Scanning old photos:
first day of school
sheepish grin with braces
tossing your wedding bouquet.
How did the past arrive so fast?
photo from pixabay.com
Life
Storm
caught in summer storm
damp hair curls on neck
feet squish inside shoes
skirt billows in gusty wind –
tears masquerade as rain
Sing Me Some Jazz
Time’s long shadow
scats and sings.
That ole pendulum
forever swings.
Doo-ya doo-ya
doo-ya bop.
Tickety tickety
tickety tock.
That grim reaper,
got no soul.
But shit my honey,
he’s got control.
Doo-ya doo-ya
doo-ya bop.
Tickety tickety
tickety tock
Now listen good
while I’m tellin’ you.
Doo-ya doo-ya
doo-ya boo.
Live it up baby
while we can.
Stompin’ and dancin’
that’s the plan.
Jazz it up baby,
come on now.
Do some lovin’
fore he takes his bow.
Snappin’ and poppin’
and rockin’ strong.
Singin’ doo-ya doo-ya
doo-ya bop.
Ain’t no way
we’re ready to stop.
Sharing with dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, on Open Link Thursday. Image by freepik.com
Desolate
The girl sat awhile,
gazing out over the waves
from a solitary sandbar.
Pebbles and rock ground fine,
parched by harsh sun,
as wave after wave came,
again and again.
Awash in waves of guilt,
drowning on dry land.
Nothing curled in the air
but the sound of nothing,
the hymn of nothing,
the humming . . .
Written for Real Toads where the prompt is to write a piggyback poem:
First and last lines should be quoted from two different poems. First line here is from Maureen Hynes, The Horses, the Sorrow, the Umbilicus; last line is from Mark Strand’s She. Photo from Pixabay.com
Are You There?
Temples pulsing, heart racing
mouth clenched in fear.
Pleading. Bargaining.
Nightmare screams in daylight hours
silently explode in my head.
Why?
Why can’t you hear me?
Can you?
Do you?
Dwight is our guest host today at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. It’s Tuesday Poetics and he ask us to consider the sounds of silence. Illustration: The Scream by Edvard Munch – Wikipedia Commons.
fading
rosebud on a shelf
plucked in youth’s naivety
saved to remember
time galloped, life danced, skipped beats –
blue-veined hands dust around it
Tanka form: syllables of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. Photo from pixabay.com
Still He Draws
Mind stalled, synapses off kilter
gait pained by age and atrophy,
he swings a chalk bucket
as we walk our weekly walk.
Stopped to watch scurrying ants
he stoops, putting chalk to sidewalk.
Hopscotch numbers beyond his grasp
he draws a simple sun, one cloud.
Standing, he pats my face
grins at me, then bends again.
Clutching pink chalk, draws a string
attached to one pink balloon.
Chalk tossed aside, he lowers himself
shifts bony frame uncomfortably
until he is perfectly placed,
as if holding that pink string.
Eyes tight shut, he lies still
floating in his muddled mind,
beside the cloud and sun.
And I smile wistfully.
I picture him a young boy
spent from playing tag,
drawing this sidewalk scene
lying down just like this . . .
then jumping up to run away,
an entire life in front of him.
Not bumbling to recognize me,
needing a helping hand.
My nephew posted this photo of his son quite some time ago on FB. I loved the photo and asked permission to use it some day on my poetry blog. This little boy is a wonderful bright, lively and imaginative child! I went to a place with this poem that I wasn’t expecting.
Posting for OLN (Open Link Night) at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, where today that famous guy from Sweden, Bjorn, is still revelling in the summer solstice season and Sweden’s advancement in the World Cup!
hey, bun! right it wrong
there are days i can be in a haze. a daze. or a funk phase. i seem to be addicted to twenty-four-seven news. seams unravelling. politics, shootings, kapoho buried in lava. earth shudders, smolders in unrest. seems everywhere.
one day this week i should go cold turkey. weak? just do it. a day without news. without gnus. there are no gnus in boston. my phone as phone only. ear to the metal. eyes won’t smolder. just ears, if I get a hotty call.
nature irked, smolders
belches red, spills, spews lava
tourist season be damned
It’s Haibun Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Jill asks us to try our hand at avant-garde poetry — to write an unventional haibun. Traditional Haibun: one or two paragraphs of tight prose followed by a haiku about nature that includes reference to a traditional season, IE spring, fall. So – capitalization be damned; and I’ve added a tourist season.
Photo: from art exhibit in NC: standing in front of what looks like a traditional mirror and somehow, the artist makes steam come out of your head in your reflected image! These days, that’s what the news does to me far too often.
IMPORTANT reference: We stayed at the beautiful Lagoon House on the Big Island in 2000, 2001, and 2005. See 2001 photo below and explanation beneath.
Lagoon House. I was in contact last week with the realtor who continues to offer rentals on the Big Island. He sadly told me the entire Kapoho area, including Lagoon House, is now under 30 feet of lava from the Kilauea eruption. It will literallly be hundreds of years before this area of the Big Island is inhabitable again.
. . . and ye shall stumble
Mountain mist shroud
clings wet and opaque.
Paths disappear.
Dampened earth waits
as sun inevitably shifts.
Atmosphere and temperature warm.
Suffocating clamminess transforms.
Life-giving moisture droplets
kiss ever-greening leaves.
Benchmarks reappear.
Written for dVerse where Michelle asks us to write words of advice, in poetic form. Photos from trip to Alaska, several years ago.
Disillusioned
“apologizing to the other passengers. As if car sickness was a crime.” page 111, 5th line in 3rd paragraph of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
“You the sand I’ve crawled across.” page 111, 5th line in 3rd stanza in Jelly Roll by Kevin Young.
Disillusioned
Apologizing to the other passengers
as if car sickness was a crime.
Commuter train to end of line
end comes everyday.
Nauseating life of dregs,
there and back and there again.
Everyday merry-go-round hell.
Cell phone glued to your ear,
apologies for my stench.
I was you until I burned,
abandoned by the man.
You happy across the aisle,
my respect tossed to winds
abracadabra, like magic dust.
Path of self-worth, weed-whacked,
lost soul like tumble weed.
Arid dunes, grain smothers grain,
insurmountable pile.
My brain is a desert skull.
Bleached-bare eye sockets,
parched blind of caring.
And you sit there like him.
You the sand I’ve crawled across.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Amaya asks us to bridge the gap: take a book near your bedstand, open it to page 111; copy the 5th sentence/line in the 3rd paragraph. That is the first line of your original poem. Choose a 2nd book and do the same but, this is the last line of your poem. And she admonishes, NO CHEATING! When I saw the line in The Kite Runner I was ready to pick a different book! But, no cheating…so Disillusionment is what came out of this prompt.
