Tyburn

Trying out another form of poetry called Tyburn. It's supposed to be 6 lines with the specific syllable counts of 2,2,2,2,9, and 9 respectively.



This last one isn't the correct syllable count, but I really liked the word 'viraling' [I made it up], so I wrote it anyway. They're supposed to be a commentary on the warped weather patterns we've been experiencing lately.

Marching Absurdity

Some doodling in my sketchbook. I was going to do more to it, but drew a blank, pardon the pun. After I started drawing it, I decided it fit the poem on the previous post. I may do more drawing for that poem.

My scanner's not working, so I'm resorting to using my camera, but it's hard to get the lighting even. I had to apply curves to this, so it looks bluer than it really is.

Anthropological Ball

When we can get past seeing ourselves as victims, then we can release the anger and discover our true identity.

anthropological ball

marching absurdities
scatter in patterned formations
diverging from a Dali painting
in undulating spirals
summoning –
Come inside
Come inside

ancient carney clown-faced beasts
hail the puppeteers
mummies on strings
in a sarcophagus strewn tent
chanting –
See the show
See the show

Inspired by this song, and is a continuation of the poem, 'Nature of Identity'.

Tired Again

tired again
though winter’s rest is over
sun dried chill blows
through a honeysuckle covered
briar patch

Respite cut short
by an early drought

balmy aroma settles sluggishly
among prickles and poison ivy
like artificially flavored syrup
on bleached, deep fried bread

stripped of nutritional purpose
sweet intoxication deteriorates

Spring at the Beach

prickly blossom view
veils invading industry
harsh spring survival



oddly arid wind
abates momentarily
tenacious spring seized

Six Sentence Sunday 4/17

For Six Sentence Sunday this week, I'm posting another part of the same story that I've been working on. [See the previous post for the last 6 from this story] No title for it, yet. You can find links to many other Six Sentence Sunday submissions here.


"How can ya sell pot, if ya don’t smoke it?”

“It’s not mine. It’s my boyfriends’.”

“But he sends you out to sell it… hmm,” he said with a creepy smirk.

The moonlight reflected off the grease and sweat on his rotund face and stringy, thinning hair. They took a few more hits, and then he started talking down to me like I was a school girl that had never gotten high before.

Six Sentence Sunday

Hi! I had such a wonderfully friendly response last week with the Six Sentence Sunday gang, that I'm back again this week. This is from something I started to work on, and then never got around to finishing. I'm hoping to get back to it. Click on the link above to see what everyone else is writing.

There was a putrid, bitter taste of disgust that seeped out of a hidden crevice deep inside me. It was the kind of crevice that unwanted memories disappeared into. When B.W. sat back in the car, that taste erupted into rage.

"I want to go back and beat those guys with a tire iron!" I said tightening my jaw in an attempt to bridle the rage. "We could hide in the woods and wait for them..."

Latest Art

Moon Music


Road Rage

Yea Spring!

These pics were taken in my garden.



And, this is the reason why I've not been online much lately.



This garden is named Ilma's Garden, after the woman who originally started it.



I love scented geraniums, and...



have them all around my front porch.

There are more pics of my garden here on Silk Creek Portal.

Six Sentence Sunday March 27

I found this web site on my friend, Sue's, blog, where people post six sentence excerpts from their work and leave their links to it. This is my first time to try it. Mine are taken from a previous post entitled "Places I Ought Not Go".

I begin to wonder if this lunatic in my back seat is having delusions of being a hero.

“Shouldn't you be radioing in for help or something?”

“And tell them what?!” His calm demeanor snapped. “That I left my squad car on the side of the highway with the keys still in it, jumped into a car with a crazy woman who thinks she can ‘feel’ a monster’s presence, and then runs over God knows what?” He pauses for a second, “Probably some poor motorist who was stranded and looking for help… I’m gonna lose my job over this one.”

For links to other Six Sentence Sunday posts click here.

The Cretoron List

During the early 80’s, I drove four hours every day, two hours each way, in rush hour traffic to attend high school downtown. At that time, the boom-town oil rush of the 70’s left Houston’s freeways plagued with a stifling bumper-to-bumper 20 mph stop-n-go crawl. There were bumper stickers that read, “Will the last one out of Michigan, please turn out the lights?” it wasn’t just Michigan, though. There were probably just as many out-of-state license plates as there were Texas plates. At 16, I learned how to drive in this traffic.

I carpooled with three other classmates of mine in a ’72 Dodge Dart, that one of the girls christened “The Hippy Mobile”. The actual christening was another story that I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that this fire red Hippy Mobile was well suited for four teenage girls in rush hour traffic. The scratches and dents just added to its personality.

I left my house every morning at 6am to pick up the others, and didn’t get home until 6pm, so all our after school free time was spent driving. We quickly found ways to entertain ourselves. Groucho Marx glasses and hand puppets would solicit some pretty humorous reactions in the morning. After school though, a six pack of beer and a bag of Doritos while waving at all the truck drivers was the entertainment of choice. My friends like to see how many of the truckers they could get to honk their horns.

The morning rush hour mentality was different from the afternoon’s. In the morning, people were sleepy and distracted. They would be reading the newspaper or putting on make-up in the rear view mirror while driving. We were rear-ended many times, but in stop-n-go traffic, it was more of an annoyance than a fender bender. Nine times out of ten, it wasn’t worth stopping for. One day, we came up with the idea of having one person sit in the driver’s seat reading the newspaper, while I sat beside her and drove with my left hand and foot (the Hippy Mobile didn’t have bucket seats; it had one long bench seat). We thought the double-takes of the other drivers were hysterical.

In the afternoons however, people were tired, cranky, and in a hurry to get home. The unintentional accidents of the morning became intentionally rude road rage in the afternoon, hence the creation of the Asshole List (please pardon my language here; we were just teenagers). Yes, we kept a score card above the sun visor to track all the incidents. Here’s how it worked: An asshole was worth 1 point, and was someone who would cut you off and then drive slower than the rest of traffic especially in the left lane. A total asshole was 2 points, and was someone who’d cut you off, and you would have to swerve or slam on your breaks to avoid hitting them. A complete fuck up was 3 points, and was someone who actually hit you, ran you off the road, or tried to run you off the road in a fit of rage. For example, those idiots who don’t care to merge safely, because they don’t want anyone to get in front of them. After about six months, we figured up the totals and found we averaged about 17 points per week. Unfortunately, my dad found the list one day, and took it away. He didn’t think the language was appropriate for young ladies, and tried to scold me for it, but couldn’t keep a straight face. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took it to work with him the next day to show the guys in his carpool.

Well, here it is thirty years later, and Houston’s freeways have finally caught up with its population. Even though there’s still construction on many of the freeways, there’s no more stifling stop-n-go traffic except after an accident. One would think that the driving attitudes would improve with the progress, but apparently not. I still see road rage on a daily basis.

The other day, I was driving in the left lane, getting ready to pass a silver SUV and the 18 wheeler in front of him, when suddenly the “2 pointer” SUV pulled over in front of me, causing me and the cars behind me to slam on their brakes. Generally in most states, the left lane is for passing. Slower traffic is supposed to keep right, but Mr. 2 Pointer must have felt he was the exception to this common courtesy, because he continued to go the same speed as the 18 wheeler that was still in the lane to his right. The cars behind me cut over two or three lanes to the right to get around them. I decided to wait and see if he would eventually speed up. He did, and I followed him. When I was even with the cab of the 18 wheeler, Mr. 2 Pointer cut back over to the right in front of the 18 wheeler, revealing to me the road construction that was ending my lane. I didn’t have time to stop, so I sped up to get in front of the 18 wheeler. Apparently angry about the SUV, the 18 wheeler sped up also, and intentionally hit me, because he didn’t want me to get in front of him as well, making him Mr. 3 Pointer.

The rage of these two men spreads like the swine flu across our freeway systems, infecting everyone who comes near. It’s a highly contagious, ugly, angry, porcine disease, and now I have it too. I’m afraid to drive, afraid of acting just like them. So, I’ve decided to start another list, to try to make fun of the situation. I’m trying to make light of things like we did in high school. It’s the only way I know how to work through this kind of anger. This time I’m calling it the Cretoron List. I made the name up from the words ‘moronic cretin’. The words seem more descriptive than the previous list’s words. Here’s how it works: A Cretoron is 1 point, a Gross Cretoron is 2 points, and an Utter Noxiousile (from the words ‘obnoxious imbecile’) is 3 points. The standards for scoring are the same. If anyone would like to play along, feel free to leave your scores here in the comment section on Fridays.

I've also been spending a lot of time in my garden, trying to work through the anger.


floral choir's hymn
harolding healing colors
nature's therapy

Oh!

Elena over at My Quest is hosting Weekword this week, and has chosen the very expressive little word "oh". I used that word quite a bit on my latest trip to Galveston.



"Oh, what a beautiful bird. Hope he stays still long enough for me to get a good shot."



"Oh yea! I got it."



"Oh how sad." We saw a lot of dead things on the beach that day.



"Oh weird. Look how big it's scales are. They look like sea shells."



"Oh cool..." Don't ask me why. My sweetie replied with, "Oh no, next you'll be writing poetry about dead fish, huh?" Hmm... maybe another time ;]



"Oh *shoot! My batteries are dying!" (*not the word I actually used)

No sunset pics this time, due to the dead batteries, but we stayed to watch it over a lovely seafood dinner and a glass of wine, and then headed home.

Cynosure

This week's weekword is brought to us by Junebug's Musings. She mentioned Valentine's Day in connection with the word 'cynosure', and it made me think of these beautifully brilliant orchids I have hanging over my monitor. My sweetie brought them home for me as a surprise last week, so I thought I'd take a picture of them and make a card for him. I searched on the web for the language of flowers, and learned that orchids mean 'refined beauty'. I thought of a mature beauty, like the love shared between two people who have out-lived their first spouses, and have been refined by life's experiences to share a different kind of love. Different from that naive exciting first love of youth, but still brilliant in it's own way.

The poem is an acrostic, which means the first letter of each line spells a word, in this case 'romance'. I'm stepping a little out of my comfort zone writing a love poem, but I guess that's therapeutic, too.

Nature of Identity

nature of identity

mirroring antique anger
at an ontological vanity
elaborately Victorian

tearing tangles from my hair
with silver inlay brush
applying nightmarish
clown-faced foundation
to ancient scars
in my dusty sunbeam room

rituals in preparation for
an anthropological ball

inspired by Moineau en France and Justahumblebee's comments on the previos post

Therapeutic

This week's Weekword is 'therapeutic'. You'll find links to other posts listed here on Domestic Scribbles. The dictionary defines it: of or relating to the treatment of disease; curative. Yet, many of us regularly refer to our hobbies as therapy. Why is that? Is life a disease? The stresses of life can cause disease. Autoimmune diseases are becoming more prevalent today partly because of these stresses.



The dictionary defines hobbies as an activity pursued in spare time for pleasure or relaxation. Yet for me, my hobbies have become a very necessary part of my routine for staying healthy. Like exercise and eating healthy, they have become needed therapy rather than a spare time pursuit.



One of my hobbies is photography. Last Friday, I went to the arboretum to take these pictures. The walk in the woods left me feeling so serene, that the obnoxious rush hour traffic on the way home didn't bother me like it usually does.



Of course not all therapy is pretty. I've got to vent some of the bad stuff too, which is usually the case with most of my poetry.


scolding darkness
pointing cold rigidity
at my chest
as if to blame

I wait numbly trepid for
bony rapping on my chest bone
unknown impact
wafts through memory pillars
and cobweb dreams
stripping reality
from a marble library

concentration dissipates
the blow never comes
just disbelief
gawking at the bloody muscle
ripped from my chest
oozing through frigid phalanges

afraid to breath
afraid to discover
I’m no longer able

outside the library
primal forces compel exhalation
awareness materializes
how am I breathing without a heart?

the pool of blood crackles
but the sound is within
slow and faint
a new one pumps
barely able to catch my breath
fingers and feet still numb
struggling to remain conscious
the only warmth
deep inside me

Places I Ought Not Go

Several years ago, I helped my sister move back here to Texas from New Jersey. On the second night of the drive, I drove until my nerves began to fray, so my sister took over for a while. Unable to unwind, I just silently stared out the window, and let my mind wander. I noticed that when we’d drive up to an animal like a rabbit or raccoon on the side of the road, it’s eyes would seem to glow even before the headlights would reach it, and then after shining on it, it’s eyes would glow red. Well, my imagination ran away with this, and after about an hour or so of my imaginary travels, my sister asked if I was asleep.

“Nah,” I said, “just daydreaming.

“Tell me about your daydream, so I won’t get sleepy,” she requested, and this was the story I told her:

I’m driving down I-10 at night in Louisiana on that long, flat, boring stretch of highway that cuts straight through Louisiana’s swamp land. It’s a series of bridges connected sporadically by patches of dryer land. By day, this straight line of pavement roams as far as the eye can see, but at night, the infinite blackness of the swamp seems to swallow it up along with the light from my high beams. Visual stimuli is limited to the occasional passing car, the mesmerizing reflective road stripes, and the glowing eyes of local inhabitants of the wet lands I’m passing through. Oh yeah, and speed limit signs, which are easily neglected when the monotony lulls me into a trance, and then recalled after awakening to the excitement of red and blue flashing lights behind me.

I pull over, and the officer pulls up behind me, sitting in his patrol car for a few minutes before approaching me. I put my car in park, but leave the engine running, even though I’ll be sitting here for a little while. I’m a bit spooked about being in the middle of nowhere alone, and probably a little tired from the hypnotic drive. He asks for my license and insurance, and as I reach over to get it, I’m suddenly overwhelmed by an irrational fear of some lurking evil in the swamp. Trembling, I hand him the requested documents, and try to compose myself. “It’s just my overactive imagination,” I say, hopefully to myself, but the officer is looking at me oddly, and the feeling persists.

“Are you ok, ma’am?”
“Yes sir.”
“Have you had anything to drink tonight?”
“No sir.”

Now, I’m only vaguely aware of his presence, distracted like a B movie horror flick when there is foreboding music playing in the background, but in reality everything is eerily quiet. The feeling grows stronger, as if the evil is moving closer. I can hear my pulse as I struggle to maintain composure. Then I notice the officer staring off into the farthest reach of the high beams. I strain to see past them, hoping to find what has caught his eye, when finally I find the glowing eyes.

“Get in the car!” I blurt out abruptly.
“What?” His voice cracked with surprise.
“Get in the car! It’s heading toward us!”
“What are you talking about?!”

“Don’t you feel it?!” I’m yelling now, but I’m not sure he hears me, because I’m rolling up my window, and throwing my car into gear without thinking about the legal ramifications of what I’m doing. To my surprise though, he jumps in the back seat.

“Lock all the doors!” I scream even though I’ve already hit the main control button for the electric locks. He reaches across the car anyway, and slaps his hand down on them just to make sure. At this point, the headlights are highlighting a shadowy outline of a figure running toward us, and it’s eyes are turning red. I slam my foot down on the gas pedal, but it's blocking my only escape route, so I steer straight for it. I never really get a good look at it; just hear the thud as it bounces off the hood of my car.

“Did you see it?!… Did you see that?!” I turn around to look back. “What was that?! Did you get a good look at it?!”

Glancing back to my rearview mirror, I’m praying he has answers to my questions, but he just stares blankly and shrugs. Feeling that my paranoia has just been justified, I’m hysterical now. No more trying to hide it. I’m white knuckling the steering wheel, and repeatedly muttering, “oh my God.” He, however, was in a very different frame of mind.

“We’ve got to go back,” he mumbled.

“What! Are you insane?! I am not going back there!” I could not get far enough away fast enough. The little four cylinder engine of mine whines as I drive at speeds faster than my speedometer can register.

“Ma’am, you really need to calm down.”

I begin to wonder if this lunatic in my back seat is having delusions of being a hero.

“Shouldn’t you be radioing in for help or something?”

“And tell them what?!” His calm demeanor snapped. “That I left my squad car on the side of the highway with the keys still in it, jumped into a car with a crazy woman who thinks she can ‘feel’ a monster’s presence, and then runs over God knows what?” He pauses for a second, “Probably some poor motorist who was stranded and looking for help… I’m gonna lose my job over this one.”

“There’s no way in hell I’m going back there!” I just could not bring myself to see where he was coming from. “Besides, you felt it too. I could tell.”

He didn’t argue; just sat there thinking for a moment, and then quietly asked, “Will you please slow down?”

He radioed in, while I replayed the events over and over again in my head. Was there really something evil out there, or was I having some kind of night driving delusion? If it was just some poor stranded guy, why the awful dread before we saw him? And, why was the officer scared, as well? I tried desperately to remember what it looked like, searching my memory for a clue. In the background, I could hear dispatch ask for a description.

“It was wet and slimy, like the swamp,” I pipe in, trying to make the whole horrifying event sound real, and failing miserably.

“I thought you didn’t see it?”
“It?” A voice on the radio inquired.
“I mean him,” is his flustered reply.

“There’s green slime on the hood of my car.” I offer as proof, hoping to make him realize that we weren’t crazy, but the sound of my words makes me question my own sanity. Really, it was too dark to see what color the wet substance on the hood was or if it was indeed slimy.

“Just have someone pick me up at Al’s Kountry Korner.” He says to his radio, trying to ignore me.

After finishing his conversation with dispatch, he starts giving me instructions on where to take him. The last thing I want to do is leave the main interstate to drive down some dark winding exit ramp into the swamp. I want to keep going until we hit civilization, not some backwoods convenience store whose name is spelled with K’s. Pulling into the parking lot, there is a patrol car waiting for him. He tells me to wait while he speaks to the other officer. I can see that the other officer is annoyed.

He returns, and says, “Look, I’m not going to be issuing any speeding tickets tonight. Really, I’d like to just forget the whole thing happened. You’re free to go.”

Free to go where? Baton Rouge was probably another hour or so away, …and I’ll be alone again on a dark haunted highway in the middle of the swamp. As I watch him get into the patrol car, I realize that I will never know for sure what happened back there. Did I really run over somebody, or are those two cops on their way to be gutted and gored by some hideous creature that I thought only existed in Sci-Fy movies? How could I live with the possibility that I might have injured someone innocent?

What would you do? Would you go back, like all those stupid people in the horror movies do?

There was a long pause, and then my sister answered, “ Wow. You really need to write that one down.”

Let Words be Few

winter sun whitens
without uttering one word
seeded grasses’ tales

Cycle

Swan Jellyfish
Genus geopsychosis
Dwells in watery, cavernous fissures
Tenebrious and abysmally submerged
Among scars of geodynamic dross

Waiting for turbulent tides
To send it gliding through
Mirrored shafts hewn
Years of erosion refract and reflect
It’s venomous attraction so
Exquisitely arrayed

Rippled apparitions silently announce
It’s emergence at the surface to feed
It’s prey - oysters in penumbra
Stunted from lack of light
Beguiled into opening up for a
Sweet bouquet of plankton
Transported from below

Where, after dining sufficiently
It returns to proliferate

Adrift

sent adrift
slapped about
by furious fists of sea
beacon fades
emotions crest
obscure light is out of reach
faith plunges
into dark abyss
abandoning futility

dawn inflicts fog
beacon’s blurred
no tide to wash ashore
anger dissipates
indifference creeps in
efficacy’s left laying
on the ocean floor

Light You Up

photo found on the web

freedom and fame programmed at birth
taught to desire, but not self worth
put down for buckling under the heat
“suck it up, it gets tough on the street”

spark of anger ignites a flame
drawing desire to a mesmerizing game
to stand apart from the common mire
to fit in with the trendy hot fire

forging a world where losers are cool
idols imprisoned for breaking the rules
heroes demanding, lewd, and crude
success is loud arrogance with a ‘tude

heat of the fire brings life to a void
perishable warmth flares up annoyed
how long will it last before feeling the burn
numb propaganda bombards every turn

hey sister, look at your duplicity
equal “party” rights say “humiliate me”
do you really believe you can piss on a wall
light up so you can see how far you can fall


I really loved this poem by Laura Tattoo on Moineau en France.

Recycle

This weeks "Weekword" is "Recycle". Below is a story about my friend, Lynda, that I posted on Silk Creek Portal back in March of '08. When I hear the word "recycle", I think of Lynda, and this is why:

Since one of the themes of this blog this month is Women in Nature, I thought I'd write about my friend, Lynda and her garden. Lynda has been fighting breast cancer for about ten years now. When she first started on this journey, doctors told her that the odds of surviving this long weren't good. She is currently undergoing the last and harshest chemo treatment for her cancer. She was told that she would be on this one for the rest of her life. It's left her very tired and weak, with a low blood count and low kidney function. So, when she told me about her plans for this garden, I was surprised, but happy to hear it. It could be so easy for her to dismiss the idea as being too ambitious right now.

I drove to Beaumont this weekend to help her get it started. The place she plans to grow her vegetables is at her in-laws house. In the back there are 8 or 9 raised beds that have been overgrown with about three years worth of weeds and grass. While we were busy pulling weeds and turning the soil, I asked her, "what does this garden mean to you?" She said, "recycling." I asked her what she meant, and she started to tell me about her father-in-law, Spud. These were once his gardens. He built them about 20 years ago when he retired. He was very passionate about them, especially his strawberries. He worked in his garden when he was well into his eighties. Once, not long before he died, his doctor asked him if he ever suffered from shortness of breath on exertion. Spud said, "define exertion." The doctor said, "when you're going about your normal daily activities." This eighty something year old man told his doctor that sometimes after several trips of carrying 80 pound bags of sand to his garden, he would have to stop and rest for a minute. We should all have that problem when we're eighty. Anyway, Lynda said it made her sad to see these gardens that were once the pride of such an energetic man who was so full of life become so overgrown like this since his passing.

Spud passed away about 2 years ago, so being the nosy friend that I am, I wondered why is it now that Lynda wants to start these gardens back up again. I pried further, "so you're doing this as a memorial to Spud, or does it go deeper than that?" She thought about it, and then said, "this is what kept Spud alive after he retired." I said, "so if you have no work, you die?" She said, "yes." But, it was more than that, because she added, "I can't give up now, I have gardens to tend to."

She also has work to be done at the animal shelter, puppies to rescue, foster, and find homes for. She won volunteer of the year for her work with animals. I think that all of this is more than just work for her. She used the word "recycling". In this context, it makes me think of the cycle of life. This garden is an integral part of that cycle. In spite of the gloomy forecast that the doctors give, she continues to fill her life with life, and give back to life.

Lynda passed away in October of '09, and then my mom the following January. Many of my creative endeavors came to a hault, including gardening and blogging. Slowly though, I'm coming back around. Last October, I wrote this poem for her.



Lynda's Poem

You embellished my life
with the last five years of yours
Adorned it with stories
from your animal rescue adventures
while I cried on your shoulder
after losing mine
Bejeweled it with bead work
made from our treasure hunt bounty
while helping me blow dust off mine
Illuminated it with photographic treks
no one else had the patience to join
Enriched it with gardens
that renewed environmental wonder
and recycled life

Hours spent in unspoken mirth
or in epic laughter
We shared the same muse
Your diagnosis was terminal
yet you filled life
with life and gave it back
Until the last harvest moon

It’s been a year since then
My camera and beads have
once again gathered dust
But, an overgrown flower bed
outside my door whispered
It’s creator died years ago
A thorny rose stem among weeds
Tiny begonias hidden in the grass
told the story of her love
I thought of you and recycled it

In memory of you
I took a new photo
A huge white bloom
that only opens at night
While inside my house
a bird screeched
A rescue you’d fall in love with
Thank you

Simplicity

dormancy pervades
gray coated simplicity
Winter pond’s secret

This is for "Weekword", a weekly blogging challenge that I discovered on Mary's blog. The Haiku was inspired by hers. She went into a wonderfully in depth discussion of how difficult it is to attain simplicity. My photo probably doesn't seem simple, but for me, it represents the simple peacefulness I felt while taking it. That day at the arboretum, it was so quiet that it seemed like even the turtles were hibernating; like earlier that morning they squinted a sleepy eye at the gray clouded sky and said, "Yup, today is a good day to go back to bed." In contrast, below is complexity in winter colors.



Winter’s veneer hue
cloaks complexity within
strives for clarity

You can find many other blog posts on "Simplicity" by clicking on "Weekword" above.

Bridges

arching vines mirror
amber drifts cushion crossing
traversing dank murk

Fall bridges twisted woodland
in ravines of awareness

January Moon

left behind

the news of your passing
leaves them silent
but there’s no one left to preach to
so a stranger gives your eulogy
left behind
forgotten
because of years spent in memory’s effusion

life’s elemental scream
fades to a whispered prayer of confusion
a final exhalation
that no one hears


January Moon

shadowy fingers of night sky
unveil a swollen moon
with memories no longer to be recalled
their mother is gone

sharp angled barren branches
hint at this January moon’s frigidity
whose white hot passion
casts shadows on spray painted concrete
where I live


It seems to me that people are generally drawn to poetry that rhymes, so I rewrote the above poems to make the rhyming one below. Which do you prefer?

January Moon Rhyme

Night’s shadowy fingers unveil
A moon swollen with memories
Clouded recollection is impaled,
On the spires of winter stark trees.

News of your passing lingers,
Silencing those who knew you.
Your eulogy is given by a stranger;
There’s no one left to preach to.

Left behind, moon light raids
Years spent in memory’s effusion,
Your intrinsic scream fades
To a whispered prayer of confusion.

Final exhalation, this January moon
Hints at abysmal frigidity,
White hot quiescence carves a rune
That no one will ever see.

Shadows cast, their tales forgotten,
On dark empty streets of your begotten.

Flying Boats

sinking boat
suddenly takes flight
like the hearts of lovers
when lust is consummated
only to find
when the magic washes over
nothings changed

soaring unrealistically high
propelled by adrenaline
over bridges meant to be
sailed under
crossroads bypassed
in favor of a mid-air stall

last second parachute
cushions the end of a free fall
alighting further down stream
going nowhere
in a sinking boat

parachuting boats
as quixotic as
flying boats
and yet, unable to do
what it was meant to do

Trail

Spent

Coins dropped
into a hand of rotting flesh
Character spent

An old hag strikes a deal
with a luminescent daughter
Pale and delicate
retaining white linen that
repels murky water…
and wispy dark hair that
opposes ivory skin

Preservation paid for
she slips away
Constitution bared and bled
left standing alone in murky water
holding the putrefying jawbone
of an attacking dog

Camaraderie gawks
concludes and criticizes
standing safely on dry
decaying continents
of dragons and voodoo masks

They’re happy I’ll be staying
Preserved for decadent perishing
There’s no turning back
She took the dinghy with her

Beneath

A collage made from pictures I took on a trip to Tennessee last year.

Traveling

I made this collage with photos I took while on a trip to Garner State Park earlier this month.

Antidepressants

eyes coated with a medicated blur
words refuse to focus
shoulders are lighter
but pages still haunt

don’t care about the pain
don’t care about the gift
lazy hands laugh
unmotivated feet dance
-in purposeless directions
-in silent numbness

but sleep reveals that
core chapters have not been numbed