Tag Archives: poem

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.

 

Neap Tide

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Three years ago I published this poem with no ending, asking commenters to construct an ending.  There were a number of excellent solutions, but unfairly, I never published one of my own, so I’m giving myself the additional assignment to finish the poem  since it also makes use of today’s prompt word of  “tide.” I’ve made many adjustments in the original poem and added the last stanza. 

Neap Tide

Borne, then born.
Clothed, fed, shorn.
Housed and cuddled,
Brain filled and muddled,
schooled, polished, allowed to roam,
to make the world into a home.

In my third quarter, now sedate.
Content to let my life abate.
Find worlds inside and there abide,
to let what happens be my guide.
To try to live with less precision.
To fear less the world’s derision.

Why so hard to be oneself?
Easier when on the shelf.
Now as I pull my world around me,
memories and dreams surround me—
my solitude a crystal jar
that lets me ponder from afar.

The current of my life, its tide,
reaches without and pulls inside
the things that help me try to see
where my life has taken me.
I contemplate and sometimes share
the truths that I’ve discovered there.

You come to read and judge each word
as wise, amusing or absurd.
You give new insights to what I’ve said—
poems not completed until they’re read.
Less in the world, ironically,
more of the world’s discovered me.

 

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If you’d like to see how others  ended the poem three years ago, go HERE.

The prompt today was tide.

Near: World Premiere of Sylvestrian Near Rhyme

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Near

My father went from obscurity to a sort of small renown.
He worked hard as a rancher and the mayor of our town.
He met my mother at a dance in her sister’s borrowed gown–
both of them lonely visitors to a faraway strange town.
I’ve thought about it often since we laid him down.
Why didn’t I ask more questions? Why didn’t I write it down?

Many a calf he helped to birth and many a field he’s mown.
Avoided his mother if he could–long-suffering aged crone.
Not many highways traveled,nor many airwaves flown.
He died in his angry daughter’s arms–the two of them alone.
I’ve thought of it often till regrets have turned into a drone.

His eyes were always looking further over yon.
Over a ripening field of wheat or over a fresh-mowed lawn.
Working, often, until dark and up again at dawn.
A man of camaraderie and wit and brains and brawn.

He liked to tell a story and sing a rousing tune.
Stand on the porch at midnight to piss under the moon.
He gave me a turquoise ring, a baby rabbit and a coon.

Now that he’s very gone away.  Now that I’m very grown,
I know my flesh is of his flesh. My bone is of his bone.

And I wish that I’d asked more questions. That we’d both been less alone.

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The form of this poem is one consisting of six stanzas, the first with 6 lines and each thereafter one less line.  Each line in each stanza rhymes with all the other lines in that stanza and each stanza’s rhyme is a near rhyme to the last. The name of this form is Sylvestrian Near Rhyme and since “Near” describes both the theme and form of my poem, it is also the name of the poem.  And yes, I did make up the form!  I’d love it if poets given to rhyming and meter would attempt the form and send me the results as comments or a link to this blog.

For dVerse Poets Pub

Matins: NaPoWriMo 2018, Day 18

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 Matins

We lie in each other’s shelter,
hiding what is necessary,
shedding guilt,
holding one another in the soft reverence
of those who seek to be loved.
We can hardly believe
how our pieces are coming together—
the hard world retreating,
falling like pages from our hands,
making us want that loss of everything
except the two of us.

Flattery is unnecessary, as is reassurance.
We hold one another as protection,
quieting each other,
gathering our petty problems
like brood hens put inside for the night,
safe and barely yearning 
for the freedom of low branches,
flight to further fence posts and away.
How could we have ever wished escape?
Caught up in our private morning,
we find it hard to remember
what the rest of the world rails against.

 


Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt: find a poem in a book or magazine (ideally one you are not familiar with). Use a piece of paper to cover over everything but the last line. Now write a line of your own that completes the thought of that single line you can see, or otherwise responds to it. Now move your piece of paper up to uncover the second-to-last line of your source poem, and write the second line of your new poem to complete/respond to this second-to-last line. Keep going, uncovering and writing, until you get to the first line of your source poem, which you will complete/respond to as the last line of your new poem. It might not be a finished draft, but hopefully it at least contains the seeds of one.

This is a link to the poem “Hail Mary,” by Megan Blankenship that I chose from “Blackbird” Magazine to use to inspire my poem.

 

 

 

Banded

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Banded

From string to string and fret to fret,
they draw us into music’s net.
They strum and pick and blithely finger
notes that make us want to linger,
tap the table, move our feet
to their infectious strumming beat.

They are my favorite sort of band––
unique and playing their own brand
of acoustic, bluesy notes––
a kind of music that denotes
connection to a world of hearts.
Their music woos and cuts and smarts.

Opening sensibilities.
Music that unites and frees
our spirits to commune and soar.
Notes that journey to our core.
Which is what music’s meant to do
in  dancehall, city street or pew.

Good music sets our hats askew,
chases us down and counts a coup.
Stirs our hearts and brings a change.
Astounds us with its depth and range.
Draws us with it, layer on layer,
unites us in communal prayer.

Denominationless, it draws
us in and gives a place to pause
together to survey that place
devoid of sex or age or race.
That place where we unite in song.
Give up ourselves, and sing along.

The prompt today is fret.

Civilization

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I awaken to the insistent music of the morning. The cacophony of bird voices is disrupted by the squeaking of gears of the gravel truck climbing the mountain road past my house. Steam rises from the hot pool echoing the venting of Colima volcano, peeking over the shoulder of the mountain known as Señor Garcia. He has on his cloud sombrero today, which promises rain.

Crisp air of morning.
Mournful chorus of dog howls
echoes siren’s wail.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to write a haibun that takes in the natural landscape of the place you live. The WordPress Daily Prompt is disrupt.

Simultaneous: NaPoWriMo 2018, Day 10

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Simultaneous

Galaxies spin out of sight
far out in this selfsame night
where I attempt to journey in
to universes within my skin.
Whole worlds inside that I can’t know.
I feel sometimes they guide me, though.
How else explain my need to range
into environments more strange.
Like many, thinking I’m unique
when many others who also seek
share a larger journey all,
trapped together on this ball
that spins our world through time and space
taking us all to the same place!

For Napowrimo.

Five Finger Exercise

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Five Finger Exercise

One finger isn’t typing, though I know that’s what it’s for.
It’s just that I can’t use it since I slammed it in the door.
It sliced it very neatly , not quite down to the bone,
The bleeding was profuse. I called my neighbor on the phone.
He drove me to the clinic where they stitched my finger closed.
Yes, needles in your finger hurt as much as you’ve supposed.
So now I type one-handed with my left hand in the air,
for it was the doctor who said to hold it there,
one finger pointing up as though calling for a cab,
That’s why I won’t be using it to poke or type or dab!

If any friends had come into my house while I was gone, they would have thought I’d been murdered or at the least stabbed and abducted, as there was a trail of blood from the sharp metal door to the kitchen. Very obvious against the off-white tile. I’ll spare you the photos.

 

Speechless

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.


Speechless

I’ve been thwarted in my efforts to shine at elocution,
for though I memorize the words, I flub their execution.
In short, although I’m erudite, I don’t excel at speeches.
I stammer and I blush and sweat. My words come out as screeches.

I don’t give toasts at weddings. At funerals, I am mute.
And although I am quite clever and politically astute,
you won’t find me expounding on what I think I know,
for when I seek to share my thoughts, they just advance too slow.

Even if I’ve known for years the people I’m among,
I simply do not have the gift of a silver tongue.
There are no debate trophies cluttering my shelf,
for I’m usually speechless unless talking to myself.

The prompt today is thwart.