Tag Archives: The Sunday Whirl

All and Everything, For Wordle 669

8 Replies

     

All and Everything

Our bones are branches gathered to keep our bodies tight.
They move us in the daytime, but settle down at night. 
We are not furred or feathered, but sometimes, still, we scratch
at winged and legged invaders we aren’t able to catch. 
Our skin is smooth but softer than stones smoothed by the tide—
our minds blown into hurricanes by what we keep inside.
Emotions tilting back and forth from agony to bliss,
once strangers, we turn lovers just with a simple kiss.
All things caught inside of us, our bodies are the home
to the whole history of man—as stuffed full as this poem.

 

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle the word prompts are: scratch bones branches gathered blow words stone stranger keep tilt feathered we  (Image from Pinterest.)

 

 

Night Terrors, For the Sunday Whirl, Aug 18, 2024

7 Replies

Night Terrors

Beings leap from my memory, calling my name,
sharing the heartaches for which I’m to blame.
Remembered particles falling like rain,
breathe all their stories over again.

They hold out their arms, inviting me in,
promising bliss in what seems to be sin.
I reach out to touch them, but thunder’s loud peal
delivers me back to a world that is real.

Bad dreams and night terrors  release their hold.
No more do I have to do what I’m told.
I come back to that place where I have the might
to determine my actions and do what is right.

For the Sunday Whirl  the word prompts today are: bliss leaping memory particles arms breath story pieces heartache beings thunder called

“Ebb Tide” for The Sunday Whirl, Aug 11, 2024

5 Replies

 

Ebb Tide

As we approach that vast alone,
those things for which we must atone
silently invade our world,
as all our secrets come unfurled.
Unable then, to face their ache,
in the darkness we lie awake,
unable even now to leap
into that river dark and deep
that will, at last, sweep us away
into that  most novel fray
from which this time we won’t return,
no matter how our hearts may churn
to give ourselves another chance
to recompense each circumstance
where we feel that we went along
with events that went so wrong.
But, alas, it’s now too late
to change those choices that sealed our fate.

 

The Sunday Whirl prompts today are: vast alone silently novel wake unable secrets world river darkness face ache

Double Reversal, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 665

13 Replies

 

Double Reversal

The silhouettes of leafless branches of the jacaranda tree
sketched by the sun upon the surface of the wall
recall the windswept tangle of your hair.

Call back the edges of memories long buried in a deep back room.
Stolen kisses made illicit by your ex’s change of mind.
Senseless posturings and  unsuccessful reversals.

Finally coming back to what we were before.
You were the prize hard fought for,
and I, the inevitable ending.

 

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 665, the prompt words are:  tangle surface call back deep room kisses edge sense sketches silhouette windswept

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 664, July 21, 2024

3 Replies

Daunting Pilgrimage

The raucous calls of prophet crows warn us of our error
in traveling down this moonlit road, thus augmenting our terror.
Our minds connect as voices recite their trembling prayers—
all our former evening plans now peeling off in layers
as one-by-one we zigzag from our predetermined path,
our former plans forgotten in the aftermath
of dreams of ghosts and goblins that await us up ahead.
The woods are dark and scary, adding to our dread
of the moving shadows and that macabre song
that trembles on the wind’s voice to hurry us along.
The silken touch of terror sends fingers down our spines,
reducing some among us to sniveling and whines.
Of the ten of us who started out, just five of us still here,
our group reduced  one after one as our goal grew near—
an aged house much worn away with one feeble light
glowing through the darkness of this frightening night.
But as its door swings open, all five of us repeat
the words that break the horror of our journey, “Trick or treat!!!!”

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 664  the prompt words are: sing trembling zigzag connected mind silk dreams moon prayers crow road prophets Image by Simon Berg on Unsplash.

Twilight For The Sunday Whirl #663

4 Replies

Twilight

Our turtle years are speeding up as though there’s sparse time left,
distorting all our reveries and leaving us bereft.
All that vanished life that fades into the mist—
those pearls of perfection like the first time we were kissed—
all the names and faces of those we once embraced—
dissolve into the air as though they’ve been erased.

All those former altars once bedecked with flowers,
garlands of celebration that vanished with the hours,
days and then the years now gathered in our past,
all those lives we built, not engineered to last.
Soon we will just be a name carved upon a stone,
to join with other spirits in the twilight zone.

Twilight

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle # 663  the prompt words are:air embraced pearls perfection turtle altar garlands reveries vanish name built mist

“The Approach” For the Sunday Whirl Wordle, 662

18 Replies
the pink clouds,
Clouds above
\

The Approach

The edges of my wishes wrap around my mind
over expectations of another kind
curling over “To Do” lists, jerking at their edges,
causing piled paper work to fall off bookshelf ledges,
breathing life into that void—that gap left in the middle
of all those daily tiresome tasks to leave some room to fiddle.
To look at curling banks of clouds that sail across a sky
so vast that I can’t count them, so I don’t even try.

Everything in life need not be a tiresome task.
Every day presents a time when I take time to bask
for at least a moment, or ten or twenty more,
in other natural treasures that lie outside my door.
Life seems to be speeding by, rushing toward its brink—
once stretched out before me, but soon over in a blink.
Ever conscious of those acts that I will leave behind me,
I wonder what life choices in the end will have defined me.

 

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 662 the words are: jerk void breath gap vast blinked curling sky wish wrap edge ever

Judgment Day, For Sunday Whirl Wordle 661, June 30, 2024

2 Replies

Judgment Day

I bury ominous secrets in a locked box, lose the key.
In their secret grave, I know they await me—
barren bits I’ve buried lest they clutter my life,
knowing, once revealed, they’d cut me like a knife.
Those riddles that most humans choose to drop into a grave,
each like a hibernating beast sleeping in its cave.

No one knows where to hunt for them except for just that one
who carries only memories now that that deed was done
and buried deep. The thud  it made dropping into its nest
its one and final murmur as it joined the teeming rest
 of hidden acts of anger, temper, greed and lust.
Dirty little secrets now turning into dust.

Buried and forgotten until that judgement day
when, perhaps, we all will be called upon to pay
for simply being human, and as humans must,
making bad decisions others might judge unjust.
But our severest critics might better atone
for those buried secrets of the past that are their own.

 

For Wordle 661 the words are: riddle hunt barren bits ominous thud grave keys box drop temper secrets

“Adventure’s End” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle, June 23, 2024

11 Replies

Adventure’s End

“Holy smoke!” the young man cries, pulling on the reins,
his heartbeats quickened, sending blood surging through his veins.
This glorious adventure—this quest across the plains,
fording raging waters, swollen by the rains,
seems  to have turned against him as the arrow whizzes by,
shaving off his hat brim just inches from his eye.
He cradles fear, as weeping, he whips the plodding team,
prodding them to frenzy as though within a dream.

The bitter taste of panic, one brief surge of regret,
causes him to finally accept his sobriquet.
When his mother named him Chauncey  which his dad shortened to “Chance,”
it signaled wild adventure and dangerous romance,
and as he set out on his travels to find fortune and fame,
not once did he consider the two sides to his name.
Now he rests forever beside that lonely road
that in his youth he thought would lead him to the mother lode.

 

For Sunday Whirl Wordle 660 the words are: holy plains waters beats travel weeping veins cradle rained taste brief glorious Image from Unsplash.

“Liberty” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 659

18 Replies

Liberty

Birds find an opening in clouds to cross a languid sky,
their shadows sparking hope as I trace them with an eye
searching for some method, be it holy or black magic,
to dispel the shadows of an outcome I find tragic.

One waiting in the shadows by the font of holy water,
advances, clear in his intent to wed my father’s daughter.
Clear in my resolution that I will not have it so,
I ‘m resolute my troth to him would birth a life of woe.

As he greets me at the altar, I turn my foot to run
down that selfsame aisle, out into the streaming sun.
Let my father wed him if he’s so set in his plan
to bring into his family this workhorse of a man

so like himself that I well know that he would likely smother
all my dreams, just like my father did to my sweet mother.
In the woods there waits for me one other who can see
all those other selves I have it in my dreams to be.

Fleet of foot, I shed my heels and speed in my advance
ahead of those pursuers who would choose to foil my chance
of living my own life in the manner I would choose.
Thus fueled by my determination that I will not lose,

I speed into the forest where my lover waits,
my final summation to a lifetime of debates
about who rules my life expressed in action as I reach
to mount my waiting stallion and make off toward the beach

where his boat is waiting for my true love and me
to set out for our lives across a welcoming sea—
a new land for us both where we can come to be
whatever we might choose in a land of liberty.

Note: I’ve been waiting for 6 years to find an opportunity to use this photo I took from my porch at the beach in La Manzanilla.  Finally!

Words for The Sunday Whirl  Wordle 659 are: spark languid opening magic hope cross clear cloud holy birds 

@notebookmusical

no thoughts, just @Joy 🌞 performing #mydays from NotebookMusical. you’re welcome 💙 #joywoods #TheNotebook #notebookbroadway #ingridmichaelson #mydayscover

♬ original sound – The Notebook Tour