Final Flight
A rage of flame
blasts invisible blue
from chrome jets
straight up
Waves billow
through the silk cavern
until flame-lit colors
rise from the dust
We shiver in the pre-dawn desert
amid of a horde of undulation
as sharp, fiery reports burst
and crack our pre-coffee silence
One by one,
the giants sway
until they lift
into the twilight dawn
to float
wherever the winds
will take them
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by terrible tragedy Previous Post
Rationalizations
It is only light after all,
but perhaps when it collides
with the silvered glass
to be bludgeoned back
the way it came
like a jai-alai pelota
hurled against the fronton wall,
perhaps like the image
made up of all those waves
and tiny pelotas,
that image which appears
reversed to the eye,
perhaps the truth of the light
going in
reverses into the lie of the light
coming back
Otherwise
why would we see highlighted
in the mirror’s reflection
only our outward flaws
and our inner charms
when true self reflection
should illuminate to us
our outward beauties
and our inner betrayals?
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by the photo Previous Post
Showing Up
A bitter wind
pushes a fog
before the eyes
of compassionate people
obscuring the truth
until all they see
is the gray
until all they feel
is wetness on their cheeks
until all they know
is the dullness
of morally false
equivocations
and
obfuscations
and when they
start to believe
that gray is reality
a single sharp light arrives
a child with a candle perhaps
and then another
a mother with a mission perhaps
and then another
a father with a message perhaps
and then another
and another
and another
until the gray mist
has transitioned into
a brilliant spectrum
to remind the people
that the only truth
that matters is
love
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by the photo Previous Post
Fishing
I caught a perch once,
when I was eight or nine,
in Roaring Brook
near the stone bridge
If you ask me
what bait I used,
I couldn’t tell you,
maybe a pinch of
Wonder Bread
or maybe
one of the endless hordes of
nightcrawlers marooned
on our driveway
each morning
In any case it was a perch,
at least some kid told me
it was a perch,
but I’ve never
caught another perch
in Roaring Brook
or anywhere else
and I’m beginning to wonder
whether there are
any more fish
at all
and
yet
I keep
dropping
my line
in the
water
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by Annie, the stupidest and most annoying cat EVER IN THE ENTIRE WORLD Previous Post
Most Days
I don’t fear
Missiles fired from distant warships
Child-stealing militant revolutionaries
Tyrants filling their secret prisons
Ravenous wild animals
Dreadful plagues
Most days.
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt was the date Previous Post
Slow Pitch
In the late afternoon sun
I sip my pilsener and
contemplate the weeds
I meant to pull yesterday.
Some are going to seed already.
across the yard, the
dwarf lemon tree
droops to rest one fat fruit
on the concrete patio.
I don’t have much experience
with fruit trees.
I remember when I was very little,
climbing into the branches
of peach trees with the other
hooligans of the outfield
while we ignored our fathers playing
corporate softball nearby,
only glancing up at the sharp clink
of cowhide on aluminum
to see if a homer might bounce
all the way
into our forbidden orchard,
so we could scramble down
and throw it back to the lumbering
outfielder puffing with futility
while the batter rounded third.
I don’t think we ate any of the peaches.
I would remember the guilt of it.
And I may be over-remembering
the lofty heights we could climb to
at just six years old.
I should pick that lemon
before it rots on the ground.
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt was the photographed lemon tree Previous Post
Finding The Rain
When I took the form of a horse,
You chose the shape of a plank of ice,
And together we bridged the chasm
To bring enlightenment to the people.
When I took the form of an otter,
You chose the shape of a river
And together we wound through the country
And solved its many mysteries.
When I took the form of a sheep,
You chose the shape of a snowdrift
And together we existed in silence
As danger passed us by.
When I took the form of a lion,
You chose the shape of a mist
And disappeared on the bitter wind.
Now I prowl the parched savannah
And at last I am beginning to remember
How to hunt on my own.
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt just happened by chance Previous Post
Erigenia’s Dance
One hand grasping the daffodil stem,
she leans out over the thirsty dirt
like a sailor leans out from a mast,
feeling spring’s warm breeze
painting her winter-white hair
with rainbow streaks.
Erigenia reaches out, palm down,
and spreads her slender fingers.
“Drink,” she whispers as
sparkling dew drops fall from her fingertips
to skitter across the dusty brown
like scattered diamonds.
She waits.
“Wake!”
With the suddenness of lightning,
Erigenia leaps from her perch
to land with an alarming jolt
among slumbering seeds.
She smiles and twirls, as all around her
the dirt rumbles and crumbles,
pushed up by tiny needles of bright green
reaching, striving toward the noon sun.
“Dance,” Erigenia urges.
“Dance with me.”
She twirls and pirouettes
around and between
slender spears of new grass
which sway in shimmering waves
to the rhythms coaxed from
ancient stone and dirt
by spring’s brilliance
and Erigenia’s joy.
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by Kymberlie Previous Post
Ghosted
The cat meows again
as if she’s forgotten that
she had her breakfast
a half hour ago
but she hasn’t forgotten
and again I won’t respond
because I’m busy checking my inbox
for your reply to the message
I sent yesterday morning.
There was a time
you answered
my messages
within the hour.
I haven’t heard from you in ages.
The stupid cat meows again.
How stupid is the cat,
to return again and again to her empty bowl?
How sad that she is so driven by futile hope
of a new morsel’s impossible appearance.
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt was provided by Previous Post
College Tour
The college tour guide explained
you could work on an organic farm,
right there on campus,
and I kept my mouth shut because
who the hell wants to play Mr. Green Jeans
with so much literature, knowledge, and beer
to consume, and only four years
in which to consume it?
To me, “organic farm” sounds like
a lot of bullshit shoveling, literally,
which I suppose isn’t that different from
a lot of bullshit shoveling, literarily.
Ultimately, both can put food on the table.
I learned to shovel bullshit
as a five year old, or rather
chickenshit I think it was,
which my dad piled into
the back seat of the Peugeot
to spread on his garden.
That’s how I remember it,
piles of stinky dirt called “manure”
which was also something
dogs rolled in, particularly dogs
with long hair like our husky.
My dad would spread manure
on his garden, then spend
sixty hours a day weeding, watering,
and fussing over that
sacred patch of dirt
until it was zucchini season.
It seemed to me that zucchini season
lasted ten months a year.
Stuffed zucchini, baked zucchini,
pasta with zucchini, zucchini with rice.
Zucchinis bigger than my thighs,
piled like firewood ten feet high,
all made possible by manure.
I went to college when it was cheap,
so I could learn a trade and escape
all that manure and zucchini.
Poetry Month 2018
I’ve resolved a few times to write a poem a day during the month of April, and I actually succeeded once. I’m again trying it out. No idea what each day will bring. Some light verse, some politics, some “oh shit I didn’t write anything today” haikus. If you read one and feel moved to comment, please do. If you want to share your poetry, please share! PS: Today’s poem prompt was… there was no prompt. Previous Post