Life

End of the Line

lillian6 Comments

Caught in depression’s dark place
she hopped a no-name train
out-bound from her no-where life.

Metal wheels grate steel on steel
vibrations scream to emptiness
emotions scraped raw, again and again.

Unseeing people clamber on and off
cellphones plastered to deaf ears
unknowingly define her nothingness.

Surround sound automatically
projects periodic hypnotic names
leads lucid riders home, town by town.

Destiny speaks the loudest words
cut into her ragged soul
Last stop, Wonderland.
Thousands ride the subway system in Boston every day. They’re anonymous people, right? . That idea is the Muse for this poetic story. And yes, Wonderland is the last stop on the Blue Line in Boston’s subway system.

 

Life’s Choices

lillian5 Comments

City life can be invigorating. Sometimes I crave the natural of the sea.  The juxtaposition of these two got me to thinking about the two sides of myself and voila, this “person” resulted. I do think that sometimes, there’s a “reclusive idyllic” in all of us…..as in today’s Daily Post Word Challenge.

 Life’s Choices

Reclusive by nature
she lived everyone else’s dream
a New York-Wall Street-Starbucks life.

She woke ten years ago, exhausted
ignored the ticking clock
sipped coffee slowly and decided.

One greatly, not gently used car
stuffed suitcase, and road map later
she searched the road for seaside serenity.

Dune shack dweller these many years
she fancied herself a Crustacean
sliding through life sidewise.

Exo skeleton deliberately developed
avoids tourists, sudden noises
eye contact and sand castles.

Off-season, she feasts on quiet
vast stretches of sand, sea and sky
shell discarded, she feeds her soul.

The Sculpture

lillian3 Comments

 

I stare. The smooth white sculpted figure
completely captivating. Cold, unmoving
lids closed for eternity. Eyes created
into white darkness.

Serenely sits, back bent with chin in hands
pondering thoughts, alive in past reality.
Captured contradictory calmness
while lungs clogged and marble dust swirled.

Chisels scraped and coarse hands shaved
layer after layer, coaxing, manipulating curves.
Demanded and willed, she bent to stillness
life siphoned from blood to stone.

I imagine her resentment
concealed in beauty replicated
bent deeper still, pain unseen
words swallowed into stone.

NaPoWriMo — without a prompt. Day 21. I’ve found that since my forray into writing poetry, I look at things more intensely. Has this happened to you?  In Bermuda, I came across this amazing sculpture — I couldn’t take my eyes off it.  And then I read what the artist said, and I understood. 

Sculpture credit: Pensativa 1984, white marble. By Felipe Castaneda….in the Bermuda Art Museum. Of his artistic process Castaneda says “I still consider it a kind of miracle that forms almost identical to human beings are born out of rock – and in some cases the only thing lacking for them to be alive is for them to move of their own accord and speak.”

 

Choose the Light

lillian7 Comments

NaPoWriMo  Day 20:  without a prompt.  Who needs a smile today? This poem should be in my About. 

I choose life in lightness
sun or clouds, day or night
seek the circle’s upturned half
peripheral vision, occasionally required.

We wake up watchful ready
sweetly taste our morning smiles
tickled baby beams a toothless grin
dimples born in happiness and glee.

Grandkids’ knock-knock jokes
silly faces feign gargantuan guffaws
I choose to step lightly through life’s travails
aging knees, fingers stiff, imagination in Neverland.

Moonwalk

lillian5 Comments

NaPoWriMo day 10:  without a prompt.
Nostalgia. Reminiscence. As we age, these words come into play. And sometimes, like me, you go back to revisit your childhood haunts.

They warned me
but I still tried to moonwalk.

You remember that smooth
walking backwards to Billie Jean?

This time, I glide back
for a one day return to where I began.

The house at 144 is there. Paint peeling,house 2
flecks of grey-white decorate the yard.

Rusted poles, frayed clothes line
bereft of flapping sheets.

I meander down a one-way
and circle back searching

for the corner shop. Marble topped
counter with stools where we perched

to share chocolate or cherry cokes
and carefree cheerleader talk –

now your friendly neighborhood
hardware store. Without those silver

keys to tighten clamp-on skates and
rush down Washington Street so fast

we didn’t need my brother’s Radio Flyer.
Next door sits a Dunkin’, eclairs filled

with counterfeit custard. Past blurred
in the too-large magnifying glass

of my mind’s eye. The moonwalk was
and still is, well beyond my grasp.

Phraseology

lillian1 Comment

The power of words – made into phrases – dependent on circumstances…

Words to a baby small
said with a grin
scooping mashed somethings
from a dripping chin.
All gone.

Long buried
dark transgression
in the almost unreachable
back room of my mind.
All gone.

Brother sudden, father slow,
mother slower still.
My lips whisper:
now – just me.
Almost – all gone

   

All We Need

lillian1 Comment

buttercup_meadow_pointed_flower

Have you ever just escaped the craziness of the world by tent camping? It makes you realize how little we really need to be happy.

All We Need

We travel at a hurried pace
away from a stoplight-elevator-world
toward those long-planned
six nights and days.

The tread wheel flattens
heart rates slow
as the green meadow comes into view
scattered clumps of butter-cups and violets.

Personnas molted, we sit
and breathe deeply
the kind of gut-breaths
that expand the good parts of your brain.

Coffee gurgles over the fire
lit by one match
branches, twigs and
scraps of yesterday’s paper.

The one we quickly scanned
standing up at the glass table
gulping from mugs
with ergonomic handles.

With long swishing swallows
of aromatic elixir
we watch our six day world
through the thick mesh of a tent flap.

Rain starts to fall
quietly in that all day soaking way –
so we laugh
and clink our tin cups together.

Secrets One and Two

lillian2 Comments

We all have them, right?   Secrets can be delicious or debilitating, wonderful or horrific. So here’s the question to think about. At some time in our lives, have we all had both?
 

Secret One                                                  

A secret so sublime
you long to swirl it
relish it slowly
like the first pour
of fine red wine
as it coats the glass
anticipation heightens
the tasting as divine
as the telling.

 

Secret Two

A secret so potent
like anger
wind-whipped current
roaring through
the sea wall of your mind
unrelenting persistent
batters forward
again and again
through rock hard edges
until released in spews
shattered feelings spent.

Pollyanna

lillian3 Comments

If you haven’t read my About, now would be a good time. Looking at this post, it seems to fit with who I am quite well.

Sunflower

Pollyanna

She was called a pollyanna.
Positive exclamation addicted
she high-stepped and varied her pace
through life’s shifting textures.

Retrieving sea glass and a scallop-cut piece of shell
from the day’s foam ruffled waves
at the edge of iridescent aquamarine.

She lived as a greeter.
Always expectant, rounding each corner
to meet until-now unfound friends or catch
a coin’s shiny glint from the sidewalk’s crevasse.

A collector too, she gathered smiles as she
walked past and sometimes toward faces
moving to their meeting places for the day.

She said regrets lead backward.
Ruminations rehash long ago or too current
memories looking for what-ifs and what-thens
not in her mind the stuff of collectibles.

She chose to live today
and dream tomorrow
always loving forward.

This was written in response to a poetry class writing prompt: think about your regrets.  I sat down with my journal, a morning cup of coffee, and began to “spill” on the page. Thoughts, not coffee. And then I stopped. Not fun. And it wasn’t me. So I started again and out came Pollyanna. Have you heard the term? I can define it by something my daughter once said to me, Mom, every movie can’t be The Sound of Music!!!

The picture is from Provincetown, MA, many years ago. It just seems to fit with this post, right?  Besides, sunflowers always make me smile.