Blunt Cut
(A Dear John Note from Rapunzel)
If my hair is a ladder, I’m cutting each rung
and closing the window from which they are hung.
Hope you find a good job since my decision to lop
off your means of support when I cut off my mop!
For RDP: Blunt
The Blue of a Heart before Forgetting
First thing in the morning, when I’m fresh from dreams,
your memory cuts so sharply through the day’s beginning that I wake.
Once, in that long dream of childhood, days were not over half so soon.
Early in September, below the slippery slide,
the steady beat of dribbling basketballs.
So many acts of bravery lost—
“Annie I Over” and “New Orleans.”
Way back in our salad years,
it was so very easy to trap wonder in a box.
The dominoes going head to toe.
All those nights of passion, those years spent in desire.
More in the air than possibility.
You would think there would be some remnant left.
Enough, I say!
It was the beginning of the end.
I’m counting steps from one to ten across my heart, then back again.
What you blindly get into in youth can be the end of you.
I must ask, is it me alone—
this bald horizon line, the teeth of far-off cliffs?
The tide comes in each morning.
That isn’t my heart beating with wild abandon.
I scream, I cry, I moan, I curse.
The rain is falling drop on drop.
All day long, the rain comes down,
writing this poem with water on cobblestones.
The moon like an animal hovers over and around our houses.
My life catches in its static house.
I am an ally of the truths that lie the whole world over,
though some of them are ill-begotten.
Since it is true, I must report.
Every day since birth, I have been emptying the cup.
My past drifts away from me.
I seem to fit my life now. I’m cozy in my skin.
Is it gain or loss to feel contentment?
A woman should be shrouded, silent, pregnant, dumb.
You crane your necks and stand and gawk.
Clap hands, you say, Clap hands to the music.
The act of creation is the greatest art.
For dVerse Poets, we were to make a poem from the first lines of one poem we published each month in 2023. Finding it almost impossible to sort through over a thousand posts made in the past year, I instead went through my file where some poems from past years are filed alphabetically. Selecting some poems from poem files A to D, I recorded first lines that seemed to be possible lines in a poetic compilation, then set about reordering them. This is the poem I came up with. The lines are exactly as they were in the 40 poems I borrowed the first lines from. The only changes made concerned punctuation and capital letters. The title is also from a first line.
To read other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.
The Split
She drew her mantra to her and wound it like a veil
to form a place within he tried to pierce to no avail.
With no key to enter and no grounds to demand
entry to that space where the outer world was banned,
he switched his thoughts to other things: a blue bird’s sudden flight
and the ribbons it created as it split a shaft of light.
A chain of beads of shattered light like glass spread on the floor
were scars that vanished one by one as he walked out the door.
The Sunday Whirl Wordle 637 prompts for today are: scar chain bird ribbon beads shaft switches mantra key grounds drew veil Photo by kiwihug on Unsplash
Night Thoughts
They lie there like slumbering cats,
unaware of my presence,
then stir to stalk a field
where hidden metaphors hunch,
twitching, in the tall grass.
Whether they exist in a dream or not,
they do not know, but dwell there
in the shadow of my sleep,
transformed into jungle animals.
Exposed to the light of day,
they spring, as though tired of waiting,
into my conscious thoughts,
leaving their footprints on the page
where I jot them down guiltily,
a grateful plagiarist
who has merely trapped
the stuff of dreams.
Showing, then curling and retracting their nails,
paw after pawprint, they stalk
one line after another,
as, taking the credit,
I fill another page.
For dVerse Poets. What Animal serves as a perfect metaphor for how you write?
See how other poets wrote to the prompt HERE.
Fire & Ice
The fatal flakes of swirling snow
covered everything below,
including picnickers too frail
to withstand the frozen gale.
Framed in words, alas, more gory
than what was the actual story,
the fading flame of their last fire
was said to be their funeral pyre.
But they who replace truth with fable
sometimes choose to turn the table,
feigning facts with spurious lies,
creating fiction in its guise.
The truth is that the icy glaze
that covered lovers was just a phase,
for just before it was too late,
they hopped aboard a passing freight,
then jumped off at a neighboring town
where they flagged a taxi down.
Those bodies reduced to mere ember
scattered under snow-decked timber
were not human, but slabs of veal
placed in the fire form their meal.
But since such legends are mostly truthless,
they fabricate details more ruthless.
And that is why, finding the fire,
they named that hollow “The Lovers’ Pyre.”
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 636 the word prompts are: fatal flakes frame phase feign fable fame favor freight flame frail fade
Seesaw
When folks tell me to just do it,
my first thought is to eschew it.
And though I may change my mind,
I’m really not the doing kind.
On the other hand, if you
reveal something you’re going to do—
something of the crazy kind—
I might see fit to change my mind!
For Stream Of Consciousness Saturday, Jan 6, 2024 the prompt is “just do it.”
Pen & Ink
Guided by a hand like yours,
pens can open many doors.
Unclip it. Uncap its point.
Let paper that pen anoint.
As words somersault and caper,
flowing from your heart to paper,
a simple point, an ink-trailed line
could link your lonely heart with mine.
For Weekend Writing Prompt: Guide
The assignment is to write a piece of exactly 45 words making use of the word “guide.” I snapped this photo in Guanajuato. Never hurts to have a pen handy!
Penultimate/Ultimatepen
He said they couldn’t fence him for he liked to roam free.
No sty could ever hold him. No captive pig was he.
That he was a wild pig was true without a doubt.
As soon as they would pen him in, in seconds he’d break out.
But the farmer, too, was resolute. As his prize pig departed,
he vowed that he’d contain him. He wouldn’t be outsmarted.
He built a sturdy metal fence, and then he strung it higher—
woven fine and tight of the premium barbed wire.
Then he caught Porky and closed him in, determined that he’d win,
for it wasn’t up to any pig to refuse his fencing-in.
But indeed the pig devised again a means by which he left,
leaving the farmer feeling defeated and bereft.
Once more caught and then re-penned and taking his repast,
the pig had not a clue that this meal would be his last.
This escape his penultimate, now the die was cast.
His days of glorious freedom, alas, were in the past.
Then, his last meal finished, he made his next advance
toward a fence reconstructed, ready to take his chance.
But, alas, he’d met his match. Escape would never be,
for the farmer had infused the fence with electricity.
This time not the penultimate, it was the ultimate pen,
for Porky has been seen, I fear, just one more time since then.
Spread out on a platter, an apple in his jaws,
his final feat a foolish one, bound to give one pause.
When he said they couldn’t pen him in, I fear poor Porky lied,
for when he hit the fence this time, in minutes, he was fried.
Ham that he was, I fear that poor Porky’s lot was cast.
For the pen after the penultimate turned out to be his last.
Probably not the first time a pig who was a sinner
paid the price for it by turning into Easter dinner.
Click on Photos to enlarge. What do you see in these beach finds?
To the Island
If I sent you to an island, it would be for your own good.
It wouldn’t be unwillingly, with chains and ropes and hood.
I’d lure you off to be with me, surrounded by the sea.
You wouldn’t have to talk or walk or be in love with me.
The objects that I’d give you are a camera, notepad, pen
and a computer with no wifi to connect to where you’ve been.
You’d live in the present with the details of your life,
examining where you have been without the daily strife.
With no Internet distraction, no ringing of the phone,
sometimes you find a part of you that you have never known.
There’s something that is lacking in what’s crowded in one’s brain.
It’s hard to find ourselves when we must live the whole world’s pain.
In the morning, you would walk the beach, move inward with the tide,
examining what treasures the waves conceal inside.
A stone shaped like a check mark or a continent or heart–
it’s hard to suspend looking, once you’ve made a start.
You may take photos of them or collect them in your pocket—
something to make art from, or a picture for your locket.
Another way to get inside is what you write about them.
If you have secrets, it’s inevitable that you’ll out them.
The sea’s part of something larger and each treasure is a clue
connecting the whole universe to something within you.
This is why each object plucked up from the sand
is part of you that you’ve reclaimed—there within your hand.
What you see in what you find is what you have inside.
Perhaps it’s something you don’t know or that you know and hide.
The very fact that it is here revealed for you to see
may mean that you are ready to finally set it free.
The sea with all its treasures and its recurring tide
is also found within you—safely tucked inside.
So look into a mirror—a metaphor, more or less;
if you are wondering if you’ve changed, you won’t have to guess.
You’ll look for things within yourself as closely as the sea
and find out more of who you are and who you want to be.
You’ll see the changes on your face that say you’ve become wise.
Deep worry lines around your mouth and laugh lines by your eyes.
And once that you have found yourself, you’ll find yourself again;
for you are always changing—refining what you’ve been.
Tucked off on an island like a wallflower on a shelf,
perhaps you’ll find the whole wide world there within yourself.
And when you see the world within, you’ll want to live in it,
for it’s a world that you have power to change as you see fit.
For MVB the prompt is Island
Quandry
When your thinking is simplistic, it’s bound to be confusing.
And if you are not organized, the logic that you’re using
may lead you ’round in circles with the result that you’re not
successful in discovering the answers that you sought.
For the Three Things Challenge, the words are: SIMPLISTIC ORGANISED CONFUSING
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 