Monday, April 30, 2012

Fading Away ...... Goodnight April

It is common in April To hear castanets Clicking As roos move Through the bush Of roses in Maine It is common in April That the white cliffs of Dover dive into the Laguna Sea sparkling It is common in April To feel the Buffaloed snow Fall gently melting in the Sands of Hawaiian sun It is common in April For the wheat fields To sway in spring breezes Along the distant moors As butterflies lift in melodious Swarms of chromatic glory It is common in April For seas to sip rivulets And spray purple deserts As dandelions float on Shared dreams It is common in April For strangers to fall Into each others arms And beds and minds Tracing each face With the braille of keys Until each crevice revealed It is common in April For the tapestry to fly Enfolding all for one Shimmered month Of intertwined thread Golden…. It is common in April Only in April Now melting like spun sugar on the tongue tip of May

Sunday, April 29, 2012

She knew it ...




She knew it – when she went there
Just a ten day trip
booked in a travel
agency by a Marcy person
who said it was “the thing”
although she
had “never been”
Marcy “wanted to”
“someday” after
a requisite trip down
an aisle
She turned her ring
heavy on her finger
and tried to smile
sweetly like brides
do in those magazines
as Marcy whispered
giddily that she “already”
had “her dress”
hanging in her closet
cleaned confessionally
professionally
She turned her ring
heavy on her finger
In the aiport they argued
about a borrowed camera
who was going to hold it
he pulled the strap hard
and it fell on the tile floor
smacked itself useless
and his ring too big
flew off and skittered
he stopped it with
his shoe and a black
look, temple throbbing
with that vein that
did that thing
She wore a tight linen
skirt pale blue and short
a matching jacket
no pill-box Jackie hat as
she had imagined
she would when
a woman
Engines lifted all of them
in a concert of expectant
faces staring at sudden
clouds filling the window
seats and lit cigarettes
drifting esses through
the cabin
Until dizzy she leaned
on his hard shoulder and
slept until the plane
bumped
and then
in the opened
door she stood
at the top of
silver stairs
elixered air
warm as mother’s
milk sweetly
wrapped in
the rounded softness
of perfumed air
solid as soft
shoulders
tatooed HOME
tarred tarmac
reached as
a waving ribboned
welcome
spreading womanly
emerald hills
reclining on generous
hips curving the sea
aquamarine
clear
lapping gently
along the lip
of horizon
shimmering
beyond the
filagree of
crimsoned
frangipani
days
already
unfolding
in
luscious
rescued
ringing
she removed
her shoes
her jacket
released her
blouse from
skirt
and stepped
smiling
sure
into
the
knowing
it
****************

Happy Birthday to me
Happy Poeming to The Street

Happy April Poetry Month
Happy Homecoming to All :)

Saturday, April 28, 2012

To The Sea








To The Sea

Down the lane barefoot, she walks
gentle footfalls soft on cool loamed earth
onto sharp-sharded alley slicing unfelt cuts
on bloodying soles, walks without squander


to the sea

Green eyes fixate-follow the navigation of her 
heart hammering her intractable path


to the sea

There in the newly fingered crimsoning dawn 
rustled flocks of geese rise as one
vanished vees into molten pewter

of shimmered sky, beating 
powerful wings into fresh 
wet-salt scented breezes
of this new day
filled with promises yet to keep


to the sea

she walks  with  gentle footfalls
sunlight shining in tangled hair
alone, safe, free

to
the   
languid
sea

waiting
with
open
arms
to
accommodate







her...




forever


The Trouble With The Ending Of Another April Challenge


The Trouble With Leaving Another April Challenge
I wrote this poem last year at the end of the April Challenge. It had been a time of extremely intense connections as a poetic community. This year there are many new voices and “The Street” has been bustling sometimes with so many poems that it has been difficult to comment. There has also been a new platform, which I for one, consider as the kindest statement I can make – a “mixed blessing.” Nevertheless, I thought that I would share the poem from last year as a reminder to all of the sense of collective community that so connected us one to the other and to include those who are now new voices to understand how wonderful this community can be… Thank you Robert for another wonderful April… and thank you to all .. the talent has exploded here and I am thrilled to stand in the center watching the sparks shoot like comets across the night sky.
We are not at the end – but we are close – Goodnight to all! :)





Ode To A Street 4-28-2011
Cobblestones pavers
Gentle underfoot sheened
Whispering lyrical loveliness
Through from earliest dawn
All the night through
Someone, somewhere stirs
For a stroll
Under bowers of word petals
Because there is no beginning or end
I honor The Street both teeming and serenely still




After Leaving Here – I Will be There – April 2011
I wrote the other night to all that I could possibly include
knowing somehow that this year this ending April would be a difficult interlude
Wrapped in the moon-silvered and glimmering
The sense of collective community a chorus of one voice
Fragmented and in the street still shimmering
Whispered on the air, drifting in the soft night breeze
The comfort of the Muses rising from each to other singing
Sweet, painful, searing lyrics to each other seizing every soul
Until the street was emptied and all that remained
Were these wispy whispered filaments, shimmering with soft light
As each lingering poet walked ostensibly alone in the darkened lonely night
As the cobble-stones glistened, sole foot-falls rising from the ground
To meet with the others for leaving this place although one bound
Never is actualized, never does occur – once Muses meet and coalesce
Forever vanished, extinguished that existential torment on the street that is a living tapestry
Good night to all …in the knowledge that creativity is a brilliant speck of an incomprehensible vast collective universal oneness…

Thursday, April 26, 2012

PAD DAY 26 - 3 ANIMAL POEMS


 DAY 26 - 3 ANIMAL POEMS


Daisy in the morning – an elephant tale

I don’t know if she really was
named Daisy behind a narrow
moat she stood with liquid eyes
watching

My father young and peanut
holding locked eyes lifted his
arm and like a master sorcerer
called ” Up Simba ” and she’d lift
Her majestic trunk and rise

Like a lifting building
Throw back her trunk
And blare a smile
Eyes locked as she

Lowered herself back to
the golden straw swirling
at her ankles and reached
With the delicate pink of roses

As sound and passion
echoed bouncing from
the walls that melted
in my trembling chest
And she reached

To my.upturned hand
And eyes still on my
father gently, oh so
sweetly, picked-sucked
the peanuts away

with laughing eyes
tickling my wet palm
delicate as dew on a
blossom

regal Queen honored
me at my father’s request
and the walls melted

Maybe it only happened
Once, maybe it was happenstance
but still I see their eyes and
feel the tile walls melt
shimmering away and

Somewhere we stand
Daisy, my father
and I
forever
free

A glorious trunk
raised in blaring
welcome as birds
lift from the trees
and red dust swirls
about my ankles
in the mist of an
ever equatorial morning







“Black Beauties”

“animals” she called them
on first day driving
sighing sanctimonious
tapping red wrapped
fingernails against

her smirking teeth
“lucky to have her”
she sighed
these “black beauties”

these third-grade-children
in the long ago charge
of one red-lipsticked
hatred-heinous

teacher

unfortunately
no twilight zoned
signpost signaled
only a cancelled carpool
consequence

and time passing
an errant dodgeball
to her empty head
dangled snatched disability

discharging her
into the wild to
roam her jumbled jungle
of manufactured malice memory…

twenty-five children saved
not unscathed
but free
nonetheless
from one scathing
Serpent





fluff puff of coal smoke
drifted through the opened door
magic 

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Origamied



Happy Birthday To The Magical  Wordle :)


Oh shimmy origami dragon off the edge of that disheveled shelved wall- fall filamented, rise ethereal, wavering wonder in the dappled light, you much maligned misbegotten, misunderstood - now delight filled dragon swallowing exquisite acute and abstract aches all - until - coda peace flows as the sweet smoky flame of your spangling shimmered smile silencing the would- be cacophony of dreams’ ferment.







Tuesday, April 17, 2012

NAPOWRIMO CHALLENGE 2012

DAY 25- A CENTO




DAY 24 - A LIPOGRAM




No “O” No love – a Lipogram*


Spinning tilted axis
Sliding there in shades
Gray fade-merge
Dinge
Tuneless hum
Spinning tilted axis
Emptied all





RACING TO CATCH UP AGAIN DAYS 19-23
(mission accomplished) 


DAY 23- EKPHRASTIC POEM 23 
IN THE CENTER OF THE EYE 





In the center of the eye that can no longer

hold this fragile sense of certitude in the  

existence of nothing beyond the Now of this

crescendoed crash – transfixed light smashes,
shifting all in shades of shimmered cerulean
tided pull toward tremulous tempestuous
insistent – irrevocable Tomorrow.






DAY 22 - TUBULAR PREGNATO

wrapped in tendrils reaching to clutch
exuteroed wall - climbing as any other 
ivy - but for the beating of one sonographic
heart - centered as a stamin growing in the 
desert - destined to wither in the wasteland 
of a misbegotten gardener - misplanted - doomed.
Oh tubular ivy climbing verdant glimmering 

innocent twisted sapped veins pulse burgeoning predator pregnato - even after pruned separate 

from your tethered wall - tubular pregnato stares 

its sliced blossom shooting
 forever tendrils to the host heart even after excisioned termination. 




DAY 21 hay(na)ku -


floating
on a 
filament you left 








DAY 20 TRAVELING POEM
FROM COMPUTER TO DINNER

Iced finger on keyboard
fly
As you in well intentioned
voice
Call
Dinner
Chair swivels
Air rushes in
blood pumped ears
a baseball game drifts
picture frames
vases
books
a glass
with tepid 
watered lemonade
as I rise
and 
begin to walk 
hardwood underfoot
yards of jettisoned distance
into another dimension
bedroom - shower - to 
you waiting
in the other room
with the dinner
I cooked
in compensation
hours ago
drying now
as I shower





DAY 19 -OPPOSITE POEM - 
THE CITY OF OUTERCAUGHT 
(with apologies to W. B. Yeats and beloved Lake Isle Innisfree) 






THE CITY OF OUTERCAUGHT

I will sleep and drift to the city of Outercaught
From ashes of cabin build with brick and steel beams architected by me;
Shouting throngs who my services plead to be bought
And stride in glorious connected cacophony

I shall have excitement in the citied Outercaught, rushing flooding fast
Rising from the starlit clarity of deepest night to where no cricket sings;
Here noon dreamt sun blinded black, and midnight an embraced ebon vast
And morning emptied of the linnet’s long departed wings.

I will sleep and drift, forever in this blessed dreaming night
Where I never hear the incessant lapping of water sucking upon that shore;
While I stand each day surrounded by crowds not an infernal bee in sight
The buzzing stings of my almost soul-dried sore – no more.   






opposite of.....




The Lake Isle of Innisfree     
by W. B. Yeats


I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

**********************************************************






RACING TO CATCH UP
DAY 18 - POETS' LULLABY



Hush poet writing let the Muse flow



Hush poet writing let the Muse flow

Worry not your mind will not go

Imagic forms from past and near

Float and dance and merge quite clear

Hush poet writing let the Muse flow

Worry not your mind will not go

Elephants ride feathers, death is dear

Language diaphanous perfectly clear
Hush poet writing let the Muse flow
It will take you home where you need to go
When you get home through that golden gate
Sweet sun-setting-shafted arms for you await….



*******************************
         RACING TO CATCH UP - DAYS 13-17

DAY 17-EPISTOLARY- A WOMAN OF CLASS 


Dear Woman Who Sits In Front of Me

I know I have been told, and do not mean to be impolitic,
That “A woman is a some-time thing”
But though Gershwin wrote this in nineteen hundred thirty five
I find that you, my dear wonder have my feet tapping in old time jive
I think of you and like the dark sky at mourning noon I bite into thoughts
Dripping as you, my luscious lascivious peach and nothing remains Marginal
But the spectral stretch of my hand from your always outlying bottom



*********************************************
DAY 16 - PHOTO INSPIRED - CONTENTMENT 


CONTENTMENT


I breathe you in cool
Contented splendor
Floated in turquoise
Clarity of sweet silence
One languid leggy extension
Color matched your only
Needed hold on Eden 

******************************
DAY 15- A TOO SILLY- TOO SAD PARODY OF 
HARRY AND PHIL

Harry and Phil
went up the hill
to fetch flowers for their wedding
Harry fell with a blow
(Angina - when told the marriage was a no go)
And Phil took ill soon after

****************************************

DAY 14 - A First Petrarchan Sonnet- SOUL-MATE 

She comes and wonders at this quandary of soul mate
Wanders, ponders, turns and trembles in from crown to feet


The posited possibility of how and where and when does one meet
That ephemeral floating elusive possibility determined by will or fate?


Taunting icy finger tickle could that soul be an already past expired date?
Could it be that on one woe begotten evening, morn or noon did she greet


With a tepid embrace and a slipped quick exit out whatever door beat
And with this misplaced faith in fate that would promise eventual elate

Is it possible that connection with this elusive connecting filamentary thing
Holds within its conjure spectre aside from all that has gone before


Soaring, dancing on the headed pin or walking plain through any door
Where is that soul-mate that would torture thus my bloodied beaten heart


Threaten each matched note longed by the soul to sing
If question need be asked then song mated soul has not yet begun to ring 


****************************



DAY 13 - A FIRST GHAZAL - ONLY WITH LOVE 


How to frame the twists of foregone questioning fate?  Only with love


The random winds blowing flotsam into tear-filled eye – only with love



The singing couplets, smiling hearts, greeting-card rhymes yes them too

All – from deepest philosophical to child’s slipped grasp - only with love



The savage slip, the snarked remark, the disappointed fixed stare, sad sullen

The voices raised in irrelevant revealed rage, crumpled cries, only with love



There in the stilled silence of all logic, each desperate call screams in the sand

Echoing each uncertain purchase, vanished footsteps restored– only with love



From each questioned moving on wind of expressed misunderstood reaching to

The totality of the ongoing ache yearning to capture PKP forever – only with love


**************************************************




DAY 12 – HOMOPHONIC POEM …. VEETA AGRA

Veeta Agra – A Most Frustrating Woman in a Most Frustrating Group

Eli - pensive in Vece Che, Ay pointing
“Ah grappa?” “Tea?” “In this condominium – Affront?
You prattle Verdi pretending an ill soul
Giocare, ah, tambourine very, Vera
Scheherezade fine! A tardy writer? Are we?
Per Sveg Liarsi “all is settled”
Essere, Allie, Otto, impugns key – Affront?
Rise! Alieri.  Ill pointy Gio, accompany me
Per to the set with mama, sent over pages in new
“Da?,” “Ya?”, Yes! Tragedy!


From the Italian poem as follows:
Poesie # 4
By franco buffoni
2
15 aprile 2012

di Franco Buffoni
Vita agra      
 E li pensavo invece che ai ponteggi
Aggrappati al condominio di fronte,
Sui prati verdi a prendere il sole
Giocare a tamburello bere birra
Scherzare fino a tardi ritornare
Per svegliarsi alle sette
Essere alle otto in punto qui di fronte
Risalire il ponteggio, accompagnarmi
Per tutta settimana, cento pagine nuove
Da tradurre.…

 ************************************



NaPoWriMo - Catch up Days 1-10 with apologies for lateness getting on the train and delight to be riding along





NaPoWriMo  -apologies something strange going on here tonight cannot add any photos between poems will try again tomorrow.. again hope I have not offended any - by rushing out 10 poems to catch up ... 
************************************

DAY 11 - 5 SENSE POEM ... BUBBLE GUM
Held hard in damp five year-old-palm,
The five cent piece
Stretched on tip toe to clink the counter
Exchanged one single pink chubbed rectangle
Unwrapped in crackled release
scent of sacred sweetness sticky

and second offering..



5 SENSE POEM ... THE SHIMMERING

There in wet frangipani bushland drift blossoms across silk sheened skin - she, young and barely there, reaches two fingers to press a petal against her pastel palm as soft silence thrums her songbird pulse in languid luxuriation lifting the bloom past parted lips tipped to tilted tongue the frangipanied elixered ecstasy melting as molten manna, she sighs soaked sentient sensory satiation - Shimmering.



***********************************************



DAY TEN – FIRST LINE - A POEM IS DEAD, WHEN IT IS SAID (EMILY DICKENSON)

A poem is dead
When it is said
Is true the forced
For poetry dances
On multiple plains
Of senses folded
One upon another
Understood within
Deconstructed upon
Expression


***********************************************************

DAY NINE – A PERSONA POEM – 
DR. HARRY STACK SULLIVAN (PSYCHOANALYST)

I entered that dim chamber
That circled the abyss within
Which I would later learn we
All would circle in ghastly perimeter
I entered that dim chamber
Looking for the laughing mother
Who had vanished one strange
Night of mysterious screams
And found instead sitting
Still as death itself her visage
Something small stiff
against her bared breast
“Your brother” she stretched dry
Lips over yellowed grin
Reached her tremored hand
to bring me close
to them as I withdrew
Back to forever seek unknowing
Now revealed

**************************************************


DAY EIGHT – OUTSIDE POEM – TO THE SEA


Early morning
Doors still shut
Quiet ringing
First bird trills
As road crossed
And through
The open latched
Gate purchase
Found to the sea
The long road winding
Away through grassy
Promenade of just waking
Canada geese
Glowering on both sides
Focused eyes remain fixed
Ahead to the thin blue line
Widening with each breathed
Step salted air
Singing the Siren song
Of the approaching shore

********************************************************


DAY SEVEN – A COLOR POEM – RED
She rises from the fetid pallet shared by siblings younger, burning in the still black night. Walks in shred of clothes of sleep-feet bare on stones outside the hanging door, into the open air, burnt in stilled unknown conflagration, stands at the off hinged gardened gate and runs through toward the flame of the horizon of her suddenly certain crimsoned horizon.

*******************************************************


DAY SIX -  THE FERAL KITTEN  (WITH APOLOGIES TO MARIANNE MOORE)

Come
From the waving marsh
            Of boundless sea salted creatures
            Sleeping, skulking, foraging
                        Collected in mystical colonies
Across the road
Skipping small
            Fluff of coal, moving with purpose
            Up impossible paving stoned
                        Stairs where people stay
Come
From the waving marsh
            And do not run as blood brothers
            And mothers instructed
                        Stand on legs of inches
Alone
Unafraid
            Surrender all for the door
            That opens and arms
                        That hold you close
Home
From the waving marsh
            To the kingdom in which
            You shall reign on little cat feet supreme
                        Over all within
******************************************************************************


DAY FIVE – BASEBALL POEM - TEE-BALL


It was the first day
He was just four
But they said he could
Play with the big boys
The big boys of five
And one of six
Helmet falling over eyes
Fixed on that tee
That kept moving
In mystical machinations
Declining the heavy
Downswung bat
Until it stopped
And the stands roared
As the ball fell and dribbled
Off into the red dirt rolling
Halfway to pitcher’s mound

**************************************************************


DAY FOUR – BLUES POEM – LIKE A RUMBLED STORM
My man has a temper like a rumbled storm
True, my man has a temper like a rumbled storm
You ever stand out in the rain when the lightning comes

My man has a temper like a rumbled storm
That is the truth, he has that temper like a rumbled storm
But I ain’t afraid of the tempest caught in the wet rain pounding

My man has a temper like a rumbled storm
My man has that temper in him like a rumbling storm
And it hurts so good to drink him down

******************************************************************


DAY THREE – AN EPITHALAMIUM – 

WEDDING CLOSE


She didn’t wear a long white dress
Diaphanous and blowing around her bare ankles
In the tropic breeze
Instead something tiny designer trendy
He in brilliant white rolled at elbow and shin
She had no flowers in her hair
They had no bower above their heads
Yet between us she almost
Ran
Down the sand
At first look
Turquoise sea no match for her
Shining already wedded eyes

****************************************************


DAY TWO – MUSICAL
 LINE POEM - 
“THEY SAY THAT WE’RE TOO YOUNG TO LOVE”
they sang
young raven haired boy father
hair rakish over smoldered eyes
mother so tall and slender he
called her Stretch his arm
in command on her back
as they moved together
in the long ago living room
where a little girl watched
and knew
they weren’t too young
at all

************************************


DAY 1 – A TRIOLET – STILL POSSIBLE


Still Possible
There was a time when I thought that all was yet to come
Hopeful, possible with simple effort expended
Then time ran as proverbial sand vanished now then from
There was a time when I thought all was yet to come
Uncertain now I stand at the shore sipped on coke and rum
The tide reaches toward my bare feet extended
There was a time when I thought that all was yet to come
Hopeful, possible with simple effort expended