Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

The Dance of the Terrible Middle

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The Dance of the Terrible Middle

Caught in the terrible middle of the animal,
in the white nerve of my sleeping grandfather,
I go with the signs of night in a straight line,
eluding the contented star animals,
breathing with the transformation of their high place.

The high mountains are my prison,
the fear of your love my punishment.
I occasionally give in to thoughts of you.
The ghost of your memory is in my center.

We are separate, but
in each of us is the house
where both of us live.

In the table of your hair,
in the locked room,
to the living heart of the beast,
we come for charity.

The sweet scent of reason
dances to my middle self.
It is of the moon,
but equally of books––
a mongrel with its tail between its legs
howling a mortal solo of our split lives
and our separate deaths.

The rolling body of the star,
my body spinning to the paradox
of what I could believe in––
the faded ochre of the one truth of your friendship,
the disparate truth of my grandfather.

All out of line, unparallel.
Lover with your full nights’ sleep
and half of your life lost to this sleep,
you dream of three futures while
I dance the tango of the terrible middle.

For dVerse Poets Fragment Poem

Missed Americas

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Missed Americas

Now that they are runway-bound,
those extravagantly gowned
are oft-driven to expound
with words not overly profound
about beliefs they’ve newly found
(overheard and swiftly downed)
just because they love the sound,
hoping in the final round,
their golden tongues will get them crowned.

 

For the dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Crown.
Image from  BBC.

Baptism at Sea for dVerse Poets

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“Baptism on the line, also called equatorial baptism, is an alternative initiation ritual sometimes performed as a ship crosses the Equator, involving water baptism of passengers or crew who have never crossed the Equator before. The ceremony is sometimes explained as being an initiation into the court of King Neptune.”  Wikipedia

Baptism at Sea

We were happy at Christmas. Pale Andy didn’t dance, but moon makes even mouse-hair gold, and it was golden hair that swung to breeze. Out on the deck, baptized by salt spray, we watched dolphins spread out in a line, racing our boat to the equator and winning, flipping tails and turning in one fell swoop, synchronized in their returning to where we’d all just been.
But we went farther south, turned west, then up again on Africa’s farther coast.

We cross a fine line,
speeding into tomorrow,
courted by the sea.

This is Fran’s prompt for dVerse Poets: This week, Let’s give thanks! Write a haibun about one person, place, or thing for which you give thanks. It could be your favorite playlist or album, a holiday getaway, childhood home, or someone truly special to you. Whomever, or whatever, you decide to give thanks for, let your haibun manifest that to us!

For those new to haibun, the form consists of one to a few paragraphs of prose—usually written in the present tense—that evoke an experience and are often non-fictional/autobiographical. They may be preceded or followed by one or more haiku—nature-based, using a seasonal image—that complement without directly repeating what the prose stated. The haiku is a Japanese poetic form that consists of three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.

In the Mirror

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In the Mirror

Her rag doll image
rejects the girls room twitters,
counts to five and says hello
to the new girl she sees 
in the mirror who doesn’t care.

 

The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a Wayra poem. The elements of the Wayra are:
1. a pentastich, a poem in 5 lines.
2. syllabic, 5-7-7-6-8
3. unrhymed.
A further request is to use onomatopoeia.

Since I’m addicted to writing to prompts, I am randomly choosing prompt words for myself as well: by letting my eyes fall randomly on words on this page or my desktop. Here are the prompt words: twitter, count, image, hello, rag, rejects.

Categories of Terror

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Categories of Terror

Footsteps behind you in a midnight park
or the sentence of standing center stage.
A shadow, darker, moving through shadows,
that one voice, remembered, calling your name.

Echoes that follow you through the years.

Only one terror worse.
Alone in the whole wide world.
No more morality or fame or love or blame.
Now, what is the purpose of your being?

For dVerse Poets: Epiphany

 

 

 

Zombie Ball

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Zombie Ball

Slice of liver, ooze of spleen—
add them to the soup tureen.
See all the pallid corpses preen?
They seek to woo the zombie queen.
Complexions chalky white or green
through the haunted house careen,
much rowdier on Halloween
than all the holidays between.

 

For dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Careen

 

Dental Discourse: dVerse Poets Compound Word Verse

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Dental Discourse

She could not stand the sad sad sight
of his horrendous overbite.
She arranged to take him to a
dentist, thinking he could do a
makeover.

She asked the doc what he would charge
to make his overhang less large.
The price he set to make each tooth less
was, I fear, greedy and ruthless
overkill.

Thus began their drawn-out dicker
that I think would have gone quicker
if his teeth had been less icky,
and the job a much less tricky 
overhaul.

After much talk, they struck a deal,
both thinking that they’d made a steal.
But then with little else to do,
 she said  if he attempted to
overcharge,

she would have his license lifted
no matter how bloody gifted
he might have been (when this all ends)
at cutting down her toothy friend’s
hangover.

 

 

For dVerse Poets prompt: Compound Word Verse Image by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

This form consists of 5  five-line stanzas with aabb rhyme schemes, each containing 8 syllables and each stanza concluding with a three-syllable compound word that had one element the same as all other compound words in the final lines of the stanzas. Phew!

“Ash” for dVerse Poets

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Ash

Wood to ash and flesh to dust,
stone to sand and iron to rust.
Leather snaps and fabrics fray.
All things living must wear away.
What we seek to save, we save in vain.
Nature wipes out every gain,
and blessedly, also our pain.

 

For the dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt: Ash (44 words only)

Unraveled

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Unraveled

The pain of love unraveling? No one knows it better,
for she wears her heart upon her sleeve, knit into her sweater.
Each day her heart unravels and lies tangled down her arm.
They say it cannot harm her. Loosened hearts cannot do harm.
But she’s a prisoner of these tendrils of love that’s come undone—
the truth of it revealed to her each day by a new sun,
while each night in her dreams, sleep knits it up again
and the ardor of her lost love once more draws her in.
She forgets the present and relives what she once had—
what she imagines in her slumber cancelling out the bad.
This unknitting and reknitting can’t be what life is for.
She must search for her dream’s exit. She must try to find the door.
Cast her old garment on the flames. Burn up that raveled sleeve.
Real love stays firmly knitted. A true love doesn’t leave.

For dVerse Poets: Pain  Image by nik on Unsplash.

Panegyric Poetry: Ode to Morrie

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Ode to Morrie

Oh you ball of energy, you little snarl of fluff.
When it comes to hugging you, I cannot get enough.
Your hair so black and curly, your teeth so sharp and white
that it is an honor when you choose to bite.

Your flair at ball retrieval truly has no equal.
However many thrown for you, you always seek a sequel.
Your eyes luminous marbles, your nails a lovely shape
from running over terraces to stem a squirrel’s escape.

Your hairy little jowls would put Borgnine’s to shame.
So many little mysteries for which you aren’t to blame.
What creature eats the birdseed spread out on the wall?
What other creature has your leap? What other dog the gall?

You give the cats their exercise and what possum would dare
to stray into a garden given to your care?
Oh brave little caroler when interloper passes,
Your mighty barks belie your size. No burglar tests your sasses.

At night you serenade me with your howling croon
accompaniment to ambulances or the rising moon.
My revered alarm clock, my companion after dark,
as now and then throughout the night I celebrate your bark.

Each day I laud thy energy, thy beauty and thy voice.
When I contemplate your dogginess, I cannot but rejoice!
This ode of praise I write for thee, I cannot help but pen it.
If there had been a dog messiah, my dear, you would have been it!

 

A Panegyric poem of praise for dVerse Poets