Category Archives: Poetry

If I Were Water and You Were Air

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The Prompt: For this week’s writing challenge, take on the theme of H2O. What does it mean to be the same thing, in different forms?
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If I Were Water and You Were Air

I used to be restless water—
only the froth and currents
of a moving life.

Now I am still water,
sinking down to where
I can be found
by anyone willing to stand quietly
and look.

Is it true that moving water never freezes?
Is it true that still waters run deep?
Is it true that we are wed in steam?

“What if, caught by air,
it never lets me go?” I ask.

“But even water
turned to air
must fall at last,” you say.

“And what if I fall farther from you?”
I say. “Or what if I never again find banks
that open to contain me?”

I used to be swift flowing water.
Now I am a pool that sinks me deeper every year.
So deep, so deep I sink
that on its way to find me,
even air may lose its way.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_writing_challenge/ice-water-steam/

Blank Page

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The Prompt: All Grown Up—When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

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Blank Page

It stretches forever in front of me.
There, no future happens until I create it.
And that is the power of words
that rub like pieces of gravel in my shoe.
I become less of a child in bearing them,
grow to adolescence as I pry them from my shoe.
In storing them on the page, I become my own creator—
writing a new world with each decision of word.
On the page, I can, if I so choose,
grow up again and again.
Each page filled or every edit of the last
becomes another part of me
that tells the same story:
that growing enough to fill the space inside of me
never happens.

 

Lost Poem

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 Lost Poem

A button pushed.
No lives lost.
Just newborn words,
vanished
and mourned.

Consider them
a sacrifice to the muses,
he says.

Consider them
parts of me
I’ll never remember again,
I say.

Blue-footed Booby

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Blue-footed Booby

Graceful Vee of wing and curve of neck
laid out in sea foam on the beach—
it is as though you are making a final goofy move
on feet dressed up in blue first for dancing and then for love.
The means of your death is less a mystery to me
than what has left you and where it is now.
Perhaps, as I cup my hand through air above you,
I hold a part of you not soon enough departed.

Remembering those tiny sea turtles,
alone in the sea for moments,
picked off by the birds,
these mysteries worry me
like tiny flippers
resisting
that next great adventure
of the inside of a pelican
as I finally understand why anyone
would choose to have their ashes scattered at sea.
I have always dreaded descent
to the ocean’s dark floor,
when I could have been imagining
washing up on a favorite shore.


Monosyllabically Possible?

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The Prompt: One at a Time—Today, write a post about the topic of your choice — using only one-syllable words.

Monosyllabically Possible?

I
might
just
fail,
but
I
will
try.

in
a
case
of
do
or
die,

If
I’m
caught
out
in
the
kelp,

It
will
do
to
just
cry
help!

But
if
you
want
to
cuss
and
shout,

it
just
won’t
work
to
go
that
route.

When
in
the
door
you
slam
your
thumb,

we’ll
see
how
far
that
you
have
come.

Your
girl
has
just
gone
on
the
lam,

and
you
just
have
to
shout
Goddamn!

Floating Meditation

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Floating Meditation

I don’t want to do aerobics;
I want to float the sea,
pretending that I’m flotsam
or perhaps that flotsam’s me.

I’d like to try to meditate
the half hour I’m adrift,
but I fear that between me
and my subconscious there’s a rift.

“Am I flotsam now or jetsam?”
keeps running through my mind.
I guess to tell the truth,
I’m not the meditating kind.

New World Miracle

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The Prompt: An Extreme Tale—“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. When was the last time that sentence accurately described your life?

Note:  For the ninth day in a row, I (along with several other bloggers) have not been able to pingback to the Daily Prompts page.  If you are able to, can you mention this poem in your blog and pingback to me?  WordPress doesn’t seem to be doing anything about this problem, although we’ve written numerous times!  Thanks.

I’ve told the second part of this story in an earlier post.  Now, here is the beginning and the ending.  One day I’ll tell the in-between.


New World Miracle
(Ethiopia, 1973-74)

Black Tiger in safari jacket
you told me
hyenas in the hills
would attack the mule if I tried
to ride alone
from the lowland landing field
to Lalibela.

By
sunset
we had reached
the high plateaus
sheep crying
miles away
shepherds calling
mile on mile.

In this high air
heard from mountaintop
to mountaintop
from valley
lifting to plateaus above
you with Afro out to here
admitted the hyenas were a lie
took my picture
tucked my camera in your pocket
pulled me up
to you
and
there was no
resistance
in
this
air.

I was
enamored
of the falling sun
the cries of shepherds
your hair
your jacket
your clean mouth
white teeth
and beautiful
tall rest of you.
I had always needed
to feel like this.
Giddy.
Your kiss pulled me in then
ricocheted
to valleys
under valleys
under valleys.
Always something
under
something else.

We were at the edges
of the world.
We were at its
cracking rims.

And I can believe
in you
standing
on the rifted rock
above the canyons
still
I can’t imagine
you
in the valley
deeper in the valley
than the valley floor.

I can’t imagine you
dusted hair
eyes closed by clods
growing trees from your navel
pomegranates from your fingernails.

When you touched me
I grew
then I grew too far.

But nothing
since
has touched your warm
your brown
your hands
your mouth
where you touched
nothing since
has quite
touched.

In your country
where names
are only words
strung together
your name
Andu Alem Tamirat
meaning new world’s miracle.

You could have come with me
to grow invisible in California.
Instead you
died in
futile
revolution,
seeding
painful
memories.

Remember
how you used to climb
out of my dining room window
to the back yard compound
to pick orange waxy blossoms
from the pomegranate tree—
how you used to
tuck them
in my hair?

Thanks Be to Pure Hearts

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The Prompt: Never Too Late—Is there a person you should’ve thanked, but never had the chance? Is there someone who helped you along the way without even realizing it? Here’s your chance to express your belated gratitude.

Thanks Be to Pure Hearts

 Thanks be to that creator of the universe—
the one I can no longer pray to in a church
because of those powers who take truth prisoner
and lead the masses to wherever they can be most safely trusted
to surrender reason to them.

Thanks be to that man who turned water into wine.
Not a teetotaler. Not even abstinent, or so some say.
That man who loved all and who would not strike anyone
except for merchants making a living from the church.
Two thousand years ago,
he saw that merchants and moneylenders
would lead the world wrong—
using the little minds of frightened men
to turn faith into a weapon.

Praise be to those at the beginning of it all
who tried to set a true course but made the mistake
of leaving the compass in the hands of human fools
who saw over all, how to use it for their own glory,
making power their god and oiling their way upward
not toward salvation
but toward ever higher places in this world.

Those who are not fools might speak our enemies’ names
yet be shouted down by those
Dunning and Kruger have named as their adjutants—
the countless mindless who speed the world toward ruin.

Yet for this day, I want to turn my back on those I’d rather curse
to thank pure hearts who still can see the way.
There is still, I know, a part of them in all of us,
evident in everyday things: a mother’s sheltering arms
or in as simple an act as taking the smallest piece of pie.

So when we give thanks today,
thank those who remain kind within the world,
carrying along the spirit
of those first beneficent acts
that started with the dust of stars
and from it created consciousness
and then implanted some good turn of will
so as to give hope in a world
that feels divided in the blackness of the universe,
lonely in this night
but steering by those pinpricks in its cover
through which light shows, even in the darkest dark.

Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210

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The Prompt: Grateful and Guilty—write a thank-you note to your guiltiest pleasure

Okay, I challenge you to find a better excuse than I have for not getting posted until 7:10 at night.  I’m told by the owner of the little palapa restaurant I’ve come to after not being able to get online all day that it is probably because of yesterday’s eruption of Colima Volcano about 80 miles northeast of me.  Frustrating but exotic, no?  At any rate, here is my “real” post for the day…Judy

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Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210

Thanks be to God for TV that’s evolved beyond Godzilla.
And thanks to him for frozen cream—both praline and vanilla.
Another pleasure is writing in bed. It’s how I start my day.
With no spouse or kids to feed, it’s where I get to stay.
I know that grandkids would be nice, but still I’m rather grateful
that being childless cuts to nil the chances they’ll be hateful.

Chocolate and potato chips, together or alone
are two more guilty pleasures for which I must atone.
I try to limit quantities that pass between my lips,
for if I eat too many, they’re displayed upon my hips.
Another guilty pleasure that’s high upon my list
is a stupid TV show that somehow I just missed

the first time that it came around and which I must admit
is really superficial, although it was once a hit.
Still, I can’t stop watching it when I am all alone—
a guilty pleasure for which I’ve found ways I can atone.
I only watch it from the pool as I do exercise—
computer balanced within view while I aerobicize.

The show I watch is Beverly Hills Nine-Zero-Two-One-Oh.
And that’s about as far as this confession’s gonna go!
I’m sure I’m shrinking brain cells, but I grow them back again
by reading hours of Marcel Proust, and then Anais Nin!
My ending comment must be this sincere beatitude:
for friends who like me as I am, I have great gratitude.

Guilty for my sins and the excesses that are mine—
grateful for the friends who still insist that I am fine
if I never turn out perfect both in looks and my behavior,
I guess the fact that they’re not perfect either is my savior.
Guiltily and gratefully, we all pass through this life,
pudgy from our excesses and battered by our strife.

But that’s how life is patterned, and we all are lucky still
that of our guilty pleasures we’re allowed to have our fill.
Thanks be to our compulsions and life’s excesses of pleasure,
for all our peccadillos end up as life’s greatest treasure.
So, thanks be again for naughty things. We both love and revile them.
With some of them we stuff our mouths. With others, We just dial them.

Pieromaniac

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Pieromaniac

At any time of day or night,
I’m always open to a bite
of pastry stuffed with something nice,
in fact, pie is my favorite vice!

I am very very very
fond of all things flavored cherry,
and of all this cherry pleasure,
pie’s the one that I most treasure.

Good for breakfast, good for lunch,
on pumpkin pie, I love to munch.
Coconut or chocolate cream?
They are my fantasy and dream.

Banana, apple—oh, and peach!
Put one of them within my reach,
and I’ll purloin a piece or two.
No pie is safe within my view.

On the window ledge or table,
I’ll grab a piece if I am able.
In a coffee shop or grandma’s kitchen,
pie’s delicious. Pie is bitchin’

At picnics, parties, celebrations,
with coffee or with small libations,
at any occasion or event,
pie is the best accompaniment.

Yet there is one aspect of pie
that I hope never meets my eye.
I don’t like pie in just one place.
Please don’t shove it in my face!

Today, I’m using the weekly challenge: Pie—The scent of pastry baking, the sound of a fork clinking on a plate… This week, make our mouths water with stories about pie.