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

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 

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…

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 

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.

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