Nice to see you.




Order Lone Wolf World via Amazon or above
2018 Best New Talent - Short and Sweet Festival Sydney
2014 Pushcart Prize nominee. (more)

Books:



Get a weekly post delivered straight to your email. Email Subscribe to anthonyjlangford2@yahoo.com.au

MH-17: A Poem for the Taken





The United


Scattered nations
Scattered remnants
Shredded metal
White flags and body bags
The cold indoctrinated hover with hardware
Absurdly camouflaged
As though we cannot see what they are.

All a charade for the theatre rats
The stories are already terminated
Prior to conclusions
And jubilant peaks
And natural downs
Hearts of longing
Dreams out of reach
But within sight
Others still yet to dream.

Varying tongues and colours
Genes and ideas
Universally wrapped
In location
With a common goal
A succinct pilgrimage
Outcomes innocently undetermined
Now fastened as one
Ironically stitched by the severance
A sealed collective
Bound in our memory’s
Cottoned in compassion
Pooled in tears
And the endless abyss of our affections.

It’s a Journey without end
Together
In perpetuity
The United.




There will never be Justice. Only hope for some peace for the families.

My Books




The things we do for love


Max Liebermann



Love like blood


There’s blood across the kitchen
All over me
Barry Carberry
My guts are hanging out
And I’m trailing the past behind.

Slimy broken relationships
Sinuous and weeping
Failures caustic, red hot
I’ve tried to make amends
Yet it’s still not satisfactory.

So I say, it’s all here
Laid out bare
What else do you want?

You’re hiding something, she insists
You asshole!
Why do you do this to me?

What are you talking about? I have nothing left to give.
My entrails slop onto the floor and my legs give way.

I should be enough for you!

You are but…

What do you need friends for? Female friends?

I don’t care about them anymore. Or anyone. I swear.
richardepowell.wordpress.com/

Liar!                                                          

My hip disintegrates and my spine wriggles on the floor
Like a bony snake.
I just need something for myself.

You selfish bastard!

Defeated, my heart flops like a deflated puffer fish
Trying to swim away
I scoop it up and shove it back in the muck
But it doesn't fit anymore.

God you are so narcissistic.

Maybe. I guess. But …

No fucking buts. I’ve had it.

*coughing* I think I have to.

Only thinking of yourself. So typical.

Time for one last thought.

She’s still not happy.









Feel free to replace Woman with Man or Man with Man or Woman with Woman. You know the drill (to the head).


Next post,
A new Video.

Famous After Death #3 - Emily Dickinson


Only verified photograph





































Poor Emily Dickinson.

Fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. Despite some time away from the family home for study in her teens, she spent the majority of her life at the family home. Though burdened with a sick mother in her mid twenties, she chose to stay indoors, earning the reputation of recluse, particularly for the last twenty years of her life. Often she would stay in her room altogether, especially when visitors came. She died unmarried at the age of fifty six.




Family home





















It wasn't until her death that her younger sister discovered exactly how much Emily had written. An initial collection was published four years later, but wasn't until seventy years after that, in 1955, that the full unaltered collection appeared.

Emily's reputation is well known throughout the world, particularly in America, but why was she so overlooked during her lifetime?






'Wild Nights'



The first publication of her posthumous work in 1880 was criticized as were subsequent releases. She wrote simply but in slant rhyme, (imperfect rhyme) which was not popular at the time. Her topics often included death, a subject she discussed with friends. She was close to her cousin who died when Emily was fourteen and this left her traumatized. Other deaths over the years also affected her greatly.

Some might say that Emily suffered melancholy or agoraphobia (read depression and anxiety). Perhaps if she had been prescribed drugs, she wouldn't have shut herself away and wrote as prolifically as she did. Being so mysterious, there is much conjecture about her life, though we do know, that she yearned to be accepted as a poet. A wish unfulfilled, certainly during her lifetime.







I can imagine her sitting quietly at a desk, looking out the window at the trees and imagining a life she would never lead, or at least, pondering her mortality. She thought deeply about life, and that's something to admire. 




Because I could not stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality.

We slowly drove--He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility--

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess--in the Ring--
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
We passed the Setting Sun--

Or rather--He passed us--
The Dews drew quivering and chill--
For only Gossamer, my Gown--
My Tippet--only Tulle--

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice--in the Ground--

Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity--




More Emily Dickinson poems at The Poetry Foundation and at Poetry Soup.


Previous Famous After Death.
My Poetry.


My Books







Assholes linger





A design most horrid


Why
Do we want the ones
Who do not want us?

The person you once shared the most intimate moments with
Now wants to see you suffer
Beyond all else.

Why is that good deeds go punished
like the whistle-blower
Left exposed
Hung out and shattered
Stripped of opportunity.

Why do we become stressed out?
When we need
More than anything
To remain calm.

Why do we continue to punish our bodies?
When we know the harm it brings.

Some bodies arrive with malfunctions
Perfectly coherent minds
Trapped within
Hellish frames.

Why are the ugly beautiful
And the beautiful so ugly?

Why are we rarely
Truly happy
When, for the most part
It’s all we seek?

Why does a child get cancer
And babies born with heart conditions?
When assholes linger like a rampant fungus
And thrive just as prominently.

‘I’m slipping down
But there’s nowhere to go’
Something many of us can relate to
Yet why is it
That when we are dispirited
People stay away?
As though they could catch
What we have.
They only want you when
You’re on top of the world
Or possess something
That they want.

We need a thorough overhaul
An evolutionary upgrade
100,000 years should see us right.

I wonder if we’ll make it.





They're everywhere I know, but I would love to hear an asshole story from you. Especially if the asshole got his or her comeuppance.

More Poetry Here

My Books

Cheers

=]