2021 April PAD Challenge: Day 26
For today's prompt, write a blank world poem*
“It’s A Mad Mad Mad World” ...
and I am
trying not to be
2021 April PAD Challenge: Day 25 -
For today's prompt, write a thought poem.*
A Blink Of A Think Piece
When it comes to thought -
everybody ought
P2021 April PAD Challenge: Day 24
For today's prompt, write a question poem.*
Where are you?
As a little girl I lay with you
under a weeping willow in
a Botanical garden after
you finished painting naked
ladies with other painters up
a steep staircase in the
museum while I waited
below-wandering about
the paintings - outside to
the gardens - until we met
always under the willow tree-
The light filagreed shadows
on your bare chest - as you
stripped off your tee shirt and
put it under our heads -
you sighed and smiled and stretched
your arms out for me - and I fit in the
circle, inhaling your scent,
of cigarettes and turpentine -
dreamily counting the leaves
on a single branch-wondered
why weeping in such beauty -
"look for me always in the whisper
of the wind" -you said eyes closed
as I fingered the scar across your
chest - You were my forever father
this day -and a thousand more - an
Arabian nights of tales of wonder
with you always the hero -
crashing through the surf
on days too cool for anyone
else to swim - raising your
arm at the zoo as Daisy the
elephant lifted her trunk -
waiting as I leapt from a still
moving carousel into your
perfectly time-toned arms -
your hair shining through
mullioned windows - that
ebon hair - the constant in
each unfolded tale, deeper,
darker still than any coven
of crows -the magic calliope
turned and spun - the tides
receded - the tree wept -
as time will do and now it is
today -you gone far too young
but far older than any imagined
and I impossibly older than you-
left to wonder - are you still my
warrior paternus survivor of that
dashing slash scar-crossing chest
to back - that mystic "zipper" traced
with chubby toddler fingers,
felt raised against my cheek,
that opened your heart - day before
I arrived - but that was then, the stuff
of legend, and now, now, all questions
answered flower again with new blooms,
as the calliope grows faint - the scent of
fresh grass - the bend of a willow tree
of a billion flickering leaves fainter still
and I, am left, to listen for your answer
in the whisper of the wind -
where
are you
really ?
AD Challenge: Day 25 -
2021 April PAD Challenge: Day 23
For today's prompt, write an appointment poem.
I meant to make a point
I meant to make a point
but death got in the way
scurried as a white rabbit
and pulled me 'long its way
thus in the midst of turmoil
in a whirling wilderness of
contemplated thought -
a point meant
never offered for consideration,
and so, conclusively not bought
prompt, write a thought poem.*
2021 April PAD Challenge: Day 22
For today's prompt, write a nature poem.
Nature?
"HATECHA!"
"HATECHA!"
"HATECHA!"
please, please, please, I beg you to stop.
"Can't - it's just my nature."
2021 April PAD Challenge: DAY 21
For today's prompt, write a blank me poem-
replace blank with word or phrase/use as title
Marry Me
long long ago
two friends ran
to Macy's after
a softball game
he was sweaty
she giggling a
bit - their assorted
children just hours
ago moved in together
- two plain band rings -
boxed safe in cupboard
quick separate showers
Ah! - Door bell brings
a huge bouquet of
balloons sent by
surprised friends -
and then - finally then
standing on our
gleaming hardwood floors
in clean jeans and cotton shirts -
three young kids -two German
Shepherd dogs - (one in a tie)
A rabbi - his back against
the piano - hands splayed
above our head - intoning
familiar words - we which read
looking in each others eyes -
we kiss - long and, oh, oh, so, hard
a glass stomped with sneakered foot
we turn and hug tight our kids
Let out the dogs who’ve waited patiently and then ...
It's Now. ... So many
suns and seasons come
and done - kisses are sweeter
dogs and their pups long lived
floated away - their days done -
along with chaos happy busy grown-
kids to adults far off flown-
Heat now simmers in blood
never-to-be-believed then -
but true, runs and felt as one
you hurt I flinch - I sigh you
question why -
we are a WE ..
You are still you, and Me of course me -but we have come to be-
come that not-quite- believed-as-actual - “we”
alone together as never
had the chance to be
Now
- joined together as then we
promised so ever so cavalierly
We are decades tested ready -
Now. Now. Now. Can you all not see?!
We are completely ready to hear, to say
Finally. Truthfully. Openly. Consciously.
Marry me.
2021 April PAD Challenge - Day 20
For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
Write a love poem and/or anti-love poem.
blue veined hand reaches
on white sheets fingers entwine-
last tug completed
2021 APRIL PAD -DAY 1prompt, write an animal
2021 APRIL PAD -DAY 19
For today's prompt, write an animal title poem.
2021 April PAD Challenge – DAY 19 –
Titles like "Counting Sheep," "Beside the White Chickens," and "Horse" would all qualify. Of course, you can stretch this prompt however you wish.
2021 APRIL PAD -
Hindy
named not by me for the Hindenburg
by a fellow with a sardonic Germanic
bent - Hindy's black pelt shone ebon
as darkest night -amber eyes shone
eerily as though in an other-worldly light
Arrived a gangly pup with a new husband
and two kids - grew quickly into a massive
guy, a powerful thick necked German Shepherd
of the very overseas best -
We lived, three children, some rabbits,
another Shepherd girl part of the group too,
and as the months unfolded Hindy grew and
grew, - most days curled atop the stairs staring
out the side light panes onto a suburban street -
stretching limbs uncomfortabiy - he'd turn his
head my way so that our eyes could meet -
in those amber eyes I saw fields and land he longed
to run knew of just the place he belonged -
his place amid the sun -
My father'd bought a country place -
retired very early on his new found land -
asked him if he could take on “the dog”
as “a favor" just for me - to give me a little
hand and so it came to be -
Hindy ran on acres green, across the East Coast
shores, each week they'd travel to Dairy Queen
and share vanilla cones - when I came to visit
I found what I knew I had been foreseen -
A light-hearted boy in my father's smile
and in Hindy the message received that
he had transported all the while -
Of course, there are not always completely
happy endings, none of us knew the secret -
cells multiplying viciously - none knew that
this secret magic garden of matched souls
would be five years
only - and then done -
now, In a cemetery, crowded with tumbled ancient
inscribed stones, my father and now my mother intermingle
their disintegrating bones - and in the earth that surrounds them he can see their garden grown - Elysian fields, love, vanilla cones, and with them all together, Hindy's long-ago beloved albeit smuggled spread and scattered-to-ash-bones.
2021 PAD-DAY 18
Write an ekphrastic poem (based on another work of art) painting, photograph, sculpture, mixed media, or other
“The world is big, but little people turn it around!”-
Gavroche/Les Miserables
seems damnably overwhelming
soaking legions of souls with fecund fears-
death spills out from knees, and guns, a cavalcade
of hatred, as mouthed prayers thrown cavalierly to
ripped hearts-raining a reign of tears -
but though true undeniably, the world is cold and big,
continues tossing bodies onto this too long bloodstained ground -
tis also true, evermore, that “little people turn it around” -
We are watching on the screens and streets,
listening with wide eyes to all as it does day by day unfold -
hearts and souls and spirits coalesce lift as “little people”
write the reckoning, reforming, rising, soon, soon, coming to be told.
For as that child with clear voice sang out on a broadway stage fruit from seeds long sown ripen justice, rising from outrage
So, as kind intentioned hearts see bodies fall lifeless to the ground
Join in, and know as it has been forevermore -
“little people turn it around”
Be a little people.
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2021 APRIL PAD -DAY 19
For today's prompt, write an animal title poem.
2021 PAD challenge DAY 17-
For today's prompt, write a waiting poem.*
Waiting for “Go Dough” (the musing of a precocious would be intellectual)
It was so very popular back then - everyone talking about it -everyone being the ones in black sweaters pulling French cigarettes from little boxes - or was that Benson and Hedges which her mother smoked for a time. But back to Go Dough -most things she, a child parked to wait in college cafes often for hours while her adult worked or did something or other - waiting in one or another darkish damp wood coffee beery wine scented
place listened, waited and wondered if this “dough” they all spoke about in their hushed intense voices -their eyes flashing reflected words - words - words, oh the wealth of words- Wondered she did, if this “dough” was perhaps, she wisely decided, one of those supplements for the downtrodden they often went on about - Probably, she satisfyingly concluded, shifting her small bottom on a wide , out of the way wooden corner bench and sucking at her milky sugared coffee as she waited - throwing back her head every now and then miming perfect smoke rings as she listened and learned, on and on and on - never for an instant either bored, lonely or perish the thought - downtrodden. After all she was newly turned ten - a part-time city girl - clearly old enough to be left alone.
Fin
hand spans his chest
that chest where she
had laid cradled as an
infant in roof-top sun
her hand on his chest
in an August room shot
through with sunlight -
after thirteen days and
nights -it arrives without
fanfare - heart thumping
a simple, one, two, three
beat, clear and plain and
under her hand -
suddenly, profoundly
still.
It’s all about the waiting ...
It’s all about the waiting
From first breath to the last
It’s all about the waiting -
About the time past passed
It’s all about the waiting
From last breath back to first
It’s all about the waiting -
About harmony through chaos-cursed
It’s all about the waiting
All breaths ultimately as one
It’s all about the waiting -
About the puzzle finally done
A mother's waiting is never done
A mother's waiting is never done
it begins before the child
in womb begins to move
No matter what shall happen
Be it joyous, sorrow filled or
burst with ambiguity or fun -
A mother's waiting is never ever done
She might tell you that she's finished
that a grievous wrong has closed the
book etched within her heart - she may
be counseled that the rational way to happiness
is to accept that they shall forever part
Listen not,my friends,to the mother who says that she is done
for she is waiting for a love returned as certain as the rising sun
(also haiku day)
CoVid virus runs
merrily round blue marble -
population thinned
haiku ah achoo
cherry blossoms fluttering
nasal passage tickle…
hand brushes tummy
seismic quiver shifts flesh
baby will be born
…
bare ancient tree
thick trunk splintering
suckling spring rainfall
cries of mothers rise
a tsunami of shed tears
waves rolling to shore
…
in the tall dry grass
wide eyed baby bunny twitch
hawk circles clear sky
on windowsill waits
the cat stretching settling -
human late again
2021 April PAD -DAY 16 today's prompt: Write a city poem. You can make the title the name of a city/mention a city/set your poem in a city*
T
City of Gold
She sits a small child excited into quiet in the predawn
seat beside her father as they drive into work ... watching
out the window ... remembering last night's music played
loud as he liked it, until the sound rumbled in her chest -
She sits watching as the first fingers of light begin and
her father speeds up the car - calls her his navigator -
turns the wheel so the car takes the curve precisely as
with a wave of his hand - the sun rises over the Hudson
River - the city shimmering, Statue of Liberty, Empire State,
Chrysler Building, a mantra of love as they near the cobble
stones of the city that will still be empty when they arrive,
sitting in that golden light, she turns for a moment to watch
the profile of her father's smile - hears clearly the golden,
splendid soaring crescendo of The New World Symphony.
as they ride on
into the sun ..
2021 PAD DAY 15 -
For today's prompt:write a (blank) story poem- replace the blank with a word or phrase /use as titleyou can stretch this prompt however you
Police Story
No, not the raunchy silly kind
the one where heartbreak, defilement of protect and serve, juxtaposed insanely with murder
repeatedly, horrifically entwine
Way past time for a new one.
Spun Story
Spun sugar
whirled into a cone
vanishing
disappearing
on the tip of a touched tongue
cotton candy lives so soon done
leaving only memories
tucked into empty paper cones
2021 PAD DAY 14- write a poem inspired only by stimulus from where you're sitting/consider your surroundings/poem away
In morning write what do I see ...
Back abed for a delicious while
A white duvet spreads soft and wide to a slice of grandma’s patchwork put neatly spread across the foot
Beyond, this that mahogany double dresser topped on one side -carrying the light- a shining crystal mushroom, a small clear dove calmly waiting as though ready to lift to flight, an antique paperweight, all together arranged on a clear crystal tray -
on the other end - a cut glass framed picture of my heart’s home - the beachy exquisitely beautiful sea -
far far down in bright St Thomas way ...
Above this all rises on the wall a huge mirror from grandparents’ bedroom so long ago - in its visage a sturdy soaring budding tree, blue skies and - there and ...and...
If I stretch to rise from my bed I can clearly see -
reflected back - the eyebrow-raised-long-hair-scrunched atop my head - the familiar slightly-smiling-in an oversized men’s-white-washed soft repeatedly, sleeping-shirt -wearing - quite comfy -this loose-limbed - newly reawakened
writing me ...
2021 PAD DAY 13
Two-for-Tuesday
1. Write a lucky poem and/or...
2. Write an unlucky poem.
Bestowing the lucky
a little boy enters a this and that shop
hand tightly clutched searches about
looking here and there
(among potpourri, pastel figurines, sparkling bracelets and such )
- pacing here and there growing a look of fear -
until he with an expression of delight finds a small painted sailboat -
clutching the prize in both hands with all his might -
rushes to the register where I, a lazy summer dawdler - dawdle with
nothing to do much
fingering at the painted seashells and such -
of course I let him go on before -
watching him hop from one foot to the other other -he can hardly bear a moment more -
so close am I to the small lad - I can feel his panic in my own throat - as joy turns so fast to bad -
panic spreads on his face as he hands over the little sailboat there
and scans his palm -
WHERE
there is nothing there -
his hand empty of his scrunched held bill -
Looks about him with neck whipping abandon -
runs up/down the store -as only a young child can or will -
all the while shouting in a choked whisper "It's for my Dad - he's just returned from navy today" -
What oh what I ask, would any of you at that time say -
the cashier/owner stands and stares, another woman clucks "Oh bad luck, how too too sad"
Meantime all the while, the distraught boy repeats "For my Dad" ...
over and over echoing in gurgled pain again and then again and again -
and when he finally he does return -flush faced so close and hot it could if touched I'm certain fingers burn.
His eyes stricken, I ask him casually "Is that yours?" ...Looks down and then back up at me -(I shrug, smile, busy myself back with the shells)
a random bestower of belief -
My own joyous heart pounding soaking in his relief,
He stares in wonder and snatches up the crumpled fiver that "appeared" behind us (“magically“ on the sandy wooden floor - right there in plain sight)
right, where it had not been before, right down THERE -
WHERE
A merry (secret as required) mitzvah memory created, one would surely say
- This poet, dear readers, has never known from then to now who was the truly lucky one that long ago summer day.
DAY 12 use at least 3 of 6 words: convict, great, play, race, season, voice. Extra credit for using all & extra extra credit for a sestina.
The obvious missing word
This is a season of sickness
of body, mind and soul -
This morning ...
I am choked with revulsion -
suspending this poem until
my voice returns with some
resemblance of whole -
I silently scream out to convict
those who flay others layer by
layer of skin - but wherever begun
there is more to begin..in this season
of sickness so far below anything great
begging indulgence in this moment of
day when another drop overflows my
rain barrel of tears - I have no heart for play.
The end of hate based on conviction of hope
- letter to an unborn great-grandchild of a gestating future
(my try at a Sestina)
Dear Great-Grandchild you may soon learn about a time of convict-
ion - a time when the young danced in the streets belief powerful -great
were the beat of true hearts, searching the horizon for oncoming play
They dressed in vestments and tapestries of each human tint of race
was a surreal time: plague of politic, hate and, a sudden come season
of reason a -feet twitched to march, to dance and give voice
For overwhelmed by hate -throngs turned to hope with inevitable voice
yearning for choice,tired of log jams and fear, near came a stir to convict
the naysayers of hope that lived in castles of salt, a vinegar season
As a rising tide grew to magnificent height -rose a wave never as great
there were those -children, all ages, of this new wave, who ran to race
others in castles, denying disgrace, who chuckled as at a comedic play
Yet,through the land came a stirring, a deep dipping graceful plie
and small children and oldersters began a low humming voice -
a voice continued to grow one to one- stretched and ready to race
there was singing and talking long into the night as the castle convicts
refused to see light or the song, or the tide rising salt sprayed and great
beginning the seminal inflection point where hate just fell out of season
The old-timers stretched and spoke of long ago tales season-
ed, their time in the sun when they waited for reasoned fair-play
about how time after time - disappointments were deep and great
as they marched, carried signs, gave speeches and sang in loud voice
as many, yes tis true, were killed and too few charged, less convict-
ed-ucation was twisted and chunks of history gagged and erase/d
drained and defaced the blood, sweat and tears - white washed all race
whilst mamas of color held their breath when their boys came to season
fearing police sworn to serve and protect would find reason to convict
with conviction, as prisons and coffins filled with colored foreplay
of a continuous fucking that continued day after day, but came a voice
of choice, for yes dear one,flaying by color crept from humble to great
Finally that humming, that thrumming grew loud and far great
joining threads torn by hate to a grand tapestry falling with g-race
and up to those cloistered castles - even there was this strong voice
of this choice kind of end times of privilege, now gone rot of all season,
the land underfoot glowed with a blood earned tinged umber dis-play
castles crumbled to sand and blew irrevocably away in convict/ion
Without a trial needed -hatred - a forgotten convict -silent and great
dear child, happily, you cannot grasp foul play based on hate and race
Lives rode a long ago season -arrived at free choice - Listen to my voice
2021 April PAD Challenge Day 11 -
For today's prompt incorporate a prime number into your poem* (see comments)
INDIVISIBLE-
(an inadvertently created new version of the shadorma)
Onward they come
Walking united-side by side
Onward they come
Onward they come
prime shadormaing skipping as stones on pond
Undivided by self or another the seminal inflection point where hate just fell out of season
Morning Becomes Electric
(a shadorma 3-5-3-3-7-5)
In morning
birds twittering on
In morning
In mourning
Cacophonous joy plays on
indifferent to pain
April PAD Challenge- DAY 10
today's prompt, - write a Get (blank),"poem - replace the blank with a word or phrase*
Get well my son (a very raw poem)
watched you as an infant
your lips a slightly synodic blue
felt my own heart catch in the
perfect prism of our new world
that the slightest cardiac malady
could have been passed from grand-
father on to you ... in breathless relief
watched as you nursed - hungry at my
breast -and on the third or morning of
the fourth - in brilliant frangipani sun-
shine watched your lips full and rosy
red as I released held breath and finally
came to rest -healthy precocious infant
grown quickly to a magically wise and
brilliant child - At five your friend,
a tow-headed mischief lad -
died a bloody death - for months
you'd call me to your room and tell me
with excited breath -that Sean had been
"right there" sitting on your bed
the experts that I called agreed that this was
your defense balancing tragedy in a too young
for-this head -
Then one day you said to me
with those eyes so wide and
darkest chocolate brown that you
decided that God was made of
all those who had gone before -
as though you were politely, gently
instructive, swinging open a celestially
informed door -
Your premise was far beyond what some
might - expect from such a little boy -
but you continued on this course with a
kindness, wisdom and perhaps some
special preprogrammed joy.
You read at two and one night at three -
at bedtime held my face with both hands said
“My heart overflows with love Mommy”
Was any other mother ever filled with such
a profound and precious awareness of a gift
Perhaps, but I reveled in the mystic magic of
such a precious lift - I recall that when
your friend died -the day before he had
teased you until you left the play date at
an end
and then asked quickly to return and
made it up - because you said "You don't
get angry at a friend"
"Mommy I am so happy,"
you said after all the rituals were gone and
done - Sean will never get to be a man and
for that I am very sad - but i am happy that
I didn't leave him angry because Mommy
that would have been so very bad -
I take liberty with his words - the child-like
purity was far grander poetry - but so it
went on in this way, as years folded onto
one another, and teachers, counselors,
friends, family and other parents came to see
and share what I saw with me ...College came
and off you went - I sobbed in silence
hiding - I thought my bewildered frightened
at your leaving misery - until as ready to leave
your college room a frozen smile plastered on
my face - you hugged me hard and said
"Oh Mom - it is okay for you to cry - Did you really
think I did not see?" - and so I sobbed into your
chest until bright red blew up my blubbering face -
tears finally turned to a smile and laughter as I left having
been in the presence of that sort of supra-natural grace -
You moved onto manhood - all and even more
that any thought you would be
and then just as you had said as a teen you
married late in life - and I was proud - in fact
I was downright self-congratulatory -
how thrilled I was for you to finally take a wife -
that new chapter beginning in the thick book of your life
and I knew that the children you yearned for as a small
child yourself back so long ago - were soon to arrive
with a love that my soul already seemed to recognize and know -
and then
it went
sideways -
You'd shout "You know what you have done"
but I swear before all that is sacred I had and
have no idea where this rageful hatred erupted
where in hell - for this was hell - this horror had begun
There was a few weeks after a first child came
to be - when it seemed that all returned to
the love we shared so natural and beautifully-
That lasted a mere ten weeks - then a slide began
down a jagged razored road - nothing that used
to bring calm and surcease - I could not break
this locked and loaded for obliteration - code
Hundreds of pages - thousands of hours of
talk and try brought us only further far apart
For the first time in what I now see as a blessed
life I felt the rip and rend of what I had thought
overdone usage of that term the breaking of a heart
Oh, yes some said it was the wife - how easy
that would be - but no, it was not the case -
for after my own mother passed- the person
who reached out in love was she -
and there for a bit in those dark times -
there was a flickered light - she and I met
and talked and all went lovingly - she let
me know that there was work and I explained
after several long great talks that we could do
no more and was delighted weeks later on
when my son called and opened up a proposed
get-together door
We met, my boy, my full grown man, father
now to his own son, and I elated waited
to listen ready to begin - the reconciliation begun -
I had no inkling that this meeting heralded a
clear bright sense that you were stuck,
unwilling to move on, for all intents and purposes -
as the young ones say - I suppose the upshot was
that you were in fact, nearly done
Two silent non responsive years went by,
I kept you apprised of joys and sorrow too -
sent happy texts on holidays and as advised
by all as confused as I let this situation in its
own time and path continue on to brew -
One year ago received a text another baby was to be
and I responded with delight not-"hysterical" and
appropriately congratulatory -
in return I received a reply cutting surgically - "I should",
you said, not have any expectations wrapped up
"unrealistically.".
So, yes, the years have passed
and the reading, reflecting, reaching, searching
is coming to a new possibility excruciatingly
difficult for myself to myself to sell -
that friends and family who have suggested such
may have a point and that perhaps my adored
son - things are not within you well.
I shall not send this to you - oh no - I've learned
lessons in humility and distancing through the
years - I do wish that you find "well" and know
that I have come to a conclusion worthy of the
the wisdom you might have reached forward and
flung to me with a strong cast -
perhaps after all I wonder if this banishment applied
is karma for those I might have unintentionally caused harm
and pain to in the past -
Or perhaps, my wise son, who may or may not be
quite well, perhaps the huge life lesson is that one
who gets forty years of bliss from a child is very far
from a state of hell.
In conclusion, I revise the implication of the title so now
far there up above and fervently wish
with no strained expectation that
we both are well and that somehow we again can share
or, at the very least recall and cherish the legacy of our
love .
GET OVER IT - a companion (apology) piece
Get over it
for goodness sake
it is not the end of
all the we know
There are melting
ice caps - rising
tides - wars-
infanticide -
genocide,
and all sorts of
horror real
as you sit and
ponder your innards
and a son who has
decided to grow cold
Get over it - I tell you
you've had too much
time alone in this pandemic
and m'dear this story and
you are growing - oh so old
Yes you wrote those postcards
mailed them out for Georgia
gave yourself a trigger finger
but the hatred and the grander
insanity outside your little L
life does despite you onward
linger
So GET OVER IT
Get over yourself and
your imposed operatic
tragedy - be grateful for
the husband who crashed
to the floor last year un-
expectedly and now with
a little unit trucks on next
to you with a Que-Sera Sera
quite centered happily
GET OVER IT
I say, and I mean
it - not intending to be
cold - but even during this
past year - m'dear you are
growing old
You'll not be here forever
and no sense in worrying
about your legacy - live in
the now and do what you
can and leave these good poet
people please - please please
and off this topic - GO - GO GO -
GET OVER IT
LEAVE NOW
peacefully!!!
Have a goodnight all
2021 April PAD Challenge. DAY 9 -
For today's prompt, write a persona poem (for an inanimate object).
The Note
At the dawn of Covid decided I did
that this was the the time to free all the things that I hid
You know what I mean the things that you stuff
into a huge box or a bag - when you've just had enough
I had only one left as Super Sandy had cleaned quite a few
Feeling more than a bit blue at the events of the world and the day
Chilled by the touch of mortality, reflecting what the heck for myself did I have to say
Oh sure, I did this and a little of that
But, nothing quite grand as I sat and I sat
Take even this clearing up - I had known there would be hours and hours to get through
Yet, step right up, lookee here, a year came and went and what did I do?
Gave myself a virtual shake and smack upside the head and said get going right then
No more time to sit in a puddle of wonder of the, why, where and what the heck when
At least I could free those things, most unremembered that I had hid
I could, I would, and what do you know, I got up and did.
From the spare room - I lugged out that huge grown dusty container
opened its lid and was surprised at the remainder -
kitchen drawer items from the old kitchen ruined and wash-ed away ..
a bagful of change, a few knives, and higgely piggely stack of papers from back in the day
What day was that - you might ask - You did ask that, you say?
Oh nothing quite special just adverts, a menu, a bill of sale for something unbought
There's a saying -"haven't seen it for years out it should ought" Considered for a moment, then thought
It was almost the end, I had had goals for CoVid sequester-ing
Managed to jog 10K steps each day, lose some weight and now here was this thing
This stack of papers, from a quick look most would condemn as categorical junk
Almost, just almost I grabbed them up to be gone, then my heart jolted and sunk
It would take just a minute -okay neurosis was going to win
Just a quick shuffled through and then the end could begin
There were coupons expired in two thousand and three
all manner of such and as I quickened my work at the bottom, what did I see?
a thick embossed envelope with a curlicued handwriting of love
if I could believe in such things I'd say it was sent from above...
At the end of this refuse, this junk, this salvaged anonymous stuff,
was a note from my Grandmother, "Mother Cele" who in her magnificent script wrote
how much she adored me, how as a granddaughter, I was so much much more than enough.
And through tears filled with sunshine, spring flowers and more
Her writing inscribed a new note on deep within my opening core
For ladies and gents, CoVid was ending - a new day, in so many wondrous ways just now begun
Tossed out the old bin, laughed right out loud -Takes a love note from "Mother" to return this girl ready for fun
2021 PAD CHALLENGE DAY 8 -
For today’s prompt-write a metaphor
poem(when something is something else)*
Dust Ball
I flow
I float
I bounce on a whisper of a breeze
from your opened window - slide under
your bed as night falls and you sleep - I slip
between the cracks and crevices of the legs
of your favorite chair and rest for a bit - evading
with a quick puff the bristles of the thing you push
along as you listen to music - once I passed the tip
of your toe as you danced - I flow, I float, I bounce,
portions of me separate and rise into shafted sunlight -
my motes - that shall stay on - until inevitably as it must come for all - the roar of the Great Suck arrives and into the blackness inhales me along with others tumbled
in the vacuum of blackness - remembering in joyful comraderie the halcyon days when -
we flowed and floated and danced in sunlight -
invisibly with you -
always -
dust to ...
Four year old raped and murdered Kaitlin*
I am Kaitlin - that four year old little girl -
raped murdered and left in my yellow summer dress
to molder until ...
that long, long ago April when I called out to you - and you answered –
how eagerly you scooped me up into your arms and posted me in poems that made some cry -
You had waited for me since your own girlhood -
Oh, you - so joyful were you -
So filled with your own self serving gratitude
- you set about torturing me -
Relentlessly- you twisted my soft limbs reached your fingers to lift my tiny gauzy skirt - exposing me, hoping for everyone to see
I know you remember how I loved peanut butter sandwiches with the crusts cut off - You told everyone! -in those poems you happily posted and smiled as people cried at your words writing me into life
This was not enough for you, Oh no - you needed the Why, The Who, the flippin Wherefore and had no time to wait –
No, you persevered, on and on, long into dawn after dawn- year after year- twisting my soft limbs, my very mind, as helpless, I stood, watching the weight of your words fall upon me, your heavy leaden deadened prose, peopled with strangers, with those whirling chaotic ill-formed scenes, scenarios, digging in the soft earth of my grave littering it with your inane storylines, taking me to towns, creating parents
I never knew - a murderous, incestuous father, a psychotic mother hate filled or once confusingly, lovingly delusional - You whirled in my wind-
You would not stop -defining the soul I entrusted to you -and now thousands of pages and three falsified versions of my life later - ten years of your time passed - you have done the unimaginable – you, my would be selfish savior have raped me nearly senseless and a
slain me once again -
until I am almost good and truly dead - and the thing of it is “she whispered her cornflower blue eyes wide, her fingers playing with the hem of her skirt, ....”
See?! I know , I know you will not, cannot bury me for good -
I beg you now with a voice I hope you hear -as once I came to you standing silently, clearly, complete in the corner of your living room - I beg you to understand that the moment was the magic -
Embrace what was for what it is, and for the sake of all you cherish, including me.
Stop.
*Note:
*Katilin was and is a character that appeared to me during the time of my first PAD writing challenge. I wrote quite a few poems about this little girl at the time.
and have attempted to novelize her over the years. This is my attempt to make amends and to find some sort of peace.
2021 April PAD - Day 7
For today's prompt, write a villain poem.
Not Quite A Fairytale
(a shadorma )
Stalked right in
Smiling ridiculously with television teeth
That retrofitted wolf
We, Riding Hoods
skipping through the forest with our baskets
until he bared killer fangs
Today, I combined our PA Villain prompt with NaPoWriMo option to write a shadorma
*The shadorma is a six-line, 26-syllable poem (or a stanza – you can write a poem that is made of multiple shadorma stanzas). The syllable count by line is 3/5/3/3/7/5
The Villain's Mom
even the worst of the very worst
was once some mother's soft
infant babe-in-arms -
even the worst of the very worst
Which is worse the villainy or the indifferent watchers?
a quick poem ... inspired by
Rosemary Nissen-Wade
They came for them in shining black cars
cruising right up to doorways, that bleating
siren repeating, blaring in the quiet streets -
as neighbors peeked from curtains -
They had watched as schools closed and shops and Nein Juden appeared and yellow stars sprang on suit jackets and little girls jumpers, on hasfrau’s dresses, and school teachers white shirts, on rabbis and even on non-believers.
Watched as old men were thrown to the ground -
stepped around the shards of glass glittering Kristallnacht -
By the time those black cars came and the trains chugged off to camps they perhaps believed were only for work -
they turned their heads - moved on with their day -
What could they do?
Years whirled and wars came and went - camps opened
and film footage horrified - and all watched and more wars and strange fruit was swinging hanging from trees -
the pollen of hatred blew across the globe to
children afire running naked down a Vietnam road fell like powdered dust on others waiting on rooftops for copter that would never come -
A young sweet faced boy on a wire fence, a fellow dragged behind a car - one brown or black face after another...choked, shot, beaten. Citizens interned in camps, others on opposite sides of a wall, massacres between one tribe and another - white farmers killed - peace-makers jailed - children with swollen bellies - flies swarming - the toxicity flew ...from one end of the world to the other committed in collective and individual abandon with bare hands on flesh, sophisticated weaponry fired from on high,
and all imaginable weaponized hatred in the in-between. On and on and on this litany too long to repeat too unconscionable to be recited of life defiled, trampled, burned, extinguished, spat upon, lynched, punched, pummeled, bullied, ....
from long before the manic mustachioed man manifested, marching on to a woman beaten in broad daylight - while others...
watched...
Each villain can have some reasonable doubt, excuse, mental compromise or illness, coercion under fear for the life of self and family - some iota of possible explanation, passion, delusion, distortion, hallucination, psychoses, possession, some rationale for the horror that is otherwise inexplicable ... but...
the watchers... the reasonable dispassionate watchers...
placidly viewing the unviewable ... closing the curtains, filming a scene to post for friends, walking away... the ice of placid indifference far surpassing the conflagration of hatred -
chilling the spark of soul - extinguishing that tiny light of simple humanity and casting all into the abyss...
while others come to peer down and ultimately, yes to...
Watch.
PAD-DAY 6 - Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
1. Write a change poem and/or...
2. Write a don't change poem.
I want to be the change
Moving the plates of the world - serving a banquet of kindness and perfect justice -
as the innocence in each child’s heart changes not a single molecule and I live on to protect the meal
Don’t go changing sang the song
Running in my head all day long
As unexpected he crashed down to the
floor
and for an instant was here no more
Don’t go changing
and yet every day a piece of tech implanted -has him here to stay
In the middle of don’t and do
Our lives dance through
How can I ever choose between
these two -
for each day is an amalgam of beloved former and cherished miraculously resurrected you
Change
his father was an older guy
in a sepia time long gone by
returned each evening stripping
off his work limp dampened tie -
(jiggling a hand into a bulging pocket)
so the boy could hear that repeated remarkable clink
and there looking up and up to that tired face-he'd think
in respectful pride - his father was for sure a millionaire
come home again - Midas at their fifth floor walk-up stair
·
Have also combined the NaPo prompt...though it presents quite better with italics that I cannot seem to get going here. I think the general idea of the poem holds.
"I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. "–
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
I HAVE DREAMT IN MY LIFE –
(per NaNoWriMo – the second title)
PASSING THROUGH
Those nights walking through the house-
that house that reappeared – once filled
with mouldering curtains swinging
malevolently – another refashioned in
irreverent irony – crown moldings and
curliques gone – shiplap and mahogany
replaced with sheetrock – white on white
with but a single window paned door opening
to snowy curtains – gauzed and blowing in a
a warm breeze …. Those nights waking always
with a keening yearning ache for the house that was
seen but once as a small child - perfect in unexpected
majesty – grand but warm, embracing as though with
plump arms -held my tiny child self – swirled in soft chintz -
dressed in loose muslin swinging gently - as she, as I
wandered with slippered feet on floorboards wide
waxed to such shimmering sheen that we could see
all she was and all they could be in wavery reflection upon reflection.
Yes. Yes. Such dreams I dreamt and dream ever still - soaking this soul in the color of gemstones and wildflowers
turning from EB back to the old fellow to nod in singular sorrow-full sudden sibling-hood synchronicity …Yes.
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
Thank you Leo. I cast myself upon the changing waters in gratitude.
For, I shall continue to open the door and walk through that house –again and again –
in Bronte's colors swirling as “wine through water”
Until...
2021 APRIL PAD CHALLENGE - DAY 5*
Prompt:”The First (blank)”/replace the blank with a word/phrase/use as the title
First Time - when
“Go ahead,” she said, seventeen, flush cheeked, clothes in a muss
Her high school boyfriend always insisted on stopping them right then without a fuss
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Sure?”- new fellow most perfunctorily said.
Far from home, no longer in Kansas, with this guy she barely knew-
he most definitely definingly did - and in an moment’s blur they were through
She was a bit pensively surprised - as clothes restored she lay on that lumpy dormitory bed -
a good and reasonable girl -she accepted accountability, for she knew, even right there and even right then -
he had followed to the letter, what she had said, when - as leaves tumbled from trees outside that crisp long ago autumn college night - laying in the after-then sight ....
when things could have turned left or right
She lay calmly bemused considering that seminal “go ahead” in the newly made by her bed - laying there softly solo - in that autumn then - in her now forever inscribed after-then
When ...
The First Time I Lost You
was when you were two
it was a nanosecond -
then there you were
sitting behind me all
the while - I hugged
those tiny shoulders
you said "Mama smile?"
the second time you were forty one
you are not behind me at all this time and
I truly do not know when this will be done
Mama not smile
The First Book
Pulled the drawer .. silently
alphabetized oak bronze brackets
in the sun so shimmery -
heart pounding determined was I to finally get this done -
to see, to see alone, just for me -
this grand possible impossibility
Gently pulled, as cat burglar in a diamond theft -
my potential disappointed self already in my mind self protectively had left
Pulled and riffled through and through until I stopped stunned - for it was apparently true
Never but for birth such a thrill - my soul still stores its trembly chill -
yes there it was for all to see
- my book, my name
-there in
THE LI-BRA-RY
2021 April PAD Challenge - Day 4
For today's prompt, write an active poem. *
Prompt: “What does the
Running the 4 mile hallway
Turns out pandemics are the mother of invention -
As weeks morphed to months in self quarantine
Decided to jog -more actively than I’d ever been
Ran concentric laps out on my deck and as winter snow fell thought what the heck ...
Up and down the hallway there - turns out sneakered feet will gather miles just anywhere
And thus the daily 10k jogging steps were born to stay -
sure to last past the final pandemic day
future hold?" Make your
2021 April PAD Challenge - Day 3:
For today's prompt, write a communication poem.
The Music of That Night
Thirteen days and nights passed
sitting on his bed - white pillows piled high - he lay his raven hair back -
I combed cologne through - and sat, sometimes kneeled, other times lay in the crook of his arm our fingers entwined - quiet but for the whoosh of oxygen - of course there were songs to be sung that he had taught me as a tiny girl never expecting to reach this age - this day - Swing Low Swing High -Chariots on white horses coming for to take him home - and newer tunes -The Music of the Night - all sorts of things -
On that 12th night I ran glycerin across his lips and hummed Pathetique, The New world Symphony and as midnight passed a shift gently shook the room with perceptible predictable entree - in those soft lit predawn hours I fell silent - suddenly struck with the absolute irrelevancy of sound -no need in our new paradigm for such - for you see the orchestra crescendoed along my pounding heart as my father raised both arms from beneath his coverlet and with eyes closed -
conducted
in perfect
time -
together
with the
music in
my mind,
heart and
soul ...
slept for a bit
and woke-my
hand flat on his
chest-I counted
three precise beats
fin
Out of ...a work in progress
She texts, poems, pleasantries, news, links, congratulations and such -
She tries reaching out in emails, phone messages, postcards, psychic telepathy, prayer, again and such
Months flow into years, she continues yet, does not hear back very much
Until even this faintest of “much” fades as well.
She lives each year with her silent grown -married and himself a father now twice over - child - in the surreal seared, scarred with pain land of the euphemistically designated
out of touch -
Oh well,
a custom tailored version of never expected nor etiology understood plain spoken in silence -
capital H hell.
What can one do or say after a while, but carry on continue to try-
shake the malaise each morning blink sleep from each eye,
draw a deep breath and sigh, one of those shiver shudder walk-on-her-grave deepest of sigh...breaking the seal- bursting myriad memory from a depthless charged soul -
Oh well...
With a strong cleansing breath she stretches, reaches and once again just for this day with a final sigh,
frees it all to flutter onward floating the flotsam of fracture into the high.
021 April PAD Challenge Day 2
Prompt: “What does the future hold?"
Make your answer the title of your poem
The Arc Bent
Held in powerful hands - small unlined written in childhood to the gnarled knuckles of those who have held and fended far too much for far too long - to all in the in between -grabbing fast refusing to release -
together in a passionate power pulling, shaping, in sacred malleability that oft cited arc to bend - to bend to simple righteousness - shimmering with the history of hope indefatigable - together in the shimmer of the shine protected and jubilant in the shining
of metaphorical mythological movement -now
Manifested -
liberty and justice for All by All
The arc bent
On waves of aquamarine (in concert with NaPoWriMo road not taken prompt)
at twenty – found myself in a white dress
father at my side – in an alcove heading
down an aisle that had nothing to do with
who I was or what I felt and no –there was
no little one pushing the walk – simply in-
explicable inertia at least inexplicable now
things were different then – I was different
then – went along to get along and there I
walked – every road has a reason – this one
led after several months of the blurry groom
finishing service duty to a honeymoon – one
of those packages advertised on Thirty-Fourth
Street, NY at Liberty Travel. The Virgin Islands,
almost aptly named – three islands one sleepy,
one with ‘night-life’ and one in the middle –
I, a would be hippie Goldie Locks chose the
“just right” middle – deplaned in a pale linen
sheath and Jackie O sunglasses in St. Croix
and as the doors opened was sucked as surely
as Alice down the rabbit hole into wonderland.
I was home – frangipani filled my head – my
heart slowed and recalibrated a new rhythm
as I walked down the plane steps I shook off shoes –
in love with a place in a way that excluded my shorn
headed compatriot with the matching ring and his
distinctly different and wildly mecurial temperament.
But, that was that road – patently perfectly different
from the ticky-tacky houses of surburbia lined up
on Long Island or Scarsdale that I foresaw with
chilled foreboding marching me onward on a conveyor
belt to my eventual plot in some tree laden stone garden.
I had escaped … and stay I did, we did, - the marriage
surviving on the nectar of paradise – the brilliance
of crimson flamboyant blossoms, bougainvillea and
crystal waters, friends with sail boats and cold wine,
crayfish pulled from the water, a job offered teaching
little children, eventually a baby of my own – a huge
German Shepherd dog that ran free as childhood Lassie
a perfectly pointed Siamese cat rubbing my ankles -
sitting on a terrace nursing the infant child watching swallows swoop at sunset – uncaring when corrected
that they were bats after all –
day after day unfolded each presenting another gasp of agape wonder at postcard beauty …
the baby stood and toddled and
the fellow with the matching band – sometimes lost it and smashed something or needed ice for his knuckles when they met my teeth – everything healed quickly in the clear salt water, in the laughter of friends,
folk music on guitars, reggae dancing barefoot in the streets, steel drums, and motorcycle rides through the rainforest –
until he grew radically restless and needed to leave – beginning a drumbeat that grew louder minute
by minute, month by month, until suitcases packed I walked the plank to the plane into the open arms of family who mostly, but for one never
understood why I had chosen to stay away –
Every road has its destination –
that one to inexpressible beauty
and fruitfulness seeding the implantation of certainty that there
was always another way, another road – another time -
The matching ring cast to the wind with its wearer -violence it seems
does not melt easily in the cold New York winter – replace flamboyant
blossoms with bare limbs of scrawny trees –in one of those neighborhoods
escaped for just enough years – and one cannot help but see what is plain –
Another road, books, and libraries, papers and writing, trains, and teaching teens, listening to the uncanny wisdom of a small child growing into the man I knew he would become, - friends, cold white wine on summer beaches, walks in The Village near grad school and more grad school, rushing home to sweet
little boy hugs and games, snuggles and hot chocolate and marshmallow snow days and when he visited family, allowable lust,
oh that allowable consummated consummate lust.
This jiggling path, from folk to disco, from fairy tales to Faulkner to Freud side by side with motherhood, and more big slips of paper for framing, letters to trail my name.
Finally, a friend, with a centered center, flowed into an unexpected love,ready made children, a birthed book, and another and another with my name on the spines -
This forsaken, forced upon road, this just long and windy enough road to build a career, a life, and feel the poetry of Caribbean warmth flooding veins in the coldest of days – moving forward on new roads – fed on with wisdom of that first footfall placed decisively on a path that felt right – continuing on all the others – that followed, all the others that continue to flow – to flow as clear as the crystalline confidence of the Caribbean sea – rocking me to tomorrow trusting in the path.
2021 April PAD Challenge: Day 1
For today's prompt, write an introduction poem.
Footfalls
I hear the steps
gathering down
The Street of long
ago - familiar faces
penned in pleasure
Here on this first day
No introduction necessary
Welcome to the world of pain
Where grown men cry for their mama
As others watch in
helpless horror the
indifference chilling
as a casual hand in a
pocket a knee on the
neck of all ..
as we rise up
stand up draw
breath from death
and introduce ourselves to one
another - Finally.
Seeing, hearing,
addressing, ending
the pain.
Introducing humanity.
2021 April PAD Challenge Day 2
Prompt: “What does the future hold?" Make your answer the title of your poem
2021 April
