Your Spin

Why is the pain always yours -
 or
    his -
 but never mine?  I suppose, because I know too much to
                                                                           wallow.  I'll own my share
 and have
 but I don't hoard, and I'm not accepting this new variety
                      you heap - or hoist.  I've lived a trilogy, not a tragedy and I'm plotting nothing and this is
  not my battle.  In fact,
      today, the wind carries
        caution.
 I've learned to apprehend its coming.  I feel
             the rain in my gut,
 and the air warns of strain, and I'm not restless, and I can't lead the way.
 I'm not persuading, and there is no path.  I just know
                                                                                                                    when to take
cover.
 I won't debate or writhe, prey in terror and in wait.
I'm tall, delaminated, back erect, leaving ruins,
 and the only thing I wonder is how or why I'm here
again, this place so familiar.
 But now, I have reserve of
                          strength
and I don't pine prostration.
My naked heart won't betray me.
What you don't know
is what I know,
 and there's a scent I
follow.
I'm weaving out, past piles
  of cursed pity, and willows cackling as they weep.  One pilgrimage I make, where there are promises of sanity.
                         The candlelight almost got me, the shadows making faces, fooling.
                          This
                               is not a transfer.
Watch me, now, each step, as each trick scurries, hiding.
 They
                                                                              know better.  Swept once under the carpet, for a
moment, bold,
 they best return.
 I'm not in the house keeping
                               business;
 my home's a mess.
                                   So, here's the door.  I'm exiting.  My help is not
your birthright,
so, keep your lack and I'll keep mine.
I bit it
off,
but I'm spitting out.
 I don't
cater any longer to imaginary grace.
                               I've held the root that
                                        spins
                                              straight to
                                                        hell -
and pulled.

The Sunday Whirl
                 

Why

Why this
 every day?  Every way?  Everything. 
Why here and now, then and there?  An
                               addict for the edict, the
                                              regulation and the rules.  The squirm of sense.  The sound of the sometimes rhyme, the slant of the
                               eye.
 The purpose in procrastination or the procrastination in the purpose.  The loyal lines,
              elongated , eloquent. 
               Eternal. 
The education
                                                     in the
                                                             energy created,
 found. 

Examples of exhortation.
 To wrangle with
                                                                                   the

world,
 waste vanity,
watch it
         transform, stare it straight, and curve it into
                 something newer.  Progress requires patience to envision the
                         entire. 
To hope but bend.
                              To exit into yesteryear, time and time again.  To experience precedent events. Unprecedented, too.
                                     Eradicate existing weeds and breed instead, a now enticement.  To
                                                             see again the
                                                                emerald waves where
                                                                        there are
                                                                            calls to ecstasy. To taste. To hide the human, the within, from the human, the without.
 To
                    eclipse the rasp of expression which is mine.
                    Enhance the easy, evaluate
                    each

nuance.
 I can say it with less but I don’t want to.
                 I don’t have to. 
Here. 
                              Here I meld, entranced, benumbed.  Effortlessly, make evident
                                                          the healing,
the effects of expectation.
           Endeavor to take
                          off, to
                                  take in.  An essay on fate, engendering
                                        ending.

Restore the mean, the lean, the state, the slate, redeem embodiment of exchange.  Hush the holler of hell but know it first, to
  emend and edit, melt not in the
  exile, in the sense of the surreal. Nor droop in the enervated slight thrill
                                   of the shrill.  Go ahead, go crazy, find solace in the breeze, gather harmony , create
                  ceremony of resonance. Embrocate with yellow, ecru, like peach exudation, like golden gashes,
                                                                                                                                                         gasping.  Exercise the elements,
ask what’s necessary, what’s present, what’s civilized. Then don’t.  Espy in dreams an empire of enchantment, endear to evolution of revolution, all that’s extraordinary, and magnetic.  Not entertain the masses but illuminate the
                       excellence of madness. Reproduce what’s clear, predict transparent
                                                                                                truth

of there
 of here.
 Tell.
           Enthrall. Write it well.  Enjoin and cleave, then leave.

ABC Wednesday
TS Poetry - Inspired, "Why Poetry?"

Parting

I'm not giving you
                          up;
 I'm  letting you go.
 And I'm trying to
explain the difference,
 and once again,
 I'm getting nothing
                   done.

  I'm trying not
                                   to leave you with claw marks,
 but you're mauled, and
                  my hair is messed like I've been in a bar brawl,
                                                                                      so, I guess the secret's out,
I'm
no good at
               this.  The

sun is
shining an alarm in all its yellow.  The sound of bells surrounds, goad that it's time,
 and I'm stuck inside.

Flexing beneath
                     that first kiss,
 I gave you my fear, abandoned
               apprehension.
 Did you hear me sigh that night,
                               in that place, where all was sacred?  We
                                    hiked on into evening, leaving heat of day, gleaning as we
                                                                                                                         went,
momentum
 from the darker, browner
 prints
 in the
            trail
where the
              recent rain
had marked out simple notions.  The willow
                                                      weeds mourned our descent, and so
                                                                                    did I,
still sated
by the memory and the potion of that earliest taste.  I would not
     trade that
     trace of pearl-
                         like found promise on your tongue.
                                                                    Take away the
                                                                     thrill, the favor and the savor but not
                                                                     the choice, and
                                                                                 I'm sorry now, wading
                                                                                 in the wide wait well of
sacrifice.  Penetrated by the prize, full
        from wine
         ripened in pursuit, so
                                   this pull away like the forced crawl of the
                                                                                 cherished thing now clipped of wings and wasting.
     Scared, I bring an offering - an
        account of all
I'm not.  Hold it tight,
          the

racing.  Have me when I'm grown.

Poetry Jam
We Write Poems

Let's Leave

Life is too short to work so hard,
         so, let's kiss instead.
Make it a marvel.  Reveal
                 to me your secrets through your embrace. Weave a freckled flower through my hair.

Let's get lost in a diner, dance
               on a table, make
                            everybody look,
make everybody
talk.

Let's
               spend all our money up,
stay too long,
laugh too loud,
cause I don't
want
      to miss this.

Pardon my mess;
I'll forgive what you forgot.  Let's be
                          young and love the world today.
                                                                  Throw away
                                                                                    your list of sins and loss.  File them under the who-cares-anyway tab, and
let's find meaning in this moment, not worrying
                   about what's closing in;
search profundity in the seduction of a jukebox.

Your shape and my color, let's blend and spin and mix and match.
Get right out
               of the core of things, decode
by undressing our hearts, play house and nice for now.

Please, take off early.  Let's
                                   leave
now.

Carry On Tuesdays
The Mag

Slipped

We said, we'd like to bathe in the
                                 blue, blue
sea;
swim with dolphins, see the coral.  So we
  went,
we danced,
apricot cordalyne lining a path
for the future,
opened, alone
                                    a bottle of
                                       bubbly, bitter and sweet, under
the highest, hugest moon.
Were there clues beneath our feet?  Gathering in our
 toes?   Were there rumors in the wind?  Were the waves speaking,
                                                                                               keeping time with our throbbing?  Next day, I wore a plume  of posy,
                                                pretended there
was luck in this floral trimming.  That what
we had was rare.

What one incident, word, glance, plucked the hope embedded
                in those
                           easy terms?  Or does joy
                                                    die slowly, June always conceding to an eventual, stipulation of snow?

The thread
in the cross stitch
                           hanging your grandmother
                                gave us held up when we
                                                 did not.  Just a ball dropped;
                                                        one
                                                        of many.  So the knowledge sits tucked
beneath my belt, a threat of the dry throat confession I can't choke
                                                            out and the assembled
court of small town cynics pronounce my guilt of loss.

Sunday Whirl

Above the ruins

Above the ruins of the past, we
  build a monument of all we've learned.  Buried beneath
                              our wisdom,
                                    we've left decaying days.
                                                                       Sturdier than
                                                                         that slab gravel hope, our
intentions slant
but point.  We part the
sky in declaration and clouds pardon our insistence-clearing in absolvance.
Strong to weather, unmoved by either
   rain or rub.  Fragments of
                                 each
 have
formed the irrefrangible and the new has only risen from prior pain.  That which we,
ourselves, are made of.  The flooding gut of springtime
     saturated seeds,

painted grey our walls but not for
                              lack of
loveliness.  The mind's eye still
                             sees within, the
reeds, the palm grass prisms growing, waving on.
Faith
fossilized, we've split where weak
     scarred now with scales for strength, so
                            the future palpitates.
                                             

Carry on Tuesday

Magpie Tales

What is and why

When all is
                  said and done,
poetry will remain. 

 When facts fail and hearts hunger,
poetry will prevail.  

When prose has broken all her promises and nothing’s left of news,
 poetry will awaken.  

She will shine in the measure of a man, whisper,
             words of wisdom,
                    sing songs of truth.
Value seen at last in verse, past madrigal revealed.  

 Rhyme is reason and is more.  

The muse of self
will leave, 

overtaken by eternal form. 

Love found in lyrics, and stretched sonnets of a story we thought we knew
                                                                              will,
 in the end,
create a home.  

Silence but for stanzas, the search begins and in finality of time, poetry will have her say.