Tag: poetry

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Time Travel

Travel Hangover–

Pouring damp memories over dying embers, 

anticipating the pop, sizzle and hiss of regret,

I refuse the temptation to stir the ash,

re-confirm the smolder hides no live fire.

Driving a rented van packed with her–

obstructed the view of road left behind,

held fleeting glimpses, speeding past blades

grass, roller, razor, “Did you bring knives?”

A mother reviewing, checking, fretting

the details whirring ahead to the horizon.

Unpacking the view clear, opened us up

to ponder, muse the hours in notes, little

cares, rehearsed sentiments, deficiencies

repeated with silent knowing nods, all said.

I play the game of focused movement 

to wile the hours, trick time to obey, my eyes

follow, attached to the point out there as all

else spins and races, rattles empty spaces ablur.

A splinter swollen sore and angry, riotous red

throbbed through a chipped thumb reminds me

I waited for you on wooden slats in the park

while you twirled a dizzy dance of fractured tune.

I stifled an urge to call out, make you notice,

but the stretching sound that circled us then

that moment I was churning in your disregard

of the world, of me, of the beckoning children

could not blanket the distance between us,

the one I carried up to your bed, squared 

to the wrong wall on the wrong floor in a room. 

  
 

Sharon Olds  

I Go Back to May 1937 (from The Gold Cell)
 
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, 

I see my father strolling out

under the ochre sandstone arch, the 

red tiles glinting like bent 

plates of blood behind his head, I 

see my mother with a few light books at her hip 

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the 

wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its 

sword-tips black in the May air,

they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, 

they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are

innocent, they would never hurt anybody.

I want to go up to them and say Stop, 

don’t do it–she’s the wrong woman, 

he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things 

you cannot imagine you would ever do, 

you are going to do bad things to children,

you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of, 

you are going to want to die. I want to go 

up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,

her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,

her pitiful beautiful untouched body, 

his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,

his pitiful beautiful untouched body,

but I don’t do it. I want to live. I 

take them up like the male and female 

paper dolls and bang them together 

at the hips like chips of flint as if to 

strike sparks from them, I say

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

 
credit: maphappy.org

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Line

  

Hooked on believing I harbor no addictions,
 
I circle the perimeter of consolation.
 
Sure,
 
I smoked for years, 

but I stayed quit for years too, 

returned and stopped again.

And yes, 

lurching from bouts of drinking 

to sobriety and back may sound obsessive.

But absolution bears no compulsion

nor is it addiction. 

Or is it?

I cop to compulsions, 

short, 

fleeting ones like finishing things, 

completing what I started, 

books, courses, paths, dinner plans, 

stuff like that.

I used to obey rules for the hell of it, 

something compelling and lovely in the rule, 

the principle and the law emitting a magic that moved me.

Until I lost the lust for it, 

cooled on the perfection and rigidity of the line,

the truth of the right angle.

Balancing on the nuance of tightropes flashed a softer luminosity of right.

Since then, 

the lapping years ate those twists and flavors forward to calibration.

Now, 

I leap less, 

wheeze disbelief in equations like cause and effect, 

rules too tight

patterns as solutions,

no, 

not any more, 

the insecurity submerged, 

lost,

moored to the mystery of ignorance.

Dark matter. 

Yet the words

spill

pour me over the rocks and smoke me

chilled

heated

flaming swells of urgency

touch,

pick,

scratch,

gnaw it off the bone

and bloody ears of vein-hydrant flood quelling.

The irresistible line draws me

circumscribed and subsumed complete.

 
credit: https://keeldevelopment.files.wordpress.com

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The Lover’s Leap

  

I am sorry.
 
I brought her into bed with us again, she who worries 
too much about her breath and her b.o.
 
all the wrinkles of offense, she who cringes at the thought,
the very idea that she may be seen,
 
imperfect as the smoke hiding the fireworks the other day,
left a trail of sooty stink looming,
 
threatening to mar our view, dim the shiny glee of us.
And now you know.
 
Though the end is not the all, not the being or culminating cause,
we were groomed to believe so,
 
such that her presence stays me, stems the flow, ebbing waves,
impenetrable shield, a barrier, firm and illusory, still
 
and empty as the notion that we need to be THE image
the key to keyhole fit
 
when with a flick of a switch, lights on to view the truth
veins and skin and twisted mouth
 
invisibly drawn to be erased in one full sweeping hearty sigh
honestly gut-of-the-mind uttered
 
by body belief in beauty larger than sight
holier than the mountain
 
we delve in for deliverance in undeniably desirous delight
release and respite, fulfilling
 
in its wholeness, this acceptance, this release, 
this trust in blind care
 
for the principle, for the knowledge of us we share 
enfolded, in threaded limbs
 
that nothing but fear she wedges between permeable doors
open-shut as the thought leaping over the falls
 
cascading down an embracing grip caught in the pupils’ deep
in careful sense, fragile fortitude as the spine of a lover.
 
 
photo credit:  static.yourtango.com 

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Stitched Poem of Lost Word

  

A word came to my mind today in chimes

where wood reeds stood sand tall in pairs

like lovers spun in airy tales of olden times

when hearts sang of heather seed prayers.
 

But the word flew past as echoes’ remains,

rang void vacuumed sound inside the gaps,

hollows down from which arise sad refrains,

and compressed steely safes, worded traps.
 

No words came by today in orange branches

only windy specks prickling chapped cheeks;

a sun stole glitter flecks on roofs of mansions

and barren pop songs dribbled old lyric leaks.
 

Language lost mourns words gone dry before

a poem’s purl through a keyhole’s open door.

 

photo credit: http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/

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Writing Poems Amid Artificial Sounds of Trains and Falling Snow While Pipes Burst and Birthday Boys Skated

  

The train traveled far today so the whistle sounds faint
tired, perhaps, of the snow-muffled shrill of un-restraint.
 
A cool stove lay undisturbed, cool iron clean, all the day
while the ground leaked, forming my father’s bed a lake.
 
Two daughters slept and awoke to buy birthday boy gifts,
then flew home the helicopter, remote, controlled, adrift.
 
A husband fished for answers in a plumber’s busy way
only for rejection’s sake he pleaded dearly for his case.
 
For tomorrow can right itself in rhythmic steel drumming
and pulse below a calm repose in boredom’s humming.
 
For neither burst of pipe nor creativity’s pace may shatter
the week end’s closing call to the summer’s opening gala.
 
The hours longer and shorter still when poetry awakes
in bed the daylight long with trains, pipes, snow, skates.
 
An inspired screen tortured hard frozen bits slow falling
while thunderous trains traveled ever on, never stalling.
 
Words dry up, writing sours, turned to poetical blather
time to gather up my wits and return to other matters.

(and so ended my poetry half marathon)

 

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Oranges (haiku)

 
Tree dropped oranges

blistered, rent, bloated sweet

nature blight pavement.

 
(This was hour 9, poem 9, and I needed a brain re-charge reprieve, so I punted–haiku)

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Leotard

  

 
On my dresser, crumpled like sin lies a leotard,
gold lamé scarab’d like a 24 carat snake skin,
black lycra arms tightly tubed, trimmed in lace
sewn to this gay garment celebrating costumes
and splayed over orderly folder’d paper stacks
inches thick with frayed efforts, struggling pens
of students composing in discomposed anguish
for the A’s, B’s and C’s drifting over their heads
hovering above their walking shadows at the go
as trudging destiny to seats betraying no means
that end in hours sipped in blind ears and minds
mending time in threaded thimbles of mothers
who cajole and credit them with bygone myths,
those about education and scaling mountains,
inheritances emptied from bank accounts dried
long ago spent by the crackhead loan pirates
and bank note worshipers of voodoo financiers.

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Snuckle Silly

This poem marks the half way mark of the poetry half marathon and the deteriorating focus and skills become more evident. That day started late with a late awakening and continued to be challenging around the house where I camped for this event. 

The prompt instructed the participants to write from another’s perspective. I started out that way–from a toddler’s perspective–and quickly departed on my own journey as was the case with most of the poems I tried to follow along with the others.

  

Swooshing, hum, hum, swishing um, um
inside an elephant’s trunk swinging away.
Parrhump a dump twiddle all the de-dum,
singing the song nasal as a horsy’s neigh.
 
“Tickle my feet again” begs twiggly titters.
Pebbly teeth swallow eyes disappeared,
blinked inside with butterfly lashes’ flitters.
“Snuckle me silly,” her fat-thumbed cheer.
 
Baby cry tears weeping joyfully in sneezes
shuffle eager ears along clear paths drawn.
With fatty lamb’s feet she snuggles breezes
plumped up in words to dimpled knee songs.
 
Too soon, too little, thinned spiny legs grow
lean against time stretched long and brittle
bones bounce less break slick sidling slope
downed in the snow howling no longer little.
 
Trigger smiles and crackled cries muffled
the early risers’ dawn in spires sunk below
for cattle cars passing by in bovine shuffle
milking calves paused in stations unknown.
 
Beneath the stretch of time’s skin lies heat
and the promise of the amnesiac release.
In squiggle patches laughs a memory treat
relished in paunchy belly sweet sits peace.

 
photo credit: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/toes

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The Morning After


“He was such a creeper, he made my skin crawl.”
She spoke with squinted nose and eyes sucked in tightly drawn to the center of deep disgust.
“Where did you meet him?” I sipped lemon water.
“A place called ‘After Hours’ on Beach near Central.”
She shuffled the boot leather sole of her left foot underneath the quaint table dressed for two.
Its mate was folded up underneath the back pockets of her 501 Levi’s firmly squat into the padded seat.
We used to meet at this corner cafe often; she was married then.
“He spit when he talked too close to me and had a dripping smile, loose grin spun widely–and loud.”
I conjured up with a shudder the stale beer, punishing electronic drum beats and the glint of a greasy stare too close up inside the parameters of my circle of heated breath.
“He thought he was hilariously funny wishing me ‘good morning’ at 9:30 at night with a wink as if he could make it happen just by saying it.”
Sinking inside with an outward sympathetic half smile, I inwardly groaned at the enormity of it, like Sisyphus’ burden this giant gap of want, need, ties we seek just to sever, never have and don’t even want.
photo credit:  http://media.brainz.org/willmon

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