Intermission 

Good, kind Tim died on Tuesday, 

He should've ended right there, 

But the faeries didn't want him yet, 

His soul just floated on the air. 

He landed in the lost land of Oolmuk,

Where angels and demons coexist, 

It was a pleasant sensation to be in a place, 

Where fear, loneliness and hatred aren’t missed. 

And here among such entities, 

He dwelt for many years, 

When at last he felt caged, and he raged, 

And he cursed the Divine through his tears. 

My Soul is so tired, my strength is so spent, 

My thoughts are confused, I wish you'd relent, 

And let me sleep the sleep of those who have felt, 

That they have been honest and productive 

with the hand they were dealt. 

So he asked the question, 

Entreated to his God, 

To truly rest must I worship you 

or just truly love others? 

So kneeling he prayed for rest and freedom, 

And at last real death befell him, 

And his new parents celebrated, 

The rebirth of good, kind Tim.

                                                    Time As Harlequin

Some strange trick of the mind, sleight-of-hand, time’s hands?

Idleness or fixed energy? Cards,

quickly shuffled. Hocus-pocus. The fast

card shuffler’s hands. Prestidigitation.

Pace, disguised as standard routine,

felt as fast or slow;

thus, we register our accomplishments done

by the ticking of the clock or,

the turning of the world.

Those routine beats of time,

sped up, not standard,

Or slowed down.

Our false system of reckoning,

calendars

flap quickly through their phases as if by legerdemain,

wizards of time shift the measuring.

The same degree of hour,

second, or minute altered,

grown longer or shorter by our accursed invitation,

to watch the harlequin perform,

we lose count

of the acquisition and reward

for tasks and projects completed,

only in retrospect, at the end

does deft trickery stop.

 

Growth for the sake of growth 

is the ideology of the cancer cell. 

Edward Abbey

The Stone Man

The stone man, weak from chemo

Stood in front of the elevator doors,

Classic features on the beautiful face,

His frame and contours fragile,

If tipped over, he would break.

How I wish to have had

This statue in my home

At another time

When the craze and cracks were not so apparent.

But he is now beyond my reach to acquire

And with that I am at peace,

For another art lover claims him

And will add him to his collection.

And this collector, known to me,

Will cherish the stone man

As much as I.

 

Thank you to Editor Sand Pilarski for publishing my poem today!

https://www.pikerpress.com/article/11850/osmium/

Osmium

By Linda Imbler

Osmium

Blue-white brittleness
densifies the heart,
then heavy lies our thoughts and feelings.
We begin acting as strangers do.

For the old woman wandering alone
after the heavy door to her past is shut,
and the old man in the crowd wearing white whiskers,
slipping his heart in his pocket.

Tears swell in the eyes of not just the old.

The black-frocked goth horse-girl rides by.
She’s not immune to dreaming of what might be,
within a world whose sky can reflect a million hues of blue.

The boy drenched to the bone by tears,
who feels he’s in a world with
too many words in its head,
when all he needs to say and hear is “I love you.”

What do we do to brush away the pain before there 
will be no place to sing and dance,
when there seems to be no cure
for the many kinds of sadness and all our deepest regrets?

The time is right for getting back to sharing loaves and fish,
bringing forth the doers, thinkers, praisers, and empathizers.

There’s not a moment to lose.

Thank you to the grooviest, swirliest dudes I know, MH Clay

(Michael) and Johnny R. Olson for publishing my homage to 

Ernest Hemingway.

https://madswirl.com/poetry/2026/04/channeling-papa/

Channeling Papa

by Linda Imbler  April 14, 2026

The sun is looking low in the sky,
from this point on the horizon,
sailboats flying prone.

There are people dancing
at the Sunset Celebration in Mallory Square.

I guess it’s not so bad,
being air lifted from Africa
with a broken back.
When I learn how to walk again,
I’ll join the lucky ones on Duval Street.

In the meantime,
I’ll just let the mojitos flow
and baptize something.
That should be enough
to conquer all my shadows.

editors note: 

Nobody did it better! – mh clay

Thank you to Elliot M. Rubin of Rhyme Time for accepting 

one of my poems for inclusion in the Michael J. Fox Parkinson's 

Foundation Anthology.  The Anthology has not been published 

yet, so more coming later about this project. 

 Thank you to Doug Stuber of Heron Clan for 

accepting my poem.

Applauding The Page

How does inquiry begin in one’s head?

The answer is quite possibly

that it starts

near the magic of the archives 

where we discover the intrigue of emphatically vertical shelves;

used bookstores most noted attributes,

carrying:

a variety of tutorials,

the most eccentric ideologies of philosophers seeking truth,

poetry that shows tremendous range of emotions.

The emotional appeal of used bookstores 

is that they serve as a conduit to future worlds, 

or feudal lores

where, within pages, is found evidence of antiquity.   

The histories of ancient nations   

stand as castles of our most mental challenges.

There are also important works

on the fragility of humankind.

Patronizing a bookstore,

filled with writings,

frees us from too tight a niche of thought,

and lets us enjoy the gray of erudite contemplations.

Whether meeting a novel for the first time,

or renewing old acquaintances,

for a little while,

until bloodshot eyes set in,

and too full of a brain

demands we step back,

we can enjoy

woody scented charms,

books made of paper from trees.

Try it,

the walk through the forests will be stunning.