Medusa’s hairdresser was I, told her cleanliness is next to godliness. No mind she paid me, soap never touched that head. No surprise snakes nested there!
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Merril hosted Tuesday Poetics and asked folks to choose a character from a well-known story or myth…but it could not be the main character. We were then to write a poem from that character’s perspective.
Well, I’m sure Medusa had a hairdresser so, tongue in cheek, that’s the perspective I took. A little fun with mythology!
A toast to the Class of 2065! “We’re the class that’s best alive!” Ten days later, the twins are soaring high, on the way to their dream jobs!
Earth is too mundane for them. The Mars community, established well before their time, is their diamond in the sky. Humanity took control. Developed it far beyond its earliest days of desolation. Developed it to suit its needs and its every desire. It is the most exciting planet left in the New World.
Their pod’s instruments indicate arrival. But there is no Mars. They only see fragments of matter floating in space. No neon lights. No movement.
Exploitation? Misuse? Only rumors. Right? But where is Mars? How could it disappear? Where are the people? Who can utter the poignance of all that is constantly threatened? Invaded, expended, the planet had simply had enough. Humans be damned.
Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. However, today we’re expected to create a piece of fiction of 144 words that includes a particular line of poetry, provided by the pub host.
Sanaa is our host today and asks us to include the line “Who can utter the poignance of all that is constantly threatened, invaded, expended” from the poem In California: Morning, Evening, Late January by Denise Levertov.
I’m singin’ the blues. Not that raspy haunting way, more like zydeco!
This America understood what was at stake. Democracy won.
Black, Hispanic, Jew, Christian, Muslim, women, men gay, straight, everyone.
Americans chose truth over fear, compassion, and voted NO KINGS!
Much more than a rout, Trump was emasculated. His sycophants shocked.
Poe’s words speak to Trump, Quoth the raven, never more! Blue skies now shine bright.
Written for OLN at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets across the globe. Image created on Bing Create.
November 3rd was election day in the US. The Democrats outperformed everyones’ expectations. The House and Senate both flipped . . . Democrats will hold a significant majority in both. In state and local governments, across the entire United States, folks voted out Republicans (President Trump’s base) and voted in Democrats up and down the ticket: from judges to senators to attorneys general to governors . . . you name it, Americans voted in Democrats and said no to Trump’s administration and policies. The “blue wave” we hoped for became a blue tsunami. From Texas to Georgia, to Michigan, Ohio, and Maine; across the entire country….it is a monumental shift. One, I believe, the world celebrates.
Mesmerized by autumn’s colors, jack-o-lantern creations children donning costumes door-to-door gathering of treats. Humans blithely celebrate Halloween.
Oblivious are they, as the night progresses. Asleep in beds, candy inventoried, sweet tooths sated, witches’ hats discarded, costumes strewn on floor. Adults and childrent in exhausted sleep.
Clocks toll midnight, that preternatural hour. The signal on this one night, the dead await each year. Occurrences beyond the pale, are about to begin. Bats circle screeching as darkest of clouds shroud the sky. Streets, empty of humans, fill with the unspeakable.
Skeletons escape graves, clamber boldly through town. Disembodied spirits float overhead. Mummified creatures, once embodied souls, perch on porches, curbs, moaning in groans. All things once dead, make their appearance.
One hour each year. This is all they’re given. To move. To feel the wind. To awaken and live again. Regrets may arise as some have wishes of what they could have done. Others content, just breathe before they enter deep sleep again.
This is the twilight time, unbeknownst to many. This time between All Hallows Eve and All Hallows Day. The time of the living dead.
Poem inspired by our walk through Boston’s Beacon Hill late yesterday afternoon, looking at all the Halloween decorations folks put out. Image created on Bing Create. Happy Halloween everyone!
Standing in the dappled shadows surrounded by silence sudden sounds startled my senses. Somewhere the master had raised the baton. Sweet birdsongs joined chattering squirrels in playful harmony soaring skyward. The earthy crunch of fallen leaves underfoot shocked in percussive surprise. A mellifluous stream babbled over smooth stones singing a song to soothe the soul. Sounds of silence surround me no longer as I surrender to the sublime synchronicity of this seasonal symphony.
She sits tall, neck craned, blue and yellow flag out of view. Husband and sons gone. Neighborhoods reduced to rubble.
Paint me on this dismal morning in my black mourning. Paint my sorrow, my horror, my disbelief.
Joyful colors obliterated. No emerald greens, brilliant purples or rich chestnut browns.
Abandoned by you, your government. Ceded for whatever reason to that Russian tyrant. I am the widow of Ukraine.
My visage shall haunt you until the day you die.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe where I’m hosting October 22nd’s Open Link Night. Folks are free to post one poem of their choosing OR they may write a poem that includes mention of at least three colors.
I’ve combined my optional prompt with Melissa’s prompt from Tuesday Poetics: write a poem inspired by one of three “haunting” paintings she provided.
The real haunting and haunted story behindSvetlana Telets, Rain Woman (1996). Telets is a Ukrainan artist. Telets claimed that for months leading up to her painting, she felt an invisible presence watching her constantly. She claims to have felt an invisible force guide her hand llike a puppeteer while creating it. Telets’ painting was displayed in a local gallery in Ukraine, where it was purchased and returned multiple times by buyers who reported the painting caused them to experience insomnia, nightmares, and an eery sensation of being watched. Some even claimed that a shadowy figure followed them through their homes.
Goblins on mischief rampage. Forest-sprite Sylvie awakens atop her mushroom cap. Too visible! Wings pulse message, screen needed now.
Sylvie escapes beneath fiddle ferns as fireflies answer by the thousand, hypnotizing malevolent ones. Full moon reveals staring Snowy Owl. His countenance frightens goblins away.
Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Lisa asks us to include the word “screen” in our poem of exactly 44 words sans title. Image created on Bing.
1. Red yarn raucously stretched, tangled up and down stairs. Cat spent chin rests on ball’s remainder, tail and right paw ensnared.
2. Snow melts under warming sun. Water rushes over boulders carves trail in mountainside. Carries, tosses rocks and branches gurgles loudly in rapids below.
3. Tuk tuks, bicycles, tarp covered trucks, cars. All jockey in and out as drivers gesticulate. Heat blazes, smog suffocates. Traffic lights. Detour signs. No matter. Throng pushes ever on.
5. Blue tsunami gathering steam. November third in sight. Maneuvering through noise through blustering lies the race to empathy, truth, democracy.
Written for Meet The Bar at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Laura asks us to write a CADRALAR, a unique poetic form explained below.
Cadralar: Poem of five numbered stanzas. Each stanza an imagist poem that can stand alone: a photograph if you will, but seemingly unrelated to the other stanzas, until you read the 5th and final stanza. Stanzas’ lines should be similar in length. Final 5th stanza, reveals the thread between the first four stanzas and answers the question, “What do you yearn for?”
Hint: I often find it helpful to go back and read the first four stanzas, after reading the final one!
FYI for those readers not from the US: November 3rd is election day in the US. It is not a presidential election year – that doesn’t come until 2028. But, we do vote for a large number of US congress folks (House of Representatives and the Senate), as well as important state offices including governors and members of state legislatures. If we “flip” Senate and House seats to the Democratic party, it will strip Donald Trump of much of his power and there could even be another impeachment, albeit a successful one in terms of removing him from office. All of these are possibilities. Many in the US, like across the globe, are tired and furious with what the Trump administration has done to the US and its ripple effect on the globe as well. Stay tuned for results on November 3rd.
*Red is the color of the Republican party: the group of sycophants following President Trump’s MAGA agenda.
Trumpet wails smoke curls in jazz club ice clinks in whiskey glasses. Eyes glued to stage they sit, imagining, caught in her spell.
Red moist lips sing in raspy sex-tinged voice I put a spell on you. Hips gyrate slowly arms stretch above her head hands writhe seductively.
He sits, shoulders slumped. Food spattered lapels ink stained fingertips. The poet, as he’s known, soaks in the atmosphere with nowhere to go.
His mind travels with her every word. Imagines himself inside her throat, inside her eyes, inside her soul.
Why can’t his words do to his readers what her voice her words her body do to him?
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, Sanaa hosts Tuesday Poetics with a prompt titled Thirteen Songs, Thirteen Hauntings.
She gives us a list of thirteen songs and asks us to be inspired by one of them. We’re to let the music determine the mood, imagery, setting, and voice of the poem. I’ve selected I Put a Spell on You, by Nina Simone. The music and video definitely inspired my poem. Click on the video above, watch and listen for a bit and you’ll understand why.
Robert and Emma lie undetected in the shed beside the town’s garbage dump. Dead for centuries, their spirits are still quite lively. Their love, strong as the day they wed in 1801. They find the stench of garbage more pleasing than their decomposition all those years ago.
Their skeletal rattlings have always scared away the curious. But the night of October 31st 2026, something was different. Hundreds of critters who tunneled into their space as frost took hold, suddenly breathed their last. The dead were settling in under their mud roof and something was shuffling overhead as the wind began to howl. Bats swooped nearby. Children screamed. Witches from the local coven flew overhead, cackling, screaming their names.
Energized, they stood up. Stretched tall. Their phalenges reached out and entwined. They’d waited centuries for the night of the waking dead. Surely this was it.
Written for Prosery Monday on dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.
Today Kim gives us the line “The dead were settling in under their mud roof and something was shuffling overhead” from Alice Oswald’s poem Body. We’re to use that line, word for word, within a piece of prose or flash fiction that is a maximum of 144 words in length. Extra credit if the story is exactly 144 words in length. Mine is!
