Oh, play pretend

Lynn Greyling

Oh play pretend - damn the demanding

silence – Come back and play pretend.

Send flying verses over my head folded

like paper air-planes holding your secret

inscriptions to me– your patient progeny –

Oh play, play, play pretend and banish the

capped stench of grief and death alive under

the scars – stanch the scarlet river running 
beneath protestations of healing – Feverish, 
infected with yearning - I cry under my calm 
coolness of fabricated, fatuous, “moving on” –

Please! 

If I cannot have you back –

and I can not have you back–

Oh play pretend! 

I have waited five and twenty years now since

footsteps echoed from your shoes rather than

walking throughout my heart, my mind, my soul.    

Oh play pretend and for just one moment – Live.

THE WATCHMAN – three poems.

Dreamstime.com

THE WATCHMAN  - "Watch"  a poem 

inspired by Björn Rudberg at dVerse
The notion of conscience and accountability is perhaps one of the central essences of what it is to be human – a concept that is here presented by the symbol of the “watchman” …. Here are three quick associations ….

Watch

Born to bear witness

to not turn away from

memory of buildings falling

to ash cindering september

air – born to bear witness

to look with steadfast eyes

on mountains of shoes and

bones - testament to cruelty

Born to bear witness as the 

bloat-bellied children cry be

they close or globe afar flung

The marble turns- from navied

night to noon blazing sun –

the watchman records all in  

indelible ink upon the souls

born to bear witness – for it is

they who shall enrich the soil

of the future with the ash of

remembrance

2 after-thoughts....

~ 

No witness

“I did it” the small

child shouted proud

running in through

the door announcing

a kindness to another

“You have undone all”

spoke the grandfather

with your telling –

you have enlarged

only your own ego –

A watchman is silent,

silk moving smoothly

in grace of thought,

and mitzvoth - seeking

no witness

ever

~ 

The White Rabbit

It was a child’s tale

of looking glass and

wonderland and yet

it is the white rabbit

watching the time to

reach a slippery date

this vested lagomorph

who lingers as the first

watchman–scurrying to

best his best under stress

and duress – as time slides

sideways  

The Wanting

Marina Shemesh

The Wanting

down cobbled stones she hears her own wanting-heart

thumping hobbles dragging dread uncanny closer until 

transformed - pantingly vulnerable as any empty-head

heroine smothers all - she simply waits breathlessly for

some swart heroic swoop to rip the disguise from her
pallid poem and fill her world with rounded vowels. 

Smudged

imaginary garden with real toads

Artist in his Studio by Rembrandt

Smudged 

There is an ache born of longing

written in soft charcoal smudges

The yearn for all that once was and

will never be again - the inexorable

pull toward a future flowing with

fresh unfamiliar faces -vanquished

dreams –this oncoming smudge of

mumuration rising born of all that

was and all that is certainly to come

whirling – into agony stunning even

the most steadfast hopeful soul into

wide-eyed, mouth gaping, stillness –

stillness as the final smudge of that

single infinitesimal fleck of charcoal

erases – this is knowledge, known,

denied, this life lived in the spaces

between  

avmapping.blogspot.com/2011/11/video-murmuration-of-starlings-...

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Warmups.... #1  & #2

#1 (my father was a Rembrandt loving oil painter - who I adored)

She pulled from his peg on the door

His shirt, a tunic, a sash and finally

on tiptoe knocked the black hat

to the floor – on bare feet she

rushed down the stone corridor

out the gate through the red

dust and into the empty studio

She dressed before she turned

paint brush in hand willing her-

Self to become Him for just one

single moment and see the world

as he did stilled long enough to

transport into colored oils….

#2 

In the stillness of long shadows

In the stillness of long shadows

falling softly we stare into the

Quiet - eyes wide and wondering

Where we are and what awaits

in the stillness of long shadows

falling softly

in the incomparable sweetness

Cynthia Cole Davis

in the incomparable sweetness 

they tiptoe together -  
bare toes squishing fresh-dropped dung

watching out for 'grownup-enters' creaks

reach for small fistfuls from the burlap bag

and run - run into and over the dawn lit field

wet grass - through corn - jumping mole holes - 

run to the cool edge of the woods and there bury 
their purloined seeds pressing into the untilled earth

with fingers tremulous stoked by stolid solid certainty - 
knowing that before long a vine will sprout another and 
on-until time tumbles - they are ready - and their wine flows –

Now, they lay together tasting the future on their lips - watching 
clouds as the new rise-sun spills- 
chewing on a pilfered stalk – 
farming - 
soy beans into grapes 

until the call to breakfast