I didn't name mine either

Carefully,
you open the old leather book
dust floats up around you.
Your fingers gently glide
over worn yellow pages.

Curiosity takes over
you quickly turn the pages
looking for what
you are not sure

A flash of something
as you flip past.

Dark handwritten letters.

Slowly,
you turn the pages back
scanning each one
until, you find it.

A letter,
written on the blank page between chapters.
Carefully you read each word
then read each one again.

Close,
the cover of the book
knowing that fate has delivered it to you.

It is part of you.

Poetry by Tony Hoagland

pg. 1/2

pg. 2/2

pg. 1/2

pg. 2/2

Tony Hoagland & his sly smile

Out On A Limb: Prompt

"I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficult, aside from knowing truly what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced...the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always."

--Ernest Hemingway, Death in The Afternoon

Out On A Limb

Pg. 1/2

Pg. 2/2

Good luck & Happy Writing :)

The Old Bookstore Prompt response (Smelly Book)

It smells of leather and dust
and its pages give me glimpses
of thoughts left behind,

Quiet intruder,
my thoughts reading these thoughts,
chemical pronunciation filtered

through an inaudible span,
smells like an old world
pressed between books,

cedar and images of fish
with their aluminum scales
spreading over like flowers,

we are plucked from the shelf,
our lives written in light
and our presence unknown

until with new hands,
we are picked up,
our names made similar

and our secrets
made of ink.

My Neverending story

Old bookstore,
my safe haven.
land of untold tales and adventures.

Running from bullies to my favorite place,
A large book falls from the shelf in front of me. I grab it and run to the school. I sit up in the attic with a flashlight in my hand and begin to read.

Tales told of ancients old,
and sacrifices made.
Boys grown to men
and lost to sin
and restored full once again.

The story grasped me like nothing before.
Nothing tearing away a land of fantasy.
A boy must save the princess.
I am that boy.
Her name is now Moonchild.

My Neverending story.

The Streets of Christmas

Snowflakes falling softly
cover the ground in fine white powder.

People, with their shopping bags
pull their coats tight against the cold.

Twinkling lights
hung from every building
begin to blur as the snow falls faster.

The Christmas wreath
hanging in the center of the street
sags under the weight of new snow.

Christmas time has come again.
And with it a blur
of people
and snowflakes
fill the city streets.

Christmas Letter

Dear Santa,

This year for Christmas, all I want is for you to apologize for being an evil myth, created by the Vatican to draw attention away from people celebrating the birth of Christ. Also, your association with the Catholic Church combined with your unique methods of breaking and entering, makes for pretty good odds you are a pedophile. I mean really, kids in your lap?
Fuck you dude.

-D.M.

The Bird

You are at the Mall (old fashion).
You see the smallest TV.
You love it,
you want it.
You tell your husband
or wife.

All you get is
a "Nobody Loves Mitch" record.

You throw it on the floor.
Than a killer record
is in your home!
It is the bird killer.

The old fashion End.

-Erin M.