Posts for June 6, 2022 (page 9)

High waters come on all topsy-turvy
like celebration:
meagre creeks suddenly made mighty
leaving their narrow shelters
to shimmer like sequins in the weak March sun
with all the chintzy pageantry of making up for lost time
like the fool crowned with gauds as King of Christmas.

The swell, blind and eager, 
ties tallgrass tinsel to the first boughs it can reach
and won’t wait to crest before placing the topper,
hurrying to put its star,
a bike wheel with the rusty, muddled half-shine
of the evening star through murky dusk,
only halfway up.
The decoration struggles to glow against
the redbud’s dark, salamander-damp bark
that’s freckling pink like a negative tan
brought on by such an overcast season. 

The mind has room for other variations:  

The moon’s leering eye  

How thoughts and prayers can glut a society like a backed-up sewer  

That man hawking bible verses above the farmers market chatter  

The cringe of children huddled in a classroom    fearing the thud of a boot     the stutter of            a gun  

The lottery ticket and the idiot  

A penny      once valued and shiny       now bypassed in some leaf-dappled gutter  

Remembering Hank Aaron’s sweet swing  

National Earthworm Day

Aung San Suu Kyi shuttered to house arrest (again)     

The Oh My! or Oh Crap! of love  

Deep siphoning of rights   

The blind eye of wrongs  

Thirteen ways of looking at galoshes  

Ukraine  

The train set you got when you were ten that your father wouldn’t stop playing with  

Time and all its trickery  

The black hole of hot potatoes and dragons  

A knee to the neck of innocence  

That alluring luxury of lilacs  

Rainbows celebrated every month  

The rapture           verse             line              word

pages pool and words swim, 
fingers skim and lips drink,
laced liked brambles or poison, 
musings tangled or illusioned; 

symbols falter and similes wrinkle,
demands billow and ideas kindle, 
thick like thieves or frantic, 
time easing or advancing;

either rhyme or reason, 
pens sign and books burn,
turning us to cinder. 

shaking sounds of your breeze
barking up my limbs and trees
the dirtied dog you’ll always be
shifting in your muddied pleas
i grow tired of your flea disease

I stepped out onto poetry’s tightrope,
foot toeing unwritten imagery
that wordlessly exists in my mind’s eye.
I walked across, wobbling,
and made the mistake
of looking down.

Like Dumbo realizing his magic feather
had been claimed by the abyss of strangled sentences,
I plummeted to a roiling sea of my own jumbled words.
My fragmented creation 
tousled me, waves of hesitation
crashing into my chest.
The ghosts of figments who’ve never found a way to escape my psyche
claw at my skin,
their salty tears flooding my sinuses.

I thought I might drown in my restless hurricane,
but this poem is proof I can weather the storm.

My hair is drying wild in the sun.
I run a hand through it

Yesterday I wrote my best poem
And, dear reader, I believe you’ll be pleased and thankful to know
That right near the end, as I was attempting to make sure all my 
brackets and parentheses were closed
I hit the back key and all was lost (I hate my phone, always)

What a great poem it was – it might have changed the world
or maybe just a few thoughts in just one person
It was so tight, so information rich yet so clear
Even I understood it

But it’s gone, except for the asterisk*

*Old Washington Wordsmiths meets the 1st Thursday of the month
in the Old Washington Guild Hall (Maysville, KY) at 6:30 pm
Jim Lally – director (yes, our Jim Lally)
me- communications manager (I also assign all the titles)

She was a big black mountain of a woman
An infectious laugh, in a wheelchair

        With her wheelchair and infectious laugh
        We played Dirty Uno everyday

Every day we played Dirty Uno
We never talked much about the past

        We never talked too much about the past
        She saved vegetables to make a stew

We laughed when she wanted to make stew
Later she was arrested, extradited

        She was arrested to face murder charges
        They say she killed a man for money

She never had much money for food
She was a big black mountain of a woman.

We train hard
with little cruelties.  

Pathetic girl, what crappy shoes.
Hah- Good throw! Hit the cat.
What were you thinking idiot?
Noob! Git Gud!
Snapped branches & spray paint.
Whisper, shove, & trip.
Thousands of improvement opportunities,
honing life skills and best business practices.  

Diploma 18 comes. Hard work done.
You’ve earned your gun.

                                           Dream of my death

                                       Jack,
                              who led a basketball team
                              to the state tournament’
                              who led Bible study, in fact,
                              on Wednesday night,
                              having parred the 18th hole
                              of golf, was buried yesterday.

                              In my dream, later in the day,
                              as I napped, a death angel stole
                              into my dream.  She was a sight
                              to look upon. A class act,
                              a testament
                              to beauty, entering my dream,
                              Jack.

                              Her voice, a bird song,
                              unheard in river hills,
                              as her fingers opened my chest,
                              and took out rhyme,
                              letting poetry flow
                              out like Old Seventy Creek,
                              cold and clear.

                              She pulled me near
                              her pale, hazy cheek.
                              I wanted to let go
                              of every word the time
                              she made me feel blessed
                              the way love fulfills,
                              but the whold death was wrong.

                              I opened my eyes.