dreams for their students.

Physical therapists, who brought new fluency to damaged muscle.

 

Having carried those who died from:

 

The violence of a fire,

The crack of a gun,

The stilled pendulum of life’s ticking.

 

Ready to transport:

 

Those who stood strong until their elderly end.

Those who stumbled and fell in early years.

Those who knew ahead of time where they would be buried.

Those who couldn’t settle on where to settle.

And those who thought they would live forever.

 

A hearse, now still and quiet,

waiting for the next procession.

The Mandala of Healing Memory

 

The lapis lazuli stone

is used to declutter the mind.

It is also the color

of your engrossing eyes,

eyes that make all my thoughts fall forward

on top of each other,

as if the gate of my mind

has come off its hinges.

I’m haunted by thoughts of your songs.

If only the mandala

could spin back just so,

to keep those eyes just as beautiful, 

but rendered less than all-consuming,

and more hugely self-protective for me,

by their distance.

Circadia

 

On a moonless night with only the streetlight’s glare,

between snatches of sleep,

while I lie lightly dreaming under the color of night’s grey,

as the dark’s orchestra of crickets, breeze, and owls play,

laid between the choruses of feral dogs’ howls,

at this time, I imagine a long desert journey

of scorpions, rattlesnakes, and roadrunners across the sands.

I suppose purple mountains growing more royally 

robed with blue’s diffusion into the ether.

I picture swift, streaming dinghies and kayaks leaving silver wakes.

My secrets of earth, sea, and sky, wide and deep and high.

 

I imagine to slowly wake by silent morning stars 

that close their eyes against their twinkle

with the beginning of dawn.

To only hear the gentle tweet of the early birds, they who catch the worms.

 

Yet, looking out open windows, 

while my eyes adjust to the dim, 

I see steadily growing candlelight within the clouds,

as the map of my reality takes me down speedily brightening streets.

 

Forgotten reveries are replaced,

by visions of despondent beggars drunk at dawn,

the early morning screech of an overly enthusiastic jazz trombonist 

playing urban taps for an exhausted, overworked populace,

trucks’ engines thunderously rumbling as the noise of giants racing.

 

Circadia, please pull me along swiftly

to a moonless night where I lie lightly dreaming….

 Thank you to Glory Sasikala of GloMag for publishing my poem in the September/October issue.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AybcHskWG-PUVr1e-FSFmEDDLQHDdt1y/view

 Thank you to Editor Siddharth Sehgal for publishing my poem in Indian Periodical.

http://indianperiodical.com/2020/10/tight-clasp-not-yet-undone/

Tight Clasp Not Yet Undone

The melodies we revere,

so tightly float

around our fears

of what might happen to us

should we stop

intoning our spirituals.

These songs, pipe dreams

used while we illude

within our fool’s paradise.

Music as alchemy, to transform

spells of fear and dread,

into freedom

from diseases and accidents.

So, we continue to sing,

hoping to turn chants into mighty protection,

as a roof against a rain.

 Thank you to Danijela Trajkovic of A Too Powerful Word for publishing my poem today.

https://atoopowerfulword.wixsite.com/magazine/post/linda-imbler

Protective Coloration

Protective coloration,

prescribed illusions, cheating changeovers.

For predators with a hungry form,

maybe an arctic fox

with his attacking design

built around his foxy affiliation

with ice and snow.

Or, perhaps prey,

a glass octopus, transparent,

hiding from whales or sea birds.

Delicate winged butterflies,

up against a tree bark,

playing hide-and-seek with frogs and lizards.

Even those with a penchant for glamour,

spiders and peacocks, vivid, kaleidoscopic.

When all are done integrating,

what remains is a safe and happy life.

Humanity,

polychromatic sculptures

with an external, laid wrap of skin.

Humanity, a distorted spoil

by those who speak sin,

descended from some primitive wrong.

We, without the constant lock

of all the light that

potentially shines from inside us,

using our colorations

to hide that glow.

For now, humanity,

misused figures only forged

in the image of the bound.

 Thank you to Steve Cawte of Impspired for publishing my work today.

https://impspired.com/2020/10/01/linda-imbler-4/

The Sum Total Of All Their Longing

Amid the huge awakening, after the long silence,
flowers of love give out to the world the scent of new bloom.
Be never mistaken that life is worth living.
Energies conferred upon both man and woman,
two radiant monarchs crowned with passion.
At mountain’s peak,
as gloominess turns to illumination,
the best of this twosome will stand revealed,
the sum total of all their longing,
one grand note taken onward within the song
of this pair of hearts.

In A Petri Dish
A study of past times and seasons will advance our progress
toward our making dynamic, yet logical changes.
Alterations that help emphasize our being alive,
and imbue us with keener perception
as we catch each new vision.
 
The old days remain as they were,
but gardeners with better tools grow new fruit,
spread the roots of civility,
and fulfill the sunset’s promise
of peace in our time.
 
We, the enquiring world aspirants,
on a vast scale,
because none can do it alone.
Only by building our rafts,
using trusty lathes
with unifying symmetry around their axis,
can we hope to float upon friendship’s grace,
above gentle streams of goodwill,
and only then will we finally
be able to drink from those same waters.
 
We’ll celebrate
a new examination of Earth’s petri dish,
that will reveal our close embrace
of splendid and golden days.
 
Hats off to us, then,
for exposing our true worth.