I need your help,
the crocodile is getting close.
Time just seems to disappear
even on ho hum days.
Please send Tinker Bell
to flit round my head.
I’ll remember then
to think wonderful things.
And the starry sky
outside my window
will look more inviting
when it’s my turn to fly.
lillian
Quickly’s Winter Doldrums Jan 10 Prompt: write an epistolary poem – a poem in the form of a letter.
She enjoyed decorating for the season
memories gently removed from tissue paper,
placed about the room.
Christmas cards from years gone by
ornaments of glass and styrofoam
some misshapen, now glitter bare.
Each year’s new wreath carefully selected
artificial greens bedecked in happines
meant to last well beyond her window.
And as Epiphany dawned
she readied herself for church
donned this year’s circle of golden stars.
Her wreath of choice, her Sunday hat.
And she wore the Christmas spirit
well beyond the new year.
In response to the Daily Photo Challenge to let a familiar shape, the circle, inspire you. Poem motivated by photo, taken at the White House December 2015.
News on reels, envelopes sealed with spit
new was last month or a week gone by.
Today it interrupts my present,
becomes a never ending loop.
Sunday drives with i spy and the license game
morphed into get-me-there robots.
Talking heads decapitated
into monotone maps.
Family restaurants turned mausoleums.
Mommy, daddy, Ashley and Drake
eyes down and mouths shut.
Thumbs talk…with imaginary friends.
Paris in Paducah and Chicago too,
a world of twitter and bird shit.
Color me shrink wrapped
and struggling to breathe.
In response to dVerse Poets Pub, December 17 prompt. Write about the times we have lived in – describe the life of the decades you have gone through. Free-write whatever comes to mind and then create your poem around those ideas. Cut it down but keep that raw feeling from your initial free-write.
Aperture in the universe
newborn, idea, or brush stroke
unfolding, release.
Something unknown
outside the well worn crease,
explodes through bland ticks of time
into significance.
A bit of pyrotechnical grandeur
becomes millions of colored lights,
if only we dare to dream.
Happy in her new digs,
plywood and metal scraps,
original resident dead.
A step up from cardboard,
if she could eradicate the smell.
Comic strips, the colored ones,
wallpaper of choice.
Condoms stored in knock-off bag,
Pick your flavor, pick your place.
But no, not here. Not in my space.
Golden locket round her neck
broken knotted chain.
Daddy’s picture kept within,
missing god knows where
always hangng near.
Mama’s image burned one day.
Albatross memories
seared in heart.
Flailing arms and slurred tongue,
bottle thrown. Crashed into her soul.
YOU. GET. OUT.
And so she did,
grabbed the locket and ran.
Happy sweet sixteen.
Birthday promise made that day
always kept, these many years.
Sobriety.
Eyes tired, never shut.
She saw their faces, every john.
Every thrust she felt,
every punch and hunger pain.
But slurring, oblivious sot?
She would NEVER be her.
Photo credit: Linda Lacerna. Somehow, in this holiday season, my heart is drawn to those who have not – the Lorettas of this world.
At this age, spectacles sit precariously,
the bridge of my nose their perch.
Magnify life’s past,
forks in the road, hillsides with ruts
sea side suns and city life,
so many bridges forged.
Looking ahead, the distance is less.
Tread slowly the tunnel etched on the map,
transition away from and into the dark.
Or seek light, transition forward
cross o’er the bridge and soar slowly,
glide through the transom and savor the view.
Photos of Zakim Bridge in Boston, MA. Poem motivated by Daily Post Photo Challenge: Transition. Bridges, of many kinds, transition us from place to place.
You said twenty miles as the crow flies.
On a hot still day, with a tail wind
or through an electrical storm?
Your six minute cardiac arrest,
like a lifetime. Until it wasn’t.
Birthday note penned in blue,
seventy is the new fifty.
Like a wilted brown-edged rose
is a pink rose bud? Hardly.
Sun rays pierce gathering clouds
as blackness sits beside my pane.
Quoth the raven, nevermore.
Or evermore? Never sure.
And there is a world of difference,
but how do I measure that?
Motivated by a Fall Poetry Apprenticeship Week 7 assignment: consider a misunderstood or misquoted line of a poem, or something you misunderstood or misheard.
Half-pulled shade, headlights dance
in the space before the sill.
Thoughts of nothing and everything
bounce inside my head.
Days gone by reappear, faces blur then clear
generations meld one to the next.
Eye-open dreams change scenes quickly
acts play out in milliseconds.
Like a thousand moths flitting round the light
ideas, words, pictures, feelings, here then gone.
Time moves forward on a nearby shelf,
illumined dial ignores my stalled state.
I watch you beside me, face up, eyes closed.
You wear the night so well, sleep looks delicious.
I match my breath to yours, slow syncopation
like snow flakes falling in the dark of night.
No sound. One by one, breath by breath
and finally I drift.
Cars travel dirt roads
on hot sultry summer days,
dust clouds trail behind.
Cornfields stretch for miles.
Farmers perched on green machines
rumble through the rows.
Keepers of the land,
they rose before the sun
to feed you and me.
Haiku trio. Photos: corn from our Iowa garden many years ago. Tractor: by Loretta Humble.
Lines and lines of cars move nowhere
tempers flare, boxed in, horns blare
appointments fester in my mind
hands clamped on wheel,
like talons on prey.
I crave, I need, I must have space.
Foot to brake, pump and pump again
peck my way, inch by inch
peer through smog and fumes
find a seam, create a crack
desperately seeking blue.
I crave, I need, I lust for air.
What if I quit?
Leave it all behind.
Try new wings, not a migratory line.
Free form, to soar, to find
real, life affirming air.
I can, I should, I will.
lillian the home poet 