A World of Verse

By ASMSG Authors

A World of Verse is the first collection of poetry produced by poets of the Authors' Social Media Support Group (ASMSG). Twenty-One poets, representing dozens in the Writer's Circle of ASMSG, pour their hearts, souls, and imaginations into over sixty poems ranging from the anguish of loneliness and the despair of loss to the joy of belonging and the rapture of love. Feel the passion for life within these pages as we celebrate this inaugural collection. More will follow. The poets represented herein are:

Alan Hardy
Andy Szpuk
B.L. Ronan
Bryan Paul
Debra Parmley
Ian Bradley Marshall
James Amoateng
Karena Marie
Laurie Kazmierczak
Lucy Pireel
Murielle Cyr
Ollie Lambert
Oscar Wager II
Peter Watson Jenkins
Regina Puckett
Shannon McRoberts
Steven Harz
Teresa Amehana Garcia
Teresa Joseph Franklin
Yelle Hughes

We hope you enjoy this labor of love, and pass the passion along.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grey Mouse Publishing
• Release date: Sep 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301171477

ASMSG Authors

ASMSG, or Authors’ Social Media Support Group, was founded by R. Grey Hoover to provide like-minded authors a network of diverse Social Media platforms from which to gain greater reach than each could accomplish alone. We currently have nearly 300 authors affiliated with ASMSG, with a vast aggregate following on many platforms. We support each other’s event promotions, share experiences and triumphs, and learn from each other’s various experiences and knowledge. Our goal is to create quality works of short fiction and poetry, all produced by ASMSG Authors

Book preview

A WORLD OF VERSE

A COLLECTION OF

POETRY

by

ASMSG Authors

Visit ASMSG

(Authors’ Social Media Support Group)

At:

www.asmsg.weebly.com

Cover Art by Regina Pucket

Visit Regina’s Site at:

http://reginapuckettsbooks.weebly.com/

This anthology is a collection of poetry. All works herein are included by the express permission of each author. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by: ASMSG Collections Publishing

Written by: ASMSG Authors

Produced by: Christopher Shields, Co-Administrator, ASMSG

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of the publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Authors except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Contact ASMSG at www.asmsg.weebly.com

Cover Art © 2013 by ASMSG

Cover Art by Regina Puckett

Editors: ASMSG Authors

Smashwords Edition

List of Poets:

Alan Hardy

Andy Szpuk

B.L. Ronan

Bryan Paul

Debra Parmley

Ian Bradley Marshall

James Amoateng

Karena Marie

Laurie Kazmierczak

Lucy Pireel

Murielle Cyr

Ollie Lambert

Oscar Wager II

Peter Watson Jenkins

Regina Puckett

Shannon McRoberts

Steven Harz

Teresa Amehana Garcia

Teresa Joseph Franklin

Yelle Hughes

ALAN HARDY

WALK ON

Often fallen boughs, at a glance,

assume creepy shapes, of bodiless limbs of crouching humans,

half-limbed reptiles hugging the earth,

shock you for an instant with their slimy proneness.

Something lying in undergrowth, lying still.

That split-second brings you face-to-face with a chance encounter.

Meeting of eyes. Living things waiting. Camouflaged.

You step out of your comfort-zone,

open the door at night and walk into darkness,

imagine shadows and terrors, and hidden monsters.

It's the time it takes to fumble a lock or chain

and scamper back inside.

Sometimes, though, you look up and see a face transformed,

a blaze of hatred, a burst of madness.

Then it lasts longer. And your body quakes.

You feel pain. It's a shock which doesn't blink.

You have to face it. And you do. You survive.

The days pass. You return to what you were.

Someone who, in wandering along the path,

meets the gaze of a bewitched piece of wood,

a slap from the primeval past,

its imaginings.

Then you walk on. And on. Until, one day, the real terror comes.

DESERT ISLE

He sat on the beach of his private island,

wrote messages on scraps of paper

once were staring blankly at him,

pushed them through bottles’ narrow necks

into bottles’ ample bodies,

where they, shaken, shifted.

He flung them as far as he could into the ocean's waves,

like a parent gazed after them,

until they were lost in the spray

or the tangle of waves like a twisting-turning cotton-thread,

waited long enough for them not to return.

He would scour the undulating sand shaped by the receding sea,

each day tread its soft moistness for something untoward,

an object or colour which would catch his eye.

Slowly, he gave up,

scuffed the cloying