Today is brewing, steeping.
Clouds blur within my head.
Grass pricks feet like shards
or linoleum with eyes.
They’re supposed to be on faces.
And that song, Tiny Bubble, goes with a ukulele.
It’s yesterday again, or Tuesday tomorrow.
I shall pad to the upstairs water closet.
Run ocean waves until steam rises like fog
and drains clog with long dulcimer hairs.
I will slip under the sea
to become an anemone.
No one can miss me.
Because i have not been here
for a long long time.
City lights blink like fireflies, regardless of season. High rise windows shine where brick meets sky in a busy horizon.
Ten thousand steps a day are easy here. Church, mosque, supermarket. Post office, synagogue and hardware store. Restaurants serve Italian, Chinese, Ethiopian, French, Japanese, Greek, seafood, pizza, tapas, ribs. Department stores, yarn shop, coffee shops, and burger joints. Museum of Fine Arts and African American Meeting House. Beauty and nail salons, barbershop, shoe repairs, dentists, doctors, optometrist and palm reader too. Freedom trail and river stroll. I am carless in the city. Well-worn walking shoes upon my feet and a cornucopia of things to do.
Iowa girl
fifteen acres
first-picked tomato
dripping down my chin.
Transplanted to cityscape.
I still carry heartland habits,
greeting surprised strangers
as they pass me by on city streets.
Written for dVerse, the virtual poet’s pub, where Bjorn is hosting Haibun Monday and suggesting a modern take on this form — put it into a city poem and the haiku that follows the prose may or may not be about nature; may or may not follow haiku form. Pub opens at 3 PM…come visit other’s views of city life! Photos taken from our 7th floor deck in our highrise in Boston.
i.
They ignored the name, blood orange,
plucked it from apples in the bin
and then they were surprised.
Layer after layer peeled away
through pock marked rind
through white pith,
only to reveal a rotten core.
ii.
They chose the brightest orange one
mr. jack-o-lantern
pre-carved, with the biggest grin.
Set it out for all to see.
Surrounded with goblins,
they left it on the porch too long.
Rot and mold began to take its toll.
They watched in great dismay
as it slumped and caved
into a misshapen ugly thing,
far earlier than the target night
it was expected to shine.
There comes a point in time
when life doesn’t migrate,
it meanders.
Meanwhile . . .
morning alarms come alive
coffee is gulped, black and strong.
Commuter rails and trails
fill with busy bees,
drones and queens with tasks ahead.
Life moves on a conveyor belt,
bar codes intact . . .
while I roll over,
wiggle my toes
and let the day unfold.
Shared at dVerse, Open Link Night, a virtual pub for poets. Folks share a poem of their choice on OLN. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Photo: dawn in Provincetown, Cape Cod.
youth invincible
quick stepping through raucous times
kaleidoscope shifts
colored prisms less defined
pace slowed coming round the bend
A second Tanka shared with dVerse — although I’ve broken the rules a bit and added a title for this one. Tanka: 5 lines with syllabic count of 5-7-5-7-7. Third line contains a cutting shift; no punctuation; no capitalization.
One dot from a pointillists’s brush,
starts the ripple in a river’s sheen.
Grab the energy of love,
fling it long and fling it wide.
Build positives and can-do-its
into mountains of hope.
Add a life-time partner
and work together
to pass it on.
Tending the bar today at dVerse, asking everyone to write a self portrait quadrille: 44 words – no more, no less; not including title. Stop by and see how folks paint themselves with words rather than a brush! Photo Credit: Pointillism by NikkiNavaille.
Deal the cards,
jokers are wild and ante is high.
Life’s tough
with card sharks at every turn.
Bluffing is no longer an option.
Sharing for Open Link Night at dVerse, the Poets’ Virtual Pub.
It was a day like any other day – until it wasn’t.
Rocking the elliptical to A Hard Day’s Night, I suddenly stopped. Did some invisible vice just clamp on to my chest? The Beatles still blared in my headset, I started to pump again . . . nope . . . can’t breathe. Off the machine . . . slowly out the club door into the sweltering day. I watched my feet in slow motion as the sun magnified everything. Sweat dripped through my pores. The elephant sitting on my chest was an unbelievable load. Takotsubo? The heart blows out in the shape of a Japanese octopus trap. Really? And everything slowed down to match the thick soup of summer’s oppressive heat. If you’re a woman who lives with stress, or has lived through stress, you should know the word: Takotsubo. I didn’t. Until I did.
octopus seeks its prey
eight suctioned tentacles grab and twist
latch on to suck out life
It’s haibun Monday at dVerse Poet’s Pub where Toni is tending bar. She asks us to write a haibun (one paragraph of prose followed by a haiku) that relates to hot hot hot — perhaps a memory from a hot summer day. This is my memory. My experience. I urge all readers to read about Takotsubo, sometimes called Broken Heart Syndrome. It is real and frightening. In most cases, women completely recover with no lasting damage to the heart. I am, fortunately, one of those women, although it took three months. We must all learn to handle stress in our lives. It is a matter of life and death. Photo on left is a Japanese octopus catcher. Xray on right shows the left portion of the heart blown out like a takotsubo….the heart does not pump efficiently. Take care of yourself out there!
jazz in the city
cello, saxophone, paper cone
playin’ for tips and the city dawgs
makin’ music
strummin’, blowin’, puffin’ too
flyin’ high with life
city nomad, gigs of the soul
WONDERFUL art by Claudia Schoenfeld, also one of the founders of dVerse, a poets’ pub. Could not resist writing a second sevenling to conincide with this great piece of art, Urbanity. A sevenling is composed of two tercets and one final line — and includes somehow an element of three in each of the tercets.
Swing it, oh jazz man!
Brush me lazy eights. Swish-arc-swirl, swish-arc-swirl.
Tap-atink rim shots, bass-drum-thuds.
Stick it LOUD, oh ROCK man!
KaBAM a-BANG-BAM. CRASH cymbal SPLASH.
PUMP WHOLE FOOT PEDAL. BASS DRUM BOOMS.
Soothe me melancholy, then BAM ME A BEAT.
To be read aloud. Try it!
Written for dVerse, a poet’s virtual pub, where Grace is tending bar and asks us to write a sevenling related to music. A sevenling is two tercets and a final single line – each tercet includes an element of three — here the sounds of a drummer. Celebrating the 5th anniversary of dVerse with a wonderful interview with Claudia, one of the founders and, I might add, painter extraordinaire! Painting credit: Psychedelic Drummer by Eduardo Tavares.
lillian the home poet 