Poetry – Page 4 – Peter Dudley's blog

Another Two Days – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 19 (written on April 20)

Another Two Days
The roses I bought you
are curling black at the tips
like they belong on the cover
of an album by an emo band

but I think we can get
another two days
out of them

They lasted a whole week,
just $9.99
plus tax
but hey
just $9.99
a whole week

I always feel weird
buying red roses
at Safeway

What will people think?
They’ll think I fucked up
and need to apologize
Or that I have no
imagination
or patience
and red roses are
all I can come up with

But you said you like red roses and
you seemed delighted
when I walked in the door,
red roses in hand,
kind of like the way
you seemed delighted
when I walked in the door,
years ago,
empty handed

and hey
just $9.99!

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 actual real red roses
Previous Post

Marriage – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 18 (written April 20)

Marriage
I pull weeds, sweating
under my shirt,
tiny stones grinding
divots into my knees

with my trowel I gouge the earth
It’s important
to get below the surface
all the way to the root

after all this work
I don’t want these weeds
to grow back
even though others
will surely sprout
to take their place

the yard looks tidy
from the street
crisply edged lawn
smoothly trimmed shrub
weedless gaps
between conspicuously intentional blooms

the yard looks tidy
from the street

the way it’s expected to

and I wonder if the neighbors
know how much sweat
you and I have dripped
into our tidy suburban display

Final Flight – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 17

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

Rationalizations – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 16

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?

Showing Up – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 15

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

Fishing – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 14

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

Most Days – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April Friday the 13

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.

Slow Pitch – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 12

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.

Finding The Rain – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 11

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.

Erigenia’s Dance – #PoetryMonth 2018 – April 10

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.