After Dickinson (In Modern Times)

Posted April 8, 2019 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry

After Dickinson (In Modern Times)

Because I would not stop for Life,
he did not stop for me—
Life not really a creature
of posed civility—

As I drove and drove myself
Life hopped on for the ride—
Though he’d himself no need for haste
He let me indecide—

We passed by schools, their playgrounds bare—
youth stop-starting ahead,
each of us scurrying plural 
to find our own instead. 

I didn’t see my horses’ heads
eyes round with darkling strain—
I did not marvel at the gleam
of steaming car or train.

I did not really see at all—
oh yes, there was my screen,
someone was doing something there
someone else too, it seemed—

Missing much before me like—
the cornice in the ground
that grave site sometime swelling—
that loss most surely found—

Till then, it isn’t centuries
it might feel not a year—
yet still I hunt some distant there—
although Life sits just here.

 

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Drafty poem for April after Emily Dickinson, for Marian’s prompt on Real Toads about etiquette. The Dickinson poem that inspired it follows vaguely can be found here.  Drawing is mine (as are all on this blog unless otherwise identified.)  All rights reserved.

I’m not really satisfied with this one, but I am already a day late and need to leave for work!  Sorry I have been slow to comment.  It seems very hard for me to do the blogger/wordpress interface and a lot of the comments I did yesterday seem lost in some nether space.  Agh. 

What They Want of Us (Certain Lawmakers)

Posted April 6, 2019 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry

Tags: , , ,

by Jason Limberg

What they want of us  (Certain Lawmakers)

To reproduce like rabbits.
No, just to be rabbits, pussy soft hares,
mute and cute.

To just shut up and hop to it;
mute and cute. 

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Thinking of current assaults on Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood in the U.S. (and on women’s rights generally).  For Kerry’s prompt on Real Toads; the pic is a wonderful ink drawing by Jason Limberg.          .The views expressed here are stricttly my own and have no connection to Jason. 

Cold

Posted April 5, 2019 by ManicDdaily
Categories: Uncategorized

Cold

I have been so cold
all day,
one hand mittening a tea mug, the other icicling
rough lips, a quaking
inside.

Why have you come to me, virus?
When I was already too sad
to be sick.

But that’s how it works, you whisper,
snarkily,

while me, I sniff, and tell myself
 that time will surely bring
relief,

and tell myself how still I must change
my life,
and wonder whether I will now.

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Another drafty poem for April and for the Real Toads prompt about the monster that’s a bad roommate, this the rhinovirus currently camped out in my throat and nose. 

When Thinking Of Scars

Posted April 4, 2019 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized

Tags: , , ,

When Thinking of Scars

I have heard that Buddhists ask
what one should do in a world filled
with sharp stones? 

Should we cover the world with
soft leather, so that we might walk
where we will?
Or should we simply cover
our feet?

I tend to wear thickish shoes,
my skin so thin.

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Drafty poem for Sherry”s prompt on Real Toads.

Somewhen

Posted April 3, 2019 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized

Tags: , , ,

Somewhen

Somewhen a car roams,
the shape of my torso already
ghosting its hood;
stairs I will have fallen down
await,
a stream slips around the sometime rocks
in my pockets;
the sea breathes me.

They all speak late at night, sotto voce–
They think that I don’t hear them.
(They know that I hear them.)
(They count upon my hearing them.)

In the cone that is a too-bright light lit late,
the car hood blinks, the stairs shrug,
the stream blushes – the sea too feels sheepish–embarrassed all
by how they need me
to make them into fates–
embarrassed all of them, but not so embarrassed
as to simply let me be.

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Another would-be poem for Sanaa’s prompt on Real Toads about late nights.  It is difficult for me to return comments till this weekend, but will. 

 

This Chair Not A Political Hack

Posted April 2, 2019 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized

Tags: , , ,

This Chair Not a Political Hack

The chair contemplated
the bums it had supported, fated, it seemed,
to be rated
bottom rung,
catching what might otherwise fall
between the cracks.

What the chair wished:
to be for once the one who tables
the motion,
who starts a movement with legs,
makes others do its bidding;
not hidden
beneath the suits and toots.

The thing, it thought woodenly:
to take a stand–
But life was not fair
to this chair,

and the chair?
It just sat there,and took it, oh yeah-

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A joke to lift some of the political gloom.  I am sorry to be slow returning comments but very grateful for them.  This is written for HA prompt on Real Toads to write from the perspective of an object.  He quotes a beautiful Wallace Stevens poem, that could not be more different. 

Tried to Make a Nest

Posted April 1, 2019 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized

Tags: , ,

Tried to make a nest

She tried to make a nest upon his chest,
as if by folding into him
she could get him to hold her.

She liked to think of the light there as blue
but it was grey.
The chill of cement
as she walked to him, then bent to look for
a hollow, to fit into
a hollow,
could still be recalled
by her bared feet,
the hard cement beneath
whatever they covered it with.

   

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Draftish poem for Marian’s prompt on Real Toads about changes in love. 

Can Humans Smell Beauty

Posted February 17, 2019 by ManicDdaily
Categories: drawings, poetry

Tags: , , , ,

Can Humans Smell Beauty

She sensed him more and more
when he was no more.
His scent filled hands otherwise vacant.
“I can’t” was all she would have said,
had she said.

The scent was not of rot, or cold,
but of the boldly fresh, the warm,
that is to say, a child’s head,
sun suddenly, the sweetness of just sitting
on a picnic table
or swing,
the aroma of singing or of being able
to sing,
what you hold to your breast when you notice
your heart beating,
or hurting,
that kind of thing,
what you hold to your breast
when it’s your heart you would hold. 

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For Magaly Guerrero’s prompt on Real Toads, which included the great question, which is the title here.  It doesn’t quite work as the title, but I haven’t come up with something else. 

The drawing is also mine (Karin Gustafson).  As always, all rights reserved. 

Moment

Posted February 8, 2019 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry

Tags: , , , , ,

Moment

I’m sitting on the train;
it’s all so much the same,
why does it always change?
this sitting on the train.

The strips along the platform
as yellow as they fade,
Now spray paint swelling every wall
but not much to be read,

sure, missives of a sort —
initials blown to bubble;
train jitter jars then starts again (again)
through city rubble.

I long for something shining
not metal and not glass;
will the dulled to sparkle,
what’s passed to not be past;

rest one hand against my lips,
think small moist palms (once kids),
then feel (imagined) yours, dry, warm,
as a kiss upon closed lids.

Now, we cross the river,
a train next track smears blue,
as I still wait for that some time
when I was me, you you.

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A drafty sort of poem for my prompt on Real Toads to write about this very moment. 

I’m sorry to have been so absent; I have been working working at work, but also have put out a couple of books–one about the death of my mother, called Momoir, Maybe, and a new children’s book, Little Dog Thirsts For Adventure.  Check them out!  

 

Like Lichen

Posted November 22, 2018 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry

Tags: , , , , ,

Like Lichen

LIke lichen is like an ear is like
some leaves
is how I love you–it’s just the shape
nature makes in me.

Like a fern is like a fir, like any tree truly,
like the dendrites that bring feeling
to a hand or body,
like the fingers of that hand, the limbs
of that body–
a shape nature makes–

like a nut, an egg,
like a planet, a seed, a heart–

like a riverbed or tributary,
like roots, like lightning,
like the capillaries that traverse
even stone–

the shape nature makes in me,
the love for you. 

 

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A love poem for Thanksgiving and my prompt on With Real Toads.  Check out my most recent book if you have a chance.  Momoir, Maybe, available on Amazon.  (Or a host of children’s books.) 

And many thanks!