Category Archives: Poem

Tree of Faith, for the Poetree Prompt

15 Replies

For the new 2 writing  Poetree Prompt
If you can’t read the poem above, here it is in larger form:

Tree of Faith

In
another ­­
country,
I could be beheaded
for what I most believe in.
Personal. Unique.­
A creative faith that rules my life––­­
religion an organic thing
grown from a communication
between my heart and mind to shade me.

No pews or choir lofts.
No creeds or ayatollahs or muezzins.
No pentecostal dunkings
or annointments
other than fresh falling rain.
No prayer stick more holy than a paintbrush.
No well-thumbed hymnal
declaring faith more clearly than my fingers on a keyboard
or my gooey glue pot or a frame filled with my art and thus my soul.
If God is the creator,
then what prayer could be more elemental
than one’s own creation,
reading like a holy book of who you are?
Where is that creation drawn from
other than that first creator of it all?
We are still in the process of being created.
Genesis not a book already written but the very lives we live.
Yet in another country, this most elemental mysticism of the self–
stated, is punishable by death.
Hide not your flame under a bushel unless it is necessary,
oh brother poet, sister artist, fellow fanner of a personal flame.
You have been branded in your country by that fire
that should cure.
In many countries, perhaps all,
there have come times when what is personal
must remain so for survival’s sake.
Yet what has seeded change is martyrs such as yourself,
facing 800 lashings, years in prison if fortunate,
crucifixion if you’ve drawn the short straw
picked for you by old men wanting never to be judged themselves.
In another country, this simple act of putting words like mine upon a page
enough to end a life for.
That old geriatric communal faith
being so fragile that letting one person have their own faith
might bring about
that
first
seed
of its
shadow.

Flutter

7 Replies

Moths

They lift their wings
to float, then pump.
Slower than flit,
faster than slump.

Not content with loll and putter,
moths prefer to sail and flutter
through the air
from here to there.

The Weekend Writing Prompt is to write exactly 34 words making use of the word “flutter.” My word count includes the title.

 

“Words” for W3 65

46 Replies

Words

By their adjustment,
I change their drift,
but when I alter their lilt,
I am as transformed by them
as they are by me.

I am inebriated by words.
I reel in their power
as they call my bluff.

They reflect the changes in me
I would otherwise not know.
I can float in their buoyant comfort
or shoot the rapids of emotion.

Words are my river and my raft,
my cushion and that daredevil conveyance
into a new stream of thought

from which I never return
to the exact same world
I left from.

 

Why Do We Write?

We write to share that part of us that might not otherwise be shared. The page is like a Fibber Magee and Molly closet where we store all those leftover parts of ourselves. Open the page and everything comes spilling out: organized, disorganized, jovial, sad, rational or irrational. Everything gets crammed into the page. We may not be lionized for it. Our words may be stolen and presented as someone else’s, but the important thing is to write them. Words are like a pressure valve, freeing pent-up emotions. They furnish a release that is somehow part of the solution to the problems they describe. 

For the W3 65 Prompt: Inspiration  (What inspires you to write poetry?) To read other poems written for this prompt, go HERE.

Food Fight and Flight for Wordle 614

8 Replies

Food Fight and Resultant Flight

I dabbed the food flecks off of my face
and skittered at a quickening pace,
my tattered hem dragged from the grasp
of my tormenter’s cruel clasp.

Chattering teeth betrayed that place
where I had ended flight and pace
to squeeze my frame into a nook
where my pursuer would never look.

But, trapped within the prison I chose,
I felt the world around me close.
So, squinting out between the slats,
I spied the confirmation that’s

evidence of that scalding truth
that drove me from seclusion’s booth.
Freedom’s worth more than former wishes
to avoid doing the dishes!!

 

Prompts for The Sunday Swirl Wordle 614 are: tattered chattering drag dabbed face hem trapped frame squinted cruel flecks skittered scalded

 

 

Family Law

19 Replies

Family Law

By hook or hammer via head or maw,
we dispense our private law.
Cross not our path, felon or fish,
unless swift justice is your wish.
If you enter through our door
to steal or plunder? You’ll be no more.
Invade our brook? I fear we might
make you the victim of your own bite.

 

My friend Chris sent along this curious photo as a prompt. This is as close as I could come to interpreting why one man in formal dress stands hammer-in-hand at the door while the other poses in full fishing regalia, and even more of a mystery is the significance of the photo to her!

Toilet Paper Blues

18 Replies

Toilet Paper Blues (and Greens and Yellows)

 

img_3569

Toilet Paper Blues (and Greens and Yellows)

Once paper for the toilet came in every hue—
green or blue or yellow to wipe away our poo.
And though we all liked paper that was soft and squeezable,
most people felt that color wasn’t very feasible.

Hue was always optional, for you could still find white,

which had the best capacity for capturing the light.
Of all the other choices, white was still the best
to help you find the toilet on your midnight quest.

Now in the tissue aisle, no color meets our sight.
Green and blue and yellow seem to have taken flight.
We use our toilet paper for what it’s created for
without the added problem of matching our decor.

My poem isn’t delicate, it mentions words like poo.
I hope this does not put off such proper folks as you.
You will perhaps forgive me for my word choice this one time,
for feces’s not poetic and caca doesn’t rhyme!

Fandango’s prompt for the day was Toilet. I couldn’t resist reposting this poem from a few years ago..Hope no one takes offense.

Power Point

28 Replies

Super Powers

In our wider world of pomp and dollar,
somehow power makes us smaller.
Distracts us from the metaphor
of what a super power’s for.

Those powers we seek In the vast world
wait within us to be unfurled.
In that world we’re given to create,
we hold the key to every gate.

We’re given vision, strength and power
to make a minute of an hour,
to leap ahead or lag behind
in our universe of mind.

I soar the heights. I swim the sea,
and delve the depths to try to free
those powers that I’ve found to be
in that vast space inside of me.

For Sylvia’s Prompt to write a poem about Power. Image by Junior Ferriera on Unsplash.

for the W3 Prompt 64

Go HERE to see other posts to this prompt.
And HERE is the correct link to see the prompt.

Short Vacation, For dVerse Poets

6 Replies

Short Vacation

Just for today, repress advice
that the world is not so nice.
For just one day, forget the slime.
Pretend the world’s once more sublime.
Let’s hop aboard our little dingy,
grab that picnic hamper thingy
and simply sail our fears away.
Escape the news, just for today.

The dVerse prompt today is “Vacation Reminiscences”
To see other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.

 

(This is a poem I wrote in 2018. I had forgotten it, so perhaps you will have forgotten it, too. A shortie, just like the vacation described.)

Unmasked

21 Replies

 

Unmasked

I’d like a mirror so I can see
if I display felicity
when someone whispers in my ear
the name of one I once held dear.

I know not what my heart may feel,
what passions I might dare repeal
now that my head is ruling me
instead of love for somebody

long departed––no longer here
for so many a long-lost year.
If I could paint a picture of
the countenance of long-lost love

in monotone or multi-tones,
in stereo or  monophones,
I hesitate to admit that
I fear the portrait might fall flat.

How often it has been  my ploy
to act withdrawn or bored or coy,
as though the long-lapsed love I bore
is what steers my grieving core.

But, in truth, duplicity
is what in all simplicity
guides my actions and my thought
and turns me into love’s robot.

With paint cans colored various hues,
why do I always choose the blues,
rebuffing each potential woo
and dropping out of courtship’s queue?

And so, if love is not a ruse––
a mere excuse for whom to choose,
I stand here gawking, open wide,
with no place left in which to hide.

Respectability’s passe,
and pride too dear a price to pay;
for staying safe in grief’s tight room
is burial before the tomb.

And so my dear, this poem you view?
Pretend that it’s addressed to you
and join me in complicity.
Perhaps shared words can set us free.

I’m not a girl.  You are no boy.
This poem is not a word-stuffed toy.
Should you respond with words that match,
it’s possible that we will catch

another chance to reach and choose
and maybe this time we won’t lose
the golden ring that does not bind.
This time we may find love is kind!

For Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #228

This is actually a poem I wrote seven years ago but for some reason, your photo reminds me of it so I changed the name and I’m reprinting it here. Is that cheating???

Bleeding Heart Hibiscus: FOTD July 8, 2023

9 Replies

 

I believe this is the first time this hibiscus has bloomed since I bought it months ago. I had forgotten about it and suddenly was surprised by two blooms! I probably published a photo of it when I bought it but I believe Zoe ate the flowers and it never bloomed again. I have a tag named “Bleeding Heart Hibiscus” and just the other day, I was wondering what it was and where I had seen it.  Now I know!  So happy. Just the other day I was wishing I had a white hibiscus.

For Cee’s FOTD