Arms stretched to heaven
Cactus dance in yellowed plain
Praying for more rain.
Category Archives: Poems
My own poetry, poetry is what I most love to read and write. It is the first category I select on anyone else’s site, but also realize it is not pleasing to everyone’s literary palette, and some of these are better than others. I sort of doubt Walcott or Ms. Oliver are the least bit nervous, however, enjoy these glimpses into my soul and how I see the world.
Day 16: 31 in 31
PTSD
Hate is the terror that follows me
Vituperative words the clothing of that
Second shadow that all the meds or therapy cannot sever
It crouches ever on my heels, small in the noon day sun of reality.
A shade more deadly but less sympathetic than my fleshy cancer,
Waiting for the evening creep of media reports,
Well-intentioned Awareness campaigns,
Inadvertent closure of an exit with any other in the room,
The uncontrolled and frequent contact in a crowd;
The memories’ setting sun swell it’s size and power
Till panic swallows my hard won peace of mind.
Day 10: 31in31
Last Leaf
Flame ballerina
Pirroettes free from her branch
Dancing to her death.
Day 9:31 in 31
The words and memories speed
retreat
like landscape past the coachcar window.
My monkey mind scrambles and chases
catching only wind and wave
Until I breathe in
Out
Find peace in this new
Where I do not know.
Day 8: 31in31 Poetry Challenge
Middle class affluence always looks the same
The bullseye symbol of suburban prosperity
Restaurants with barber pole motif
A giant yellow M
From sea to shining sea the chains stretch
linking those who have it all to what they will need next.
Day 5: 31 in 31
Haiku for Evans Georgia: October afternoon
Sky in unique blue
Fishcrows seek the juicy frog
Calm before fall storms.
Day 4: 31 in 31 (Poems that is, precursor to Nanowrimo)
This place I learn, was once called Frogpond
Until Mr. Thomson brought the train right through town
No presumption of progress or high ideas of culture then, just crops and sweat and slavery’s shadow.
Then money road in on the railroads back
And changed all that.
Bustling bank managers and lofty tradesman
Dressed their pale wives in diamonds and paid their pennies to hear Blind Willy sing the blues.
But progress took it’s dollars back
as century turned again, freeways failed to follow track.
Main street storefronts stare vacantly at empty sidewalks.
And only the shadows are the same with the harsh demarcation of white and black.
Day 3:31 in 31 Front Porch Epiphany
It started in the west, behind the break of trees
A racous caw of alarm,
“Coming, coming, coming!’
Other corvid voices adding “Closer, closer, closer!”
“Coming! Coming coming!”
“Flee, flee, flee!”
Innocent of cause, I watch and listen.
I cannot hear the engine noise carried on the breeze
until long after the Chikadee aand whipporwhill, the finch and jay
join the siren song.
“Evacuate-ate-ate, Evacuate-ate-ate!”
“Fleeeee we will! Fleeeee we will! Fleeeee we will!”
“Go, go, go; hope, hope, hope”
“Fly fly, why?”
“Not me, not me, not me”
“Shhh,”the mother sparrow says to her late brood, “we stay stay stay.”
“Danger! Danger! Danger!” the murder echoes through its ranks.
Even the donkeys on the next door farm begin a warning bray.
The mockingbird, city born, makes siren sounds as it flit from tree to tree.
Then I hear the engines south of me, and see them come
the metal beasts that eat the trees.
The roads needed clearing, a man a house,
and every pen a page.
I understood the need they met, these ripping, gripping teeth of steel
but never understood before, how those who live there feel.
Day 2: 31 in 31
Haiku
Cloud lambs scampering
Gilt leaves tremble amid the green
Summers last hurrah.
Day 1: 31in31
The men and women clutch tight to other’s rumored failings,
the straws of a destiny gone wrong, greedily gathered.
The branching differences of vision chopped away,
opinions carved to suit and
Stuccoed with a righteous judgement,
motes of mismade choices in mud smear glue
fortify the icy glass walled houses
Sheltering and unifying fear.
All the voices swirl in moldish mist;
“If you can’t say something nice, come join the fun.”
“Maybe sit a little closer to me,”
“Have you heard about the latest scandal?”
“Did you here what So and so said about them?”
“Politics today…”
“Society today…”
“If it wasn’t for them, I would be…”
“Well if it wasn’t for you, they’d be…”
“If you don’t believe like me, you’re wrong…”
“If your not with us….”
But the chorus of the sun and dandelion heads are calling me to hope
With relief, I slip away.