Linda Imbler’s poetry collections include seven published paperbacks: Big Questions, Little Sleep First Edition, Big Questions, Little Sleep Second Edition; Lost and Found; Red Is The Sunrise; Bus Lights; Travel Sight; Spica’s Frequency; and Doubt and Truth.  Soma Publishing has published her four e-book collections, The Sea’s Secret Song; Pairings, a hybrid of short fiction and poetry; That Fifth Element; and Per Quindecim. Examples of Linda’s poetry and a listing of publications can be found at lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com

Liquid Emotion

Liquid emotion freezes or thaws.
It can flow into every crack of time.
Grief as cascading shekels and pesetas.
Love as fluttering doves and butterflies.
Hate as detrimental sledge-cudgels and bombs.
Jealousy births grotesque 
charges of lies that line up as infantry.
Courage makes the world shine,
so you can see to where you are flying.
The declarations you reveal, 
any of these emotional expressions,
is a choice made,
and will be your freedom or your restraint.

The Ninth Bazaar

A rightful din suffuses the market.
The loud thrum of ‘hear ye hear ye hear ye try mine,’
believing they will be the god 
that dazzles away your silver.
Their desire for flourishing sales are the prayer of the day.

Their haughtiness they contain under smiling ways.
It takes high scrutiny to detect the falsification of wares,
flaws hidden behind animated conversation.
A tempting voice cries foul,   
expresses petulance toward those who have caught on, 
and passed right by.

Their shops are open under variant season’s skies.
They carry foolhardy ardor 
in their artless tackling of potential patrons.

Buyers,
clutching small purses at the advent of day,      
seeking the direct center
flying like glides to perform the clear operation of a purchase,
where they seek a balance of pennies saved 
against the whole of their debts.
Marching through corridors,   
trying to untangle the confused maze of tables, 
without falling into the depths of the ninth bazaar.

Day’s end, 
rife with forced generosity and packed away wares.
Merchants closing the day without chatter,
as it becomes clear
there is no one left to buy.

Metallic Pinafore Apron

Pay the fine.
Pass the Rubicon
in one irrevocable journey.

As far back as the Eden’s residents’ first crossing,
the spare severity of the land
has been protected by
an impenetrable bib of aridity.

An ancient symbol 
of bleak permanence
is etched upon every door.
No bronze doors these.

Lurking in the darkness, 
a nameless woman bleats, 
within each wretched town.

Iron draperies fall in abstract folds,
heavily sag upon every airless window.

It takes supreme effort to take a single step,
and,
even if amulets were allowed here,
their properties would be nullified.

Like a steel cage with no slats, 
harboring unsleeping factories of fume and slag.
Like a metallic pinafore apron,
a protective shield for this machine
clings resolutely against all that should stand free.