Tag Archives: poem

San Miguel Nocturn

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San Miguel Nocturn.

It’s two in the morning.
Dogs call out greetings or warnings,
the near dogs hoarse in their excitement,
the far dogs mellow and rounded
in the echoing distance.

What are they saying?
Bright moon like a bowl,
new bitch in the territory,
a whole leg bone today?

All night long they bark and bay
until 4 am when the first
then the second and the third rooster crows.

Someone throws a handful of grain
and the chickens cluck like popcorn
in a finally hot pan,
waking the city which only
seemed to sleep.

The lobby steward, waiting
for the last guest to enter,
nods at his post,
t.v. static charging the air around him.
The guard by the gate waits
for the honk of a horn.

A woman crouches
over a pad of paper in the bathroom
so as not to awaken her friend.
Her pen scratches as hens  scratch
in the dirt of the yard below her window.
The friend’s almost imperceptible
snores are a counterpoint to the music
of the first cars
accelerating up the cobbled hills.

New sounds build the symphony:
the slam of a car door,
footsteps on the stairs,
water in the pipes.

A city’s wide morning yawns
clash and reverberate
in the  still darkness
as dogs bark like a hammer
pounding repetitiously,
building the new day.

San Miguel de Allende, 2002. Click on any of the last 5 photos to enlarge all.

This old convent, converted into a hotel, is where I have always stayed when I go to San Miguel.  Bob and I stayed there just months before his death. This poem was written a few months later when I revisited our favorite places in San Miguel with a friend. That is what this poem was written. To see the poem that I wrote that night, go HERE.

Preposterous Vision

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“Peyote Dream” Painting by Jesus Lopez Vega

Preposterous Vision

My friend Chuy says
it is peyote leached into the soil
the corn grows from
that gives Mexicans
such a remarkable sense of color.
The bright pigments of imagination
flood his canvasses.
His peyote dreams leak out into the real world
and wed it to create one world.
“Peyote dream” becomes its opposite—
a freight train taking us into the universal truth.
A larger reality.
This stalk of corn, this deer,
this head of amaranth,
all beckon, “Climb aboard.”

So when you bite into a taco
or tamale, when the round taste of corn
meets your tongue, and pleasure flows
in a lumpy river down your throat,
look up at what is standing in the shadows
and see that it is light that creates shadow.
See the many colors that create the black.
Follow where the corn beckons you to go—
into the other world of poetry and paint
and dance and music. Hot jazz with a mariachi beat.

Chew that train that takes you deeper. Hop aboard
the tamale express and you will ride into your
new life. It will be like your old life magnified
and lit by multicolored lights and the songs of merry-go-rounds
and when you bite into your taco, it will taste
like cotton candy and a snow cone
and your whole life afterwards will be a train that takes you nowhere
except back into yourself—a Ferris wheel
spinning you up to your heights and down again, with every turn,
the gears creaking “Que le vaya bien.”
I hope it goes well with you
and that you see the light
within the shadow
and the colors
in the corn.

For Fandango’s prompt: preposterous

Caught Short

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Caught Short

Caught short by the rainy season, I should have known better.
Though I’d left home high and dry, I knew I’d soon be wetter.
Defenseless  in the downpour, I ducked into a store.
Just to get some shelter,  I rushed in through that door.

I felt that I was lucky as this store was full of stuff,
though finding what I needed might be sort of tough.
The store clerk shuffled up to me, though he could barely stand—
an umbrella just as old as him held up in his hand.

Lucky when I chanced upon this ancient wrinkled fella,
he happened to be carrying a really big umbrella!
I opened up my pocket book and located a fiver.
Now I wouldn’t spend this day wet as a scuba diver!

But when I left that thrift store with my practical new find,
I found that I was actually in the same old bind.
For opening up my parasol, I uttered “What the heck?”
as rivulets of water ran down my head and neck.

The purchase I’d just made, I found, would be no help at all.
I hadn’t noticed that the shop was St. Vincent de Paul.*
The fault was no one else’s.  I know it was mine, solely.
I should have realized sooner that my purchase would be holy!

 

*St. Vincent de Paul is a secondhand store run by the Catholic Church.

 

The Daily Addictions prompt was Ancient. This poem was published under a different name four years ago.

First Kiss

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First Kiss

“Allemande left, allemande right.
Promenade your lady, hold her tight!”
Years later, I recall demands
for touching waists and holding hands.
To “Promenade. Go ’round the world.”
We do-si-doed and faced and whirled.
Square-dancing was called to blame
the day I first encountered shame.

Just six years old and mild and meek,
a boy my age dared peck my cheek.
His mother pulled him off the floor,
then jerked him rudely out the door,
shaming him with words and action
before I knew my own reaction,
which might have merely been a measure
of a friendly mutual pleasure.

Instead, for twelve more years together,
held as classmates in close tether,
much as I perhaps desired
that we might have again conspired,
he never tried what once was censured.
Another kiss was never ventured

’til in our twenties, home from college,
emboldened by our further knowledge,
home briefly for summer vacation,
heartened by a small libation,
finding ourselves in darkened car
up on a hill, his mother far
away in town, we finally kissed,
discovering what we had missed.

Then we went our separate ways—
that one night just a summer’s phase.
Years later, though, I still recall.
that first kiss, and his mother’s gall
over what was a gentle theft
prompted by an “Allemande left.”


The “guilty parties” are, it is true, pictured above, but I’m not one to kiss and tell. This true memory was prompted by today’s “Daily Addiction” prompt of promenade.

Last Minute Redemption

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Last Minute Redemption

I have made a resolution
to attempt last-minute absolution
for the sins I have collected,
just in case I’m resurrected.

 You see, I have a certain hunch
that later I’ll be in a crunch,
burdened by a heavy pack
of life’s misdeeds tied to my back,
condemned for all eternity
to never be completely free
’til I atone for every one.
Only when I’m down to none,
will I advance thus unencumbered.
Now that I know my days are numbered,
if I have ever slighted thee,
now is your time to contact me
to receive my late apology.

So Mia culpa, lo siento.
In just one second, un momento,
I will voice my sorrow for
all the ills I’ve caused you, or
all the times I didn’t say
those words that might have made your day.
For though I don’t believe in hell,
I figure that I might as well,
 just in case, try for exemption
to win my guilty soul’s redemption.

Since the Daily Prompt from WordPress is now defunct, I’m trying out a number of other daily prompts.  The Daily Addictions word today is redemption. Feel free to play along by clicking on the link and adding your own post on the theme to the Mr Linky link.

That Small Feeling

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That Small Feeling That Something’s Wrong

My intuition sounds its gong.
I have an inkling something’s wrong.
I look  around  for what’s amiss,
but cannot tell what signals this.
My arm and neck hairs stir and rise,
as if to warn me of surprise.
This tiny hunch keeps me alert,
but insight is a fickle flirt.
When nothing happens, it goes away
and I live out my normal day.
That tiny niggling little prickle
might lead to nought, for insight’s fickle,
and sometimes things are just so small
that they aren’t there at all.

 

This poem was written in October of 2016. The RDP2 prompt today is insight.

Longing: Non-WordPress Prompt for the Day

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jdb photo

Knowing this was the first time in over 4 years that I haven’t had a WordPress daily prompt to follow, forgottenman gave me this one.  If you’d like to join me, just post your blog and then give a link to your blog in my comments section. Being that this is also Open Link Night in dVerse poets, if you are writing a poem, you can also link it HERE. Be sure to use the Mr. Linky bar given on this site to link your poem.

I will list links to other new prompt sites as I discover them tomorrow.

Longing

This morning’s church bells’ constant bongings
woke me to familiar longings.
Coded as they were in dreams,
when I awoke, they split their seams
and spilled into my conscious thought.
Futile to yearn for what I’m not.
No longer young or lithe or trim,
no passions spilling from my brim.
No husband, mother, father, lover.
No guardians to watch and hover.
I’ve grown away from most of life,
connections severed as with a knife.
Still, I do not long for these.
I do not pray on bended knees
for what is past or what is lost,
for I know pining’s pain and cost.
My longing, now, is just to see
what life’s plot is left to me.

The prompt today was longing.

Agave Marias

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Agave Marias

Two sides are battling for possession of my life. One pushes me ahead, urging, “Do, do, do, and you will be of value,” but the other twines a hand around my ankle and pulls me down to earth and whispers, “Be.” The “Proud Marys,” I have named these contrasting women who emerge one at a time from my center, but since I have lived in Mexico for seventeen years now, perhaps Maria would be a better shared name. A name is all they share, for by their own natures one is an outward person: a doer, a liver of life, a socializer. The other is inner: a reclusive watcher, dreamer, thinker, artist and writer.

Some people know how to balance these voices, but I don’t. And so I live on a little seesaw of made and canceled plans, meetings and random days of alternately reading, writing, watching movies or wandering around my house attending to my ever-lengthening “to do” list. What is life, I wonder? Is it your accomplishments? I have lists of those I seem to have less and less willpower to sit down to and finish. It’s like I have to sacrifice the satisfaction of ticking things off a list for the promise of a different kind of life.

I don’t think I’ve every really felt I had significance other than as a doer of things: artist, writer, committee chairman, decorator of houses, organizer of my friends’ lives. Yet during all of this activity, I always suspected that all around me people were leading lives that were more fun than mine, more satisfactory. If I gave more, did more, accomplished more, I thought I would attract this ideal life to me.

A tour guide once explained to me the importance of the agave plant in Mexico. For the Mexican of the past, the agave was what the buffalo was to the American plains Indian. Different parts of the agave plant were used to make rope, housing, clothing, food, dye and last but never least, mescal—the finest of tequila-like alcohol. So perhaps I should call my Marias the Agave Marias. Between them, they furnish me with all of the necessities of life. One says organize, proceed in a linear fashion. The other says, “Brainstorm. Go with the flow. Let process win over need for a perfect product.” So I let one Maria lead me through my mind and put it all down on paper, now and then letting the other Maria pop in to clean things up a bit and organize. Agave Marias, furnishing it all.

Childless, have I instead created all of the possibilities for myself within myself? In refusing to give birth, have I hoarded all of the possibilities of my genes within myself and is that what has led to this slightly schizophrenic seesaw of existence-—one day running off for an entire day of activity, the next staying home behind walls? One side wanting to be Cinderella at the ball, the other side wanting only the security of my own hearth?

I was married for fourteen years and before that lived with another man for three years, I’ve also had female roommates, but most of my life has been lived alone. There is some part of me that only exists in solitude and when I’m too long away from her, I miss her. Without her I feel superficial. It is from this side of my Agave Maria that I draw all of my real nourishment—my creativity, my soul. The other Maria is my reward—the finished product, the publication party or the book tour.

All of the seed I hoarded has given birth to these different entities within myself. Failing to produce offspring, I have become my own offspring. These children, my Marias, journey out from me but always return to the wellspring. I go to the party but come home to snuggle into bed for the entire next day, venturing out only for popcorn and a different CD. Or I sit on the side of the tub for two hours with my laptop on my lap, writing a story which takes me into a wonderful world of my own creation.

It is Christmas, and in the background, a chorus sings what to my ears becomes, “Agave Mar-eee-e-e-e-aaaah,” and the beautiful notes convince me, for a short time, that I am the mother of creation, the one Maria that all of Mexico celebrates, tattoos upon their chests, dyes into their T-shirts, puts on decals and bumper stickers, commemorates in stone or plaster or clay or wood in every house. She is the spirit of duality in all women and in all men: flesh and spirit, of this world as well as heaven, of the utilitarian and the creative, human and divine.

All of us are Agave Marias, learning to collect ourselves and pull all sides of ourselves in to ourselves to appreciate them. We are our own mothers as well as our sisters and daughters and friends. Within all of us are these Agave Marias, like sisters absolutely indispensable to each other who are nonetheless competing for our attention.

“Honor them by listening to each,” Mother Maria says to me and suddenly I realize that there are more than two Agave Marias within me. This third motherly Maria seeks to reconcile the others and whispers, “Look deeper. There is always one more. All welcome. All part of life.”

 

The daily prompt was Narcissism. Since I had already written on this topic in April, I chose a slightly different slant on this prompt, concentrating on the different sides of myself in a slightly nacissistic manner. My original Narcissism poem, published in April for NaPoWriMo is HERE.

Pen and Ink

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Pen and Ink

The pen that stands, clipped and inert
in the pocket of your shirt
has no power on its own
so long as it is left alone,
but once held upright in your grip,
free of cap and free of clip,
it forms a partnership of sorts
that spews out pithy, smart retorts.

It snaps the present into line
with words that, effortless, combine
in sentences that, once unfurled,
have the power to change the world.
I ask you, who would ever think
that two joined objects—pen and ink—
could form a perfect synergy
to spew out jokes or tragedy?

Guided by a hand like yours,
a pen can open many doors.
A simple point, an ink-trailed line,
could link your heart with one like mine.
Unclip it now. Uncap its point.
Let paper now that ink anoint.
Let words turn somersaults and caper.
Let words flow from your heart to paper.

Let ink flow rampant from its cage
to dance across the naked page.
No telling what it might report
as words go wild and cavort.
“I” and “love” and “you” might do
a sort of line-dance or soft-shoe.
Words just might and words just may
leak out and give your heart away.

The prompt word for Tourmaline’s One Word Photo Challenge is pen.

Core Identity

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Judy's new haircut and thin lips

Core Identity

Whoever really gets to see
what is at the core of me?
Neither my mother nor my lover
gets to see beneath my cover.
No surgery has extracted it.
It’s not exposed in ire or wit.
It’s in a corner still unlit,
buried in identity’s pit.

Even I have not exhumed it, for
I’ve never found my very core.
Some say it’s found in meditation,
prayer or true love’s exaltation,
but I have journeyed into each
merely to wind up on the beach
of what I know must be the sea
of my soul’s identity.

Perhaps it is the world’s distractions––
all its toys and fine abstractions,
its petty jealousies and fears
regarding family and careers
that get me lost while searching for
that ladder, passageway or door
that will lead me to the root of me––
that seed of my identity.

Perhaps in death we’re rejoined with
the part of us that is our pith.
Could it be what life is for—
this striving toward identity’s core?
Perhaps the lonely death I fear
will finally serve to bring me near,
away from all those things I’m not
to that whole self I’ve always sought

 

The WordPress prompt today is core.