otist

Sold at news-stands Painted on billboards Heard on the news until you sleep Where it lies, lies the truth Truth lies and life is lived Life buried in the untethered heavily chained in the material yet they choose to fly in spirit It thrives in the havens of the living A hand reaches and one responds Daringly, unsanitized All lies before them, and there's no effect. Truth racing in hearts grasp then tug away, and clutch again. Those who thirst most, dare most Reclaim everything and offer nothing for compromise.

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^{Photo Two Hands About to Hold, Greyscale, BRA by Rodolfo Clix – Pexels, Free to Use Also @cent}

She used to be oblivious to cruelty Now, she is grown and beginning to see All that is hers she makes her own Things granted, every repetition, are potential lies, every friend a potential foe, and family, a secure bet

Sure, you may think something has left her but something has dawned upon her, her face may be less gleeful, but she has a gem dug out from deep inside of her a realization she has held up to the light cast its shadow against the world, and now she has grown pensive.

Will I have to leave?

No. You will go where I go. And one day, I will go where you go. We are not forced, we stand our ground Even when we leave, we win something We create our Eden wherever we go.

All of her anger seemed dissipated now as though evaporated from the surface of a hot tarmac in the Korean summer heat

I asked her to call on those who had helped her in her time of need. Supported her. Thank them, once all of this doubt is water under a bridge i wanted to tell her also that there will be more floods, no, rapids. But that realization will dawn on its own.

For now, there is Wednesday I bit my lip

Yes, I will call him on Wednesday No. You will not leave. I have been here, defending you. This is your place. Your Eden. You will defend it one day When I can no longer defend it

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#poetry #morningwalks

^{© Thomas Clothier}

You appear and I bleed I feign caring less, anticipate your leaving and all the inevitable pain

I am no reading eyes, no listening ears My blood is a noisy clang cacophony a selfish hungry beast devouring all 'till real and dream converge and sown words fall on hard stone, on sweet earth

Thy onward march in days of burning light the nights darkening quiet 'till in Thy season of fulness tally to Thy joyful despair

I did all, said all and nothing self scorned, my rank soiled blood look then on me burned and decay send it all to gods, Dear

I deserved nothing despised everything Thy leaving and my staying about everything, I knew nothing Then and now in the days where I have gone.

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#poetry #eveningwalks

^{© Thomas Clothier}

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#poetry #eveningwalks

^{© Thomas Clothier}

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#poetry #crosstitutional

^{© Thomas Clothier}

Of Diaspora*

My remains are a life raft in a gale May I land on ground Fathered by Sense Mothered by premonitions alert that built trenches and barricades when first a new-tyranny's stench wafted in on dead, putrid breath

May it be scorched by mad raging kilns of men that shirked their being and soulless women bearing knives that carved out their mothering and in its stead, left tiny scars likenesses of their hate-filled selves

Such that the land is clean and all that remains there our sacred truths dispersed by baton or lunging trunch truths' seeds, our humanity grown tall, felled, thrashed and re-grown, and scattered far and away again

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^{Image: Symbol of the ethical social media platform, Diaspora}

#poetry #morningwalks

^{© Thomas Clothier}

1987, Verulam

On the balcony, the crackling, slow, long drags Below, pedestrians on the busy street The Elder's face lit by the glow of the ember, enough to hint a sign, was it concern, before it was hidden by exhaled smoke The scent mixing with dhania and mint and the sounds with the TV reporting another alert The hopeless days, then, burned and festered, transpiring from a litany of murders into the years ahead as they were read into the record from a prompter.

The Elders' voice, exhaled slowly, The Study observed, closer, the expression was less concern suggesting all the madness was, in some way, sensible.

The distant green hills, covered in black night, echoes of mayhem from corrugated bellies life preparing for burial in the approaching attraction the grass clothed, as the dutiful moon behind the cloud, and morning rays somewhere far away, which by a morrow's noon would certainly scorch and sear

The starved caged spirits that would no longer grin nor slow their paces toward life's bidding knocks but suffer jabs and kicks that would consume us one by one.

The sense lay there in the voice, trained aloof distance An attitude that kept us marching quietly, bearing all weight even after you'd gone, and into all the nights ahead all quiet aloneness the many leavings and waitings bred.

The kitchen now without delicate hands, but life's scent has not left, the mayhem grew yet, all the quiet love remains.

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#poetry #crosstitutional

^{© Thomas Clothier}

When that day, not before

I live with it, an affront dragged along Serving no purpose but to inflict sense Something to wake me when I dare to sleep Smiles radiate, mere cold affronts to sense Needy eyes, needly thorns warding off All is vapour, no match to the inevitable scorch. Love is an island in a cold sea Deeper, yet one day drowned by it Pain seeks companion to torture The sea removes all traces of yearning Until it, like love, never existed And we wait for a call that never comes

Lines long ago, repeated today The halls filled quickly with steely faces of men Bodies worn, pressed in queues for hard soles, khakis and leather, honours' latest address Regimented gaze covered their land and dear souls They'd hear their children's voices playing by the fields, streets and the trenches Not the cacophony of grenades and rockets of the ill-fated plight, of man's evil might The battalion of untold events, unrelatable by letters, The horrors tallied remain locked away in gunsights. On the Morning, May rise after Tyranny's night Truth's victorious Day etched into memory's light May march certain, The Immortals return Leaving Dead once again to a cold earth cavern.

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#poetry #crosstitutional

^{© Thomas Clothier}