Posts for June 6, 2018

Category
Poem

Grafitti

Artistic grafitti on a Bulgarian wall
asked an intriguing question
What would your age be
if you didn’t know how old you are?
The answer brought instant freedom!
Freedom to be young at heart  
rather than over the hill
Freedom from hearing
You’re doing pretty good
for someone YOUR AGE
Freedom from 
the fear of turning
35 – 40- 65 – or 70
Freedom to be ME!
In the present moment!
Ageless and free


Category
Poem

On My Block V or Makes Sense to Me

This still 
It’s been still tonight
Not quiet. Just still.
Traffic still rattles on
as the tread submits to combustion
And dissolves into or onto or above
These taxpayer funded asphalt ribbons
the reverb to my solitude I guess. 
Breeze been steady tonight
Just caught a swell of them
Windows wide open that fresh
Rolling across my arms 
Almost felt like that time
I was standing on the back porch 
Of the Carnegie Center during that party 
And that breeze found me and left me
Standing still quiet in the middle of noise
Faded
Wanting a milkshake and a couple of straws 

It almost felt like that


Category
Poem

HAVE YOU EVER?

Have you ever stood on the edge of a precipice
Gazing at the vast expanse of nature
Grass, trees, a river hundreds of feet below?

And as you marveled at the wondrous panoramic view
Did you suddenly take a flying leap off the edge
Plunging toward the river below in free fall
Even singing the lyrics to the Tom Petty song
As you descended perilously to what seemed to be certain death?

Then, did you notice a tree growing out of the side of the cliff
And were you able to grab onto it, breaking your fall
Then carefully climbing down the treacherous incline
Did you reach the river and collapse on the bank, thankful to be alive?

Have you ever done that?
Neither have I
I wouldn’t advise it
It sounds dangerous.


Category
Poem

Painstaking

Adrift in shadow
Tendrils wrenched from thirsty soil
Linger endlessly


Category
Poem

Living in Pieces

Battered,
          Broken,
                 Shattered
                          Pieces,
                                  Lying on the floor.
Swept up,
          Picked up,
                  Patched up 
                              Pieces,
                                   Walking out the door. 


Category
Poem

Deluge

Like the branches twisted and bobbing
in the backyard creek
that rushes with winter rains,
I lie on the floor
entangled in your limbs —
listening to soft snores
and showers pound the skylight —
trying not to drown.


Category
Poem

No Tools Taught to Rise Above Home

She was only a little more
than thin
But he called her
Fat Twiggy”
Since she had chosen to have
Short hair
Just another disapointment for him
He had to be in control of something
So he filled their lives with sarcasm
That cut as though
They had all committed suicide
Scars
That stayed and stayed
And would not wash off
Even with the attention of a functional
Lover. 
But whom did they attract?
Weak men with the need to 
See them as wanting
See them as bleeding
They bent to a will of straw
As though it were iron
They saw it as iron
But failed to feel its heat
Burning into the flesh
Of their brains
Building onto what they knew
To be their truth. 


Category
Poem

Kapoho

I sense you are gone,
physically,
where once spirit voices whispered to me
in wake of your sacred pools,
beneath your groves, 
where I felt your eyes, 
seeing me,
in a way I had never been seen,
calling me back,
the dust in the rear window clouding my vision then.

You remained there,
stories in ancient stones,
and I longed to return to you,
feel your gaze, a galaxy of salt and fresh co-mingling,
cool currents on child brown skin, 
where I held my breath,
listening then, to hollow laughter echoing
in the presence of the holy,
where I knew,
held you in my rib cage, in my gut,
my naau,
a place of holding memory that wasnʻt mine.

And now I hear, from far away,
that you are gone,
her heat pouring over your spirit land,
her creation, your charred succumbing,
every stone enveloped by her being.
Your hollow voice now fills with her blood flow,
your cool ponds, now heat with her longing, 
your solid bones have become her body.
ribs of your knowing becoming hers,
as my memory of your seeing
will remain with me.


Category
Poem

Given a Room of Our Own, Anything…

Given a Room of Our Own, Anything…

 

A cup of words are not 

to be spoken, my love,

instead relish it

like a tree’s sweetness. 

Anything you can cup

in your hands, savor.

Breathe in the sassy

and the silent, breathe

in its everything. 

Sigh clouds 

of immense power

as you breath out.

Say to it, You are my blood,

Sister.  We will nod 

our heads together

over these steaming words—you’ll

have a cup too, perhaps a mug—

and together, my love, 

our anything will be possible. 

Melva Sue Priddy


Category
Poem

Who Wonders at All?

The cloud is a prisoner.
The sky holds; contains it.
Who wonders at all
that people can see any
and everything in a cloud?
Who on earth has ever said,
“Look at that sky so full of itself!”
Maybe you have heard as I have,
when it is a particularly pretty day,
“The sky is so cloudless.”
I don’t know which is worse,
to be gazed at and assigned all possibility
or to be seen, quick, clear through,
for what you lack.