Relationships

The Would-Be Poet

lillian13 Comments

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.

Azul’s World

lillian17 Comments

I’d like to see the world
through Azul’s eyes.

Where trees are lush green
vibrant with life.

Where every face is smiling,
grinning happily.
Side-by-side neighbors
whether across the globe,
the continent, the island,
the city or neighborhood.
Where there are no others.
Only a world of us and we.

Where all children are kissed by mothers
beneath trees melodious with caroling birds
hidden among their leaves.
Where the rising moon thrives
shining hope and beaming light,
even as the setting sun
paints the sky in waves
of yellow and crimson orange.

May we all see our world
through the eyes of Azul.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today I’m hosting and am delighted to post four pieces of artwork created by Azul, an 8-year old boy from the Philippines. I’ve never met Azul, only his wonderful father. I’ve posted four of Azul’s drawings/paintings and asked folks to create a poem inspired by one or more of them. I think he’s a budding artist! In case you’re interested, here’s the fourth piece of Azul’s art that I did not include in my poem. It too is beautiful.

A Short Political Ditty for the Times

lillian17 Comments

Hum-diddly-dee
hum-diddly-dum.
Sing out with glee,
beat that drum!

Add words to your tune,
“sycophants be gone”!
Revile the buffoon,
use your brassiest song.

Come November third
rise up, Land of the Brave.
Drown this theater of the absurd
in a tsunami blue wave!



Written for dVerse, the online pub for poets around the globe. Today, De asks us to write a quadrille including the word “hum” or a form of the word.

Quadrille: a poem of exactly 44 words, sans title, that includes a particular word provided in the prompt.

Living in the Wrong Time

lillian15 Comments

She seeks answers in the landscape,
this early nineteenth century woman.

Firmly corseted, demure by training,
constrained by society’s expectations.
She pauses deliberately on crude dirt path,
having followed it through rolling hills
amidst surrounding trees.

Would that she could stretch her limbs,
bloom anew, sway in every fresh breeze.
Remain firmly rooted defying threatening storms.
But she is here. Painted in her times.
Resolutely she turns, walks off canvas,
slowly returns home.

How much joy she would have
if in this moment she could know,
her female counterparts
will change the world.


Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual home for poets around the world. Today Melissa asks us to consider the artist Henri Rousseau and provides us with several of his works to motivate our poetry. I’ve chosen his painting, La Promenade dans la Foret (The Walk in the Forest) c 1886.

For Jaye

lillian3 Comments

Adirondack lady
blankets at the ready
cool evenings to come.

She sits surrounded by woods
lulled by the sound of loons,
listening, smiling with Joe.

Memories seem to visit her lately.
Their early parenting days
punctuated by laughter and love.

She waits now, expectantly,
their child’s mothering days
soon to begin.

Time passes by, disappears,
inexorably moving forward.
Generations born and tendered.

One certainty
in these unpredictable times,
this new little one
will be born into a world of love.

Icarus Revisited

lillian19 Comments

He feigns strength,
gilds his world golden.
His name. His visage. His way.
Trumpian mythology
built lie by lie, threat by threat.
Its depth unimaginable,
bottomless pit of greed, racism.
So self-consumed is he,
blind to his wax wings melting.
Truth’s flame is invincible


Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today De asks us to include the word “myth” or a form of the word in a poem of exactly 44 words sans title.

Reference is made to mythology’s Icarus whose wings were made of wax…which led to his demise when he flew too close to the sun.

Remembering June

lillian2 Comments

I recall being always happy in the early years of my childhood. Playing house with dolls, parading down Melrose Avenue in dress-up clothes, riding my tricycle, running through sprinklers and drinking from the garden hose – all with my best friend, June. As we progressed to first and second grade we climbed Mrs. Jester’s apple trees, held hands as we walked back and forth to West Elementary School, made chalk drawings on the sidewalk and played hopscotch too. I loved sleepovers at June’s house, looking with wonder at her sister Auberdene’s dressing table filled with lipsticks and perfumes. We’d sit in June’s living room and watch Roy Rogers and Gene Autry on the black-and-white tv while eating a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches. Once every summer, my mom bought a box of popsicles and doled them out to June and I and other kids on the block. Everyone fought over the red ones. I always had the yellow ones to myself. I guess nobody else liked banana.

childhood memories
friendships frozen in photos
long faded by time


Writing this to say Happy Birthday on June 15th to my dearest childhood friend, June Zitka Trentacosti. June is on the left in both these photos.

Living in a Run-On Sentenced World

lillian8 Comments

how did we get to this place
where journalists are called piggy and stupid
and the one before is called sleepy joe while the one now
who was also before the one before
nods off in televised meetings but wakes up
demanding cabinet members sling odes of praise
while hiding their genuflecting knees below the conference table
refusing to speak against indulgences given to insurrectionists
as others under his spell fund masked men
not Zorro types
accosting individuals who by the way are not eating your pets
rather paying taxes to raise their children who are US citizens
being good neighbors attending church
working jobs that need bodies who show up and care

we need Martin and Jesse
John Lewis and Barbara Jordon
to be here again
we need their spirited tenacity to rile up cowardly sycophants
to grow backbones and finally say enough is enough

meanwhile he’s playing feral tom cat lifting his leg all over DC
leaving his mark so future felines and species of any kind
will know he was here in his gilded age of narcissism
adding his name atop JFKs and on towers and arch de trumps
even as he paints the Reflecting Pond blue
in the image of Mar-a-Lago’s swimming pool
which as he explained with posters as visual aids
is taller than any of the tallest buildings in the world
never mind it’s a pool of water lying prone on the ground
not a building actually standing tall reaching to the sky

he’s become an AI Master in the wee hours
evidenced by his creations
something no other president has or ever will be
see Donald the pilot dropping shit bombs everywhere
while JD warns Leo to be careful talking about theology
his boss created himself in the image of Christ
and it goes on and on and on like a run-on sentence
with no stops no resets no commas
just implicitly felt exclamation marks slung everywhere
until we the people add our own exclamation mark
and say NO in November

let the reckoning come


Written for Tuesday’s Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Melissa asks us to write a poem with no punctuation.
Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay