commentary

Outside In

lillian7 Comments

Stainless steel body and lid
small glass knob at top
black cord with electric plug
wake-up percolates
like ideas
poets play with words
children plot make-believe
imaginary friend or foe
hands slap high-fives
or hit
metal basket filled with grinds
crushed to bits, tampered down
tempered up with heat
bubbles clear then dark
then darker still
anger boils over
outside glassed in walls
balance shifts in hand
to pour the pot
pungent morning elixir
eyes wide shut
as outside
the world explodes.

 

I”ve taken a different approach to the Daily Post Photo Challenge: Inspiration. Although there are many things that inspire my living and my love (family and my spouse of 45 years at the top), it seems that my morning cup of coffee beside my journal, at a carved-out early time in the AM, inspires my words. And so, a photo of my coffee and the words it inspired this morning.

Tell Me Do; Tell Me You

lillian10 Comments

She grew up in a poker face house
curtains drawn, emotions stuffed
inside walls, inside heads, inside everywhere.
Except anger. Sometimes it came flying out.
After a lull. Unexpected.
So loud, it shook the rafters.

No wonder she flew the coop,
using that old vernacular.
Married, with kids, she broke the mold.
Babies babbled, inside and out
sometimes screamed, mouths wide open
no plugs, pacies or binkes allowed.

I love yous and table talk
campfire banter, tell me true
talk it through to eyes that listen.
She insisted on a barcode kind of world
emotions easily scanned
on an every day conveyor belt.

Sea Farers All

lillian9 Comments

Cast your nets wide
let them float o’er time and place.
Savor the brine, its salt upon your lips
antithetical and sometimes complimentary,
to the sweet taste of last night’s wine.

Trail fingers in cool waters
seek star fish and arcing dolphins,
even as sharp-edged crustaceans
fray threads in knotted lines
threaten to disrupt the catch.

Rainbow parrot fish flirt in and out
maneuver through teeming waters.
Beauty thrives, even as leering eel
lurk in darkness, seek their shelter
within life’s disparities.

Sea glass, that human toss-away
tumbled to smooth artifacts
pleasurable to feel, caress, collect.
Dark waters today,
sun kissed tomorrow.

Even the barnacle, crusty and hardened
clings to the worm-holed hull
holds years of secrets in its blight,
another treasure caught
within our thread bare cache.

Tankas* for Earth’s Children

lillian4 Comments

Volcanoes fester
seethe and boil beneath earth’s skin
like red hot anger
held within, spews forth fury
assaults all within its grasp.

Watch how the clouds fly
sometimes dark and threatening
often soft and light
retreat in black moonlit sky
promise always to return.

Oceans between lands
offer pathways to friendship
teem with life for life.
Waves ebb and flow to all shores,
assure life’s cycle anew.

Sun of mother earth,
shines her perpetual light
nurtures all children,
no matter diversity
prejudice vanquished for all.

Listen my children,
the earth shudders in anguish
sees your refusal
to step lightly on her soil.
Embrace your sameness and love.

 

*My June Challenge Poetry Class assignment was to write a poem within constraints, and the next day’s assignment, to write a poem of instruction. This combined the two. A tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry that contains 31 syllables, typically in lines of 5-7-5-7-7.