Hush!

Not a word!

Silence is all around

Only to be heard!

A life under a life

Shadows emerge

To live another life

The urge with a verge

As Doe begins to sleep

Hancock awakes

Steals from you a bit

Of what life makes

Makes Doe the fool

For not having lived a life

Concoct calm with cruel

And makes sweet from strife

The early hours show

The balm of the streets

As if night never happened

So life never mistreats

But in the streets they lie

Thieves of the night

Yes, they cheat and yes they lie

At sunrise, out of sight

It’s all quiet and peace

And boring

Up above an eagle is calling

while soaring

It seems when things

Rumble

Feathers are ruffled

Earth will gently tumble

If it’s all quiet, it doesn’t mean

All is peace

It means an empty volcano

Missing a piece

When a stomach claims calm

Something’s wrong

But when it loses its charm

It belongs.

There’s something in the rumble

That makes sense

There can’t be something to defend

Without an offence

Most days we like to rumble

From afar a thunder

It’s a little bit of everything

Just enough wonder

Usher in 1984

Conform with their tag

No face to look for

Move their legs. They lag

Screeching of the board

Nothing to screen the sound

Eternal and infernal, a horde

All are here; no one’s around

Question. Why are they here?

Was it a grimace, or an underhand?

Then celebrated victory with a cheer

Pain in process, no need to understand

There’s an entrance and there’s an exit

But the park is an asphalt vacant lot

It’s everywhere and nowhere, that’s it!

Yes, it is. No, it isn’t. Yes. No, it is NOT!

Welcome them to the rest of their lives

When they had one and they had a choice

And the chose the comfort of their lives

Let them sing now what they’ve sung before: smog; no voice.

The ivory staircase of the Titanic

A sailing airship that no sea can drown

The hues that hover are white and pink

And the noise is well matched to the sound

A realm of no realms with paper clouds floating

Transporting celestials wherever they desire

Where everyone one chooses their skin coating

Far better than what they one day aspired

Then a portfolio of faces appear

A promise that was made a long time ago

Who welcome every newcomer with a cheer

Letting them in from where a world that always said no

The all around sound is in an envelope in a bottle

In a place in a space with only grace

No memory of a farewelled world whose boggle

Is why people did what they did never saving face

Hello to this new era of wooed wonders

Unseen by gaze, unheard of by any man,

Only uncaged hearts have capacity for such conundrums

Further, better: eyes can see what has never been a plan.

When I opened up the windows

I opened up sunlight

And let it through my veins shine

So much I doubted there’s any night

I abandoned the curtains

Too much between me and a view

Windows sectioned, each giving me

Something wild, beautiful and new

It seems there’s a reverse process

So many curtains now, less windows

Am I outside seeing them shut?

Or am I inside watching them close?

Which window is the first to go?

They seem parallel and simultaneous

Am I to decide to let it be decided

Either way, I’m on the tenuous

They say you return a child

but never tell that you lack that attention

As windows close, maybe sunlight

Is just in another dimension

Is there a bridge to it?

That twilight that appears in the night?

It seems be to that one minute

That changes everything in hindsight

Sure the years add the numbers

But the math doesn’t always calculate

Some sleepers beat all the slumbers

All awake suddenly shake and hesitate

And a question remains: what’s the next day

Like jumps between fevers, suddenly alert

And expecting train trips to be fresh like the first day

But both horn’s green and the sprite expert

“Can’t have your cake and eat it too”

Eyes you meet that tell you this testimony

Some looks just condemn ‘it’s through’

And some looks say it’s time’s harmony

Is it a day to celebrate or to mourn?

Tomorrow’ number is a day the calendar

It might be a reminder I was born

Then an X in its place to mark I’m fallible

Should I look forward to it? So may come and gone

Some were cheerful till something took over

And paced silence till the night became the dawn

Then a new day came all dressed in clover

As if I knew we’d go together

Born of her womb, am I her gift or her curse?

Some people just like to live forever.

Some people, like me, fear far worse.

I wish someone had told me the full story.

The devilish details and the intricate plot

Instead I’m left with a mystery without glory

The past’s ribboned box I daren’t untie the knot

But I’m left to guess through present’s guests

And past’s giant relics as they fade to salt soon

What was the worst part of my family or the best?

That flew my wings to the sun and left me in the shadow of the moon?

What got my mother to have me, will or spite?

Love, I guess, was probably already a well run dry

Two boys on hand, large and loose, no end in sight

And a desolate man, a woman’s situation: do or die

And do she did and planned the deed. Or so I was told.

And sowed my father’s seed and let him know the news

I was told he ran off the rails knowing he was just too old

To tolerate a third and see how much worse he’d become from the prior two

And so my mother gave me love, some version of it

I never understood what exactly was missing

Like every blessed child I felt there was a world and I was in it

Till I lost my father, and she and I were counting our blessing

And a countdown it was as I move away but it seems

That invisible umbilical cord is still there pulling me back

I feel as if we are intertwined in real life and dreams

What happens to her happens to me but as an attack

And now there’s a light in sight, one of us will pass through

I suspect if it’s her, I’ll be soon to follow, I was never left behind

I wish I had a theory to this that would even hold true

But I think I’ll die when someday she’d have made up her mind.

Congratulations to @dianetex for winning the challenge. Congratulations to the runner-ups so close behind. Thanks to everyone for their support of the challenge.

I actually had a very different take on this when I started this challenge that I thought everyone would share with me. I was wrong. It depends on which part of the world you're from and that's way you'll define those two months. I still hold my view but it is nice to see so many varying viewpoints and so many people sharing a common life experience.

This is my last take. Alas, August hasn't been my friend. September just brings fond memories to mind.

It’s clear August has its fans

Wishing its sun’ll never set

And Sept. is lonely and abandoned

Few fans like its too early of a sunset

August depends on where you are

Where the backyards send favored fumes mid-air

When the sun sets, there’s a wishing star

That the same time spread everywhere

And September won’t come for its timely theft

And open air just drabs into concrete walls

And many minds just stay bereft

Of the time they had control and call

But not so my take, August my enemy

You foul foe that remains my life till now

When people are skidding their jet-ski

I was in an office telling people what and how

The smell of sweat reminds me of August

No other summer month does

June and July just get you to shake winter’s rust

And August takes prisoner some unlucky ones

But September unlocks a breeze

The sun from its heat is inevitably defeated

And a shorter day just make everything feel at ease

It seems when things slow down everyone is better treated

In new year’s one ends and one begins

And the best thing is they have names

But as Summer’s August signs off its timely sins

September cleans the slate; clears the blame.

To @DrSemicolon; @ChrisSadhill; @Raynstar; @dianetex; @H1; @Klemaster1964; @Switch_Hazel; @CindyCalder; @EldonRiver; @AnnaFan14; @OfficeAndSand; @Plexiglassfruit; @r_raven; @Spacetimer; @aflalo22; @7v7; @AJJ; @brkbillst42; @Lees345; @SharondaBriggs

Congratulations to DrSemicolon on winning. Thank you all for contributing your special and unique take on this topic. It is sure is an elusive one.

Here is my modest tribute to you, and may all those who thrive on little hope, get filled with more of it. Certainly, your writing inspires and gives many others hope.

My modest piece

The tank runs empty

There’s a station up the road: hope.

There’s a despondent thought: it will never work

Then the baby smiles for no reason: hope.

Effort was put all out and nothing happened

Then the nine-year-old put his hand on your arm soothing: hope.

Fresh out of roses in the garden of love

Then a familiar face forgotten in the fields meets you with fired up eyes: hope.

One day the powers that be sold you out, you’re not the in-crowd

Then on another plane, others meet and greet you, respect and renown you: hope.

The author’s famed book when it was thrown in the dumpster; the movie no one saw but everyone did late at night and was sold without a sell; the artist who died with the last brush in a painting; the people who thrived even one overpowered them all without defeating him.

It maybe a vacuum and a void, a long tunnel with light afar, a spring in the air without a net, a lighthouse isolated on the shore, an expectation of the unexpected

But, at every turn, whoever you are, wherever you are, it lingers at the tip of fingers, and has taste on the tip of lips. It whispers only to you.

You may not call it hope then but when reality is what you want, you may recall it was always there.

Wouldn’t you know it?

That’s the job of a poet

People just can’t show it

That’s the job of a poet

The young part that you never outgrow it

That’s the job of the poet

Who can take time and slow it?

That’s the job of a poet

Who has a soul to sew it?

That’s the job of a poet

Who grows love to mow it?

That’s the job of a poet.

They wonder. You think. You know it. A poet.

You read. You change. You show it. A poet.

Alone. Forlorn. Words adorn like fresh from a new born. Sworn to sow it. A poet.