A Hope

Posted June 18, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

DSC01497

A Hope

Oh sister death, oh sister night,
I’ll seek your hold
at last bright light.
And when times come
that we three part
your echo still
will ring my heart,
and I will feel
nor ill nor fright
in the cisterned well
of death and night.

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Draft draft draft poem for Kerry O’ Connor’s micro poetry prompt on Real Toads based in part on Gustave Klimt and Walt Whitman, both favorites.  I am sorry to have been so absent; a busy time.  Photo is mine, from the Museum of Pre-hispanic Art of Mexico (collection of Ruffino Tamayo) in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Comments: 19 Comments

A Sounding

Posted June 4, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

IMG_2600A Sounding

Hello darkness, not my friend,
you’ve come to play with me again.
You don’t bother with soft creeping;
you just shake me like a doll sleeping
with eyelids pushed down and up at your command
beneath your hand.
Oh, darkness, you confound
my balance.

Hello darkness, not my friend,
somehow we’ll make it to the end.
You’ll keep pushing, but I’ll pull through.
My eyes will not be blanked by you,
nor will my sky be ground down
into dust, or if it must,
I’ll be its sister
granule;
I’ll be its sister
granule.

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

This is very much a draft poem a not 55 words but, nonetheless, I am positing it for Kerry O’Connor’s 55 word prompt on With Real Toads, which was also asked one to use the words of a sad song as an inspiration. Mine, The Sounds of Silence, by Paul Simon.  Pic is by me or a Buddhist painting in Ladakh, India.  All rights reserved. 

Comments: 20 Comments

L’Heure Bleu

Posted June 2, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,


L’Heure Bleu

They ask me another name
for the l’heure bleu, and all I can think of
are yellow squares, kitchen framed
by eventide, those windows
where women work–

and through the yellow, beams
of door jamb, a chintz
of suds, dish rag, stretch-marked
Saran–
cupped wells of coffee–the dark sides
of too many moons, or canyons
of a more distilled amber (burning
as it goes down)–
eyes flecked
with dab, veins rooting legs
before a sink–

I don’t mean to make it sound ugly–that gold glimmer as beautiful as
cake, luminous as
honey comb, and in the blue-black backdrop,
moths shimmer/flap
against sheened
screens;

and in the putting it all away,
one more helping,
helping–

TV greys elsewheres
but there a rose will smell as sweet even painted
dripping Dawn–

no fear

no fear

**********************************
Draft poem for Real Toads Open Platform hosted by Marian.  The l’heure bleu is the blue hour- a time of dusk/evening that is exactly what it sounds like.   Painting is one of mine; watercolor with windows added through iphone app. (Ha.)  All rights reserved.   

Comments: 8 Comments

Back Then You Swam Rather Like A Butterfly

Posted May 30, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

IMG_1330 - Version 2

Back Then You Swam Rather Like A Butterfly

Somewhere, a sneeze–

its moist blow haloing fellow passengers
in some careering car
of a trained train–

the mucilaginous scree
catapaulting me
to my bed with a bad flu,
while you, not yet a drop
in my bucket, made
ready–

my husband catching it too,
and too recovering
in that same bed.

God bless, I may have said,
in subway’s weary blear–but how was I
so blessed?

Your essence bright blinked some
months later, newborn eyes as dark
as so many kinds
of wisdom–that earth that nourishes
roots, that night that blues
dawn’s horizon, the lifting sides of all the different wings
that astonish us–
what just flew there–flies–

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

Poem of sorts for Bjorn Rudberg’s prompt on Real Toads about the butterfly effect.  (True story may be a little more complex. Ha.) 

Comments: 11 Comments

Sea

Posted May 27, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

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Sea

There’s a sadness in me
that if I were a sea
would be the sea weed,
endlessly re-fronding
like a ghost that weaves
its own winding sheet,
and in that unwinding
of deeper green
the sea wants
to weep
as if there were room
in such water
for any more
salt; as if there were room
in such salt
for any more
wound;
only maybe the unwound sadness
is itself the sea,
and me, the weed,
life being suffering, according to many,
and me, for all of it,
sprouting at odd angles, joy–
oh boy, says she/me/this
small sea.

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

Draft poem belatedly for Fireblossom’s prompt on Real Toads, about finding the grey in the good.  I don’t think this really fits–I did another which seemed kind of silly but maybe will post sometime.  (Thanks. Shay, for great prompt!)

Comments: 15 Comments

Not Quite Piano Piano

Posted May 25, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

New scan 12-10-10

Not Quite Piano Piano

We listen to Lang Lang who milks
(almost amusingly)
the pauses,
then go out to look
at Mars,
its brightness tipped with red
in the blue night.
A plane seems almost
to fly into it and you joke about seeing
Martians, your arm in the sling, recovering,
as tree frogs sing of Spring (almost
amusingly), and I wonder why it is
we do not make a hymn
to every single
given moment.

**************
A draft draft incidental poem for Real Toads Open Platform.  Process notes: Lang Lang is a celebrated and very skilled pianist — a great showman.  Tree frogs are excessively loud, while the term piano refers to softness in volume.

The painting above is by my husband, Jason Martin, and was used in the cover of my poetry book, Going on Somewhere.   (This copy is a bit purply–sorry, Jay.)

Hope all well for all. 

Comments: 11 Comments

Face

Posted May 15, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Face

In that time when my face was whole,
love thought it knew my heart;
but when you wore my face to holes,
love found some missing parts.

Like all veneers, so lips will chip,
as surface roughs, so cheek;
so me who craved your covering hips
the bones as hard as teak.

I let the sky now hold my face
let blue through gap and tear,
and, in the night, the stars find space
to slip light through the wear.

And though my skin no more is whole
love loves with all my heart;
and though what’s me slips through the holes,
I love with each lost part.

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

Draft draft draft poem, for my own prompt on Real Toads to write about no more–here I’ve also tried to think of some of Byron’s rhythms.  I’ve been thinking about this poem for the last couple of days and this version (just now come up with) excludes a few stanzas and takes it in a different direction.  If anyone is interested in process or just likes to give free advice,  I am happy to post other stanzas/versions. 

The pictures above and below are from the wonderful Pergamon exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (Hellenistic statues from Turkey.)   The poem is not ekphrastic, but I do like the pics, which set me on the track of the poem.  All rights reserved. 


 

Comments: 20 Comments

Last

Posted May 7, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

IMG_9849

Last

When someone dies,
their face puckers.
It’s not so much a kiss

as a squeeze,
the body prised
through some other
canal,
and it is not their face

but his or hers—
in that last moment’s day,
the body saying me,
even the mostly-stolen self

no longer in stealth, breathing,
oh no, oh yes,
oh my. 

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

Drafty poem for Brendan’s prompt on Real Toads about the harrowing and hallowed.  I’ve been on a bit of a break (mainly working and reading) and I’m not really “back” but this poem came to me, so thought I’d post.  The pic is mine but of a light sculpture by Jason Martin. 

The poem has been edited since first posting.  k. 

Comments: 17 Comments

Giving It A Rest

Posted May 4, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: elephants, iPad art, Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , , , ,

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 Thanks as always for your support.

Comments: 4 Comments

Brain Hurts

Posted May 1, 2016 by ManicDdaily
Categories: dog, poetry, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,
Updated Brain in Bed (With Dog)

Brain Hurts

My brain hurts
from inhaled pain,
swollen now
to not quite sane.
Nought it knows
will be the same,
nor answer to
its (or my) name.

My heart hurts
with built-in stain;
it’s been set
by drenching rain;
what washes it
might have a name,
but I don’t know it
just the same.

***************
Very much a draft ditty for May 1 and Kerry O’Connor’s 55 word prompt on Real Toads.  I’m just doing recycled drawings at the moment; this of a brain in bed, with canine companion.

Comments: 5 Comments

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