The Perfectionist
Change not a hair of thy fair head if it be for me.
I like you just as you are now from pate to chin to knee.
Your shins, though, are too shinny. Your ankles too well-turned.
Your heels? Shockingly callused. Consider yourself spurned.
For the dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge.
Aphorism
The fire of camaraderie may warm the howling gale
or make our footsteps lighter while hiking a hard trail.
Although it is not mandatory, still it would avail
sailors to remember, laughter helps to swell the sail.
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/28/fowc-with-fandango-trail/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/camaraderie-2/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/your-daily-word-prompt-mandatory-November-28-2018/
https://dversepoets.com/fire
Touchy Subject
My soul, once slippery as an seal,
that eased as easily as an eel
to heaven and back, a wave worn path,
like slippy-sliding in the bath,
has grown rough ridges that jerk me back
into the mosh pit with the pack.
We flail with elbows, boot tips, knees—
all of us caught within the squeeze
of what we hate and knock against,
beat fist and teeth and cock against.
It’s like a cageless, viral zoo,
this rough world we’ve evolved into.
The whole world’s in each other’s viewing,
killing, ripping, tearing, chewing.
We touch the keys to tear asunder,
ravage, rape, ransack and plunder.
These same hands that could stroke the keys,
pound and punish, grab and seize.
We Tweet or Snapchat, Facebook, Skype,
barely touching as we type.
We are so constantly in touch
that we do not consider much
that in our constant online dealing,
we should give more thought to feeling.
We cannot feel a handshake’s squeezing,
warm and tender, pressured, pleasing,
when we’re too far away to touch.
We cannot feel so very much.
We feel with organs meant for thinking,
and make connections without linking.
Those of us who predate the text
tend to fear what’s coming next.
A simple touch could end the world—
all of us pulverized and hurled
into a place where nothing lingers.
No tongue, no lips, no questing fingers.
https://dversepoets.com/2018/11/13/tuesday-poetics-touch-me/
Oblivious Seduction
You’d completely
won me over
by your second stanza,
even before you knew
I was the one
you were writing it for.
You had me
in the wink of an eye, even
before you knew
it was me
you were meant
to wink at.
The Smell of Curry
Would that sentiment were only
positive and never lonely––
but all emotions of the world
in sentiment are tightly curled.
Every memory we cherish
is doubly edged with “live” and “perish.”
In every city, country, land––
bad and good go hand in hand.
The blend of cardamom and lentil
always makes me sentimental.
Odors of turmeric and its ilk,
garam masala and coco milk.
Curry spices being roasted,
degree of peppers being boasted,
chickpeas, carrots, potatoes, rice––
stirring in each thing that’s nice.
What do I think of when I smell
and taste that it is going well?
Bombay and wedding saris thin
sliding down my youthful skin.
Visions of a midnight ride
to cages with young girls inside
sold by their parents and then resold
nightly for a bit of gold.
Traffic, sitar music, fingers
scooping curry––all this lingers.
The beauty of that winsome song
that showed me where the world’s gone wrong.
His action, swift, unthinking, curt
of small coins cast into the dirt
to deflect those who beg and bleat,
surrounding us in every street.
Palaces and then the clash
of children in a world of trash,
the refuse of this giant city
the world they lived in—what a pity.
Back when traveling was new,
experiences were so few
that India changed my life forever.
So, will I forget it? Never.
Since it was a journey that changed my life forever–both the physical journey through the streets of Bombay as well as that journey of the senses I go though every time I cook or taste a curry, I’m rerunning this poem written two years ago for the dVerse Poets’ Pub prompt of “Journeys.”
If you are viewing in Reader or on facebook, please click on the title or URL to view poem in its correct form.
The scrape of your chair.
The gentle tap of keys
as you, rhythmic early riser,
rouse the day.
I burrow deeper,
trying to ignore
Icicles
beating
your accompaniment
as
o
n
e
b
y
o
n
e
touched
by
sunlight,
they
loose
their
h
o
l
d
on the
frozen, silent
night.
Ill-fitted
He dragged his feet along the floor until
his brand new bride decided she’d her fill.
She pulled his shoes off of his feet and said,
“If I had known the truth when we were wed,
I might have had a very different goal—
to find a man who had a better sole
instead of feet so swollen and so red.
I might have had a cobbler’s son instead
if I’d paid less attention to your bod
and chosen me a groom much better shod!”
For dVerse poets iambic pentameter prompt.
