Imagine
Poems Writings & Reflections by Pearl Ketover Prilik
Friday, September 20, 2024
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Oh August
IMG_2297.jpeg internet photo
Oh August
Oh August – most regal month
So aptly named -awaited eagerly
as a child who yearned for
sticky summers to crisp, for cool
breezes to blow on my legs as
summer flowers still stood and
school! - those halcyon halls of
joy, elixirs of chalk and quiet,
new squeaky shoes and ah
blackboards wiped clean with
white wet cloths … beckoned
beckoned soon… soon… soon
Oh August …month when so many
years beyond childhood -
my father chose, on white pillows
piled high to step from this mortal
coil to another …
and yet, oh August, oh August he only
deepened the mystery, the joy of all
that awaited, unknown
mystic and magic… floating just
beyond…
August.
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
Let Anger Bang Its Head
Anger is the word that lives behind the door
that remains closed – a stain of outrage
seeps under and rises up as I wipe it
with cloths of protest and activism
hope, poetry and determination – but
Anger stays behind the door – they
tell me, tell me, tell me, that to live without
anger is impossible, disingenuous,
sanctimonious, even a blatant lie, and yet…
Anger is the word that lives behind the door, as
I stand on the other side - aware of its possibility
skeptical of its productivity when outrage and
action, reflection, and when possible - reconciliation
wave bright banners of hope and possibility as anger
silently broods, stews, festers, contained and unneeded.
For I do know that anger holds its finger ever on a trigger –
grasps the shaft of a shiv – for anger is blind, dumb and active
Let anger stay behind the door – let it bang its empty blinded
head against the walls until it distills its fetid blood to useful outrage,
and then, and then, - I shall take those clean cloths of hope and
wipe and wipe and wipe
what I can clean, aware when to enlist
help when all that -is -
is just too much to bear
alone.
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Proof and Prophecy
Proof and Prophecy
The winds of change
blew and I thought
they had vanished
as crumbled leaves
in winter’s coming
and yet… and yet..
Here it comes
The winds of change
once again on a back
no longer young
resurging in a heart
forever filled with
hope ..
Oh yes, together
once again we stand
in time’s reflection
and refraction
shimmering as
the times they
are a changing…
We are the change
We are the wind
We are the time that was
Singing in the time that is yet to be..
We are the proof and prophecy of time
Changing…
Proof and Prophecy
Proof and Prophecy -
The winds of change
blew and I thought
they had vanished
as crumbled leaves
in winter’s coming
and yet… and yet..
Here it comes
The winds of change
once again on a back
no longer young
resurging in a heart
forever filled with
hope ..
Oh yes, together
once again we stand
in time’s reflection
and refraction
shimmering as
the times they
are a changing…
We are the change
We are the wind
We are the time that was
Singing in the time that is yet to be..
We are the proof and prophecy of time
Changing…
Wednesday, July 3, 2024
On rain dancing
On rain dancing
Once I danced in the ever summered
sweet tropic rains … skies opening to
slanted sheets love slapping my face
awake – cooling my hot skin, soaking
wild hair slick against my bare back -
Now I rush from the car holding a coat
above my salon coiffed curls – ducking
from a single drop – and for moment –
just, for a moment,
-stop-
and ponder
letting the damn
coat slip to
ground -
stepping
back
out
into
rain
once
again
free
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Doors Doors Doors ....
Doors Doors Doors ...
Hallways limned with eye stretched lines of door after door
Straight, twisted, crystal, planked, illusory, sidewise, more and more
found down in childhood rabbit holes in verdant gardens green
on and on appearing, in places contrived, concocted, and unseen
Big doors, small doors, mouse doors with cartoon cats awaiting
pretty doors, shabby doors hanging on their hinges, sealed doors,
cracked doors, revelatory, deceptive, secret doors, all with lessons baiting
Doors that swing open bang you upside the head – amid them that singular
door that fills most with dread -
you know that door, the door that shall hungrily open swallow and mark you - doornail dead -
Onward –
Doors hiding tigers and ladies behind their planks
Doors shimmering with jewels, with joy, with ecstasy, as gasping into thanks
Doors that open into my body to enter love and exit the miracle of child
Doors that are pristinely quietly shut and others flung wide and wild
Motorcycles behind some and hearses draped in black
Door limned and shimmering ahead and doors looking back
Doors oh doors they say when one closes another opens
Sometimes this is good and true
Others times slammed in one’s face shocking throughout and through
Oh these gobsmacked doors …
Swinging, locked, open, ajar, others just a slivered, silver, Siren-calling crack
Some beckon with fresh white paint and dripping trellised perfumed roses
Others draped in sinister solid black
Always among them that door that will open up - that final final door–
a knob here and there turned tenuously recklessly, curiously, anxiously,
will-o-the-wisp devil-may-care - up until now always opening onto more
In front once they marched onto a horizon far far beyond sight– now ahead one ponders
how many more, doorways, how many more or less doors to try, how much more light…?
Someday whilst looking back, forward, or distracted by life's mundanity and more
The door - The door - The door -
That door will fling open to klieg lights of stardusted Universe
And there shall be … Yes, there shall be …..
?????
Did you think I had a conclusion, that I have a vision, to share all that I clearly see?
No, dear readers, this is where we must stop and heed the peal of carillon clarion call
Where we must cease hypothesizing that this significant door is actually the end of all
For unknown in the stardusted spectrum of eternity there just might be an endless hall
Saturday, June 22, 2024
The Maiden, The Prince and the Child
The Maiden, The Prince and the Child
Once upon a time in a land far off and away
there was born a little girl in a most unusual way
to a maiden who was young and a prince who
heart was failing as he lay upon a hospital bed –
a tiny girl child arrived without customary portents…
instead –
On the eve of the young prince’s wizardly cardiac operation
with loved ones waiting in scrunched faced anxious anticipation
the young maiden paced, felt stirring, a rushing urgency in her gut
and with fast patters down a hallway she
spied a chair next to her princely lover but -
could not sit - it seemed there was something there, there,
far larger than any pea – twas the referenced little girl slipping …
into the world – dusted with mystery, magic and curls –
unexpected – manifested from wherever –
me
Friday, June 14, 2024
Treasured
Treasured
Greeting cards and sentiments
handwritten and signed by those
once children, others now long
gone – letters still somehow un-
yellowed folded pieces of lined
school paper filled with love and
song lyrics passed in the hallway
by a sweaty palm of a lovely boy
eager to move from friend to some
things – these things – photographs
catalogued one winter when dread
assailed and thoughts of a looming
horizon motivated legacy leaving –
ahh the files, the files, manilla tabbed
and computer coded – filled with words
words, words, research, reflection, books
written and in halted progress a pilgrimage
of poems – trapped as data – some escaped
into volumes, stray pieces of printed paper,
handwritten scratches , oh the binders of
would be novels, that would not breathe,
and the paraphernalia, jewelry, a diamond
ring of promises made and broken another
of promises kept and delivered evermore,
my mother’s father’s tiny police shield
mounted on a gold disk that my mother
wore every day, I broke the chain,
forget the jewelry, lovely in their own
right but not keepsakes, not worth
reciting gemstones and turquoise,
the baby ring I wore in kindergarten
chewed through somehow, the
charm bracelet of childhood, jangling
with small tokens, a parakeet, a bicycle,
a typewriter, even then…
on and on the things, the things, when a super
storm hit – I packed a plastic container with all
considered vital.. it is in the bottom of a bedroom
closet – I’d leave it now if rains fell..books written
have been writ, poems published have been read,
jewlery mere stones, sentiments remembered,
no need to gaze upon handwritings, of children now
no longer adoring nor parents and grandparents whose
adoration remains without a card .. perhaps my grandmother’s
letter where she thanked me for being a wonderful granddaughter
a year or two after my father’s death, or my father’s letter, written
at twenty before heart surgery he did not expect to come through…
maybe, maybe not. What is truly a treasure, tangible and precious-
a notecard from my analyst and mentor an almost magical woman
who lived in a house with a white arbor lush with pink roses, a sitting
room of chintz and the kindest, wisest eyes ever to look upon me, perhaps,
her note card – saying that something about her feeling for me, perhaps not –
Most definitely the wedding bands upon my hands - if not worn they would certainly be in a
treasure box, the “wow” one on the occasion of our twenty-fifth when things were good shining
with my husband’s obvious usually completely unstated pride, the simple gold band, we
married in, yes these, yes these and the half cut glass bowl that sat on my grandmother’s
table – that crashed to the floor several years ago … half shattered… a large semi circle
remaining…still holding in the prism of rainbow reflections the love of a life-time
the rings, and the the broken bowl my legacy, my treasure. I think of tossing all else and it
brings me joy and clarity as does the peace that I need not do anything. I know if a storm were
to come or I simply heeded the call to go…
I would check my fingers for my rings, wrap the sharp edges of the shimmering remnants of
my grandmother's cut glass bowl in a piece of her worn soft rose quilted coverlet and walk out
through the door
unencumbered.
Wednesday, June 5, 2024
I am the creation of words
I am the creation of words
I am the creation of words
my hair fingered by countless
lovers .. my skin caressed,
slapped, cut, imprisoned
and freed by thousands of
hands - calloused, gentle,
manicured, newborn, aged,
drenched in filth and courtly
perfume
I am the creation of words
swallowed in greedy gulps
in childhood beds and
Caribbean sea shores
on grandmother’s velvet couch
in university libraries, subways
railroads, and jet planes –
my eyes fill with cinders of
bodies burnt, squinting in
rabbit holes, insane asylums
train stations, savannas stretching
I roam - ingest verdant fields,
slumber in feather-beds, forests,
city streets, grandfather’s straw bed,
roll in ecstasy in gardens,
under brilliant skies, torrential rains
tornadoes, tsunamis, drenched in
weather, in love, in hate, in pity, in
horror, in exultation, in adoration, in
mysticism, magic and math, mania,
madness, mindfulness, each image
intractably impressed retina to soul
I am the rallying cries, and solitary
screams for help, for joy, for justice,
for grief, for pain, for pleasure each
echoing in the chambers of ear to heart
I taste each swallow- though mere words
may be lost – I am the worded creation -
the lyric legacy of countless pages has
formed me, informed me,
terrified, teased, tormented,
tickled, transformed the
constant metamorphosis
the shimmering murmuration
of fluttering leaves digested
whole into my blood, bone,
mind and soul …
I am so titled
stamped
and numbered
indelible volume