Dear Dream Maker,
aaI wanted to be a Rockette.
aaStand in a long line,
aahigh kicking my way through life
aain sequins and spotlights.
aaNever mind.
aaThe two step with you
aahas been just fine.
Love,
Lillian
Written for day 17 in a 21-day class with Holly Wren Spaulding. Prompt: write about what you wanted to be and why. Use short lines.
…and Namrah spread his wings as I clung tightly to his undulating spine. He took me to the place last inhabited by my kind.
He landed on dry encrusted earth; trails of criss-crossed steel nearby. His massive head nodded to the open door and he watched as I ventured in. Rows and rows of emptiness. Benches of once polished oak, gathering the dust of ages. A transport station. Hope long since depleted.
Tears streamed from my eyes as I sought Namrah’s fold. With a keening guttural dirge, his one tear joined mine. And he lifted me, soaring, into the clouds.
Word Count: 100. Written for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers. Rochelle is the master of flash fiction (a story of 100 words or less) and challenges writers each week with a photo, posted on Wednesdays. Photo credit: J Hardy Carroll. Stop by and see some of the tales garnered from this photo!
Oh ye of jaded belief,
walk these greening woods
and you shall see the signs.
Mushroom thrones beside
fiddlehead playground slides.
Muhly grass, pink pillow puffs
placed ‘neath frills of ferns.
Look with open heart
and you shall find,
the fairy sprites of yore.
A quadrille (44 words) written for dVerse Poet’s Pub where Grace asks us to use the word “green” within our poem. Photos from various hikes we’ve taken.
Obsessed with her oils
and the patina of still life,
she spent her later years
living in a shadow world,
feasting on edibles
from her studio walls.
Image credit: AnnMarie at anntogether.com. Artist with words and brush. Creative woman extraordinaire. Thank you AnnMarie for allowing me to put my words to your amazing pear-fingers. Meander over to her site and see beautiful portraits, amazing creatures, and poetry that unites her images to words.
They carried purple sateen ribbons
furling and unfurling them into rays of sun,
dancing their way to the shimmering river.
Rivulets gurgled and tamed themselves
lily pads with pale green tendrils appeared,
pillows afloat in soothing cool waters.
Twirling through an iridescent aura,
stars dipped from darkening sky
entwined and crowned their flowing hair.
Bodies sprouted translucent wings
where once streams of violet furled
and their spirits soared.
Written for the final day of NaPoWriMo 2016. April is national poetry month.
Photo is in public domain.
most of the world is time
when we’re not here,
not born yet, or died –
I am infinitesimally small.
Those who knew me at birth
cared for me, walked with me,
left this earth too soon by my count,
melded into the universe.
The sun however,
still shines upon me
although days are shorter
and final miles fewer.
At my back,
the sun projects my future,
step by step in front of me
a syncopated seer.
Shadowed possibilities
become realities,
one foot forward
into the new.
In front of me
she warms my face
till glances backward
see my past,
following me,
stepping where I was
but a moment before,
a speck of time
a dab of humanistic paint
upon a pointillist canvas,
soon to intersect
with those before my time.
Written for dVerse Tuesday Poetics. We are to respond to a poet in dVerse, or a poet of our choice. We may or may not use an actual line from their poem. The first line here is from Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine by Mary Oliver. In Response to Mary Oliver [2] is two because when I started writing poetry in February 2015, my first attempt was a response to another poem by Mary Oliver — rewritten in January 2016. I enjoy her writing — and she is a kindred spirit in terms of being a Massachusetts resident from Provincetown, where we spend two glorious weeks each fall. Today is also used for NaPowWriMo Day 26.
Jack Spriggins,
I’m here to settle up.
I took yer cow some days past,
gave you beans to plant in exchange.
You said it’d be a good swap fer me
since I had young’uns to feed.
Well sir, the cow, she turned up dry
and the missus is still howlin’.
Neighbors down the road apiece
talkin’ about an oversized grave.
You buried a giant back here?
Shoveled it deep and high as can be.
I reckon this here’s the hill I’m lookin’ at,
and I can see, it’s paved with gold.
Best make good yer swap, Mr. Spriggins,
and share the wealth you got.
Else I predict yer goose is cooked
and you’ll take a fall from way up there.
And that new wife of yours named Jill?
I reckon she’ll come tumblin’ after.
I learned a long time ago,
stolen goods are not the way
to livin’ happily ever after.
Originally written for NaPoWriMo’s day 21 prompt: a poem in the voice of a “lesser” character within a fairy tale. Rewritten for dVerse Open Link Night, where Victoria is tending bar. dVerse is a virtual pub for poets. Stop by to exchange ideas, post and read wonderful poetry!
EXPLANATION OF POEM: Jack and the Beanstalk is a famous English fairy tale originally written in 1734 as The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean. Plot: Jack’s cow goes dry. On the way to sell her at market, he meets an old man who trades Jack some “magic beans” for his cow. Jack climbs the resultant beanstalk, finds a castle, a giant, a goose that lays golden eggs and a magic harp. He steals the wealth, is chased by the giant, axes the beanstalk and the giant falls dead to the earth. Jack and his mother live happily ever after.
There is also a reference here to the traditional 18th century English nursery rhyme:
Jack and Jill went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown
and Jill came tumbling after.
Hybrid sunflowers
big time flower power.
Fast growing giant Kong,
Bashful Lemon Queen,
bold eye catching.
Ms. Mars, uncommonly gorgeous.
Elf, compact charmer
and Little Becka too.
Madly floriferous Candy,
Strawberry Blonde, Frilly
and Crimson Blaze,
dazzle with sensuous high definition.
Sunny Bunch, Honey Bears
precious beauties,
incredible lovable faces.
All flummoxed on your easel,
sowed one quarter inch deep
in oil, denied full sun,
borders and beds.
Your fame, their demise.
Written for Day 6 NaPoWriMo, using day five’s prompt: Create a poem using words from a seed catalogue. This is from Burpee’s 2016 catalogue, pages for sunflowers. All words, including title, are exactly as written in Burpee’s except for those italicized. Kong, Bashful, Lemon Queen, Ms. Mars, Elf, Little Becka, Candy, Strawberry Blonde, Frilly, Crimson Blaze, Sunny Bunch, and Honey Bears are all hybrid sunflower varieties. I do love the Found Poetry genre. Photo: from beautiful Cape Cod’s Provincetown, several years ago.
[With apologies to Mother Goose]
Little Miss Muffet determined to stay
plots on her tuffet as bravely she sits
needles in hand she prepares now to play,
two legs to eight, but rapier in wits.
Nursery rhyme loser? A girl who has fits?
Web spun over years into dark comedy.
Finger pricked in the snatch, spider flits
flails, then falls. Arthropodic tragedy.
Silken threads become elegant to the eye
blood dots cloth as she doth smart
needles weave and suddenly stop with spasm cry.
Game over. Venomous to the heart.
Curds and whey topple, she utters a moan
dead heat with spider, they lie on the stone.
Written for dVerse Poet’s Pub with Gayle tending bar. We’re asked to write a Bouts-Rimes which is French for Rymed Ends. This form began in the 17th century as a rhyming game. Gayle’s challenge: use the following fourteen words in the order presented: stay, sits, play, wits, fits, comedy, flits, tragedy, eye, smart, cry, heart, moan, stone. These words were borrowed from a sonnet by Edmund Spenser. These words, in this order, must be the end line rhymes. For me, another poetry sudoku!
The real Nursery Rhyme:
BY MOTHER GOOSE
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
Life is a path between the stars.
Tantrums at two were not my youth,
long before those days
cicadas nested in cedar trees.
Old age will not be defined
by creaking limbs and bleached bones.
I will float with abandon,
as myriad shades of liquid blue.
I shall become the ocean wide
waves crashing upon the rocks
seeping in and out,
among the sands of time.
The lunar tug shall continue me
and my waters shall lap the earth.
Abhra hosts dVerse Poets’ Pub, Tuesday Poetics and asks us to answer the question, what would you like to be reborn as or return as?
Photos: from Bermuda, myriad shades of blue!
Interesting fact: cicadas were dependant on Bermuda Cedar trees for their survival, and when the cedar forests died in the 1940s, the cicadas began to quickly disappear. They are now extinct.
lillian the home poet 