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Quiet In-Out (55)

December 27, 2015

IMG_2595

Quiet In-Out

Just as there is a beat
in every moment, there is also
a rest,
nesting in breath’s breast–
It is where the beat goes too, at its best
(where what is blessed
is blessed).
Eyelids dome walls
as well as sky;
hum thrums–
a tuned whole plied.
There, lone has no meaning,
seemingly–

**********************************

A draft 55 for Margaret Bednar’s Play it Again, Sam on Real Toads–I am rather tired this time of year so resorted to one of the many wonderful 55 challenges, still held in honor of the wonderful G-Man, Galen Haynes. 

The pic is one I took in Ladakh, India, years ago, at a Buddhist shrine. 

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Just In Case

December 26, 2015

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Just in Case

I sneaked a peak
into my pocket,
saved high against
soon lows,
viewed sky against
bluer woes.

Its rock face climbed,
as I moved on,
one Elvis hip,
sometimes softer
than its nestle of pelvis,
other times grinding
a sharp bend
at bone’s end.

I sneaked a peak
into my pocket,
stashed against
the crash–you know,
where mountain
meets ash; self,
aftermath.

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Drafty poem for the wonderful Michael’s “Get Listed” prompt on Real Toads about a change of direction.  

 

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Night Song

December 23, 2015

 Night Song

As I lie, not sleeping,
I find I seek safe-keeping,
handholds in repeating
chipped bits of near-lost prayer.

Our fathering the wake
of mind that won’t forsake
this day’s dark night’s churned lake
for some deeper float in air.

For hours, arts in heaven
plead trespasses forgiven,
against us nothing leaven–
eyelids’ hollowed fare–

all that comes–the kingdom,
phrased arms that, slanted, ring round
this embodied foreground
of me, still lying there

not sleeping,
re-membering safe-keeping,
my father, earth once leaping==
so far now, and so fair–

**********************************

Draft poem for no prompt, but will link to Real Toads Open Platform.

Home at last after nearly two weeks away and feeling a bit more seasonal!  (Though this one and the non-sleep night before arrival here!)  Thanks for all!

ps – the pic is mine–of a Christmas window at New York City Saks Fifth Avenue.

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Teachings (Of a Sort)

December 22, 2015

 Teachings (Of a Sort)

Your front teeth just to let me know
what was what, that
and a clap on the butt.

The ringing slap
a schooled bell’s blare,
something swearing loud
that I’d not yet learned enough
to do you proud.
I don’t even want to talk
about the shakes, their gripping
lessons, my own teeth then given
a run for the money.

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A very non-Christmasy poem that I assure you is not in the least bit autobiographical.  For my own prompt on Real Toads riffing off of two words of a Christmas song (All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth); posted for the Tuesday open link platform.

ps -sorry this is so unseasonal! I hope to come up with something more cheery soon!  

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Sounding Joy

December 19, 2015

DSC00494Sounding Joy

Some have no need
to chart its depth.
My grandmother only worried about what she’d feed
people, and whether the rolls, with their rounds like
child cheeks, had risen, and, if
the chew at the table near equaled
the talk, she’d beam
in the gustatory steam
foregoing the hand-over-hand lifting
of the lead.

While me, I can hardly witness
my own happiness, much less bask,
rather I ask the moment
echoing questions
about lasting, and too, the past,
trying to fathom
what is bound in part
by that effort,

and what is bound in other part
by the nature of the heart,
shaped, as it is, like a fist
that wants to grasp things, hold
them tight, rather than, say, a fish
who’ll swim in stream, pond, sea alike–
who’ll swish even
in the curl of puddle–you know,
if it’s a wise
fish.

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Not sure about the end of this poem, but it’s a draft draft draft for my own prompt on With Real Toads to write something using two words of a Christmas carol or other holiday song.  In my case, the words are “sounding joy” from Joy to the World.  

Process Note–I use sounding here in all kinds of ways (I hope) but  particularly sounding depths of water, which traditionally used a rope and a lead, and, more recently, sonar.

Pic is mine.  All rights reserved.

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Thinking of GOP Candidates — Auguries of Disingenuousness

December 15, 2015

Auguries of Disingenuousness
(US  GOP Presidential Candidates as of December 2015) 

To see a world in a grain of sand,
don’t make it glow with carpet-bombs.
To flower heaven in your hand,
don’t turn strewn rocks into lined tombstones.

Eternity’s cut by every hour
that we barter off the soul–
the harlot’s cry quite overpowered
by those who’d hawk our all.

Burnishing our fears with bling,
combing bald hates with shine,
they boast they’ll get us everything,
snaking oil o’er twists of spine.

But the grains that hold the world they see
are measurements of ammo–
Oh good lord, please save me
from their deserts of glow-woe,
from their plasticked deserts of woe.

(Optional refrain:  oh-glow-woe-woh-woh-woh-woh/oh-glow-woe-woh-woh-woh=woh–)

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Not sure about the rhythms at the end of this one, but here’s a poem originally inspired by Kerry O’Connor’s Real Toads prompt and based very very very loosely on William Blake’s poem, the Auguries of Innocence (that begins with “to see the world in a grain of sand”–and finding heaven in a wildflower and moves on to the winding sheet woven by the harlot’s cry.)  My offering for Real Toads Open Link Platform. 

The pic is mine; not sand, but detailed (ha.) 

Process notes–a grain is a weight used for measurement of propellant in bullets and other projectile weaponry; plastic refers to all kinds of things of course, but also certain explosives. 

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Bell

December 13, 2015

Version 2

Bell

I am nothing, I am taught–vagina a brand
of absence.  Not true–
I am something, I am taught,
in the way that the chair you sit upon is something, or the cot
where you throw yourself down, or that fine pinky ring that one day
you will pawn–but when I am taught
something else–even just the writing of these words,
the chair will stand, the cot straighten, and print everywhere
will ring out to me, inked clappers pealing
this whole damned, whole blesséd, world.

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This – yes, I’m calling it a draft, as it is early in the morning here-was written for Kerry O’Connor’s prompt on Real Toads on micro-poetry.  I am afraid it is micro-prose if micro-anything. Kerry asked us to think of seeing the world through a grain of sand–here I was thinking of something that sounds perhaps small–girls’ education–but is huge.  And really, it could be the education of any child, boy or girl–

The pic is an old one taken by me many years ago in Nepal (early 80’s)–I happen to have that pic, I don’t think that girls’ education is particularly worse in Nepal than in many many other parts of the world. 

PS – of course, I am not referring to my personal experience here–lucky enough to grow up in a place and time where although women were under certain obstacles, they were allowed to thrive. 

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Field

December 11, 2015

DSC00373

Field

What can I write of?
That I remember the blood red of the planks of the back yard picnic table
that Celeste sat upon, Celeste who stretched to the skies when I was small and measured myself by
brick walls.

How is life so sad and yet so ample?
Ramon
Fernandez who spoke to Wallace Stevens
cannot help me,
only the dusk with its mustards and blues can say
anything and it insists

that I am beautiful, and that you
are beautiful too–

And that, honestly,
does not correspond to
the blink of
a letter,
rather to the word “mainly”
and “plants”,
and, also, maybe, “green,”
but only that green that is no longer
green as night falls, and the”‘mainly” that means
inevitable
and the plants that will grow
regardless,
even if no one visits our graves,
the ones with the frayed
fronds that remember us
as birds and our flight
as directional–

yes, those; yes, that
Celeste–

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A poem of sorts.  Unprompted.

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And the Sixth Element’s the Page

December 11, 2015

And the Sixth Element’s the Page

Terry Pratchett says the fifth element’s
surprise–this, to me, seems the most prevalent:
surprise that earth is not what you thought it would be,
or is; surprise that air can still feel free
or doesn’t–is there, but, like a boa,
ties upon your chest a knot of woe, a
chest of not, an anti-treasure.
Surprise that fire is lately measured
by the thousands of acres, or the double
digit pulls of a trigger finger.  Trouble
so often spelled as water, but–surprise too–
that its flow still washes us anew. Oh, wise, you,
Sir Terry, and your inky types, who know
to prise smiles from mere words, mere us, this now.

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Draft daft poem.  Inspired by Bjorn Rudberg to think of a sonnet (sort of) and by the Real Toads prompt by Hannah Gosselin on the classical elements–earth, air, water, fire.  My favorite writer who discusses the elements–actually my favorite writer when he discusses anything–Sir Terry Pratchett–added in the element of surprise. 

I’m not sure why I am using this picture– the little dog seems hardly surprised!  But it’s a pic I did that makes me smile so put it here.  All rights reserved.  

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December Morning (55)

December 6, 2015

December Morning

The frost sprouts violets in the field today,
seeds stars,
makes proof of the universality of
the universe–
that is, what I saw in the sky pre-dawn
now shows itself
upon the ground.

In the sparked blinks
of that bright dew
how can we fear
dissolution,
we who so long
to be found
beautiful.

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Here’s one came out in 55 words first go–I did trade a couple of initial words “after-go”–but it really kind of arrived. Unfortunately, it is really hard to capture a good picture of frost.  The one I am posting shows it furring apple trees and not the glisten.

This is a second poem for Hedgewitch’s 55 prompt on Real Toads, based on holly and ivy and pairing–I can try to justify this, but will just apologize and post.  k.

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