Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

Our Mother, Cloaked in Silence (Daily Post and dVerse Poets Rhyme Royal)

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Our Mother, Cloaked in Silence

Although she was our portal to the world,
with little pageantry we laid her down.
No trumpets blared, the flags full mast unfurled,
for it was small, the realm of her renown.

And yet the limbs were bare, the whole world brown
as though the trees she planted all were lief
to shed their full green finery in their grief.

The prompt today was cloaked.  Also for the dVerse poets prompt, Rhyme Royal.The rhyme royal stanza consists of seven lines, (usually) in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is  a-b-a-b, b-c-c. It was the standard narrative meter in the late Middle Ages.

Nosy Mortal Monologue

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Nosy Mortal Monologue

Why is our living just part of our dying
and why must our failures be part of our trying?
Who made up this game and who’s throwing the dice?
Why do we play on, no matter the price?
How can men worship this ultimate gamesman
who gives us our faults and then unfairly blames man
for acting the way he’s created to be?
Why aren’t we given mind power to see
how something so seemingly unfair might tend
to all turn for the best when it comes to the end?
Could it be that our dying is part of our living?
That somehow our getting is tied to our giving?
Does Karma exist? Does Heaven or Hell?
Does the Universe know, and will it ever tell?

A question poem for dVerse Poets

Driven: dVerse Poets Open Link Night

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Driven

They’re always back there in my head––
the things I could have said instead.
Sometimes not voiced for a reply,
but just existing in my mind’s eye.
Words joined in ranks turn there about
wondering how they’ll get out.
Before they start to riot and rage,
I let them out of their bone cage.

The voices murmur and they chide.
Cause trouble if they’re locked inside.
What if the mad men of this world––
in asylums cruelly hurled––
are simply writers who don’t know it.
Wild voice inside. No place to stow it.
All those entities inside
taught that they must try to hide.

Perhaps if they could let them out
to prance and scamper, whine and shout
on paper––empty, white and thin––
it would be the simplest medicine.
To fill the paper the surest way
to bring tortured voices to light of day.
To join that strange fraternity
Of those who have to speak to see.

What drives us to this room, alone,
our lives austere as any bone?
Is it the voices there inside us,
barely able to abide us,
needing to be wider heard?
To keep them in would be absurd.
I let them out for exhibition.
Free them from their cramped perdition.

And as I drift off into sleep,
I am the company they keep.
I hear their whisperings faint but clear
as they march in ranks from ear to ear.
Words rolling out in countless reams
fill my empty chambers with dreams.
When I awaken, they break their order,
wild to escape this nightly hoarder.

They jostle, elbow, push and squeeze
to make their way onto these keys.
I can barely match their pace
as they stream out, caught in the race
to be the next to flee my head
in their mad stampede to be said.
I don’t control these words, you see.
I am their transport. They drive me.

 

To play along with dVerse Poets, go here: 
https://dversepoets.com/2017/09/07/openlinknight-203/

Quartet (Quadrille)

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Please click on any photo to enlarge all.


Quartet

They flicker like tiny sparks,
these rapid kittens
intense in attention,
movements reflecting
every neighboring small movement.
Suspicious of brief distractions.
Violent, then soft like the feather
they’ve destroyed, 
drifting to the window frame above,
forgotten by its intense stalkers
of a second before.

 

Happy 6th Anniversary & Quadrille #36

dVerse Poets: A Letter from Morrie and Diego

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Finally, A Voice!!
(A Letter from Two Bad (Misunderstood) Dogs)

Do you think it’s simple, giving voice to our demands
without the proper vocal chords, without your human hands?
Everytime we try to talk, you scold us and you hush us,
even though you’ve just admitted that our howls are luscious.

And lacking proper fingers, we cannot write you letters.
We aren’t given proper tools to address our “betters.”
Simply howls and growls and barks and waggings of the tail—
and yet you do not take the time to learn this doggy Braille!

If you’d listen closer, perhaps you’d understand us.
Instead you shout out, “Stop!” and “Hush!” and seek to countermand us.
Can’t you understand that we’re protecting you from prowlers?
Feral cats and owls and skunks and nearby canine howlers?

We have such curiosity, though you determine to balk us.
We wouldn’t have to rush the gate if you’d take time to walk us!
We have to climb up on the roof to get a worldly view.
We wouldn’t be there barking if you’d take us out with you!

As for the cat food, take a clue. The reason we adore it
Is ‘cause it’s smelly, wet and luscious. Dog food? We abhor it!
That cat leaves a bit to tempt us—it’s a cruel feline game!
So why not buy us cat food? It costs you just the same.

And now the final agony. The ultimate tragic hitch,
Not only can our mom not cook, but now we make her itch!
No wonder our neuroses include jostling for attention.
A mother who can’t touch us? This escaped your earlier mention.

We thought you didn’t like us so we tried to win your favor.
Your touch is what we long for even more than cat food’s savor.
And as for pooping in the yard, you never told us to
sneak behind the garden shed to have our little poo.

You seem to think we know these things, but where would we have learned?
It’s you who should have taught us, for obedience must be earned.
If you would spend more time with us, perhaps you’d finally see
there is no other creature with whom we would rather be.

The dVerse Poets prompt this week is a fun one: to use anthropomorphism  making an animal or object behave and appear like they are human beings.” in a poem.

See the prompt and other examples here.  Come join in the fun! https://dversepoets.com/