Recently, WordPress has started sending reminders of past blogs published on the current date. Here was a blog I published ten years ago on June 22:
Why don’t you do the same ? If you do, please put a link to this blog in comments below.
The Toast
He never lost his swagger, even toward the end.
As life tried to break him, the most he did was bend.
When death twisted its cruel blade and his life met its turning,
unholy thoughts consumed me and set my mind to churning.
Will the dead rise up again in search of former love,
or do our dear departeds find more holy lips above?
Does past love wave its banners and proclaim itself in spite
of the fact that one love stays below, completely out of sight?
Love’s table where we feasted has found another host,
and though I hover ’round its edges and listen to the toast
of another bride and bridegroom celebrating love that’s new,
instead, my lover who once was, I lift this glass to you.
For the Sunday Whirl 762 the words are: wave turning unholy lips swagger lost dead rise twist blade feast edges
WordPress has started a new feature where they send us a reminder of every blog we published over the years on the present date. This is what I published on June 19 in 2019:
I well remember that it took me much longer to format the poem than to write it, and in the original post, I showed earlier “shapes” for the poem before I settled on this one. I’ll spare you that here. Was anyone around to read it when I first published the poem? If so, drop a line. In fact, drop a line even if you weren’t!
Image by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash, Used with permission.
Insomnia Blues
I turn up the volume, turn off the lights–
the beginning of one of my fruitless insights
into how to manage falling asleep
by listening to podcast sessions I keep
stored on my computer, backed up on my phone,
although I admit, in the dark, all alone,
I lie sleepless for hours, in spite of trying
various things to assist in my flying
off into dreamland. Music and books,
chants, meditations and other hooks
created to lull a person to dreams,
where I will not go in this lifetime,it seems.
Hour after hour, I try to snooze.
Light up a doobie, sip on some booze,
but nothing works, so as dawn lights my day,
I arise from my bed and I’m off and away
to attend Open Circle–– a weekly gathering
given to performances, lectures and blathering
on local issues. This week it’s my friend.
I find my seat. It’s first row, on the end.
Hear announcements of upcoming speakers and then
my very best friend. I hear her begin,
then fade into dreams, beginning to snore,
lean ever lower, end up on the floor.
So that sleep I’ve been praying for comes, in the end,
rudely, in public, as I lose a friend.
Today’s Word of the Day was “Volume.”
I Have Memorized This Ceiling
I know these walls and ceiling well.
They have so many tales to tell.
When reality is not sufficient,
four walls can become omniscient—
opening to all the world,
as a thousand stories come unfurled.
Each timber’s knot and each plank’s burl,
each water stain—each mark and whirl
has an adventure kept inside.
It is a fast horse that I ride
speeding my self, so tightly curled,
out of this prison, into the world.
A woman’s silhouette—so grand
has been sketched out by water’s hand.
Wood its canvas, it paints her free,
her story known by none but me.
The little dog—her friend and guide
when planks were cut, was found inside
that living tree, first cut, then milled
that my mind’s meanderings have filled
with all the stories that would be mine,
born in another place and time.
Those held prisoner by caste
or by our sex, held sure and fast—
imprisoned by life’s machinations,
escape in our imaginations.
Thus it is that fantasy
is the thing that sets us free.
The lock that holds us, rope that binds
cannot corral our restless minds.
I’ve memorized these walls, this ceiling,
imbued them with all of the feeling
lacking elsewhere in my life.
They are my husband. I am their wife.
Those water stains are flowers placed
to relieve sorrows I have faced.
Those hollow eyes stretched wide in terror,
the tree cannot have grown in error.
They are messages to me
that somewhere, something watches me.
They record and comfort one
who, worn out when her day is done,
spreads out her body on her cape
and looks up for her day’s escape.
A private world for my invention,
far from my life’s cruel convention.
I’d tell the whole world if I could,
these stories nature has etched in wood.
Instead, my stories I remand
to whatever high command
guides whatever reprimands
these unfair acts of human hands
bring to themselves. We cannot know
the greater plan from here below.
For 14 years, I lived in a high-ceilinged all redwood house. The wood ceiling and walls were what I viewed every morning and evening as I woke up or lay trying to sleep. I used that imagery as though being observed by another woman, somewhere in the world, imprisoned due to caste, sex, or other conditions of her life.
Entrapment
The city lights are tempting–each theater and store,
but when my outer life is rich, my inner life’s a bore.
Do I want to create my life or should it create me?
And which is which? I do not know. Which helps me most to be?
I guess I need a balance, but each choice is a trap.
While I think it over, perhaps I’ll have a nap.
Sometimes the truth is found in dreams. Perhaps that will work now.
But once the “what” occurs to me, I’ll have to dream the “how.”
I dream empty buildings and abandoned avenues,
stores filled with pretty dresses, refrigerators, shoes.
Wind through broken windows and grass through broken walks.
All those empty radios where no one ever talks.
While somewhere in the country, away from smog and fumes
those busy cities of the past are sealed away in rooms
writing morning pages and playing with their dogs,
recording things they used to do in their daily blogs.
If I don’t join the city, if I choose to be free,
perhaps the busy city will choose to come join me!
I don’t recall who sent me this podcast, or how. Could it be AI? If you’d like you can listen to it here:
(Please let me know if this podcast link doesn’t work. I’ve been wrestling with it for hours now!)
I Used to Eat Red
My sister Patti and I, posed by my older sister Betty. Those are “the” cherry trees behind us. The fact that we were wearing dresses suggests we were just home from Sunday school and church, our souls bleached as white as our shoes and socks!
I Used to Eat Red
I used to eat red
from backyard cherry trees,
weave yellow dandelions
into cowgirl ropes
to lariat my Cheyenne uncle.
I once watched dull writhing gold
snatched from a haystack by its tail,
held by a work boot
and stilled by the pitchfork of my dad
who cut me rattles while I didn’t watch.
I felt white muslin bleached into my soul
on Sunday mornings in a hard rear pew,
God in my pinafore pocket
with a picture of Jesus
won from memorizing psalms.
But it was black I heard at midnight from my upstairs window––
the low of cattle from the stock pens
on the other side of town––
the long and lonely whine of diesels on the road
to the furthest countries of my mind.
Where I would walk
burnt sienna pathways
to hear green birds sing a jungle song,
gray gulls call an ocean song,
peacocks cry the moon
until I woke to shade-sliced yellow,
mourning doves still crooning midnight songs of Persia
as I heard morning
whistled from a meadowlark
half a block away.
And then,
my white soul in my shorts pocket,
plunging down the stairs to my backyard,
I used to eat red,
pick dandelions yellow.
This is a reworking of a poem from my book Prairie Moths for dVerse Poets
Gasping for Air
No small potatoes are these dreams
that serve to rip apart the seams
of blessed sleep that drifts my mind
down roadways of a gentler kind.
Dread closes off my throat in fright
that I will not survive this night.
Prickles of fear cause neck to seize.
I run outside, seeking a breeze
to fill my lungs pinched off by fear
that my death is growing near,
shifting those stories in my head
to twisted tales of breathless dread.
I shift to hammock and cooler air,
breath coming easier out there,
my glassy eyes opening to
that stillness that comes into view.
Black night replacing former views
that now my memory eschews.
For The Sunday Whirl 761 the word prompts are:
runner potatoes road drifting twisted pinch glassy prickled neck shifted still
Reluctant Guest
It was infatuation. He was there at my behest,
and though I hoped for more, he proved to be a slippery guest.
When I reached out for him and he escaped my grasp,
I improvised a harness out of scarf and belt and clasp.
Before you form ideas about my brashness in this tryst,
imagining the lengths that I might go to to be kissed,
I fear that you misunderstand the situation. Maybe,
I did not make it clear that I was bathing sis’s baby!
The Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “guest.”
Christmas Rituals
Why do we go to the trouble to do it?
Cut down the Yule tree and dig out the light strings?
Untangle extension cords ’till they’re all lit.
Set up the nativity: shepherds and kings,
then Mary and Joseph and their holy son.
Arrange all the tinsel and then place the star––
(once the balls are all hung and you’re nearly done)
––on the tree.if anyone can reach that far!
Then turn out the room lights and bask in the glow.
On the couch, the family all in a row,
then turn on the music, and you’ll surely know!
For dVerse Poets, the prompt was to write an “Eleventh Power” poem:I. Eleventh Power is an invented stanzaic form introduced by Christina Jussaume who requests the subject be uplifting. The elements of the Eleventh Power are:
––stanzaic, written in any number of 11 line stanzas.
––syllabic, 11 syllables each, per line.
––rhymed, rhyme scheme: abababccddd or ababababccc.
Oops.. just realized I didn’t do abababab but instead did abab cdcd. Mia culpa!
