Beheld
She thought she could be held
by a looking glass,
only after slippering in,
found the spoon ass-backwards, front to flat,
even just her own arms warmer;
so battened them around her,
not noting as she looked down
her crown caught, parted.
******************************
Attempt for the wonderful Kerry O’Connor’s prompt on Real Toads to write a micro poem on the theme of the eye of the beholder. Pic by Christina Martin, edited by me; all rights reserved
Against All Odds (Survival)
No crash from headlong dash.
No looped stitch bartering arteries.
Calories consumed.
Looming trains uninterrupted
entering stations.
(Still waiting for it, still
waiting for it.)
Day to day despair repaired
with spared arts, artifice.
***************
A belated drafty poem for the wonderful Izy Gruye’s “Out of Standard” prompt on With Real Toads to write a poem celebrating what in fact didn’t happen. My time hasn’t really been my own for a bit, so am very sorry to be late visiting other blogs! Will make it up!
Since original posting, I have changed the title.
Pic is mine–all rights reserved.
Parting (Fall)
I catch the parting of clouds
on the mountain rather than sky,
the baring of bared maples’ inner birch, silver linings bright
as any limb warmed,
light moving
as the crow flies.
So, we sometimes find
those lost, not
by looking up, but across,
right into the shine
of the valley of death;
so, we are sometimes wreathed
with a kindness that knows our shape, our face,
though it lies well beyond
our tracery.
***************
Here’s a drafty sort of poem about the way light seems to move in November. I will link to Real Toads Open Forum. Pics are mine.
And, Also,
Tired as a flat
by the side of the road.
Whatever rolls round in me
melts to ground,
momentum nailed
down inside–
Abide with me, I croon to you
who has arms so warm
that their life cannot be mistaken
for anything but,
blue veins mapping
an alternate route I strain
to follow.
***************
A second 55 for the wonderful Kerry O’ Connor’s prompt on With Real Toads.
Not the Best Name For It, Maybe
My boohoo won’t
to a shirtfront press,
its ring-ding wringing of face
needing space
from pat flattening,
forced comfort.
Boohoo not the best name, maybe,
for what laments the same not being
the same–
you not being the you,
the true not being the true–
that voodoo of what we do
to one another.
**********************************
A drafty 55 for With Real Toads, hosted by the wonderful Kerry O’Connor. Sorry for the long hiatus. Going through a terribly challenging period at my job. Photo (not sure it fits but like it) is mine. Milkweed fluff on a frosted leaf.
Something Coming (Late October or Anytime)
As the trees turn skeletal
the wind does call:
cover your limbs
with shear from bawl,
with the silken squeeze
of cocooned offal,
with hollow-cored fur
torn from its soul,
with leather stitched
by sharpest awl.
Wrap these too
around your skull
and still, I will snake through
your all,
find your flesh,
and, like leaf fall–
wither what I cannot
pull,
crack and chap
the bits I shawl.
The only way
you can forestall
my bite and blow,
my mar and pall,
is to squint right into
my bright maw,
is to smile into
my low and tall
is to let me too
be part of you.
For I can only just pass through
what gives me
passage–
*****************
Drafty poem linked very belatedly to Real Toads Tuesday Open Platform (meaning written mainly just for myself.) Influenced by my friend Hedgewitch’s great fall rhymes in Song of the Willow Wisp. Photo is mine–all rights reserved.
First Fail (Each Time)
If you extend the “i”,
which one tends to do under these circumstances,
you end up with “fall”,
which is what it feels like–
as if you were paraded naked, made
to feel shame,
and everything of you that came before, that seemed
to be good,
was a should-charade,
while everything about that spot you occupied
like a trophy on a high shelf–though it was a cheap trophy,
a dusty shelf–
was paradisal–and, oh,
though you are wiser now, the road not taken
has been taken,
and the road taken
has been taken,
everything you didn’t know you had
has been taken,
and, of course it’s stupid to feel this way, mistaken,
but you, somehow still young, are too stupid
to understand–as you run run run like a horse
who’s afraid that when a horse lies down
it will die–
that this failure, which has unmanned/unwomanned you,
has also made you
human.
You never before knew
what that meant.
********************************
Another drafty sort of poem (meaning freshly written) for my prompt on With Real Toads on Falling Into Lines. The photo is by Christina Martin, taken in the back wings of the American Museum of Natural History.
Note that this pic only suits the poem in the most metaphoric way.
Falls
It felt as if she’d put a fake eyelash
on her whole head, as if her whole head flirted
with the world, batting itself with the flippancy
of hair curled,
though it was just a fall of auburn hair (framing her face)
and not
from grace,
a purchased dangle of pageboy mod
that made my mother
a strange woman in my eyes, that is,
a woman–
a role that with the bald
totality of youth, I thought, reserved
for me–
In the same way that many
years later,
when I met her at an airport,
I saw a loop of dry toilet paper
dangling from the back waist
of her navy pants suit
and understood, in one fell swoop,
that she’d become
an old woman,
and that I would too,
(if lucky),
which silenced my flip
remark, as, masking
the movement, I caught the tissue, curling it
into a wad–
In those frames, time’s lash
snaps us to, eyes opening
in batted blinks–
Real enough, though–
*********************
My drafty offering for my own prompt on With Real Toads to write something stemming from the idea of fall. The fall at issue is a hair piece of a type that was once quite popular, longer hair to be worn almost like a hat, with a hairband covering the place where the hair attached. (Unlike a wig, a fall was worn for a change of style primarily, not to hide any bald spot.)
The pic (mine) doesn’t really go with the piece, but I just liked it.
Seen Not Heard
Any strange voices who’d call her, she was quite sure,
would just dial Cherry 8
for she did not see herself
as a girl who heard voices,
even as she leaned the much-loved bio
against her plate (her fork in the road
an actual fork, her road, the re-read
pages)
even as she lived beneath their cover
in bed and bath,
felt a certain loyalty
to royalty (mispronunciation tending to imbue the Dauphin
with the sweetness of Flipper),
she knew that Joan’s was not
her path, her retinae too weighted
by suburban streets to glow
so gonzo–
Only knew that she craved a life
that moved in circle, shaped
a plot (narrative not
pit), tick audible,
where halos might be dialed down
to shackles, yet still keep
their shine,
where she would be
both onlooker
and star–mouthpiece and that dark bit
you held up to
your ear–
where others too
would surely be on the line–had to be, honestly,
to make the whole thing
worthwhile–
it didn’t have to be Joan–
printed words coiling connection
to Jo March too, and sickly Beth,
Abe Lincoln, Scarlett, Juliette,
Madame Curie,
even Beethoven (who looked so sad in the pictures,
deaf)–
******************************
Very very very drafty poem for Shay’s prompt on rotary phones on Real Toads
In a Sudden Depression (Roadside)
In a sudden depression,
I say maybe you should just let me
lie down in a ditch, and I see,
as you drive through the darkness, me opening
the car door, only the scuttle’s gentle, not fast,
the body finding at last
a roadside channel where algae ivies
my cheek and eyes stare glassily
as pond scum, not perhaps
as active, (though bugs do frond
the uproots of
my hair something squinching
my ear) and you, driving steadily, say, no,
that wouldn’t be a good idea,
and I, glad for the seat belt, say still, to be dramatic,
why not sooner
than later? as you, adjusting the brights, answer, what’s wrong
with a little
procrastination?
the only roads home sometimes
these dark
curved ones.
****************************************
A short draft poem. Please read with a sense of humor!
ManicDDaily 
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