Surrender

So, I drip sap for you.
Wrangle
words.
You are my vice.
You are mine.
I have given
up the fight, tired
of pretending
there's anything
                    I want
to write about but
you.

dverse

Downfall

Yeah, it's like that, Baby

Our initials carved inside a heart.

For a good time call-

me

Scrawl my name in colors and in loops - big and curved,
                                                                                  declaring.

You heard I was the one.

I'm a train, whizzing past, fast
      and bright
 with wrecked
        notions.

Song lyrics, catchy -
validating

Put
profundity where it doesn't belong -
                  where I can see it -
 say it short and sweet.

....
has a small...

soul.

I'm a building, tall and old and you're
              defacing value.
You're a break I shouldn't take
           and what's that in my pocket?  I'll
                                                             lock it up
                                                                     in lace,
send with love.

It's late - I shouldn't be here.

You've got my number.

dverse

Which language do you speak?

Do not
        the celestial spaces speak
                        a story we all can hear?  The play of color, words.
                            The rainbow, poetry.  Tell me it’s not so and I’ll know
                                            we speak a different language, you and I. The clouds,
                                                      a patchwork of paragraphs to form a truth, like the
                                                          peacock, butterfly or pearl,
                                                          playing, dancing party-colored, as an
                                                               invite.  All manner of mosaic by a master hand.  Come                        away, they beckon, there is a pot of gold.  Carnations blush in answer when
                              the beryl sky blooms
                                          so why not we?  Ultra the marine sea when her waves pull
                                                 heavenward.  Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly and the sweet
orange tree flames
                   forth but we…we
                                 want to
be
black or white.  Perhaps gray…but that’s
                                                       still dull.  We denigrate or bleach to stone, forgetting
                                                          the possibilities of just the quartz. We sum up the
                                                             epic in neat type-print
                                                                            and the clacking of the keys drowns
                                                                                                        out
                                                                                                            the melody of
                                                                                                            the northern
lights.  Hi ho,
  it’s off to work
                we go and we whistle
                      out
                      of tune, pretending solemnly we know – of anything at
                                                                                    all…of literature, polite; the
muses, maybe
                 and the clouds laugh so hard they cry.  We run for cover and they have no
                             choice but
                                           to match us in our haze.  They eclipse, they render dim the
                                                           sun, casting over and then exhausted, finally, the
                                                                                                                        light
retires….we imagine.  But the moon in protest glimmers just a sprinkle, 
                                                                                                       And I write on what’s been said                       before; clothe in words, expressions I didn't author.  I’ve formed
                          nothing and certainly nothing out of dust.  I’m just a beggar canvassing any to 
                                                                                                                                     view the canvas painted with an all
     inclusive
    invite to the
party for the prodigals.  The party for the pious and the poor, the Pharisee and pure if they
might see like Michelangelo, a hand stretched
                                                            down, look into the sky and hear a story, true.




openlink night, jingle poetry

Death

So, I’ve been thinking about death,
                    the ripping of it
and how, natural as it is,
                               it doesn’t feel right.

But what is right?
         And who am I
to know, to say, to judge?

The part of every story that we hate.
The words mixed up, the prose awkward
                                              and we always want a different ending.


                                                 And I’ve been thinking that departure can feel
                                                                                                                like attack
or like a rapid current in the agony of life’s ebbing river.
            About how the oscitance of passage
                                                      pulls in, too, the protesting pieces
                                                                      of those left behind.so we’re
                                                                              each time a little less
whole. 


Yes, the gateway
yawns, lazy-like and shards of our
glass hearts fly in with the summoned. 


                                           Maybe they’re collected, those bits, constructed anew
and returned.
But I don’t know. 


Immanent, Innate, born to die.  To live.
                           But still.

Death
declares her will, her time and we gape (each time) in shock. 
              How dare she?
                            She advances with a vow.
                                                             We retreat, denying.

The sum and substance in the end so brief and we realize we’ve only skimmed.
             And who or what is there to loathe when life at last is finished?
                No.  Bitterness is for those here and we alienate ourselves from the inevitable
                                                               and from love, which is all we really have.
                                                                       Our reflections,
baseless
because mocking death travels with a mixed bag and we want
                                                                                       nice and tidy.
Who can handle the profundity of the commonplace fact of finality, the rhymeless,
                                   unpoetical and unrehearsed tragedy when all
                                               along we’ve begged for clowns.

                                                                                          So, now,
fumbling, we place  flowers (which, too, will die) by words engraved, words,
                                    too few.

                                                   Our hearts, raw, ache, incompetent to
beat alone within the poverty of our existence.
                 We become
                       beggars who know not anymore what we
                                      want- more or less?

                                                     Though distinct in details, death is not diverse.
But still, I feel my words to be like death, an interrupted sequence.
             I have no lines to close with.






submitting at dverse

Swing

Source: thishopelessromantic.tumblr.com via Nicole on Pinterest

A swing in winter,
snow covering its red seat, untouched
means play resumes in summer.






submission at dverse

You Decide

In your own mind, you are a superhero.
The pages glossy as your mind,
         and me,
              maybe I'm catwoman, loving you or hating you
                 and you decide.
You write the story, you choose the ending
and somehow you see not that a victim should not be offered a cape.

When you don't know
where your story's going
because you don't know where
             your life is going.....


             Keep going.
                               Go with the
flow or go against the grain
but, go.

There is healing in movement.
                             Move loudly in protest
                                or move slowly in silence
but be
moved.  To tears,
             to action,
             to goodness,
             and on toward necessary change.

You worry
you're wandering.
but steps mean trust and the path is hidden only from your weak eyes.
      Strain, seek.  It will one day be made plain.

Imitation

Would you catch me if I fall?
I hear you hesitate, I hear you stall
like one tripping on a crack;
stammering foot, stuttering answer
would you cure the cancer
eating angrily at my well-formed thoughts and creeds
like the insect intent on destroying weeds?
Answers though, don't come sailing
but instead with fractious failing,
They topple with the vicious waves.
I know you might
if I would fight.



Pretty sure that no one would recognize this as modeled after T.S. Eliot.  But I had to attempt.  Not because I love him so much (quite the opposite) but because this was too coincidental.  I'm currently a student of English Literature.  I'd been sailing along quite nicely - until "The Waste Land".  I read it and didn't understand a word.  Furthermore, I thought, "This is insane.  He was insane!  And yet, he's supposed to be some poetical genius.  And surely I'm supposed to 'get' him.  I have to 'get' him.  If I don't, I've made a mistake in my field of study."  Frustrated, I grabbed my six year old daughter and said, "We're going to write a poem.  Go grab some random books - we're referencing them."  So we wrote a nonsense poem including nursery rhyme references as well as references from Hemingway, amongst others.  The next day, my teacher admitted that she found this poem to be 'exclusive'.  That the references were so many it would be hard for most to follow.  The above poem, I modeled after the first stanza in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" which I enjoyed so much more than "The Waste Land."  


Submitting at dVerse

Sestina

Attempt at a Sestina.  Be gentle.  I probably got it wrong.  :)

He said, 'Obsession.'
and I said, 'That's right up my alley.'
Method as a form of madness,
Calenture of the brain
and I've never been much for medicine.
I'm not looking for a remedy.

You offer me your remedy
to cure me of my obsession.
I swallow hard your medicine,
and find myself in your dark alley.
Thoughts warp inside my brain
and I wonder what is madness.

Sanity or madness,
gives your supposed remedy?
Take an image of my brain,
It's part of my obsession.
The way to get there is the alley.
What effect has had your medicine?

Bitter is this medicine,
inducing only madness.
I arrived through a back alley,
and now I need a remedy
to heal me of my obsession,
freedom for my brain.

I need freedom from my brain.
I need to know who has the medicine
to lighten this obsession,
this certain type of madness.
Who can offer remedy?
I've been searching in the alley.

I must escape this alley.
I must escape my brain.
Looking for a remedy
Looking for some medicine
to stop this sort of madness,
let go of this obsession.

The remedy's right up my alley.
to cease the obsession in my brain.
I'm in need of medicine, I have to stop the madness.


Submission at dverse- poet's pub