Category Archives: Poem

“Guardians” For The Sunday Whirl

Leave a reply

 

Guardians

I spin the stick to kindle fire to dispel the chill,
risking the displeasure of that ghost who’s silent ’til
It feels the differing temperature with the waning cold
and moves down from the window ledge, wanting to behold
this human who alone would risk the ire of a ghost
without protection of a cross or a holy host.
I  softly hum a tune that the spirit doesn’t know,
then dig my fingers in the ground in an attempt to sow
new life within that sterile earth–softly dropping seed
to see what vegetative wonders earthly hands can breed.
I feel the spirit hovering and sense his threatening stare
until warm currents lift him up into the cooler air
above the room, above the town, to where more spirits dwell
who have been patiently waiting to send him back to Hell.

For The Sunday Whirl. This week’s given words are – kindle risk dig until differing chill spin waning ghost softly alone know.

Making An Impression, for SOCS

2 Replies

Making An Impression

 

 

Making An Impression

I  think the time has come for me to render this confession.
I simply am no good at all at making an impression.
My hair is light, my skin is pale, I’m hard to see at all.
The only slight impressions I make are when I fall!

 

 

For SOCS, the prompt word is “impress.

“Transmogrified” for dVerse Poets

10 Replies

Many hats worn during a lifetime!!

Transmogrified!!

Let them peel away my layers to see what is inside.
By the time they’ve finally done it, I, I will be transmogrified.
For one year I was one thing and another year another––
not just the girl created by my father and my mother.

If I were all the things I was in my former years,
my observers would get whiplash as they watched me shifting gears.
I’d be a waitress or a film-maker, a teacher or a writer.
A traveler, a publicist and a poetry citer.

A lover, wife and stepmother, an auntie, sister, friend.
A granddaughter, a daughter–my titles never end.
In each guise, what was needed–a lover or a coach,
sometimes one to blame,  at other times above reproach

I’ve lived in boats and houses, in motorhomes and more–
in huts formed  out of cow dung with swept dirt for a floor.
So if you want to find a person who can be all she can be,
you can give up all your searching, for I’m saying, “Please, choose me!”

 

To transmogrify means to transform or change completely, especially into a different, grotesque, or humorous shape or form.

For dVerse Poets, the prompt is “Let Them.”

Nightmares and Dreams for The Sunday Whirl

9 Replies

Nightmares and Dreams

Sighs like sirens in the night come knocking on my dreams,
centered in those lost places that slip between my screams.
Curses from the gods, perhaps, that seep in beneath doors
to still true thoughts of peacefulness  and fill our dreams with roars
of lions and of cougars and other preying things
and all those fears of danger that each daily newscast brings.
Let our dreams instead be filled with thoughtful acts of friends,
that fill our lives with loving thoughts until this trial ends.
Our votes might end the terror, but what else is there to do
until true national sanity is restored anew. 

 

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle, the prompt words are: sighs siren knocking still centered lost slip doors true screams beneath curse

Benediction for SOCS

10 Replies

Benediction

May your life be a pleasure from morning to night.
May your  talents be many and your drawbacks be slight.
When you’re sharing a donut may you have the last bite,
without finding out later that your dress is too tight.
May all of your children be a delight.
May they not stutter or blunder or fight.
May they always be tidy, unwrinkled and right.
May they be clever and of adequate height.
May your fame be unblemished and your burdens be light,
so when your husband is high as a kite,
he will have the wisdom to stay out of sight.

 

As you may have guessed, the SOCS  prompt is “may your…”

 

Gadfly, for RDP

14 Replies

Gadfly

Flitting about, here and there
to adjust your makeup, fluff your hair
no one could ever know or guess
how many times you change your dress
to achieve that casual look you flaunt–
like attention’s not the thing you want.
A gadfly free of care and stress
over how you look and dress,
No one would guess how carefully
you engineer the “you” we see.

The prompt for RDP is “Gadfly.”

 

(I just have to show you what AI came up with when I requested it make a picture just like the one above but with the girl a bit older:

Hilarious, no????

“Some Poetic Feet” for dVerse Poets Open Link Night

27 Replies

Malina Rose photo

Four Feet off the Ground

He loved her khaki overalls, her hiking boots and hat,
so altered his agenda to be where she was at.
He knew she was the girl for him, and though he’d never met her,
he knew at once he was in love and that he’d not forget her.
He tracked her to the lunch room, sneaking down the hall,
keeping so far behind she didn’t notice him at all.
He followed her to English class, then slipped into his own.
If it had been left up to him, she never would have known
the strength of his affection. Nor would she have met him.
She would have had no choice to remember or forget him.
From the start, he thought that she clearly walked on air
and one day without knowing it, he followed her up there.
She was two feet off the ground, and with him, it made four.
All across the campus, they were seen to soar.
But when she stopped abruptly, he simply could not miss her.
He forged ahead, bumped into her, and when she turned, he kissed her!
And though at first it seemed that she merely was astounded,
in time, they formed a pair and then they were more firmly grounded.

 

For Photo Challenge #269

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night..Some Poetic Fet!

Give Me Blue for dVerse Poets

27 Replies

Give Me Blue

If it is a blue with no sadness in it:
the blue of the sky above Colima Volcano
with no other clouds in it except one puff
of earth’s hot breath becoming visible
in the cool morning air.

If it is a blue
with no middle ground of safety,
nothing that makes it ordinary.
No hue of boredom
or gray cast of age.
No tint of ever ending––
just pure blue
holding its mood in,
letting you feel however you want to feel.

The blue of glass that reflects the sky.
Iris blue and periwinkle.
Cerulean and cobalt.

If it is a blue with not a smudge of green in it,
or yellow or white or black.
Blue-blue like my tue love’s eyes
and like the color that a blueberry Popsicle
should be––its blue dusted by nature
as though frosted, even in the heat of summer.
Like blue caught in icicles.

The color of a jellyfish
or Noxzema jar.
Bluebottle fly, tenacious,
only its color not annoying.
Blue as a shiver. Blue as blood. Blue as Hawaii.

Not the blue of a heart before forgetting.
Not that blue with a lot of
dullness soaked into it.
But if you have Blue as in Australia.
Blue as in a first place ribbon.
Sky blue,
true blue,
never blue.

Blue that if it’s ever had one gram of sadness in it,
doesn’t show it.`
If you have that blue,
and you want to give it to me,
then, sure.

 Give me blue.

for dVerse Poets, the prompt is to write an ekphrastic poem about one of the given Chagall paintings.

How Art Finds You

2 Replies
On December 7, I discovered this gorgeous bloom hidden behind the palm fronds and giant philodendron leaves in the strip of garden between my house and studio.
Another air view of snow.
To mountains
The back porch went from a light dusting to a heavy icing,

How Art Finds You

Some force all around us brings art into our world,
arranges it in leaf patterns or drops politely pearled
on grass blades after rainstorms or on leaves blown to the gutter
in accidental patterns that create  spontaneous clutter.
If they appointed art police and gave them all the duty
of curtailing the world’s art––all its grace and beauty,
to lock away the artists for superficial sin,
every night the the world would simply create art again.
It would mold its beauty from the shadows, from the dust,
to gather it around us as it seems it must.
It would blow it into wrinkles in the corners and crevasses,
crust snow onto branches and into mountain passes.
All these lovely forms imposed on all that we have known
are art descending on our world from where it has been blown.

“You” for The Sunday Whirl

16 Replies

.

\

You

We could share a lifetime in some connected place
and I would never lose my awe of your familiar face.
Years relaxing into it will seem a weekend trip:
mere hours to memorize your mouth––that classic upper lip.
Then when at last we’re in our home, I’ll have the whole of you
emblazoned in my memory with nothing left to do
but to enjoy the “all” of you, not  just your face and form––
that heart and soul and seed of you that creates your corm.

For The Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: lifetime share relax connect place last class awe home will years trip. (A corm is a short, thickened underground plant stem that stores starches and nutrients to fuel the plant’s growth.)