Another day has come along while another night has passed and gone.

It’s time for another edition of The Daily Poet for sporadic poetry addicts.

Today’s poem is dedicated to an old friend of mine, Scott DenDooven, who sadly is now among the unspoken.

We grew up together in Southeastern Wisconsin until he moved away in Middle School.

I had always thought about him over the years and wondered where he had gone in life.

One day, I decided to start looking for him, and as sometimes happens when we seek things in life, I realized that I would never find what I was looking for.

Scott had passed away several years before I had started looking.

This poem is dedicated to Scott who will forever be given a voice through the hearts of the people who loved him.

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Time Capsule

We created a time capsule in your parent’s basement
with all of the memories that matter to preteen boys,
a BB gun, a couple of old Playboy magazines, and a box
of castoffs we found along the tracks behind your house.

We pushed up one of the corner ceiling panels
and shoved it all back past the ends of our fingertips,
then we pledged to forget about its existence
and a few months later your family moved away.

It’s been over twenty years since that day
when we pushed our childhoods out of reach.
I just found out you passed four years before,
but I lost touch with you too long ago.

For years I’ve thought we’d go back together
maybe during an open house or to ask the current owners
to let us unbury the treasures we once savored
and revisit the past we put away when we were young.

But now I realize I would have to go alone
and who knows if it was discovered already
by young friends searching for something of their own
their fingers just long enough to find the life we left behind.

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Thank you forever for reading and keeping the voices I hear alive.

Time for another edition of The Daily Poet, my random series of poems that come out on anything but a daily basis.

I’ve been writing late lately, until 4 AM in the morning or so after watching old black and white movies on cable.

Maybe it’s contributing to the insoluble nature of my poems, but I think it’s also helping me concentrate and hopefully create some unique connections in the silent spaces.

Well, without further delay, enjoy this poem for another day.

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Putting a Price on Love

Let’s take account
the value of this thing
the overall net worth
based on supply and demand.

How much is love
selling on the singles market
when so many are seeking
what others are just giving away.

It’s almost impossible to estimate
the devaluation and depletion
of legitimate suppliers
due to counterfeit reproductions.

Maybe that’s why you can’t
put a price on love
and why its trade-in cost
is based on a bartering system,

What you’re willing to give and give up.

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Thanks forever for reading, and as always, feel free to comment or cut up.

I really need to update the name of this series to The Sporadic Poet if I’m not going to publish them on a daily basis, but I guess it’s too late to change names now.

Oh well, another time another rhyme I suppose, and without further delay, here is the poem for today.

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Early Spring

Subtle tints of Spring
Drop hints once again

The green grass sprouts shoot
Trees begin to stretch their roots

Underneath the surface
Tulip bulbs explode

Unleashing leaves through the dirt
Exposed upon the frigid earth

Where the frost still threatens
To wilt under a starry moon

Where renewal never seems
To come too soon.

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Well, d’d’d’d’d’d’d’dats all folks!

As always and never done, mainly because you’re one of the none readers, please feel free to leave comments, criticisms, and outright attacks on my character. Why not?

Until another day, please live your life the poetry way.

Just a new poem for the season.

Seasonal

My tomatoes froze last night
and this morning awoke mushy inside,
a green as dark as pea soup
hanging heavy on their now limp limbs.

I twisted them off their vine
then just dumped them on the ground
to let them rot back into the soil
and create a natural fertilizer for next year.

Any day the frost will be followed by snow
and winter will cover their seasonal patch,
where even though I planted them late
they grew all summer strong and flourished toward their fall.

end

As always, comments, criticisms, and comebacks welcome.

Just something simple and short, another poem another day, another word less to say.

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Magnet Strings

Magnetism pulls the fragments thin
scrapes scraps together from within

Allows polar opposites to coexist
and magnetic poles to blend in bliss

Rotating inside earth’s molten core
navigates the sky for birds to soar

Molds mankind into universal order
and delivers us from life’s disorder.

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Thanks for reading. Please feel free to leave comments if so inclined.

Time for another edition of The Daily Poet, our online poetry magazine from the Modern Author’s Guide, The MAG Zine.

I’m been trying to put together a collection of poetry to start submitting to magazines or possibly create a chapbook.

I figured I’d publish a larger collection of poems here, and then work it down to what I feel are the best poems for submitting.

Funny thing is I’ve realized that some poetry magazines and poetry journals consider poetry that is published on your personal blog or a blog that is open to the public as being previously published, so I guess I’ll have to remove these poems before submitting them or if I’m lucky enough to have them chosen for publication.

Oh well, this may be the only place they’re ever published, so that could just not matter in the end either way.

But who cares about all of that – on with the 5th edition of The Daily Poet.

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From the Pier

The trees hover in the mist of morning
alliterating the waves rushing off shore
twittering in the sunlit scenic setting
where fishermen come to dream in the evening.

There’s no flare to fire for safety,
no message to set the sky ablaze
and lead men to follow it here
to find an empty pot of gold.

The breeze comes in like sighs of relief,
like the dead taking a final swim out to sea,
letting the water drift deeper below them
until there’s no hope of reaching the bottom alive.

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Thank you very much for reading, we really appreciate it. Please feel free to leave your comments.

Welcome to the 4th edition of The Daily Poet, our online poetry publishing adventure and the first new poem of 2010.

We regularly publish new poems online and welcome any submissions to have your poetry published on TheMAGZine website.

I’ve been reading some of the articles in my new 2010 Poet’s Market directory and getting a bit depressed, as there is so much work to do in getting poetry published and starting a publishing company, and I haven’t been spending enough time on either lately.

But instead of letting it get me down, I’m trying to move forward and dedicate a block of time to these tasks every single day in 2010.

My first order of business is getting together a group of my more recent poems that I feel are in publishable condition and start sending them out to poetry magazines and other alternative poetry publishers.

So I’m hoping to work out some of my poems in the pages of The Daily Poet.

It’s not like anybody else is submitting poetry at this point, so I might as well publish my own, and then from here I’ll work out which ones to submit to which poetry publishing magazines, and I’ll outline the steps I take along the way.

Hopefully, I can get some of my poetry published in even the smallest magazines in 2010 if I’m lucky.

And without further delay, here is today’s edition of The Daily Poet.

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Jewelry Box

There’s a box I am looking for
that holds more than its name entails,

not just jewels and precious metals,
but diamonds of the heart, hardened coals

that I’m trying to soften in our relationship,
and when I asked the elder who owns the thrift shop

she hadn’t seen one in her store for a long time
and the young woman at the decorative store

who shouted out from behind the cluster
where I couldn’t see her didn’t have any either

even though they sold wooden chests and costume jewelry,
but I’m looking for something with compartments

and secret drawers that open to hidden treasures
that can be tucked away, and silk linens that display

hanging charms and ring settings when it opens,
a sealed unit that locks securely with a key

yet is crafted finely to project its luxury from within,
complex in its structure but solid in its singularity,

something to be admired and measured on its own
where we store our gemstones and other odds and ends.

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Thank you very much for reading, we really appreciate it. Please feel free to leave comments below on the poem or otherwise.

Welcome to another edition of The Daily Poet, where we publish original poetry online.

If you’d like to be included in The Daily Poet, please send your poetry to TheMAGZine@gmail.com.

We would be more than happy to accept submissions to publish your poetry online.

And without further delay, here is the poem of today.

Hope you enjoy this edition of our online poetry publishing adventure, The Daily Poet.

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In the Streets of South Beach

Even though the dogs piss
on their roots in the streets of South Beach,
the coconut trees still grow sweet fruit
and provide a steady stump
for the hookers and homeless to lean on,
and when one nut falls, it could crack
the skull of a passing-by tourist
who unknowingly looks up at the wrong moment
and only tastes the spectacularly splattered milk
as it leaks across their open mouth
in their last gasps of tropical air.

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Thank you kindly for your time in reading The Daily Poet.

We sincerely appreciate it and wish the best of luck to you.

It’s been a long time since our last daily poem, and the poetry has been anything but daily.

It’s not that I haven’t written any poems, I have, but I just haven’t published much on The MAG Zine for a while in general.

Well, let’s hope we can change that, and maybe you can help me.

The MAG Zine needs your help to publish quality poems on a daily basis.

I’m lucky if I can write one good poem a year by myself, and I’d be happy with one great poem in my lifetime, but if any readers out there contribute your own poems and enough of you contribute, there’s a chance we may be able to put a few good poems out there for all to read.

Please feel free to submit your poems, we’ll be more than happy to publish them.

Here’s mine for today. I’ve been working on simple poetic formats with basic rhythms and rhyming while trying to pull meaning out of the contrast between dark language and light format.

Here’s an example. Please feel free to leave your comments below:

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Lie in My Bed

In death I’ll lie where fishes sleep
below bottomless oceans still less deep,

far underneath the netherworld
where no shadows from the surface swirl,

and finally I’ll empty my head
of dreams for what was once undead,

and let my story go untold
as endless darkness forever unfolds.

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The Daily Poet column welcomes submissions for consideration for publication in The Daily Poet and elsewhere on The MAG Zine. Please review our Submission Guidelines for details on submitting your writing.

This is the first poem in The Daily Poet, a column dedicated to modern poetry having an influence on the cultural expression of our society.

The Daily Poet publishes poems that attempt to reflect our personal experiences within the perspective of their greater cultural meaning as influenced by the constant changes of our modern times.

This first poem takes a more personal approach to look at one aspect of this experience.

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In Midwinter

In midwinter we purchased multicolor-splashed canvasses
To dull the white walls of our rental home from reflecting the snow.

We hung them all together in the living room facing each other
Where we would see them the most as we sat on our separate couches.

They made our old framed posters look dreary and outdated
But we kept them hanging around to fill the empty spaces.

The plush couches we had bought new a few weeks before
When the comfort of our previous hand-me-downs had worn out.

Yours stretched far enough for three but you were perfectly comfortable alone
And I could sleep from head to toe on those nights when we wanted space.

We made our home picturesque and when the landlord held open houses
We were the perfect model couple to show potential buyers.

Young, a little artsy, modern, everything that influences unusually hip college graduates,
They asked if we were married yet and if hardwood floors were beneath the carpet.

The snow came in record numbers that winter as we watched it on TV
We observed it come down out the window and shoveled it away the next day.

In summer, our lease would end or maybe the house would sell
And we’d move on to find some as of yet unknown rental home.

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The Daily Poet column welcomes submissions for consideration for publication in The Daily Poet and elsewhere on The MAG Zine. Please review our Submission Guidelines for details on submitting your writing.