Listen. Tears fall like rain, the soft spring rain gentle, quiet cleansing the earth, the soul.
Rain begins like a tear beading on a rose petal trickling down to nourish the earth, one drop at a time.
Clouds thicken, skies turn dark. Rain falls harder and the earth is saturated, muddy.
Drops become streams. Overflowing banks. A flood of tears rises to wash away our dreams.
Sun breaks through Two rainbows arc across the sky Double surprise, double gift Slowing the tears.
Summer rain smells fresh; earth is nourished; tears are pierced by sunbeams.
Listen. Rain will fall again: On roses, on your parade, on Mondays. Will you walk in it or just get wet?
Written by dear friend, Lindsey Ein, for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Today I’m hosting and asking people to take us on a walk within their poem.
My kaleidoscope memories, colorful because they feature you and me. Time before you sepia toned, indistinct.
Like a deeply embedded sliver tender to the touch, fear festers as you sleep beside me.
I need longer days and many many more, to continue being us.
Written for dVerse where today it’s Quadrille Monday. Kim is hosting and asks us to include the word “sliver” in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title.
Excited citizens rush through archway thirty-three. They take their seats on marble slabs, cool to the touch this sweltering summer day. Lions roar. Giant bear paws rattle cages. Slaves strain, work a pulley system, lifting up beasts on stone slabs. Trap doors open. The crowd gasps, then screams approval. Eighty thousand men lusting to see lion against tiger, grizzly bear against bear, or prisoner against beast. These to-the-death spectacles, the opening acts.
Last bout of the day, stirs the crowd to mad frenzy. Two gladiators trained to fight, slaves by night, warriors by day. They leave their training complex across the road, make their way through dark, dank tunnels connected to the Colosseum. One a slave with wealthy master, fights to earn his freedom, bout by bout. The other slave, a wealthy man’s business investment, simply tries to stay alive.
Entering the arena, they pause, adjust to glaring sun. The adjudicator signals and the battle begins. When deep wounds pore blood and exhaustion sets in, one man is declared a winner. Both barely alive, they are carted off the field as the crowd roars its approval. Back across the road, medical treatment given, they collapse in their cells. Crowds file out of the Colosseum. A day’s respite with excellent entertainment. Who can ask for anything more?
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe, where it was Open Link Night on Thursday, August 24. I’m a day late posting. BUT, it’s also Open Link Night LIVE, coming up on Saturday, August 26th from 10 to 11 AM EST. Hope you can join us! You’ll find the link to on the dVerse home page,HERE!
We already had OLN LIVE on Thursday and had folks from Sweden, the UK, Jerusalem, Pakistan, Michigan, Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey; Portland, Oregon, Missouri, Washington, and Trinidad Tobago reading a poem of theirs aloud, and chatting with each other. We’re a friendly and appreciative bunch! So do join us on Saturday if you can!
Yes, these are PHOTOS from July when we were on our month-long trip. First stop was Rome and its antiquities. We had a day’s tour with an archeologist which began with an extensive visit to the Colosseum. Everything I’ve written about here is what it was like back in the day! And yes, you can still see the original XXXIII on the archway where folks who had seats in this area entered. The photo bottom left shows part of the floor rebuilt, and you can see the circular shape with the tiers of seats. Photo bottom right shows the partitioned off “rooms” or “cells” where the animals were kept. And yes, there were trap doors in the floor and animals were raised up to suddenly appear on the colosseum floor. It turns out that animal to animal fights were always to the death of at least one animal. Animal to prisoner would most likely end in death to the prisoner. But the real gladiators, unlike in the movies, who fought here, never fought to the death. There was an adjudicator who called the contest and named a winner. The gladiators were actually slaves and had a “school” literally across the road from the colosseum where they trained by day and were locked in their cells by night. As slaves, they were a business investment, owned by wealthy people. When you learn that, you understand why they didn’t fight to the death. Some slaves had the opportunity to earn their freedome by winning X number of battles. Sometimes they managed to do that, but not often. An incredible place to see.Construction on the Colosseum, the largest amphitheater ever built, began in 72AD and was completed in 80 AD. It held 50 to 80,000 people. And there was indeed a “gladiator school” across the road. There was daily entertainment here, provided to the citizens free of charge, and sponsored by the Emperor.
i On the street corner used and discarded needles, broken bottles too. The downtrodden neglected, Mother Teresa long dead.
ii Bottled up feelings like a Molotov cocktail, stuffed and volatile. When circumstances throw him, he’ll blow his top like Etna.
iii Bottle tipped over, red wine stained white tablecloth. Lipstick on glass rim, her perfume scent still lingered. The filthy slut betrayed him.
iv Glass milk jug bottles, Wonder Bread pb and js, Father Knows Best, Roy Rogers, saddle shoes and bobby sox. My fifties and sixties life.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, Grace asks us to write about bottles.
The Tanka form is a 5 line poem with the following syllabic content in each line: 5-7-5-7-7
Roy Rogers and Father Knows Best were very popular tv shows in the 1950s. Roy Rogers vied for viewers with Gene Autry and also the Lone Ranger. We always got glass milk jugs from the grocer….no such thing as waxed cardboard containers in those days. Wonder Bread is a spongey white bread, still sold in groceries today. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Wonder Bread were always in my tin Lone Ranger lunch box!
There are moments in life standing in the glory of nature when I’ve been awestruck.
Humbled by her magnificence at the Grand Canyon, Norwegian fjords, and Mount Fuji.
And once, under whispering tall pines, I felt the sun’s rays of grace shine upon me.
Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today De asks us to use the word “pine” or a form of the word, in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title.
Yes, in our travels we’ve been to the magnificent Grand Canyon, the Norwegian Fjords, and to Japan where we saw Mount Fuji. Photo is from about ten years ago when we were camping with our children and their children, in Mount Rainier National Park.
Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory – Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Romantic Poet (1792 – 1822)
People say, watching someone transition from all knowing, to sporadic dementia, to full blown Alzheimer’s, is like watching someone disappear. It seems to me, there could be another perspective . . .
She saw our bodies, our faces. But in her eyes, we were shadows. In the beginning of the end the mist would eventually lift. She’d remember our names, laugh with us as we reminisced.
But the veil fell and we lost her, and she lost us. We no longer existed in her world. But the music . . . sweet notes, harmony, songs she loved. These she kept in her heart.
Some days, we’d find her singing. Her voice clear and strong. Her face animated. We dared not interrupt lest she stop and simply stare confused.
She’s gone now, gone from this earth. In her last days of lying still, eyes closed, lights dimmed, unaware of nurses nearby or family by her side, occasionally she’d smile.
I have no doubt angels were hovering nearby, humming a lullaby only she could hear.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today is Tuesday Poetics and Merril asks us to write a poem about a transition in time we may have experienced or that we’ve thought about. She provides the poetry lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley at the top of my poem, as a bit of inspiration. They made me think about the lasting power of music for those who, for example, suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
I was reminded of Tony Bennett’s last concert with Lady Gaga, when he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. He had trouble remembering many things but as soon as he heard the music of the standby songs he sang and loved for so many years, and was in front of the audience, all the music came back to him. The YouTube video is of him singing at that last concert.
On a more personal note, I learned several days ago that an old college friend of mine recently died. We were sorority sisters and she sang in our college choir and for all these years, in her church choir. Like Tony Bennett, I know from last year’s Christmas letter from her husband, that although her memory problems were increasing, she was still singing in her church choir. At her funeral, which I was able to watch in a recording, the pastor said her life was a song….and he had no doubt, God was singing a lullaby to her in her final days.
Five years. Enough. Audition after audition. Waiting tables at Marco’s for lousy tips with far too many sleazy propositions. Moist hands reaching for her. Patriarchal, inebriated, entitled pats on her behind. Then home to a seven-story walk-up studio shared with two roommates. Also acting wannabes. She’d tried. Oh god how she’d tried. But zero call backs and enough Ramen noodle suppers to last a lifetime.
She sat slumped in her Greyhound seat during the city’s never-ending rush hour, traffic holding its breath. Sky a tense diaphragm with black billowing threatening clouds. Of course she’s leaving during a severe weather alert! Thunder and lightning? Bring it on. Not exactly a substitute for booming applause. But she’ll take it. Just let it rain like hell!
She closed her eyes to let the Xanax do its job.
Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Kim introduces us to the poem Twice Shy by Seamus Heaney. She asks us to include its line Traffic holding its breath, sky a tense diaphragm in our piece of prose (flash fiction) of 144 words or less, sans title. We must include it word for word; only the punctuation may be changed.
When I think of aging visions of nature appear poetically, ready to be written across the page. But my hand tremor sets script askew, not unlike a preschooler’s first attempt at printing their name.
——–
Bright pink ruffled peony once perkily perched, quite the showy thing gleaming amongst greenery. Now droops beneath residue of last night’s fierce thunderstorm, struggles to hold its bloom.
Newborn foal, gangly tries to gain its footing. Youthfully romps through fields colored riotously in wildflowers. Years later, put to pasture. Stands swaying slightly, head down, eyes clouded, wildflowers a dull blur.
And I myself, mark changes in my body. Steps slow and sometimes falter, veins protrude on hands. News comes of friends facing grave illness, friends who leave this earth. I reflect more and more on what was, and what is, and what is to come.
Perennials dance in spring’s fresh air, stand proudly through their season. Then wilting, lie down to disintegrate beneath winter’s winds and snow. But their seed is strong. The next generation takes their place, for they are perennials and their beauty continues.
Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, dear friend Sanaa is hosting. She asks us to write in the style of Amber Rose Tamblyn, an American actress, author, poet, and film director. Sanaa tells us Tamblyn’s “poetry is incredibly unique and descriptive. When asked where the power lies when it comes to writing, Amber Rose answered, ‘when it makes you feel every human emotion all at once.’” Sanaa asks us to create visuals in our poem and “aim to explore the human condition.”
Life spins round and round until POP-GOES-THE-WEASEL in our face. Stuff it back in the box.
Keep turning the crank, humming the tune over and over until POP-GOES-THE-WEASEL!
But this time, the spring is shot. So what to do with us worn out Jacks?
Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Mish is tending bar and asks us to use the word “pop” or a form of the word, in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title.
Walk down with me, into this dark ancient place. Sixth century engineering feat. Wander round three hundred thirty-six columns, sentinels to Constantinople’s water supply. Discover Medusa’s inverted head carved into marble base. Outside, sun blazes. Istanbul’s teeming streets jolt us back to present time.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today we’re to use the word “water” within the body of a quadrille: a poem of exactly 44 words sans title.
I’m home again and back to writing after a month’s hiatus, traveling the Mediterranean on three back-to-back-to-back cruises with two overnights in Istanbul, Turkey. I’d been to Istanbul a number of times with my job before I rejuvenated in December 2012 (never say re-tired). It was a thrill to finally share Istanbul with my husband.
Istanbul’s Basilica Cistern was built in 532 AD, during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian. It is slightly west of the Hagia Sophia and literally down the street from the old hotel I used to stay at during my sojourns in Istanbul. According to ancient texts, seven thousand slaves were involved in building the cistern. Many of its columns were salvaged from ruined temples. It provided a water filtration system for the Topkapi Palace and other buildings on First Hill in Constantinople. After the Ottoman conquest in 1453, Constantinople became Istanbul. Locals drew water from the cistern until 1565. The Cistern was featured in the 1963 James Bond movie, From Russia With Love, where it was fictionally located under the Soviet Consulate.
All photos from our visit there last week. Last one shows me standing outside the bland entrance to the Cistern.
lillian the home poet 